Responding to an invitation or checking in for a flight soon won’t require any typing at all, assuming you’re using Gmail to manage your inbox. When the situation calls for it, new quick action buttons will pop up in an email, letting you accomplish simple tasks without reaching for the keyboard. For event RSVPs, you can even mark your attendance from the main inbox view — a preview with all the key details will pop up, letting you respond with a simple Yes, Maybe or No. On the air travel front, flight confirmation emails will now display your flight status in real time, along with a check-in box, which will boot you directly over to the carrier’s site. As you’ve probably guessed, Google will be rolling out these new features gradually, so if they haven’t already appeared in your browser, you’re certainly not alone.

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Source: Gmail Blog

Google adding quick action buttons, real-time flight status to Gmail

Early this morning at Moffet Air Field in Mountain View, California, Solar Impulse finally took off on the first leg of its barnstorming tour across the US. Of course, this isn’t the first time the sun-powered plane and its pilots, Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg, have flown long distance, but it is the first time it’s taken wing through American airspace. Why has it come across the pond? To raise pubilc and political awareness about the benefits of going green and increasing energy efficiency — and perhaps pick up an additional sponsor or two for its second-gen aircraft (currently in development) meant to fly around the world in 2015. “With the technologies we have onboard, we can divide by two the energy consumption of our world, and produce half of the rest [energy we need] with renewable sources” according to Piccard.

This first portion of the journey will end in Phoenix, and it’ll take around twenty hours to get there, as the plane’s meager output limits its average speed to around 40MPH. Should any of you want to join along with Piccard and Borschberg as they fly across the country, you can hit the Solar Impulse Across America website to see a livestream from the cockpit, along with real-time altitude, air speed and battery status of the aircraft. And, you can watch a video of Solar Impulse taking off on its North American journey and hear Borschberg talk about learning to fly it after the break.

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Solar Impulse sets off on its journey across the US (video)

Nervous flyer? If so, it’s probably best you weren’t heading from Addis Ababa to Nairobi on business recently. If you were, you might have found yourself onboard the first commercial 787 Dreamliner flight since the global fleet was grounded due to concerns over battery failures. The flight comes just days after the FAA approved Boeing’s fix, prompting deliveries of the new craft to resume. With Japan already having cleared the 787 for takeoff, we can expect to see a few more of them in our skies soon. We’re more interested in joining the mile-high Android club.

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Source: Reuters

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Ethiopian Airlines completes first commercial 787 Dreamliner flight since grounding

The Solar Impulse solar-powered airplane made history in 2010 when it embarked on the first-ever solar-powered night flight, and again in 2012 when it made the first intercontinental solar-powered flight (Europe to North Africa). Now the co-founders and pilots of Solar Impulse have announced plans…

Excerpt from:
Solar Plane Makes Last Test Flight Before Across America Trip

We’ve been tracking the sun-powered plane known as Solar Impulse for years as it roved hither and yon. Today, Solar Impulse’s pilots, Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg, came to NASA’s Ames research center to announce their plan to fly across America. The cross-country tour will begin in the Bay Area and end in New York, with stops in Phoenix, Dallas and Washington DC in between. Solar Impulse will also land in either Atlanta, Nashville or St. Louis, with the plane and its pilots set to stay in each locale for about a week to ten days to talk about the project before moving on. For the next month, Piccard and Borschberg will perform test flights around the Bay Area in preparation, and the plan is for the journey to start on May 1st, with an estimated arrival in Gotham sometime in early July.

The point of this new flight is to inspire and educate the public in general of the benefits of renewable energy and efficiency, and to encourage school children and university students in particular to “think off the grid” and innovate and invent on their own. To that end, the pilots will be broadcasting live transmissions and allowing the public to speak with them as they fly, in addition to providing access to flight planning information on the Solar Impulse website. Read on to learn a bit more about the Solar Impulse project and it’s future plans.

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Solar Impulse to fly across the US, pilots preparing for a trip around the world in 2015