Weekly output: T-Mobile Live Translation, Android 17, Southwest Airlines + Starlink

Despite Las Vegas not being my favorite travel destination, I returned there barely a month after coming home from CES. My excuse this time was the consumer-experience management firm Medallia inviting me to its conference there, travel expenses included; after some back and forth with their PR firm that raised the possibility of my moderating a panel at their event, I decided to accept the offer. The speaking gig did not work out, but I did learn a fair amount about the state of CX these days.

2/11/2026: T-Mobile Debuts AI-Backed Live Language Translation, No App Needed, PCMag

T-Mobile had offered me an advance on this news last week without sharing any details about it until Tuesday afternoon, right after my flight to Vegas had taken off. Then I realized that their press release left out such critical details as whether this network-hosted AI translation would keep any transcripts, so I sent back a series of follow-up questions; answers arrived just in time for me to finish the post before showing up to dinner half an hour late.

2/11/2026: Google (Almost) Announces First Beta of Android 17, Emphasizing Flexibility For Larger-Screen Devices, PCMag

This post written off Google’s embargoed announcement ran in two versions–one describing the release of Android 17’s first beta as an event that had just happened, then one posted later Wednesday reporting that Google had pushed back that release without explanation. This is nowhere near the first time I’ve seen software releases not happen on schedule, but it is the first time I can remember that a company clicked “undo” on an embargoed announcement an hour after the embargo time.

2/12/2026: Southwest Airlines Will Switch Part of Its In-Flight Wi-Fi to Starlink, PCMag

Southwest’s announcement of this went out late enough Wednesday that nobody on staff at PCMag was able to pick it up then, allowing me to file this Thursday morning. I had hoped that the time in between would allow Southwest’s PR office to answer the questions I’d e-mailed Wednesday afternoon, but I never heard anything back.

Weekly output: Robust.ai, United Airlines Starlink rollout, Ookla speed test rankings, UpScrolled, Shop with Points fraud risk, commercial space stations

This past week had me flying a long distance to trade snow for sand, in the form of Web Summit Qatar. This coming week will also have me flying from snow to sand, but not nearly as far: I’m headed to Las Vegas for the customer-experience company Medallia’s annual conference. (The organizers of each event are covering my travel costs.)

2/2/2026: Automation in the wild: Why real environments break perfect models, Web Summit Qatar

My one panel at Web Summit’s Qatar conference had me quizzing John Spinale, chief strategy officer at Robust.ai, about how that company has gone about designing robots to help ease the work of humans in warehouses.

2/2/2026: United Airlines: More Than 25% of Our Daily Departures Now Offer Starlink Wi-Fi, PCMag

I was able to add some context to this post because I’m an avgeek and know there’s a volunteer-run site tracking the state of United’s fleet–a site that I wrote about nine years ago.

2/3/2026: Latest Speed Tests Put T-Mobile Ahead of Rival Carriers, PCMag

I’ve been wondering why Ookla issues scores for AT&T’s fiber broadband, ignoring the rest of that company’s residential broadband services, while it grades other providers on a company-wide basis, and this time I asked Ookla far enough ahead of time to get a clear answer to include in my writeup of this survey.

2/4/2026: CEO of Would-Be TikTok Rival UpScrolled: We Won’t Censor Anybody, PCMag

Watching UpScrolled founder and CEO Issam Hijazi go on at Web Summit Qatar’s opening night about how that social platform would not practice censorship reminded me of all of the other times I’ve seen other social-networking executives say versions of that and then be proved wrong by reality.

2/4/2026: Shop on Amazon? Watch Out for This Sneaky Credit Card Points Scam, PCMag

I had started reporting this post in late December, then had to set it aside for CES, then had to set it aside for other pressing deadlines, and finally filed it on the last day of January.

2/6/2026: Space Startups to NASA: Hurry Up and Pick Someone to Build ISS Replacement, PCMag

Appropriately enough, considering a prior topic of my coverage this week, I finished and filed this post via Starlink from my Qatar Airways flight back to Dulles.

