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Virgin Mobile Gets Buzzd On Location-Based Entertainment
Virgin Mobile announced today that it has inked a deal with Buzzd, a location-based city guide and social network, to equip Virgin Mobile handsets with the ability to allow local entertainment information to be broadcast and shared among Virgin Mobile customers in the same general proximity.
Dubbed “buzzd on Virgin Mobile,” the new service will run on the carrier’s WAP deck and deliver event and venue information. as well as reviews and ratings on restaurants and other popular places from people around them.
Virgin is quick to point out that “buzzd on Virgin Mobile” does more than that. And why wouldn’t it want to stress that? Most of what buzzd will offer on the handsets can already be found from apps in Apple’s App Store, such as Whrrl, Where, and Yelp.
Regardless, “buzzd on Virgin Mobile” will let subscribers find and connect with friends via SMS and can access up-to-date information like event feeds and pricing data from the platform. According to Virgin Mobile, all user-generated feedback is layered at the top throughout the platform for easy access.
In order to use “buzzd on Virgin Mobile,” which is only available in the United States, users can register for the service by texting ‘join’ to 96321 on a Virgin Mobile handset or by clicking the “buzzd” link on Virgin XL.
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In-Flight Broadband Cheat Sheet
Updated: You just can’t keep the American urge to be productive down. Literally. That’s why in-flight Wi-Fi services get tech journalists and business travelers all excited, even as Congress tries to ban those pesky mobile phone calls on planes. I kind of like being forced to read a book, but the siren song of a blog post will surely lead me to seek out in-flight Wi-Fi on my next trip to San Francisco. Please raise your seats backs to the upright position and check out our list of in-flight broadband options:
- Today Delta is announcing in-flight Wi-Fi for all of its U.S. flights using the Gogo service from Aircell. The service will cost $9.95 for a flight that’s three hours or less and $12.95 for flights that are more than three hours (Aircell’s set rate). As direct flights decrease, many travelers will likely get stuck paying twice - -for each leg of the flight — but if I can watch Hulu instead of the in-flight movie it might be worth it. Wait, I’m supposed to be working. A Delta spokesman says the service will debut on East Coast flights first and cover the Delta fleet by mid-2009.
- American Airlines said in August of 2007 that it would provide in-fight Wi-Fi to folks traveling on jets used mostly on transcontinental routes. Last month it said it would trial the service (it’s also using Aircell) in 15 jets. It has tested the service on flights traveling from New York to Los Angeles and San Francisco as well as on New York and Miami flights.
- Virgin America offers in-flight Wi-Fi on transcontinental flights via Aircell as well, and is still in the testing phase. Update: Virgin says they will have Wi-Fi for customers (the crew already has it) on several planes by the end of the year and fleet wide by the end of March 2009. Pricing has yet to be determined.
- Southwest Airlines is planning satellite-based Wi-Fi on four of its planes this summer, but we’re still waiting to hear more details.
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And So ISP Enforcement Begins
Virgin Media and BPI (the UK equivalent of RIAA) plan to start sending out warning letters to the ISP’s errant subscribers illegally sharing music over Virgin’s broadband. BPI will identify illegal file sharers and send that information to Virgin Media. The ISP will then send the subscriber two “informative letters,” one from Virgin and one from BPI. Thus begins a plan of action the ISP and music association started back in March. We weren’t impressed with it then, and we aren’t impressed with it now.
Enlisting ISPs to help enforce civil laws on their networks is a slippery slope that could lead to privacy violations, conflicts of interest and lawsuits against the ISPs. Plus, warning people who illegally share music files that what they’re doing is wrong isn’t going to save music sales.
So what that Virgin isn’t disconnecting users who receive warning letters? It’s still a private company working to enforce public laws. There’s a word for that. Vigilante.
Would You Fire Your ISP Over Privacy?
OK, so it’s no secret that a desire for free services on the part of consumers coupled with the desire of service providers to make a buck has spawned ever more intrusive ad models (Hello, Beacon!) But while hyper-targeted ads and behavioral advertising raise eyebrows, so far they’ve largely failed to raise consumers’ ire. Target that data from deep within an ISP, however, and people start to get worried.
It’s already led to problems in the UK. Privacy rights organizations have recently started to express concerns over the use of a service by ISPs such as BT and Virgin Media from a startup called Phorm. The company places its servers inside a telco’s network to check out the data moving through the ISP’s pipes. Phorm assures users that their data remains anonymous, and that they can choose to opt out of the program, but so far, people aren’t impressed.
