Yesterday, I was invited by Virgin America to the opening flight San Francisco-Fort Lauderdale and I tested the free in-flight wi-fi, courtesy of Google during the Holiday season (ends January 15th, sigh). It worked very well: the login time is very fast unlike when I had to go through the payment process on Gogo Inflight Internet website, the user interface was terrible and it often returned error messages. The most impressive technology feature is the power plugs provided for every seat in economy class, Virgin America is a true 21st century airline! I was able to post articles, the Microsoft Office 2010 post was published from the sky...

Check out the photo gallery, I shot some really nice pictures of the inaugural flight event, Virgin America CEO David Cush cut the ribbon in SFO and Sir Richard Branson himself welcomed us at our arrival in Fort Lauderdale.

By Ravit Lichtenberg (blog) – This year, GigaOm’s NewTeeVee Live has explored TV Everywhere. In addition to general sessions, the conference featured 10 upcoming video startups—each providing a critical element of video and TV viewing puzzle. In Thursday's morning session, the first five companies present their predictions for TV and video:

Elemental Technologies (Sam Blackman, CEO)

The company (elementaltechnologies.com), which is headquartered in Portland, raised 7.1M Series A funding in June 2008 and has burned $2M in 3 years with 27 employees. Customers include the CDC—the number one consumer of video, as well as Adobe and Microsoft.

• Unlike other forms of media, the internet will not destroy the Pay TV business models.
• Consumers will want a high quality, seamless, video experience across multiple platforms: mobile, laptop, TV.
• People are going to be willing to pay for it to achieve the ease of use across platform that will pay for the infrastructure

Yes, it's that time of the year again (we can't believe it!). Soon, you will run around wondering what to get for your loved ones -probably at the last minute. We can help by suggesting the 10 greatest gifts (under $500) for this holiday season. They are called the “Uber10&rdquo. Please help us select an 11th gift by voting on an extended list (coming any day now).

The Uber10 will be unveiled in a private event in San Francisco on November 12, thanks to our Platinum Sponsor Dolby and Gold Sponsor Intel. Dolby will build a surround sound setup at the event venue to show us what the Dolby Surround Sound Experience is all about. You may be able to experience it for yourself, if the Dolby Truck stops by your town. Check out the cool Dolby videos on Youtube.

Intel will talk about the new Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow campaign and their hilarious "rock star" videos: "Intel Star" TV ad and Intel's "Big Ideas" TV ad

At the private event in San Francisco, both sponsors will demonstrate the coolest gadgets with their latest embedded technology.

Check out the 2007 and 2008 Uber10 lists, This 2009 edition will be published at ubergizmo.com/uber10

We have a few extra tickets for the private event, go to this discussion page on our Facebook Fan page to know how you can get one.

Editor's note: this seems obvious, but we would like to make it clear that companies with products nominated to the Uber10 cannot be accepted as sponsors of the Uber10 event.

Photo courtesy of dsearls/Flickr

The LeWeb conference is next month and the event now has a new website and many updates, along with a list of confirmed speakers list. The founders of LeWeb have also posted a video in which they present the speakers. You might have noticed the LeWeb banner on the right side of this site, that's because Ubergizmo is a online partner of LeWeb. As such, we will be covering the event from Paris. There is more information in the full post (including a 10% discount on some flights), see you there if you go, if not, check out our coverage of the show, starting on December 9th

If you haven't made it to San Francisco for the Web 2.0 Summit, we've posted this photo gallery to show you what it looked like from the inside. You can catch some details over on our live blogging section, but there's nothing like being on-site, we guess... The highlight of the first day was the discussion between John Battelle and Evan Williams (Twitter's CEO) about the revenue model of the popular web service. In the meantime, we’ll keep an eye open to report on interesting developments.

[CEATEC 09] Hitachi was presenting its next generation LCD TV features in a theater located right at the entrance of their booth. There was three demos:

• Super black levels: LCD TVs have a tendency to display gray instead of black because the light is coming from behind and has to be “blocked” in order to create black. Not all the light is blocked, that’s why blacks aren’t really black. Hitachi was showing an LCD TV in which black levels was so dark that we would perceive it as black. They don’t really elaborate on what’s going on inside, but it’s good news.
• Auto-IQ adjust: as lighting conditions change, the TV adjusts itself to maintain the image quality. While this is arguably useful, I don’t think that this is really sexy.
• Upscaling video: aimed at video streaming and DVD-resolution content, Hitachi was showing how it could make things sharper by sharpening the image in real-time. As with most sharpening algorithms, the noise level went up a little, but it is true that it makes things more agreeable to look at.

