Where's my in-flight internet?!

I was contemplating my upcoming short trip to London and what I am going to do with the 48 hours of flight time from/to Sydney besides watch films I've already seen, and eat over-salted plane grub. So comes the question... why do we still not have broadband available on board?! Or do we already, but I just haven't seen it / need to get out of cattle class?

It seems that from October last year, Qantas A380 Melbourne to Los Angeles has offered 'cached internet content along with accessing web-based email and chat services' but their prior plan for live internet has been put on hold while till later this year while they work out filtering systems to avoid 'questionnable' sites being accessed as happened at American Airlines, who offer access for US$12.95.

Apparently Qantas is also considering the Sydney - London A380 route for live internet access later this year. We don't know the costs to the traveller yet,but I for one would definitely pay for access! It sounds like it is only mobile internet available on A380 whereas the new Boeing Dreamliner 787 may be fitted to provide access for laptops later this year.

The airline for my flights, Virgin Atlantic, may be talking with Aircell about the Gogo Inflight Internet who provide internet via an air-to-ground (ATG) link. Aircell/Gogo is already the provider for Virgin America, American Airlines and soon United, Delta and Air Canada. This article suggests a trial by late 2010.

So it's all great if you live in the US, but it's probably not ready in time for SYD - LHR next Thursday then!

Brief work history and interests

I've been working mostly in London for about 5 years, in various technology type jobs for Reuters, fish4.co.uk and now The Motley Fool (fool.co.uk). I've focused on website product management and like to keep up to date with what's going on with the internet.

Further back - I took a degree in electronic engineering at Birmingham Uni. I enjoyed the course but decided I wanted to get more into the business side than be a pure engineer.

I have a lot of experience with finance related sites from Reuters and fool.co.uk, and also a big interest in eCommerce and portals from fish4. My latest projects with fool.co.uk include improvements to the mortgages area to increase the number of high quality leads coming through to mortgage advisors, and a review of current and potential ad slots on the site. How to monetize the site further without comprising it's design and usability is always a hard one.

I'm interested in how websites can become not only more usable but also more fun and relevant to your users. I think that's important if you want your site to stand out and for your users to return. I think this can be done through cool design, novel widgets, user generated content techniques such as tagging and social networks, and by allowing personalisation to suit the individual's needs.

That of course means I need detailed understanding of your users, which can be done through creating user profiles and personas to use during requirements gathering, and user testing and workshops to verify those requirements. I've been through varied ways of doing this, from structured 1 on 1 questioning to popping out into Soho with a wireframe idea to see if people get it! This is one of my favourite parts of the job :-)

In terms of processes, I've worked in quite varied positions for very different companies. At Reuters, we were mostly working in quite rigid waterfall project management processes, which I think is needed for the big global software projects there, but when working on websites agile processes can work better though as I've seen at fish4 and fool.co.uk.

I prefer this way of working myself, when done correctly it can be quicker and more flexible. You get small bits of functionality delivered often and as soon as they're ready, and can change direction if needed, rather than waiting for some gargantuan all encompassing master project which maybe have been spec'd 2 years ago and contains functionality which is no longer relevant. The scrum techniques I've been using also mean it's easy for everyone to know what's going on though the quick daily meetings and using visible tracking methods such as whiteboards, shared spreadsheets and team blogs.

It's not for everyone though. Small, co-located teams work best where everyone buys into the methods.

I could go on with these topics but sure I will go into more details with future posts. :-)