Aer Lingus: The glory days

Posted on February 4, 2015 by Writer
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The Fort Report

Posted on February 3, 2015 by Writer

A friend of mine told me of an incident that happened while she was working outside of her home. They live in the country and the rest of the family was gone. She was tending to their garden when she heard an odd noise. An eerie feeling came over her. She suspected that she was being watched but couldn’t place the source. She is convinced that a drone of some kind had flown over her property. Along with the invasion of privacy, she felt a deep sense of personal violation.

No American should have to feel this way. An intense debate is underway in Washington over the use of drones—an especially sensitive subject with competing privacy and security concerns. America is increasingly turning to drones for purposes that range from science to economics to national security. Drones facilitate difficult research, flying into wilderness areas and harsh climates where people cannot travel. Entrepreneurs use them for commercial reasons. Farmers are deploying the technology for better crop management.

Congress first mandated developing drones for military missions. Drones have effectively gathered intelligence, and in some cases crippled terrorist leadership structures without risk to troops. On battlefields without defined borders, drones have been integrated into defense strategy. The United States remains the world leader in developing and applying this technology, but soon enough small and undetectable drones might begin flying from other nations into our territory. Imagine an undetected armed drone nearing a crowded football stadium.

Last week a commercial drone crashed on the White House grounds.

Article source: http://columbustelegram.com/banner-press/opinion/the-fort-report/article_65e26321-9fcd-5b10-968a-b54b8a1d64b6.html

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Embry-Riddle Eagle Aero Sport Builds RV-12 Aircraft – Horizons Newspaper, Embry

Posted on February 3, 2015 by Writer

The Eagle Aero Sport (EAS) project began as an idea that a small group of students had a few years ago. Phil Riek, Sydney Scott, and Sasha Khounani wanted to obtain a kit plane – a small plane that could be built by untrained enthusiasts possessing basic skills – that students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University could build and experiment on. The idea grew and, with the persistence and enthusiasm of the small group of founding members, became what it is today – a collaborative, 47-member group of people looking to push the boundaries of what it means to be a student at ERAU.

This project was designed to be the ultimate hands-on project to give students the most experience building an airplane that they could get. It allows students to get a first-hand understanding of what goes into building an airplane, from staying safe, riveting, and documentation to sensor design, structural analysis, and budgeting. Applicants to the team can choose to be put into the engineering team, the build team, or the business team depending on what the students want to learn about. In the words of Phil Riek, the President of EAS, “The student-built RV-12 aircraft is ultimately being built to serve as a flight test engineering platform for university research projects in aerodynamic and structural analysis, as well as aircraft sensors and instrumentation innovation.”

EAS is not just a series of seminars about the process of building an airplane; involvement actually allows students to put many man-hours

Article source: http://erau-news.com/features/2015/02/02/embry-riddle-eagle-aero-sport-builds-rv-12-aircraft/

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Air Travel’s Next Frontier: De-Icing That Doesn’t Take Forever

Posted on February 3, 2015 by Writer

Why are you still sitting on the tarmac getting de-iced, the way you were in the last storm and the one before that—the way passengers were three decades ago?

It’s a given that winter weather snarls air travel, generating flight cancellations in the thousands with every major snowstorm. There was Boston last week, under 24.6 inches, and today the East Coast woke up to a mix of snow and freezing rain after it battered Chicago, with more than 5,200 flights canceled so far.  

But even when you’re on the plane and ready to go, the ritual de-icing conga line can add plenty of extra, maddening time to a flight. Board, taxi, line up, wait, inch ahead, wait, be sprayed, mosey out to the runway. If there’s particularly hellacious congestion, your pilot might be forced to return for a second treatment. De-icing as we’ve known it for many years creates time-consuming bottlenecks at big airports, costs enormous sums for chemicals and infrastructure, and then poses the environmental problem of managing millions of gallons of chemicals that flow onto airport ramps.

Isn’t there a better way? 

