Wish You Were Here (WYWH) is a service that will turn your mobile phone photos into a real postcard. You send the photo through MMS or email, you then add the address and a caption, and they take care of the rest.

I’m about to send my first one, and you can do the same on their site, they are in an open beta and sending postcards is free till February 4th, after that postcards are just $1.99 each.

I can see this being a great way to send everyone back home a more personal postcard, and save the hassle of having to write them, get stamps and find a mailbox. Imagine taking a photo of the kids on the beach in Spain and Grandma receiving that postcard just a few days later, instead of the usual 20 days international mail can take.

Users on Sprint, Alltel, AT&T, Boost, Virgin Mobile and Cellular one pay for the postcard through their own carrier, users on other operators have to use a credit card to pay for the service.

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If you’ve been traveling for a couple of years you are bound to remember the days when every road warrior up front had their own Bose Quiet Comfort headphones. Not because they were the best, but because they were pretty much the only decent option.

Times have changed (thank goodness!) and almost every headphone maker has several noise canceling (or noise isolating) headphones in their lineup. Today we’ll take a quick look at 10 different pairs under $100.

The first 5 are noise isolating. They make things quiet by actually sealing your ear canal. They use silicone (or rubber flanges) or foam. The advantage is that they don’t require batteries which means they can also be kept on during takeoff and landing . The disadvantage is that they are often fairly hard to fit and can become uncomfortable when used for long flights.

Noise canceling headphones use microphones to pick up the ambient noise and then cancel that noise using “anti sound”, essentially they cancel out the waveform of the noise they pick up.

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The photo to the left excites me. It’s 2 guys installing an "Aircell inflight broadband antenna" on the bottom of an American Airlines 767.

I’m glad the technician on the left has the manual because I’m sure it’s not as simple as grabbing a studfinder and drilling a few holes through the fuselage.

The service sounds awesome; in-flight WiFi access, free access to AA.com, the WSJ and compatibility with VPN services.

When Connexion by Boeing was canceled back in 2006 it seemed like the end of in flight broadband, but thankfully American Airlines seems to agree that the time is right to try it again, with a more promising technology. No pricing has been announced but if I had to guess I’d say it would be between $10 and $20 per flight, which is definitely something I’d pay to combat boredom and prevent spending the last 2 hours of my transcon browsing the Sky Mall catalogue.

Read what AA has to say about it:

American Airlines and Aircell collaborate on the first installation of Aircell’s Internet broadband connectivity solution at American’s Kansas City maintenance facility.  American will install and test the technology in 2008 on all 15 of its Boeing 767-200 aircraft.

FORT WORTH, Texas – American Airlines, leading the way in customer experience initiatives, has completed the first aircraft installation of the Aircell ® Internet broadband connectivity solution at American’s Kansas City maintenance base. American, which will be the first U.S. airline to offer customers Aircell’s Internet broadband solution, plans to install and test the technology in 2008 on all 15 of its Boeing 767-200 aircraft that primarily fly transcontinental routes.

“There’s a tremendous amount of intrigue and appeal for travelers to be able to utilize the Internet when traveling 30,000 feet above the United States at 500 miles per hour,” said Dan Garton, American’s Executive Vice President – Marketing. “Connectivity is important to our business customers and those who want to use their PDAs and laptops for real-time, full-service, inflight, broadband Internet, e-mail and VPN. With this test of Aircell’s technology, American Airlines is demonstrating our commitment to enhancing the travel experience for our customers and meeting their evolving needs when it comes to connectivity and communications.”

Source: AMR Corp press release

Very comprehensive (and scary) article from Michael Horowitz on why the wired connection in your hotel may not be any safer than the wireless connections.

I’ve always tried to avoid wireless, but when I have no choice I use HotspotVPN or connect back home using OpenVPN.

But I always felt safe using the wired connections.

Not a good idea says Michael; "Wired connections to the Internet in a hotel are not, by their very nature, more secure than wireless connections.".

