1time Airline to use iPad 2 in pilot’s flight deck

Pilots on South African budget air travel company 1time Airlines will become the first airline in Africa to use the iPad 2 tablet computer as an Electronic Flight Bag (EFB).

Apple’s latest version of the tablet acts as a paperless application which includes crucial information such as exchange/mail capacity, the most recent weather updates, passenger information and performance manuals, all of which would normally be carried in a flight bag.

The iPad 2 can also calculate weight and balance electronically and has been cleared by the American Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) as a device that doesn’t interfere with airplane electronics.

1time Airlines are only the third in the world to use the devices, after Alaska Airlines and American Airlines and has been cleared by the American Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) as a device that doesn’t interfere with airplane electronics.

“The EFB application for the iPad 2 is truly unique, and will help our flight crews perform flight management tasks more easily, swiftly, and efficiently. It also results in the creation of a paperless environment,” said 1time’s Chief Executive Officer, Rodney James.

An EFB is an electronic management device used onboard flights to simplify aviation operations and perform calculations such as fuel and performance data of the aircraft.

Apple iPad dominates Android tablets in enterprise markets

Apple’s iPad may be the dominant tablet in the consumer market, but it is also winning over the enterprise market at a much faster rate than its Android competitors.

Good Technology, a company that provides mobile device management services for many Fortune 500 companies, has revealed that 27 percent of the devices activated by its enterprise clients during the second quarter of this year were tablets. Apple’s iPad accounted for more than 95 percent of those tablets.

It is not an entirely surprising number, as many companies are now allowing employees to bring their own devices to the workplace and hook them up to the company infrastructure. “We attribute the large gap between iPad and Android tablet activations to the combination of user preference among our ?BYOD’ (Bring Your Own Device) users and large deployments of company-owned iPads, especially in verticals like financial services and healthcare,” said John Herrema, Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy at Good.

It is interesting that despite the availability of Android tablets like the Motorola XOOM or Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Android activations actually declined for Good’s customers in the second quarter. Good does not have access to BlackBerry device activations, like the PlayBook tablet, since RIM controls all of the back-end of the BlackBerry system, though it seems a safe bet to say that far more iPads are in use in the enterprise than PlayBooks. Good does anticipate other tablets catching up to the iPad’s seemingly insurmountable lead, but it doesn’t expect that to happen until at least 2012.

iPad sales are “absolutely a frenzy,” Apple exec says

Apple has been barely able to keep up with demand for its iPad 2 tablet — exactly the kind of difficulty every manufacturer dreams of.

“We sold every iPad we could make,” chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer said during Apple’s fiscal Q3 earnings call Tuesday. The company has around 1.05 million iPads in channel inventory, well below the company’s target range of 4 to 6 weeks’ inventory.

“Sales of the iPad 2 have absolutely been a frenzy,” said Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook.

Cook elaborated on iPad sales later in the call, saying that the company has come closer to meeting demand in the first week or two of the next quarter.

“As we stepped into July, we have been able to increase the supply further, and some SKUs in some countries are at a supply-demand balance,” Cook said.

“This is a good sort of problem to have,” he said.

Asked whether the iPad was cannibalizing sales of the company’s more expensive computers, Cook acknowledged that there might be some overlap but suggested that it was cannibalizing Windows PC sales more than his own company’s computers.

“We believe that some people chose to buy an iPad over a Mac in the quarter, but we believe that even more people chose to bought an iPad over a Windows PC,” he said.

Still, the company is now making more revenue from iPads ($6 billion) than it is from Macs ($5.1 billion), as tech journalist Dan Frommer pointed out.

Oppenheimer said that it’s not just a consumer fad, either, stating that 86 percent of Fortune 500 companies are deploying iPads, up from 75 percent of companies on the Fortune 500 list in the last quarter.

“It doesn’t appear that other tablet makers have been able to get any traction to speak of,” Oppenheimer said.

CNN live news comes to iPad

Live news coverage from CNN and Headline News is now available on iPad and mobile devices to subscribers of certain paid TV services.

Time Warner, which owns CNN and Headline News, announced today that its regular news channel programming will be streamed live over the Internet and available for people to view on their laptops, smartphones, or tablets if they subscribe to certain paid TV services.

Cable, satellite, and telco TV providers offering the service to their subscribers include: AT&T, Comcast, Cox Dish Network, Suddenlink, and Verizon Communications. Notably missing from this list are Cablevision and Time Warner Cable. Time Warner Cable is the second largest cable operator in the country.

The live TV streaming from these channels is available through a browser at CNN.com and on dedicated apps for the Apple iPad and iPhone. Time Warner said the service will also be available for other smartphone and tablet operating systems later.

The way it works via a browser is that people can go to the CNN.com video page and click the “Live” tab. Then they’ll log in through their cable, satellite, or telecom provider with a username and password. Mobile device users can download the CNN App for iPad or the CNN App for iPhone and iPod Touch (or update their app to version 1.2 for iPhone, 1.1 for iPad), and authenticate in the same way.

Time Warner has been at the forefront of the “TV Everywhere” effort that allows people to watch TV programming as part of their existing paid TV subscriptions on their mobile devices. The company has already been offering its HBO Go service to people already subscribed to certain paid TV services, such as DirecTV.

The idea behind offering TV content on multiple screens, such as tablets and smartphones, is to keep TV viewers subscribed to paid services by offering them more variety and flexibility in how they view their favorite programs and channels.

“A principle goal for CNN is to make more of our content available to more people on more platforms, and CNN’s participation in the TV Everywhere initiative is another step forward in that effort,” Jim Walton, president of CNN Worldwide, said in a statement. “We have long believed that our growth depends on keeping CNN essential and relevant to consumers wherever they are.”

But making content available to consumers in this way isn’t as easy as it seems. Some media companies have been battling paid TV providers over rights to offer certain video content on mobile devices. Viacom has actually sued Time Warner Cable and Cablevision for offering its content on its iPad apps. Viacom and Time Warner have suspended their lawsuit as they try to come up with a solution.

A big part of the dispute is that media companies feel they are entitled to additional compensation for allowing their content to be viewed on mobile devices, even when those devices are limited to viewing content in the home. Meanwhile, cable operators believe that their current licensing deals should apply to content viewed at home regardless of the device.

Media executives are also concerned that viewing TV shows on a tablet or laptop will not be counted as part of the current Nielsen TV rating, which is used to set advertising rates. Those issues are currently being worked out.

Pope gets tech savvy, uses Twitter on iPad 2

Pope Benedict XVI has launched a church Web portal using iPad2 and used Twitter for the first time to send the news about the portal on the 60th anniversary of his ordination.

News.va will aggregate news from various church departments across the world.

The Pope, 84, used Apple’s iPad2 to activate the portal and send the tweet.

The Pope’s debut tweet was on the Vatican news Twitter account.

The Vatican now uses social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter for religious purposes.

Earlier this year, Pope Benedict XVI had urged Christians to participate in digital communication, saying that it was not a sin to use social networking sites.

In his World Communications Address on 24 January, he said, “I invite young people above all to make good use of their presence in the digital world.”

However, he had added that it is important to remember that virtual contact cannot and must not take the place of direct human contact.