I just got back from vacation, a family trip to Atlanta for a wedding and Thanksgiving. Here are a few tech notes on things that happened while I was away:
Flying high: I was surprised to find that Atlanta-based discount airline Airtran was among the handful of carriers offering in-flight Wi-Fi. Delta, American and United are some of the other airlines that use Gogo Inflight Internet. The service costs $6-$10 a flight, which isn't bad. But I didn't pay a thing. The secret? Register for free in advance at Gogo's website (to save time in-flight; no credit card required), and then enter one of the promotional codes listed at RetailMeNot for a free session. I did, and it worked without a hitch.
Drawing conclusions: I usually spend a lot of time with portable games while out of town, and the recently released Scribblenauts for the Nintendo DS got a good workout on this trip. What a fantastic, innovative title. Players are presented with various puzzles and situations where they must ultimately fetch a star to finish the level. They can conjure any everyday object to help in the quest, and it's really open-ended. The more clever and quicker the solution, the higher the points. Some control issues aside, Scribblenauts is easily the best DS game released this year. And I quickly learned that a good pterodactyl can help in just about any situation.
Goodbye, watchdog: I was sorry to hear that the Minneapolis-based National Institute on Media and the Family was ceasing operations due to a lack of funding. The institute and its founder, David Walsh, were a thorn in the side of the video-game community, because they always seemed to complain about violence in games that already were rated Mature -- for players 17 and older, not kids. But recently, the institute had come around more to chiding parents for not monitoring what their kids were playing, instead of targeting the industry for creating games that older players legitimately wanted to play. This won't be the last time we hear from Walsh, though.
Radio star: I appeared on WCCO Radio on Thanksgiving morning (from Atlanta) with host John Hines. We ended up talking mostly about video games for nearly half an hour. The interview isn't archived on 'CCO's site, but I'll try to post a heads up here next time I'm going to be on.
How tweet: I just got an advance copy of Twitterature, a 208-page book that reduces classic literary works to 20 tweets or fewer. I have to admit, it's pretty funny. Opening tweet for The Hobbit from @BilboBangin': "The Shire is so BORING. Boring boring boring. Plus all the chicks are so short!"
