Life is all about balance. Radiant Core has been really fortunate in a lot of ways (including the one mentioned by Martin in the IE7 JavaScript post earlier today), but this post is about the balance between two of them specifically:

    
1. Our business is growing by leaps and bounds and we're having to take over the office next door just to find space for all the new people coming on board (give a big welcome to Alistair, our brilliant new Senior Art Director,  who posted a rave review of Photoshop CS3 today).
    
2. We've been lucky enough to avoid having to fly too much for business (some people might disagree, but our friends who spend too much time in the air can often be heard lamenting the endless parade of airports). Things are starting to change now with our fairly recent visit to Mozilla and an upcoming trip to visit Microsoft in Seattle, but so far we've managed to stay pretty well grounded.

So, given those points, it's kinda weird that all I can think about today is catching a nasty case of Disembarkaphobia and getting stuck on a Virgin Atlantic Airways flight to play with their cool in-flight system, Red. Sadly, it looks like I'll have to wait a while since Virgin America isn't airborne yet and you can only play with Red if you get a special invitation to board the Airbus A320 that they've parked at SFO (you can help get them into the friendly skies by visiting the Let VA Fly site and signing the petition to convince the U.S. Department of Transportation to reverse their decision).

At any rate, Red is a really interesting example of what you can do when you break down existing paradigms. I've flown WestJet flight with your own private TV and the ability to watch live television - which is pretty cool and all - but doesn't even come close to touching Red. Here's a little video, hosted by Charles Ogilvie (Director - In-Flight Entertainment and Partnerships), showing off some of the features:

Ooooh...list constructs! I'm impressed that they're planning to open up the platform to other Linux coders who have ideas for games - I suppose we'll see if that actually happens once they get permission to fly. In the meantime, for more tasty Redness:

    
• Check out the User Interface demo on the VA site.
    
• Take a browse through Engadget's Mega hands-on tour gallery of the Airbus (lucky bastards).

I'm impressed by things like watching streaming video or listening to a huge library of audio files, though those are expected features. Nice touches like armrest USB ports for charging your iPod are great, as is the full QWERTY keyboard on the remote control. Slightly less obvious but still really cool are the net access (email, IM, etc.) and ordering food to your seat, which will certainly cut down the cart-in-the-elbow syndrome. What really impressed me was the addition of a completely unexpected social aspect: seat to seat chat. Chat with the person next to you, with anyone on the plane (who has indicated that they're open to chatting), or join a chat room about the show you're watching. It used to be that getting stuck next to a chatterbox could ruin your guilt-free John Grisham reading time, but now you can just hop onscreen and virtually avoid them instead. We've seen this phenomenon make its way around the unconference circuit in the form of the backchannel, which is the use of a chat environment like Skype or IRC to enable a real-time online conversation alongside (behind?) live spoken reports. Adding that channel to airplane travel creates a whole new dimension in which your on and off screen personas occupy the same (cramped) physical space. Normally when you start chatting with hottie22, you only find out that she's actually a he when you've crossed state lines for an illicit encounter. Now when you start chatting with the hottie in 22C, you'll find out much earlier when you glance over (though you might still be crossing state lines and - hey - there's always the mile high club if he turns out to be cute).

Lastly, for our geekier readers, you'll be happy to know that you virtual seatmate is really just your favourite penguin mascot, Tux, in a pretty disguise (or not so pretty), and that Red passes the Ultimate and True Test of New Technology: it runs DOOM.