Phorm is also hoping to expand into the U.S. It already has competition, from NebuAd, which is putting its deep-packet-inspection equipment inside ISPs to serve targeted ads. The company got some unwanted attention last June after Redmoon, a Texas ISP, started using the service to deliver ads on top of existing sites. If your ISP started monitoring your data so it could serve up targeted ads, would you stay with them, or would you switch? Going mobile may not help. Remember that just last week, Qualcomm agreed to pay some $32 million mobile ad insertion company Xiam.
" Virgin Galactic unveils SpaceShipTwo; Plans open architecture spaceship | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com
Virgin Galactic Unveils Design For SpaceShipTwo
This morning, Richard Branson’s spaceship startup Virgin Galactic unveiled the second design of its suborbital vehicles, SpaceShipTwo and White Knight Two. I am blogging this from the press conference at the Museum of Natural History in New York City.
SpaceShipTwo is what the passengers will actually ride in, and White Knight Two is the launch vehicle that carries it to a high altitude before releasing the rocket. (It takes less energy to launch from 50,000 feet than from the ground). The design is a little bit different than the initial SpaceShipOne and White Knight One. Both are all carbon-composite vehicles, and are designed with an open architecture so that in the future other companies can use it as a foundation to create space vehicles for unmanned missions. White Knight Two is a double-hulled launch plane with four engines from Pratt & Whitney.
Branson suggests that if Virgin Galactic can prove the commercial viability of space flight, it will unlock a “wall of investment that could rival the amount invested in mobile or the Internet.” He also suggests that at some point in the future, in addition to suborbital thrill rides, the vehicle pair could serve as a superfast transport for point-to-point international travel here on Earth. (Forget about supersonic flight, this would be much faster). Looking much further out to a day when next-generation vehicles are flying commercially that can actually deliver small satellites and other payloads, he waxes about the possibilities:
One day we might be able to use space for energy production. While I believe aviation has to get more carbon efficient, seemingly benign industries like IT have outpaced aviation in carbon output. [One promise of a commercial space industry is] the ability to launch low-earth satellites that could literally take some of the heat out of the planet, by serving as a repository for information technology.
Although the flight rate will be low to start, the vehicle is designed to handle high flight rates several years from now. “The spaceship is being designed so that it can be flown twice a day and the launch plane can be flown three times a day,” says designer Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites. Virgin Galactic has ordered five spaceships from Scaled Composites, with an option of seven more. Rutan predicts that if Virgin Galactic is able to build 40 to 45 spaceships over first twelve years, with 15 launch planes, they could fly 100,000 people in the first twelve years of operation.
Virgin Galactic hopes to begin test flights this summer, but no mention of when commercial flights will actually start. With recession fears in the air, you’ve got to wonder what kind of impact that might have on demand for such premium-luxury travel.
And you thought Web 2.0 startups were risky.
On the initial $200,000 price per flight, Branson notes:
Within five years of launching, we hope that price will come down dramatically. We accept that $200,00, even though the dollar is not worth much anymore, is still too expensive for the majority of people.
By comparison, a trans-Atlantic flight in 1939 between New York and England cost the equivalent of $47,000 in today’s dollars. That was one-way and coach.
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CircleLending Becomes Virgin Money USA; Gets Makeover and Millions in Funding
Peer-to-peer lending service CircleLending has been taken under the wings of Richard Branson’s Virgin empire and rebranded as Virgin Money USA.
Virgin’s US investment firm recently bought a majority stake in the Waltham, Massachusetts company, which acts as an online middleman for friends and family who want to loan each other money. The exact amount of money invested by Virgin has not been disclosed.
Virgin Money USA differs from other online lending services, because it focuses on loans between people who are familiar with one another. Prosper, Lending Club, Kiva, and Zopa, on the other hand, facilitate loans between relative strangers.
Thanks for the tip Ryan.
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Virgin Mobile USA: Last MVNO Hero
If you had to pick one mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) whose success has spawned dozens of copycats (most of them failures), then you have to go with Virgin Mobile USA. By focusing on the younger demographic, the company has snagged about 4.83 million customers.
A joint venture of Sprint (S) and Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, Warren, N.J.-based Virgin Mobile (VM) went public today. Its shares were recently changing hands for $16, up 6.7 percent. Late Wednesday, the company priced 27.5 million shares at $15 each, raising about $412.5 million, reports Reuters. The new cash will be used to pay down its debt and buy out Sprint, whose stake currently stands at 16.7 percent.
The company had revenues of $667 million for the first six months of 2007 and a net profit of $26 million. And that took six years. My advice to all MVNO wannabes: Pick another way to spend your working life. Like managing the Yankees - I hear there might be a job opening soon.
[from bushwald] Virgin America announces in-flight, air-to-ground broadband - Boing Boing Gadgets
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