Turns out that the folks who work at Microsoft are good people! We're particularly enamoured with John Oxley, Director Community Evangelism Microsoft Canada, who graciously ignored the above mentioned glowing fruit and invited yours truly down to Bellevue to participate in the first Microsoft User Experience (UX) Round Table. Despite any harsh criticisms of the past, I'm not above turning a new leaf and it's definitely true that Microsoft's UX Research teams are the hot spot du jour (not disimilar to Xeorx PARC in days of yore). Besides, free trips are always good trips, particularly when accompanied by Mr. David Crow, whose penchant for double bourbons is well known (particularly to my own precious liver who strains vainly to keep up).

We caught an Air Canada flight from Pearson to Settle-Tacoma which turned out to be delayed an hour. The plane was an Embraer 190 which was equipped with the very latest in En Route Inflight Entertainment systems, a topic which I'm becoming increasingly familiar with (see my recent I've-never-even-touched-it review of Virgin America's Red). The E190s feature the Thales Group's TopSeries Inflight Entertainment system, in this case heavily branded with the Air Canada livery and delivered in both English and French. I wasn't able to snap any shots on the way down (I'll try to grab some on the way back), but picture your basic 9" touchscreen embedded in the seat in front of you. These units lacked remotes and many of the features were "Unavailable" (including the Map, News, and Games), though they did feature a USB plug to the left of the screen for charging your ever present array of electronica. Placing the plug at eye level guarantees you'll see it - though the lack of markings might make you hesitate before you plugged in your trusty iPod. Not I! In the interest of journalism, I can confirm that it provides a steady charge but no much else (it might be more natural to place the plug in the armrest, nearer to where the iPod is likely to rest, but progress is progress and who are we to stand in its way?).

The system seemed a little buggy - David's seatmate crashed his twice (though no Blue Screen of Death, so one supposes that it's running on some Linux derivative). There's some markedly weird Information Architecture in the menu system (e.g.: going into the Kids section and selecting Movies drops you into a hidden section of the Movies menu, bizarely merging the first and second level menus), and the touch screens weren't overly responsive (the "Fullscreen" button in movie mode had to be mashed at least three times before it stuck, as did the "Turn off Display" button in the "Screen Brightness" control), but the fact that you can watch or listen to (almost) whatever you'd like elevates airtravel from tedious to almost pleasant. As noted in the review of Red, introducing this kind of tech into a cramped space repleat with expected interactions can bring some unexpected behaviours into play. The screens definitely pumped out a fair amount of heat - noticeable by placing your hand near them - and the cabin was a fair bit warmer than usual, bringing to mind all kinds of stories about library architects not taking into account the weight of books. I also found it surprisingly difficult to settle into Clint Eastwood's excellent Flags of our Fathers after my seatmate started the same film about three minutes before me. Whenever the action lulled, my eyes were inevitably drawn to his screen where the future was foretold in off-colour, angled LCD watching. All the same, the mere fact that I could choose to watch a seemingly unedited print of a great film instead of a heavily censored version or poorly selected rubbish more than made up for it. Sure, it lacks the über cool social chat features and inseat food ordering from Red, but it's aeromiles ahead of craning over heads and seatbacks to see a blown out projection and listening to a tinny soundtrack through a set of hollow rubber tubes.

Further excitement lurked in our shuttle when we blew out a tire on the highway from the airport to the hotel. It was pretty uneventful in the end; a fifteen minute wait on the shoulder until a different van - complete with cracked windshield and flaming skull license plate frame - picked us up. The Westin Bellevue hotel itself is brand new and beautifully decorated and I'm moments away from crashing in the Heavenly Bed. More tomorrow as we start the sessions!

    
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.