Web Worker Daily

One of the more uplifting experiences for a blogger-writer on a general-interest news website like myself occurs when I ask readers in a column to tell me what they think of allowing cell phone calls on an airline flight.

This the third time in about three years I’ve asked, and the response each time has been rapid and vociferous, generating at least eight to 10 times more responses than I usually get to a column.

And what do the people – or at least my people – say? They are horrified at the very mention of the idea, with some vowing to stop flying or get into physical confrontations at 30,000 feet if they are subjected to the ill-mannered around them chattering away on the phone in a cramped airline cabin. Out of 58 e-mails and phone calls so far, 56 said they’re vigorously opposed.

Here’s a typical response, this one from a business owner in Chester, Pa:

I can think of nothing that would make travel more unbearable than cell phone use on airplanes. People are loud, rude and inconsiderate in the terminal. It would be even worse on a plane.

If you feel the same way, don’t worry. The prohibition about voice calls is not about to change. But the ability to access the Internet for e-mail and texting in flight is changing, and we want to know what web workers who have to fly on business think about all of it.

Read the rest of this entry »

As reported in more detail on our parent blog GigaOM, Idaho-based M2E Power is on to something new in the land of cell phone chargers. Next year they’ll be selling a charger that gets its energy just by being carried around while you walk – it’s in the same general physics realms as those flashlights you can charge by shaking them. But M2E says they’ve refined this application of the Faraday Principle to the point where it can be packed into a small size and still offer impressive amounts of power – perhaps one hour of talk time for six hours of movement.

GigaOM covers some of the implications of this for areas with unreliable power grids, but it could well prove useful for web workers too. With devices like the iPhone 3G getting increasingly hungry for power, the thought of a backup battery solution that you could just toss into your computer and forget about is pretty attractive – especially if it would charge the best when you were on the run and most likely to be away from your regular charger.