Icing is a top safety issue for airlines and regulators. Given the dangers, Federal Aviation Administration rules specifically prohibit any flight where “frost, ice or snow” contaminates the wings or other crucial flight surfaces. Several fatal accidents are attributed to ice buildup, including the 2009 crash of an Air France flight into the Atlantic and the crash of an American Eagle regional flight near Roselawn, Ind., in 1994, which encountered a type of

Article source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-02/air-travel-s-next-frontier-de-icing-that-doesn-t-take-forever

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Why my next car probably won’t have CarPlay (Spoiler: Apple Watch)

Posted on February 3, 2015 by Writer

Apple Watch CarPlay

My next new car probably won’t have CarPlay. I’ve reached this decision in part due to automakers’ slow crawl to put CarPlay in vehicles that you can actually buy today. While 2015 may bring the feature to more vehicles on the road with more than 30 automobile brands committed to ship CarPlay in the future, we’re still not there yet and the roll out is slow.

More influential, though, is my experience using aftermarket CarPlay in my current car for several months convincing me that CarPlay’s features are not yet where they need to be. As I noted in my hands-on review last fall, CarPlay introduces a new set of problems while trying to make using your iPhone in the car safer and easier.

So if CarPlay isn’t ultimately the answer to creating a better iPhone experience on the road, then what is? I’m convinced the Apple Watch will be better suited…

Pebble. In addition to coming to this conclusion based on my day-to-day experience with CarPlay, I’m also drawing from my past experience with using a Pebble smartwatch since I’ve never worn an Apple Watch. I started wearing a Pebble watch shortly after they arrived at Best Buy in July 2013 until just before WWDC 2014 when I sold it ahead of potential a “iWatch” announcement.

Admittedly, I kept the Pebble in airplane mode most of the time to avoid too

Article source: http://9to5mac.com/2015/02/02/carplay-apple-watch/

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How mom-and-pop businesses can thrive in the 21st century

Posted on February 3, 2015 by Writer

Rick Gydesen is 73. He intends to die in the saddle.

Gydesen says he will continue to run his coffee shop, body and soul, until he is unable to do so. Rick’s Place Coffee Shop absorbs the life of Rick and his wife Mary. Since they opened the doors of their coffee shop/gift shop/eatery in 1995, they have been the ones standing behind the counter, personally handling every aspect of their business, dawn to dusk. Even in a town overrun with college students looking for work, Rick and Mary seldom have the budget to employ help.

But they have survived.

Monmouth, Oregon, home of the small Western Oregon University, is a small town with a fickle economy. As many as 30 businesses have opened and shuttered in the 20 years Rick’s Place has stood, about half a dozen of them other coffee shops.

Thirty miles to the south lies another, larger college town: Corvallis, home of Oregon State University. It is there, sitting comfortably in the middle of a picturesque downtown that Nicole Nystrom owns and operates The Clothes Tree, a fashion boutique that has been in continuous operation since 1964. Customers in the Corvallis area have most of the standard big-box stores to pick from, from Ross to Old Navy. But still, The Clothes Tree remains, and it is sound.

(More on the future of Main Street: The booming future of collaborative work environments)

Nystrom also works intensely through her day. “As the owner I wear a lot of different hats. I manage the store

Article source: http://theweek.com/articles/534032/momandpop-businesses-thrive-21st-century

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Air Force One-Point-Three

Posted on February 3, 2015 by Writer

There’s a new Air Force One on the way, and it’s about time. The beat-up pair of modified 747s that have been hauling the world’s most powerful passenger for 25 years are reaching the end of their useful lifespans, and are set to be replaced.

The presidential planes are renowned for the tech specs of their interior cabins, which allow a globe-trotting commander-in-chief to run the country, and even manage a war, virtually the same way he would in the White House. But their fuselages are hardly state-of-the-art.

The Air Force announced this week that it had picked the next model for its flying fortress: a Boeing 747-8 with a tail the height of a six-story building and which, according to the company’s “fun facts,” can carry more than $5 billion in solid gold bars from Fort Knox. (Heaven forbid the need arises…) It’ll be the first complete upgrade for Air Force One since the current planes arrived in 1990 and 1991.

“I’m surprised they haven’t replaced it before now,” said John Haigh Sr., a former chief steward of Air Force One who was aboard the plane that now shuttles President Obama when it first carried President George H. W. Bush in 1990. As many trivia buffs know, Air Force One is a military call number given to any aircraft carrying the sitting commander-in-chief. There are actually two identical presidential planes, and when the president takes an overnight trip, the back-up aircraft is always within a 30-minute trip away “in case there’s a problem

Article source: http://www.govexec.com/management/2015/02/air-force-one-point-three/104259/

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