My friend Dave Zatz wrote in his incredibly informative ZatzNotFunny tech blog that the ambitious FLO TV hardware and service combo is shutting down in March. The handheld "personal TV" product, developed by Qualcomm, was designed to offer a variety of programming straight to your handheld via their paid service; different models included one designed for mounting in cars.

Not only is the service shutting down on March 27th, 2011, the company is offering a generous rebate ...

The free GoGo Inflight Internet for the holidays we talked about last month ends in just a few more days; Google's generosity expires on January 2nd. After you've had a taste of free Wi-Fi in the sky, will you continue to fly offline to save money, or will you spring for the full-price service so you can keep using it?

Of course, many friends who've taken advantage of the on-board Wi-Fi have reported back -- as I speculated last month -- that it's been saturated to the point of ...

Remember when getting online in airports and hotel rooms meant having a laptop with a built-in modem, paying for a nationwide dialup service, and finding a phone jack to plug into? There were a couple of pay phones with data jacks in many airports, and for a while the gem of the travel industry was the US Airways Shuttle lounge at LaGuardia, with plenty of power outlets and phone jacks galore. Once you made it to the hotel, you might have to crawl around a bit to find a data jack -- or unplug ...

At first glance, this topic seems a bit of a stretch for a travel technology blog, but I've decided I can live with that. You see, the popular Gawker web site network, which actually includes not just Gawker, but also Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Jezebel, Kotaku, Lifehacker, Deadspin, io9, and Fleshbot, has had its user account database hacked. That means the usernames and passwords of countless web site visitors are in the hands of miscreants.

I wouldn't consider this a huge problem, except ...

There are lots of places you can read tech-oriented holiday gift guides, and I'm not going to try to be complete. I'm just going to offer a few suggestions for your travel-minded gift recipients.

CarMD -- For those on your gift list who drive a lot, and like to be a bit independent, check out CarMD, a handheld gadget that plugs into your car's computer data port and, in most cases, deciphers the opaque error code behind that "check engine" light or other dashboard message. ...

Google has subsidized the cost of Wi-Fi Internet access in airport terminals in the past, and we're pleased to see this year they're sponsoring free inflight Wi-Fi for the holiday season. As Matthew also reported, the company has announced that the Google Chrome web browser will offer free Gogo Inflight Internet service on domestic AirTran, Delta, and Virgin America flights from November 20th through January 2nd.

You've seen that I love Gogo Inflight Internet when it's ...

If you've traveled with your gadgets, you know that you need to plan ahead and bring all sorts of cords and chargers along for the ride. No matter how cautious you are, sometimes you'll find yourself out and about with a dwindling battery but without the necessary cord, or with no outlet to plug it into.

That's where these new Chargebox charging stations come in. These devices, and others like them, offer a place to quickly recharge your phone or other device while you're out and ...

Remember those carefree days when the only thing you had to worry about boarding the plane with was a small laptop bag, a magazine, and your cell phone? No problem getting all that through security. But as more and more people slow things down by bringing all their luggage through security instead of checking it, and the number of gadgets per capita keeps climbing, it's important to have a strategy for boarding with all your gear.

My initial strategy is to get everything off my belt ...

I'm a techie, so more often than not, I'm traveling with my own entertainment. From my first video iPod a few years back, to my iPhone, now my iPad, and of course the laptop that's always with me on trips, I'm never short of video to watch when I'm on the road. When I turn on the hotel TV, it's usually been to watch something live and important. The Olympics. Hockey playoffs. A political convention. Even Nixon's funeral. 

Hotel television sets have traditionally been locked down, ...

When I first started using cell phones, roaming was a pretty easy concept. If you were in your cellular provider's local service area, near home, you weren't roaming. If you were out of town, sometimes even in your own state, you probably were roaming, often with a daily or monthly charge plus a per-minute charge, typically 99 cents per minute. 

Roaming across the United States got simpler fast with the advent of national calling plans from the major cellular carriers, so these ...

So far, I haven't been very lucky in finding myself on aircraft with in-flight Internet access. Even if I were, I admit I'm a little put off by the price of entry, almost always north of $10 for a flight, unless you're willing to commit to buying several flights' worth of Internet access up front.

When I found myself on a US Airways plane equipped with Gogo Inflight Internet on the way home from California, recently, I briefly considered ponying up their $12.95 fee, then decided ...