I just saw a TV news piece (UPD: and New York Times Travel wrote about it too) saying that new security measures on US flights require airlines to turn off maps on in-flight entertainment systems so terrorists would not know the airplane location.

This sounds ridiculous because, firstly, those maps are scarcely informative. Secondly, if a serious person is planning to blow an airplane in the sky over any particular point of interest, he probably knows the route by minutes, so he does not really need a map or any kind of location technology.

Now, think about the in-flight Internet. This is a service on the rise – American Airlines was going to launch it, and Virgin too – see http://blog.arrivedok.mobi/2008/06/25/internet-on-the-plane)? Will it be banned too for security reasons? Because if a passenger have an Internet connection and/or a GPS device he can easily detect the plane location.

I can easily imagine that much hyped (http://blog.arrivedok.mobi/2009/01/28/in-flight-calls-a-reality) in-flight mobile services like voice calls, mobile Internet, WAP, SMS can be banned too for similar reasons.

I can only hope that those travel restrictions will not affect our ArrivedOK Flight Arrival Tracker when it will be available in the US. Simply because its purpose is to track your mobile phone when you turn it on after landing and trigger the delivery of arrival alerts to your designated recipients. But who knows.

- A good point made by Shashank Nigam at SimpliFlying on Richard Branson’s interview about Virgin America.

You might be interesting to know that we just launched ArrivedOK Facebook application. Now you can easily share your arrival alerts with your Facebook friends.

If you’re a Facebook user just go to that page and add the application to your Facebook account. You don’t need anything to do with your ArrivedOK settings. Facebook will automatically appear in the list of your web services under ‘My blogs’ tab in your ArrivedOK profile.

For support inquiries, please visit our Support page
Follow ArrivedOK on Twitter: twitter.com/arrivedok

Facebook is a registered trademark of Facebook, Inc.

In the last two days we’ve got a lot of good responses to ArrivedOK Beta. Here are some of them. Thanks to everyone who took a look at the service, your feedback is very inspiring! And hurry up to sign-up – the tester quotas are limited!

Tweet your followers about ArrivedOK. Just click here to be taken to your Twitter account with the ‘tweet’ already to go. Thank you.

“ArrivedOK: now there’s a piece of clever telecoms technology. Sometimes there arrives a perfect solution to a real problem.” – Pat Phelan, Ireland.

“Simple, clear, and straightforward,.. convenient service” – KillerStartups.com

Andy Abramson, Del Mar, CA: “A very imaginative service… As a global nomad this kind of service is ideal for me, especially with my family and colleagues. I regularly text the word “landed” when I touch down using either SMS or the built in Blackberry Messenger to those on my Messenger Buddy List internally… I imagine the service will be very useful to the frequent flier types who have to be working anywhere at any time. From my perspective, ArrivedOk will cut down on a task that for some can be time consuming or just challenging. They smartly have also included email as a notification mechanism.”

“You’re really a bit surprised nobody thought of this before.” – David Sims, TMCnet, at his article about ArrivedOK. “See, this way, your personal arrival is noted instead of flight status in general, so when you oversleep your nine-hour Dubai layover, or miss your connecting flight in Heathrow, you don’t have anybody tapping their toes at the airport for hours while you’re still over the Atlantic Ocean. Not that that’s happened to this reporter either, no siree. No personal experience there, spending two hours traveling out to the Istanbul Airport, waiting three hours and returning home empty-handed only to have to go back later that night.”

“Very cool!” – @Hdueitt, New York, NY.

“Neat!” – Emmanuel Marot, Seattle, WA

“Brilliant.” – Travelbuzz NY

“What a nice idea!” – Joe Distefano, Melbourne.

“Excellent traveler’s essential” – Frans-Jozef, Manchester, UK.

“Do you have a mother like mine? Neurotic? She always wants to know when my plane has landed.” – Suzanne Dowling, San Francisco, CA.

“Ah hah. Another neat idea that came flying into my inbox this afternoon… It’s called ArrivedOK. Peace of mind. Especially for mum.” – Mobile Industry Review.

“If you’ve ever flown, you know what’s like to call and tell everyone you made it.” – @JasonClough, Raleigh, NC.

“Seems like ArrivedOK idea is pretty neat.” – @feebeyer, Berlin.

“ArrivedOK is a great idea.” – @jaketay, Australia.

“When it seemed that everything was invented!..” – @nicolasariza, Medellín – Here comes ArrivedOK [A.D].

