Aircraft interiors EXPO: Oi! ARINC answer call for airborne Internet
The A380 is the biggest airliner in history, and Emirates is on course to have a bigger fleet of the giant Airbuses than any other airline on earth. At November’s Dubai Airshow the Middle Eastern carrier signed a contract that brought its A380 commitment to 58 aircraft – over a quarter of the total order book and well ahead of household names like Air France, Lufthansa, Singapore Airlines and Qantas.
Emirates’ attitude to the A380 is a reflection of its taste for the biggest and the best in everything, including passenger communications. The airline has just become the first in the world to offer a fully commercial onboard mobile phone service to its passengers. Developed by ARINC subsidiary AeroMobile and employing Inmarsat for the air-to-ground link, the service allows passengers to use their own phones and personal digital assistants to make calls and send and receive text messages and emails.
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Inmarsat Aero is climbing steeply
The Mobile satellite operator Inmarsat is here to showcase its new SwiftBroadband 432kbit/sec service, which is expected to contribute to a soaraway increase in the company’s aeronautical earnings in the coming years.
For the financial year ended on December 31 London-headquartered Inmarsat reported growth in aero revenues of more than 44 per cent, outstripping its maritime (9 per cent growth) and land-mobile (8.4 per cent) sectors.
Inmarsat puts the success down primarily to sustained demand for and high levels of usage of its Swift 64 64kbit/sec data service, mainly in government and business aircraft.
CinemaNow, Technicolor unveil new delivery platform, consumer electronics industry
Jason Alexander, director of marketing for privately-held CinemaNow, said the company would seek to provide the platform to existing and new partners in the consumer electronics industry.
CinemaNow currently provides an online movie service that is accessible through its own website as well on various devices.
The platform should make it easier for device makers and retailers to provide an online movie service and features functions like content encoding and encryption, digital rights management (DRM), ad management, order fulfillment across various consumer electronics categories. Read more
Intel 1Q first-quarter profit matched Wall Street’s subdued expectations, revenue hits record
The Intel Corp.’s first-quarter profit matched Wall Street’s subdued expectations, a sign the company’s core microprocessor business remained healthy amid fears of a broader slowdown in technology spending.
The stock jumped about 7 percent in after-hours trading Tuesday after the technology bellwether forecast higher profit margins in the second quarter and signaled that it is thriving while its smaller rival, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., continues to stumble.
Santa Clara-based Intel said Tuesday that its net profit for the three months ended March 29 was $1.44 billion, or 25 cents per share. That represents a 12 percent decline from the year-ago period, when Intel earned $1.64 billion or 28 cents per share. But it was in line with the average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Financial.
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Microsoft Cuts Price of Xbox 360 HD DVD Drive
When a price cut comes out of the blue it is often a sign of a sinking ship. Given that Microsoft waited until a month after CES and two weeks before the Game Developers Conference to cut the price for the HD DVD add-on drive, I’m thinking the company wants to move products for a device that could soon be yesterday’s tech.
Microsoft gaming blog Major Nelson reports that the price for the drive is dropping from $179.99 to $129.99. Buyers can still take advantage of the limited time offer (till the end of February) to get five free HD-DVDs with purchase. And don’t forget that the drive comes with a copy of “King Kong.” That’s a lot of movies for the money, but even promotions like this one probably won’t stop Blu-ray from coming out the winner in the format war.
Microsoft buys 3D company for Virtual Earth
Microsoft has bought Caligari, a developer of 3D modeling software, in a move that could help enrich the graphics experience in Microsoft’s Virtual Earth mapping system.
Caligari started making 3D modeling and animation software for the Amiga computer in the mid-1980s. Its signature tool, called trueSpace, has a user interface that makes it easy to build complex 3D animations, according to an entry on theVirtual Earth blogon Wednesday announcing the acquisition.
Caligari has offices in Mountain View, California, and Slovakia. Its development team will work with the Virtual Earth group, and Caligari’s “tightly knit community of beta testers” will stay the same, said Roman Ormandy, founder and CEO of Caligari, in ablog posting. He said the company will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft.
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Shuttle to deliver European lab
Space shuttle Atlantis has started docking at the the International Space Station (ISS), where it is to deliver Europe’s Columbus science laboratory.
Columbus is the first part of the ISS that the European Space Agency will control, from a station in Germany.
Its installation will mean Esa becomes a full member of the orbital project.
The Columbus laboratory cost about $2bn and has room for three researchers in fields ranging from crop breeding to the development of advanced alloys.
Inspection
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