Yovav (Jay) Meydad's Personal Blog

I have not had a chance to try it myself although I really want to, but from the video below it looks like a cool on board instant messaging feature which is part of the on flight entertainment system on the new Virgin America air planes is becoming an annoyance to many passengers, especially those who are not into chatting or high altitude matchmaking.

Perhaps Virgin needs to add instant messaging/chat privacy settings to the flight preferences section on the eleVAte passenger profile page. Or how about installing a shock absorber at the back of every seat so people will stop complaining that others poke their chairs.

By the way, the mood lighting looks really groovy!

Technorati Tags: Instant Messaging, Virgin America, Usability, Product Design

A few days ago Mike Arrington made a post about AOL’s new home page and its similarity to Yahoo’s. Now its Yahoo’s turn to strike back.

Today they released a new web version of their Instant Messenger service built using Flash. I played around with it (although it was difficult for me to find online buddies – they all switched to Skype) and noticed strange similarity to Meebo – The color & gradient background, the layout of the buddy list and even some of the interaction is very much alike the successful web IM aggregation service. Kudos for the meebo team for creating a service that inspires others.

BTW, if you are looking for A/V capabilities you will have to head south toward Santa Monica and look for Mike and company.