The article goes into some detail as to why wired connections are not necessarily safe, and how it’s fairly easy for someone to eavesdrop on all the network traffic in the hotel. Of course, unlike Wireless any eavesdropper would have to physically be in your hotel and connected to the network.

From now on I’ll use my VPN when I’m connected to wired Ethernet and require a bit more security.

If all you do is watch some video clips or listen to music then I’m sure you don’t have much to worry about, but if it’s anything you wouldn’t want to share with others, then consider getting yourself a VPN account with HotspotVPN or one of the several other VPN service providers.

Source: CNet Defensive Computing blog

We’ve mentioned Hulu a couple of times, and we also mentioned how it’s in beta at the moment. Normally you’d be placed on a waiting list and would have to wait for them to open up some more beta slots.

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Now THAT is a nice looking office. It even has more screens and keyboards than mine. Click on the picture to view a full screen panoramic view of this impressive Airbus A380 cockpit. Check out the monitor in the center console; it looks like they even have a tail mounted camera view of the entire plane!

Airbus A380 panoramic cockpit view

When doing a search for something I once posted on Flyertalk, I came across an old thread documenting the gadgets I carried along with me back in 2002. It’s amazing how some things have changed in 5 years (while some haven’t).

Sony Digital camera
Toshiba e740 wlan PDA, IBM 1Gb microdrive and 128Mb SD
Iridium pager
SonyEricsson T68i
SonyEricsson T39
SonyEricsson HBH30 bluetooth headset
SonyEricsson Communicam
Ericsson Chatboard
Apple ipod
Toshiba SatellitePro 6100 P4 2Ghz with Ethentica fingerprint scanner
Sony NCH20 headsets
Assorted cables for connecting, charging etc…

Lets take a look at some of the stuff I had on me back then, and what the current norm is:

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Yes, the photo is fake (Engadget made it for themselves), but the rumor is said to be true; T-mobile may be getting the Palm Centro (after AT&T).

The (surprisingly) successful Centro debuted at Sprint, and their exclusive rights to selling the it are soon coming to an end paving the way for more operators to get their hands on it.

It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of the Centro (or Palm), but it’s always a good thing when a phone makes it to more than one operator.

Frankly, I’d prefer a cheap Windows powered Centro over the crappy PalmOS version, because no matter how much you tweak this thing, it’s still a 5 year old OS that hasn’t evolved much at all.

Source: Engadget Mobile via Mobility Site

Here are a few of the things you may have missed in the past 7 days:

• The TravelTechTalk power anything anywhere kit
• Hack the hotel TV
• Turn your Windows Mobile phone into a wireless hotspot
• How can Google help you on the road?
• HP Mediasmart Windows Home Server review
• Metro public transit planner review

Anything you’d like us to write about? Tips?

Drop me an email at tips@traveltechtalk.com

Got a Sprint Mogul? Don’t mind messing with firmware files, bootloader unlockers and updates of unknown origin? Read on…

Someone over at PPC Geeks has released the holy grail of leaked files for the Spring Mogul, unlocking the GPS and EVDO Revision A in your phone.

I may or may not have installed this myself and it may or may or may not actually work quite well. GPS is not as sensitive as I’d like (I had to step outside to get a satellite fix), but it works perfectly with Google Earth!

Rev.A seems to be working just fine; my normal speeds using Pocket Internet Explorer were around 980kbps, I’m now getting around 1500kbps with much faster upload speeds. A quick word of warning though; it’s not very stable (my connections drop every now and then), but it’s a fun way to spend the otherwise boring Monday.

And then of course the real words of warning; I’m not responsible if you end up spending all day trying to revive your phone from the dead. Updates like this (especially beta releases) are tricky, and may introduce all kinds of problems to your phone! This download is not issued by Sprint, and HTC probably isn’t too thrilled that it leaked.

Even if you don’t feel like installing this, it’s good news because it proves once and for all that the Sprint Mogul has real GPS inside and that Rev.A EVDO will be coming sooner or later (from an official download).

Source: PPCGeeks