[CEATEC 2009] Kohjinsha has unveiled their latest PA Series MID at CEATEC, and we like the extremely svelte measurements of 161mm x 111mm x 10mm (26mm when extended), tipping the scales at a relatively lightweight 400 grams. You won't be able to use this to get your work deadlines done when you're under pressure, but it ought to provide enough juice to handle just about all of your portable entertainment needs and more, surfing the Web occassionally as well. Detailed specifications nad features are available right after the jump.

[CEATEC 2009] UQ, the sole Wimax carrier in Japan was showing this personal Wi-Fi hotspot device. It connects to the internet via WiMax, and serves as a wireless router for your personal devices. It’s like a MiFi, if you are familiar with that one. When WiMax is not available (in the subway and other “difficult” places), users can connect freely via Wi-Fi, thanks to the partnership between UQ and paid Wi-Fi providers. Coverage is not ubiquitous, but latency and speed should be better than 3.5G. If you wonder, it costs about $40 for a 30-day subscription and there’s no contract!

[CEATEC 209] The Ceatec show arguably had way too many “3D” (stereo) TVs this year. Not only they all have similar functionalities, they also require glasses, which is annoying and not family-friendly. This 3D stereo kiosk does not require special glasses and displays the best stereo 3D that I have seen so far. It can do that, thanks to a pair of cameras that track your eyes, it can adapt the image separation (left+right) optimally. The 3D effect is stunning and the resolution is high enough (I’d say 1280x1024 or so) to be comfortable to use. You can head to the hhi.fraunhofer.de website to get more details, but unfortunately, it’s best to experience it for yourself… in front of the kiosk.

[CEATEC 209] I stumbled on these strange looking speakers while walking in the Hall 4 of the show floor. They look like some kind of water pack, but you are looking at wearable speakers here. Apparently, the manufacturer is aiming at customers who would rather use speakers than headphones, may be bicyclists, for example. Anyway, I tired them on and I was surprised by the sound quality. It sounds good. The speakers are placed right below the user’s ears (black rectangles on the upper chest), so he/she get a strong beam of sound, while people around hear a much quieter output. So, headphones or speakers? Which one are you?

[CEATEC 2009] Korean company Soundgraph is demonstrating how it can control up to 6 small USB displays connected to a single PC. The idea is to turn these displays into dedicated touch devices like a media player, a calendar, photo frame and so on. One master application runs on the computer itself and that is where the smartness happens. It’s pretty cool and I’ll have to find out if it is possible to write our own apps in there. I’d love to see an Ubergizmo app, haha. The displays cost between $200 and $300 and seem to be 5” to 8” large in size.

[CEATEC 09] CRISTAL, which means Control of Remotely Interface Systems using Touch-based Action in Living spaces, is a touch user interface concept based on a live video feed. It works by using a webcam placed in the ceiling that continuously captures a view (from above) of the room. Users can define zones that will be controlled, like lamps or a TV in this demo. Lamps are simple objects that can be turned on and off by swiping your hand on them, but the TV allows more complex interaction like drag and drop music, photos or movie files. The demo was not as slick as what Microsoft does with Surface, but it was interesting to watch. The setup is probably way too complicated for consumers (a webcam needs to be installed up there) or even businesses at this point, but we'll keep an eye on it.

[CEATEC 2009] ALPS has created a system that uses the human body electric conductivity to transmit fair amounts of data (streaming music...). It was demonstrated last year, but now major carriers like DoCoMo are investing in it. Basically, if you and I were both equipped with a compatible handset, we could exchange our business cards or other information simply by shaking hands. It could work for Kiosks and subway tickets as well. It gets better, devices like headsets can also benefit from this technology. Can we finally dump Bluetooth for that purpose?

[CEATEC 2009] Murata, the unicyclist robot that uses sensors to stay balanced has been upgraded at this year’s Ceatec in Tokyo. Thanks to new sensors, it can now ride three times as fast (15cm/sec), and handles itself much better in turn (tight turns!). The Murata robot can also detect obstacles and is incredibly accurate. As a demo, they made it ride a narrow (2cm) slant without falling. The robot is used to promote sciences to children.