Hasta La Gadget!

OTG, the restaurateur that made waves when it installed free access iPads in some of the world’s busiest international airport hubs last year, is improving its existing system with the deployment of a translation system that will allow it to provide translation of its restaurant menus in 13 different languages. The system is already live in test deployments at locations like Toronto’s Pearson airport, and CEO Rick Blatstein tells me it’s already having a positive impact on sales at OTG-run restaurants.

The effort will soon encompass 20 languages and see wider deployment in more of the airports where OTG is already operating in North America, including LaGuardia and Minneapolis-St. Paul. Blatstein said that his company quickly saw the value in offering multi-lingual support after realizing that at Pearson, for example, English is the first language of only around 40 percent of travelers at any given time on average.

“We have all of our menus and everything translated and tested ahead of time so that when you push the flag of your language, it automatically translates that for you,” Blatstein said. The idea is to make travelers feel more at ease, since they’re able to communicate in their own language. Ordering can happen right from the iPad kiosks, meaning there’s no chance of encountering language-barrier problems between travelers and serving staff.

OTG’s iPad deployment also provides travelers with access to Facebook, Twitter, flight status information, and more without charging them. The aim is to make air passengers feel less like a captive audience and more like treasured guests when spending time in the airports that frequent travelers likely know all too well. The translation service, applied at launch to restaurant offerings, is a first step, according to Blatstein, and one that will eventually make its way to the company’s offerings outside of its restaurateur endeavors, too. Customers could soon order commercial goods from iPads in the language of their choice, Blatstein suggests, or set up accommodations or ground transit at their destination ahead of time.

Airports can maintain multi-lingual staff, and cater to the most common languages spoken at their hubs, but you can’t cater to all the various people from every neck of the woods at every location all of the time. But with an iPad-supplemented customer-service model with built-in translation services, you actually might be able to be everything to everyone. OTG isn’t quite there yet, but it’s making big steps in that direction, and that could make air travel (or at least the parts in between) much more pleasant for all involved.

Getting data is still a pain while abroad: it usually involves either popping a local SIM into an unlocked device or simply paying through the nose for roaming rates. AT&T wants to meet visitors to the UK halfway through a new WiFi deal with BSkyB’s The Cloud. The pact offers AT&T subscribers 1GB of free WiFi access per month at The Cloud’s hotspots in the UK, as long as they’re using the American carrier’s WiFi International app. The catch? As with AT&T’s normal approach, travelers need to have an international data plan already in place — which means The Cloud is more a way to raise the limit than a true replacement for a roaming bundle. Nonetheless, anyone who just needs that much more data for an Instagram shot of the London Eye can get their fill through the source links.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, AT&T

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Via: The Next Web

Source: App Store, Google Play, AT&T

Sometimes a handsome leather case isn’t enough to protect your iPad. Sometimes you need to go to the extreme, and that’s where the Griffin Survivor Military-Duty Case comes in.

The Wikimedia Foundation and Internet Brands(IB) has finally reached a settlement over the site, Wikivoyage. The two companies have been battling each other for several months now, and the battles have finally come to an end. The lawsuit began in September of 2012, when Internet Brands filed a lawsuit against two volunteers that worked on the Wikivoyage project. Internet Brands claimed that the two volunteers created an infringing website against Internet Brands’s own Wikitravel website, and that they were deliberately trying to take users away from them.

Wikivoyage is a free, world-wide travel project that’s kept up-to-date by users. It was created back in December 2006, but was relaunched on January 15th of this year. It’s a non-profit site that thrives on the collaboration of information provided by its users. It is also the latest project in the Wikimedia line-up.

The two volunteers, along with many others, used to work for Wikitravel until it was bought by IB. The site that was once non-profit became for-profit and the management style caused many of the volunteers to leave. When IB sued the two volunteers, the Wikimedia Foundation jumped to their aid and backed them up financially. The case was moved to the federal court where the volunteers also filed an anti-SLAPP motion against Internet Brands, because they believed their freedom of openly discussing the Wikivoyage project was being threatened. Internet Brands had to abandon its federal claim because they had no factual basis. This also resulted in the court dismissing all of Internet Brands’s remaining claims.

But the Wikimedia Foundation didn’t stop at that. They filed their own lawsuit against Internet Brands. They wanted a declaration from the court that “Internet Brands had no proper basis to block the travel wiki project”. As of two days ago, on February 14th, a settlement was signed between the Wikimedia Foundation and Internet Brands. IB has released both the Wikimedia Foundation, and Wikivoyage, from all claims related in “any manner to the creation and operation of the travel wiki project”. With this, the Wikimedia Foundation will drop its lawsuit against IB.

[via Wikimedia]

Wikimedia and Internet Brands reach a settlement over Wikivoyage lawsuit is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

After the recent fiasco with the new Boeing 787 Dreamliners and their melting lithium-ion batteries, it seems that Airbus won’t be taking any chances and will be dropping lithium-ion batteries when building their new A350 aircraft. The airplane manufacturer is afraid that regulatory uncertainties will delay production of its new plane.

However, Airbus says that the reason for not using these unpredictable lithium-ion batteries has nothing to do with safety concerns, but rather scheduling and the possible delay of the A350 aircrafts, which are expected to ship to airlines sometime during the summer next year. Airbus says that they don’t want the ongoing battery investigation to interfere with their production schedule.

Airbus will switch back to traditional nickel-cadmium batteries in the A350, mostly because the technology has been proven solid over the years, and they believe in the safety of the tried-and-true batteries. Of course, Boeing’s bold step toward lithium-ion technology was unprecedented and an ultimate game-changer, but it was a risk that ended up turning sour for the airplane manufacturer.

Airbus expects its new A350 to make its first test flight sometime this summer, and it will then undergo further test flights over the year. The manufacturer plans to seek certification from European aviation authorities by early 2014, with an expected launch date of summer 2014, where the new plane will finally be ferrying passengers around the world.

[via WSJ]

Airbus to skip lithium-ion batteries in new planes is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.