A guidebook to New York Hip-Hop (Remixed)

by Jeremy Kressmann on

Though New York has given birth to any number of musical movements, it’s only the last 30 years that have given rise to Hip-Hop, arguably one of the more defining cultural movements of the late 20th and early 21st Century. Though Hip-Hop is alive and well in New York City, it’s not necessarily something that’s easy to pinpoint on a map for out-of-town visitors, especially not like the Empire State Building or Central Park.

Yet a new interactive online database, called Bronx Rhymes, promises to challenge this assumption. The new project takes a closer look at the Bronx, the Borough best known for jumpstarting the movement, categorizing some of the most famous places and people on an interactive map. A corresponding poster has been placed at the physical location of each map point in the Bronx, offering details of what happened there. Visitors can respond to the poster with their mobile phone by SMS, offering a comment on what they’ve read or providing a hip-hop “rhyme” of their own for inclusion in a database.

Anyone interested in learning more about hip-hop luminaries like Afrika Bambaataa, DJ Kool Herc or KRS-One can find the artists’ entries listed on the website, along with the text message comments of anyone who’s contributed. For instance, an entry for DJ Kool Herc reads, “he was kool like a king threw one two punches in the hip hop ring.” It’s an interesting and participatory approach to creating a tour guide, one that is just as dependent on the input of the visitors as it is on the project’s original designers. It works especially well for Hip-Hop, a movement that is highly dependent on the remixing and blending of sounds and voices for inspiration. And with high-powered mobile phones and Google Maps becoming ever-more pervasive, we can expect to see more of these type of tourist mash-ups coming soon to a vacation hotspot near you.

[Via PSFK]

Sign up with T-Mobile, get free companion airfare

by Grant Martin on

Up for a contract renewal for your mobile phone? Desperate for a cheap plane ticket? T-mobile might have your answer.

If you sign up for a two-year contract with the wireless provider, they’ll give you a free companion ticket to any seat that you buy. The offer is fairly flexible too: there are no blackout dates, tickets are good through 2010, you can earn frequent flyer miles and you can fly on any airline.

But there are also restrictions. The biggest one that I can discern is that you have to book your original ticket through a T-Mobile partner’s proprietary search engine — through which I hear you can’t get the “best” prices on all flights. As an example, one member at Flyertalk pointed out that a transcontinental flight was quoted between $600-$700, nearly twice that of which you could pay during a good fare sale.

Still, if you do your homework and find out that it’s economical to book the companion ticket, it may be worth looking into. You can check out T-Mobile’s promo page here while the Frequently Asked Questions page is here.


Malaysia Airlines First in Asia to Offer In-Flight Mobile Phone Service

by Josh Lew on

Malaysia Airlines has received and installed an in-flight mobile phone system designed by AeroMobile on one of its Boeing 777s. Passengers will be able to safely use their cell phones and PDAs during the cruise portion of the flight without interfering with the aircraft’s navigational controls and communication.

The system has been tested extensively over the past few weeks. Cabin crews will be given the green light to “advise” especially chatty passengers to be mindful of others during long haul or overnight flights. The service will be available on regional and international flights to Australia, Africa and the Middle East.

Passengers who choose to use the service will be billed by their own cell phone providers. Roaming, international and out-of-network charges will be applied. Currently, AeroMobile is working with Malaysian cell phone service providers to ensure that users won’t hit any snags if the try to make in-flight calls while in international airspace.

[Via My Sinchew]

Ryanair to allow inflight mobile phone calls by month’s end

by Grant Martin on

To the disgust of millions of quiet-airplane activists, the scales are starting to tip in the direction of mobile phones being allowed on aircraft. Today, word leaked from the UK indicates that Ryanair, the continent’s largest budget carrier will start to allow inflight mobile phone calls on a limited basis.

If these trials pan out and and model is profitable, you can expect that the service will be expanded to all aircraft in the Ryanair fleet — and further into the European Union.

All of this micro buildup from several international carriers testing out inflight mobile service is just prolonging the inevitable, unfortunately — at some point I get the feeling that we’re all going to have to sack up and deal with loud talkers on our flights.

