I generally fly into the Bay Area on a monthly basis and one of Virgin America‘s fledgling routes is Washington (Dulles) to San Francisco. Being a frequent traveler and a technology connoisseur, I made sure to get in on one of their early flights last October. Unfortunately, my extensive (in-progress) write-up was on a shared laptop… and was inadvertently deleted. (Thanks, Brian.) So, you’ll never see that. However, I’m giving SmugMug a whirl this week and have uploaded about 50 pics. Feel free to peruse images of the wireless tablet PC used for snack service ordering, seat-to-seat IM, Doom, Austin Powers-approved ambient lighting, all sorts of music, Dish Network TV, and the Linux penguin. If you like what you see, head on over to Engadget for a chance to win some free flights.
FYI SmugMug is still offering Flickr refugees (like me) 50% off the first year of service ($20 instead of $40) by using code flickr. I’m not entirely sold on the service yet, but was pleasantly surprised to see the free trial doesn’t require a credit card (followed by a possible service cancellation).
SmugMug rocks! The site is easy to use, has real people who answer your questions, no advertising, and doesn’t force guests to “sign up” before they can view your pictures. Unlike many other services, storage is unlimited and guests can (if you permit) download your original images (as opposed to *only* being able to get low-res or printed versions). Because SmugMug is profitable, they don’t have to try to extract money from selling ads or prints. It’s really cool. We’ve been sharing our kid pictures with friends and family there for years and love it. There’s even an API that has allowed Windows and Mac uploaders to be developed, including a slick export plug-in for iPhoto.
They also recently added support for hosting videos which works well though the feature (and duration) is limited based on your subscription level.
Finally, they’ll also donate a free “pro” account for non-profit organizations. We use one of these to share all of the class photos from my daughter’s school — every event or field trip usually has two or three parents taking pictures and thus those who weren’t there can still view the pictures afterwards.
If you happen to have an iphone, you can also go to yoursite.smugmug.com/iphone for a customized iphone view of of your site.
The only site I’ve heard of that comes close is phanphare, but I am happy enough with SmugMug.
BTW, thanks for sharing those pics. Very cool! I was wondering what was powering those screens and then saw your boot screen pics and had to laugh; did you actually crash it or manually ask it to reboot? Pretty cool, in any case.
Wow, 110v power too? It’s funny that they sell these airplane adapters for laptops. Admittedly, I don’t fly all that often (couple trips per year at most) but I’ve never seen either a cigarette lighter jack or the “special” aircraft jack. Maybe they just don’t exist in the cheap seats? In any case I’m glad I never wasted my money on an airplane laptop cord.
I crashed it (accidentally) a couple of times, though that was early on. Hopefully, they’ve improved it since then. Also, at one point the crew rebooted the system.
I notice that many United flights also have normal AC jacks hidden under the seat. It’s a nice surprise and not many people seem to know about it…