Yes ladies! After many, many, many airline PR stunts only involving the female flight crew, Air New Zealand have finally made a video showing mainly male employees. The employees are all stripped down, and bodypainted to let you know that their fares have nothing to hide – with no unexpected surprises or additional fees.
Kudos Air New Zealand, and thanks for the catchy tune (sung by New Zealand native Gin Wigmore)!
Just Landed – Test Render (4 hrs) from blprnt on Vimeo.
Jer Thorp took the search idea a little bit further — he illustrated it. In the video above, Thorp mined all the data of tweets saying “Just landed in” or “Just arrived in” over 4 hours. Then he made it pretty. Watch the video! Maybe one was you!
What will they think of next?
You can find Gadling on Twitter, as well as the most of the Gadling Team: Mike Barish, Kraig Becker, Catherine Bodry, Alison Brick, Justin Glow, Aaron Hotfelder, Tom Johansmeyer, Jeremy Kressmann, Heather Poole, Jamie Rhein, Annie Scott, Karen Walrond, Kent Wien, and Brenda Yun.
[via boingboing]
Ever look out the side of your airplane while on the ground and see those red semicircles painted around the jet engine? Those are there for a reason. If the engine powers up quickly and someone is nearby, someone (or something) could easily get sucked in. Those red regions are the “no walk” zone.
But that’s what happened at Los Angeles International Airport yesterday when a Japan Airlines 747 was pushing back in preparation for its departure to Tokyo. As the engines powered up, a metal baggage container got too close to the engine and was swept up and lodged inside of the cowling. Oops.
Nobody was hurt in the incident, but I’m sure it’s a huge inconvenience for the passengers and airline who were displaced.
Several days ago I wrote about Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari, in Santa Claus, Indiana. At the time of writing, I knew they had some cool rides, but it wasn’t until I took a closer look at their site that I noticed they just opened the highest water ride in the world – The Pilgrims Plunge.
You really need to see the video to get an idea just how insane this thing is – 10 passengers at a time will drop 135 feet down a water slide, at over 50 mph.
After the jump, a second video showing the ride. Holiday World is now home to two record holding attractions – the park is also where you’ll find the top “air time” wooden coaster in the world.
Like so many things in life, the latest Flip Ultra is two steps forward and one step back. At $199, this compact HD video camera is less expensive than the sleek Flip Mino. But it’s also bulkier than its little brother, both literally (it’s big enough to accommodate two AA batteries, as opposed to the internal battery the Mino runs off) and figuratively, since it can hold up to two hours of high-resolution (720p) video, twice as much as the Mino.
What I liked: In the tradition of previous Flip cameras, the Ultra is super-easy to use. The stereo mic is a huge upgrade from the tinny-sounding mono mic on the Mino. The camera felt solid in my hand, and even though it didn’t have any discernible image-stabilization technology, I experienced less shake when shooting. The USB port makes a better connection with some PCs — no need to unplug all the peripherals when I’m downloading video. Editing the images on my almost-obsolete version of Final Cut Pro … well, that’s another story.
What I didn’t like: If you’re used to the Mino, you may not appreciate the heaviness of its successor. The buttons take some getting used to; I turned the camera off when I was trying to zoom in on a subject, because I was used to the Mino configuration. A lot of my shots were unacceptably jerky. Flip should consider flipping the switch on image-stabilization when it develops its next generation of cameras. And batteries. Don’t even get me started on batteries. It takes seven hours to charge the internal batteries the first time around. Whoa.
What everyone else is saying: The Flip Ultra is getting a round of reasonably good reviews. USA Today recommended it as a “fun, easy and highly compact video camera to capture baby’s first steps, your European vacation highlights or a family reunion.” CNET gave it three out of five stars, adding that it’s “only worth buying at a reasonable discount off its list price.” Our friends over at Engadget panned the camera because of its image stabilization issues.
Field test: I shot SeaWorld Orlando’s newest rollecoaster, Manta, on both the Mino and the Ultra. I couldn’t have achieved the same angles with a conventional video camera unless it was tethered to me, and that was something the ride attendants weren’t going to go for. (In fact, I had to sneak this camera on the ride … sorry, SeaWorld.) Can you tell which footage was shot on the Mino and which was done with the Ultra?
Give up? The coaster POV shots were done on a Mino, but everything else was shot on the Ultra.
Buy or not? Get one. It’s a useful travel companion.