“If you’re tired of picking up the phone and calling half a dozen people every time you land in a new city to let them know you arrived OK, you might want to check out a new service called… ArrivedOK.” – Downloadsquad.com

“As passengers, once we’ve safely arrived at our destination, we power up our Blackberries and iPhones to let our loved ones know that the flight is over… Whether we make a call, send a text, update our Facebook status or “tweet” it on Twitter, we feel compelled to let our friends and family know we arrived OK… But the next time I fly, I won’t be calling my mom, boyfriend or roommate to let them know I’m safely sitting on the tarmac waiting to access the overhead compartment. Because next time I’m going to use ArrivedOK.”- Vacationplanning.net: Flight Tracker Cleared for Takeoff.

“ArrivedOK is a clever service that texts loved ones when you land at your destination and turn on your phone. It would be quite useful as an everyday shorter-journey service too. My mother-in-law-to-be always forgets to text us when she arrives home in Carlow from Waterford.” – Paul M. Watson, Waterford, Ireland.

“Touch down in another country, and it’s likely the first thing you’ll want to do is let friends and famly know you’ve reached your destination safe and sound. But dialing direct means those dastardly international roaming rates kick in… This kind of traveler dilemma is what makes us especially intrigued by ArrivedOK… Along with the convenience of being able to alert multiple people at once, the app means you’re bypassing the hefty international charges you’d incur for voice, text and email services via your cell phone while traveling abroad.” – lorraine @ travelpost.com: Skip International Roaming Rates with ArrivedOK Phone App.

Wow. arrivedok.mobi is ridiculously clever little thing for anyone who travels. Sends predefined texts when you switch your phone back on.” – @Ana Nelson, Dublin, Ireland.

“Definitely cool use of technology.” by Craig Agranoff from Scommerce.com

“I #arrivedOK to London. Beta testing ArrivedOK. If you see this then I just arrived at London LHR and it works!..” – Jonathan Clark, Amsterdam.

ARRIVEDOK FLIGHT ARRIVAL TRACKER LETS AIR PASSENGERS NOTIFY OTHERS ABOUT THEIR PERSONAL LANDING BY SMS, EMAIL, BLOGS, TWITTER

Austin, TX – 23 March 2009 /PR Newswire/ — ArrivedOK (www.arrivedok.mobi/hello), the personal flight arrival tracker, is now open for public beta testing. The service lets air passengers automatically notify others about their arrival to airports worldwide by SMS, email, via weblogs or Twitter, and enables users to save on international roaming charges.

Developed by Eyeline Communications Inc., ArrivedOK lets air travelers automatically alert others about their arrival at their destinations. Schedule your flight at www.arrivedok.mobi with the destination airport, expected arrival time, your recipient phone numbers or emails. ArrivedOK tracks your cell phone in the mobile network when you turn it on after the landing. Then it instantly sends ‘Arrived OK’ messages to the list of your recipients.

The unique feature of ArrivedOK is that it alerts about one’s personal arrival instead of flight status in general. “Unlike other flight services, which are based on general flight data from dispatcher centers, ArrivedOK rely on particular subscriber’s mobile phone status. It tracks one’s actual appearance in the destination airport, so one’s friends and family are 100 percent sure the person is landed okay.” – says Andrey Deriabin, Director Business Development at Eyeline Communications.

Based on patent-pending technology, ArrivedOK works by detecting its subscriber’s mobile phone when it is registered in a local GSM network. ArrivedOK allows sending personalized arrival alerts to different groups of recipients, and enables subscribers to save on international roaming charges when traveling abroad.

“The service is designed to be both fun and useful,” says Andrey Deriabin. “Air travelers usually spend remarkable amount of money when texting or making phone calls in roaming just to let someone know they landed fine. With ArrivedOK those people who care about their expenses will be able to make it for less.”

ArrivedOK starts its public beta testing with 29 mobile networks in 10 selected countries. For more information visit http://www.arrivedok.mobi/hello

About Eyeline Communications Inc.

Eyeline Communications Inc. is incorporated in Austin, TX and has offices in Singapore, Russia, and CIS. With 80 mln subscriber base in Europe and Asia, Eyeline provides carrier-grade B2B products and delivers mobile services to the end users.

Contact: Andrey Deriabin
Eyeline Communications Inc.
Tel: +73833630139
Cell Phone: +79139859722
Email: andrey.deriabin {at} eyeline.mobi

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