Interestingly, however, Ryanair is taking a different approach to fees associated with the service than other carriers — they don’t plan to enforce any wild roaming fee from which they take a giant cut. Instead, CEO Michael O’Leary says that passengers will only be subject to normal roaming fees. Perhaps the profit that he plans to make from increased fare revenues will make up for the mobile phone equiment.

Plane Answers: A rant in favor of cell phones on airplanes

by Kent Wien on

Welcome to Gadling’s feature, Plane Answers, where our resident airline pilot, Kent Wien, answers your questions about everything from takeoff to touchdown and beyond. Have a question of your own? Ask away!

Bud vents a little frustration:

There is no data whatsoever that cell phones interfere with airplane navigation systems. In fact, there have been tests with cell phone signals amplified ten fold and without interference. So every time the flight attendent comes on the intercom and tells the cabin to turn off cell phones because “they may interfere” with the airplanes navigation system, I simply stop and think to myself, that if they would lie to me about something that doesn’t hurt at all, how much can they be trusted to tell me the truth about something that really might be harmful. I think that if you will lie about a small thing, you will lie about a big one. And since the Captain allows the lie to be broadcast, who can you really trust? Reminds me of the government agent arriving on a doorstep and saying “trust me, I’m here to help you!” Yeah! Right?

I don’t agree with your logic, Bud. The most frequently quoted study was done by Carnigie Mellon University in 2003. Their comprehensive findings were summarized as follows:
The key conclusions were that (1) onboard cellular telephone calls were observed in-flight and activity is appreciable; (2) signal activity was observed in the aviation critical frequency bands at field strengths capable of causing interference to onboard avionics; and (3) onboard spectral activity was observed at flight critical phases.

The entire report is fascinating, but if you don’t have the time to read it all, here is a short interview with Bill Strauss, the person responsible for the report. He found that 1/3 of the time cell phones were being used illegally inflight, their frequencies actually crossed into the GPS band.

The FAA mandates in FAR 91.21 that carriers restrict the use of non-approved electronics devices. Flight attendants are required to enforce these regulations, and even the inflight announcements restricting cell phone use made by the cabin crew must be signed off by the FAA. So, instead of lying to you, these flight attendants are complying with the regulations of their job.

To borrow your logic a bit, let’s imagine a flight attendant who skipped the cell phone announcement. What other parts of their job might they be neglecting? Can you then trust them to check their fire extinguisher, oxygen and escape slide pressures before departure?

It’s been the policy of each of the airlines I’ve worked for that pilots and flight attendants are to be truthful with passengers.

It doesn’t matter what the delay is, we will always try to give as much insight as possible into the reason. There’s honestly no incentive for us to tell passengers anything other than the truth.

The airline I currently work for decided to go through the long and costly process to demonstrate to the FAA that cell phone use after landing and while taxiing to the gate was safe.

The test involved filling every seat with a person using a cell phone from a variety of manufacturers on each of the airplanes the airline operated.

Little regard was given to GPS and ground-based navigation interference, since the airplane was simply taxiing to the gate. Subsequently, each airplane type at the company passed, except for one. When this airplane, an Airbus, was tested, for some reason the smoke detector in a lavatory would activate.

After further modifications, the FAA approved cell phone use while taxiing in for each one of our aircraft types. I realize this is anecdotal, but it does represent at least some sort of interference, I suppose.

In the past, the FCC banned cell phones inflight because they would interfere with the networks on the ground. According to the author of the Carnegie Mellon study:

The FCC feels it can probably lift the ban, even if there are problems of interference [on board airplanes]. They’re saying to FAA, “If you want a ban, that’s your territory.”

Europe has recently approved cell phone use inflight, but that’s still subject to the European Aviation Safety Agency determining that interference isn’t an issue. I suppose in the U.S. if the public demands the use of cell phones on an airplane (a big if) then it’s going to be up to the airlines to convince the FAA it’s safe.

But please don’t blame the pilots or the flight attendants for following the regulations that are currently in place.


Do you have a question about something related to the pointy end of an airplane? Ask Kent and maybe he’ll use it for next Friday’s Plane Answers feature.