United Airlines is ditching frustrating in-flight Wi-Fi for Starlink, and apparently, you can actually stream the World Series mid-flight! No more buffering purgatory at 30,000 feet.
Are we finally entering an era of truly usable airplane internet? What's your worst in-flight connectivity horror story?

https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/watch-the-world-series-live-on-a-plane-uniteds-starlink-wi-fi-can-do-it/#ftag=CAD590a51e
#Starlink #InFlightWiFi #TechNews #TravelTech #Connectivity

Weekly output: inflight WiFi, Napster resurfaces, FCC chair’s “Build Agenda”

I spent yet another Fourth of July without going into D.C. to see the fireworks, because I had a logistically simpler alternative: a college friend within walking distance having his usual Independence Day gathering, with smaller-scale pyrotechnics in the backyard.

Patreon readers got a bonus post: a review of the first new TV we’d purchased since 2009, covering its utility with over-the-air ATSC 3.0 broadcasts and with streaming-video services.

6/30/2025: Planning a Trip? These Are the Airlines With the Speediest In-Flight Wi-Fi, PCMag

This post started as a writeup of a report by Speedtest publisher Ookla of the inflight WiFi of 30 airlines, then I used the opportunity to provide an update on United’s rollout of Starlink connectivity on regional jets and remind readers about how the price of inflight WiFi is trending towards zero.

7/1/2025: Napster Resurfaces As (What Else?) an AI Company. Can Its Agents Deliver?, PCMag

I got a heads-up about this weird relaunch of Napster as an AI service a week and a half ago but had no bandwidth to get to the story at the time. Fortunately, Monday had enough free time for me to try out Napster’s AI avatars and write a first-look post about that experience.

7/3/2025: FCC Chair’s ‘Build Agenda’ for Broadband Expansion Looks Familiar, PCMag

After watching FCC chairman Brendan Carr’s speech Wednesday afternoon outlining his plans to boost broadband availability, I realized that parts of it didn’t seem too different from previous initiatives by the commission. So I took a little time to check with a telecom-policy expert and filed this report Wednesday night.

#AI #BrendanCarr #broadband #BuildAgenda #FCC #HawaiianAirlines #inflightBroadband #inflightConnectivity #inflightWiFi #Napster #NapsterCompanion #Ookla #QatarAirways #Speedtest #Starlink

Weekly output: American Airlines WiFi, Archer Aviation eVTOL air taxis, Google display-ads antitrust violations

During one of the busier travel weeks of the year (happy Easter, everyone), it only seems right for two of my posts for clients to involve commercial aviation. Airlines also figure in my own schedule over the coming week, because Saturday night I depart for Brazil to moderate three panels at Web Summit Rio.

In addition to the posts below, I wrote one Thursday for Patreon readers about how my attitude about taking press trips–meaning, trips subsidized by the company or organization behind the event in question–has changed over the past 10 years.

4/15/2025: Free Inflight Wi-Fi (Finally) Coming to American Airlines, PCMag

AA started this week with the least-competitive WiFi pricing of any U.S. carrier, and now it has one of the most-asterisked announcements of free WiFi among its competitors.

4/17/2025: Archer Aviation, United Airlines Tease Electric Air Taxi Hops to NYC Airports, PCMag

Spending half an hour on a Teams call with Archer’s chief commercial officer Nikhil Goel yielded details left out of the the company’s press release–as well as a questionable assurance that the Trump administration’s devotion to innovation would speed the Federal Aviation Administration’s certification of its Midnight electric vertical-take-off-and-landing aircraft.

4/17/2025: Google Guilty of ‘Willfully Anticompetitive Acts’ in Display-Ads Business, Court Finds, PCMag

A little over two years after I filed a post from a deli in Wallops Island, Va., about the Justice Department’s lawsuit alleging multiple antitrust violations by Google in its display-ads business, I covered Judge Leonie Brinkema holding for the plaintiffs on three of their five claims in a ruling that could lead to the forced divestiture of major parts of Google’s display-ads business. Since that business has done my own industry few favors in recent years, I don’t feel too sorry for Google about that possibility.

#AA #airTaxi #AmericanAirlines #AmericanAirlinesWiFi #ArcherAviation #bannerAds #displayAds #eVTOL #EWR #GoogleAntitrust #GoogleDisplayAds #inflightWiFi #LGA #NYC #NYCAirports #UnitedAirlines