What opportunities await online marketers, publishers, and mobile carriers at 30,000 feet? Well, despite its rapid expansion, The Times argues that, "No one knows how viable the market for in-flight connectivity can be, given that many passengers, particularly younger ones, resist paying for a Wi-Fi connection." Indeed, airlines with Wi-Fi connections have been charging upwards of $13 a flight, depending on the length of the trip, to cover their costs. Complicating matters, most airlines don't disclose the percentage of passengers who choose to pay for the service. Sources tell The Times that it has been running at 5-to-7%, and is …

The Transportation Department and the nonprofit National Safety Council just announced the formation of FocusDriven, an organization intent on educating consumers about the dangers of driving while talking or texting on a cellphone. According to The Times' Bits blog, the group evolved out of a distracted driving summit that the Transportation Department held late last year. The federal government has estimated that in 2007, 11% of drivers were talking on a cellphone -- a figure safety advocates assert has no doubt grown. Researchers, meanwhile, say that drivers using a cellphone are four times likelier to get into a …

Consumers scanning the virtual landscape of Google's Street View service might soon encounter some oddly up-to-date billboard advertising. That's right, the company is working on a "code bot" that will automatically recognize physical adverts in Street View imagery, and then plans to implement a system to re-sell the same ad space digitally. The technology is detailed in a newly-granted Google patent, but Fast Company says it wouldn't be surprised to see a product release shortly, because the application has been in place for 18 months. Like many a Google initiative, recasting the virtual landscape to sell advertising raises …

Over the weekend, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg made some remarks about online privacy, which sparked a still raging debate over the increasingly public nature of "personal" information, whether Facebook is directly responsible, and whether consumers should have a say in whole the matter. "Has society become less private or is it Facebook that's pushing people in that direction?" asks ReadWriteWeb's Marshall Kirkpatrick, adding that, "Though there is a lot to be said for analysis of public data ... I believe that Facebook is making a big mistake by moving away from its origins based on privacy …

Google is not known for quality customer service, and, just a week after its launch, the well-documented weakness is casting a shadow over its new Nexus One phone. Google VP of engineering Andy Rubin concedes that there is no phone support -- only email customer service -- and that there is sometimes a 3-day delay in response time. "We have to get better at customer service," All Things Digital's Walt Mossberg. While describing the world's first Google-branded smartphone as a "sleek, streamlined phone that can easily go toe-to-toe with the iPhone 3GSs, Pres, and Droids of the world," …

Blame it on the recession or our culture's puritanical underpinnings, but adult entertainment company Friendfinder Networks is having to rein in its IPO. After filing for an IPO a year ago in an effort to raise roughly $460 million, paidContent reports that that company has now filed an amended S-1, which cuts its ambitions in half. As such, Friendfinder is now hoping to sell 20 million shares for $10 to $12, which at midpoint would raise about $220 million. Underwriters, led by RenCap and Ledgemont Capital Markets, have an option to buy about 3 million shares. When …

In his typically acerbic tone, industry consultant, blogger and author George Park sounds the final death knell for Enfatico -- WPP's and Dell's experiment to build a new kind of advertising agency. "The 'Agency of the Future' has fired all the creative directors, they have taken ninety nine percent of the content out of the Web site (it's just a list of offices now," writes Park. "Torrence Boone is toast after they promoted him to CHAIRMAN, in charge of 'special projects.'" Enfatico was conceived in early 2008 when Dell consolidated its massive advertising account at WPP on the …

Along with a costly and widely panned rebranding campaign, Yahoo is betting its future success on a novel mixture of computer and social sciences. In the last year, Yahoo Labs has reinforced its ranks of social scientists, adding credentialed cognitive psychologists, economists and ethnographers from top universities around the world, writes The San Francisco Chronicle. The recruitment effort reflects a growing realization at Yahoo that computer science alone can't answer all the questions of the modern Web business. But, according to the paper, Yahoo isn't the only company investing more heavily in the social sciences. "As the novelty …

Amid a bloody restructuring effort by the newly independent AOL to cut one-third of its workforce, The New York Times just ran a long piece on the ill-fated AOL-Time Warner merger. Valued at a still-jaw-dropping $350 billion, it remains the largest merger -- and greater corporate fiasco -- in American business history. So, what happened? For one, a level of grandiosity that most men can only muster at the turn of a century, or at what they perceive to be the end of an era. Also, a gargantuan clash of corporate cultures, or, as The Times puts it, "both sides …

Sending a shiver up the industry's collective spine, AOL on Monday began a round of layoffs that, by week's end, is expected to have claimed roughly a third of the company's workforce. About 1,400 employees will likely lose their jobs, the majority of whom will receive pink slips on Wednesday, according to The Business Insider. "We're just hoping AOL cuts deep enough now so it won't have do this again," it writes. Exceeding the most aggressive estimates, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong told employees in November that he was looking for "up to 2,500 volunteers" to …