It seems like a very good idea, although the image will get bouncy before your airplane crashes in a secret island, or as soon as you get with your car into the bumpy streets of NYC. Honestly, I don't know what's the worse fate of those two. [Cnet]

Yes, what you see in the gallery is a cable. In reality, the Panasonic Karma is an inflight entertainment system remote. One that kicks ass with a touchscreen, an embedded OS that looks very much like the iPhone's, a D-pad, and four game buttons. It will allow you to call, surf the web, send mail, and play games.

Dear Apple, if you don't want to do this, that's fine. Just allow a third party to do game button jackets, ok? Thanks. [Mary Kirby]

Yes, that's right, painful because I don't have a secret bank account in Zurich to justify the trip and play with all these toys.

Check the touchscreen controls of the seat at minute 1:30, as well as the size of those Panasonic screens. The business class is not too shabby either, but the first class reminds me of the golden times of aviation, when everything was glamour and comfort. [Runway Girl]

In practice, that would mean a media server, mostly full of video and music content, would be added to the planes' local networks. Instead of accessing in-flight films and music through a seatback or fold-out screen, passengers could just view it as if it were on a home server, or in a more likely implementation, through a local HTTP interface or set of client apps.

It's an interesting idea, and one that both Aircell and Row 44, two of the biggest providers of in-flight wi-fi, are both actively considering. The main draw is cost, because a bank of hard drives and beefed up router cluster is a tiny investment compared to fitting a plane with individual passenger systems.

But there are some obvious drawbacks. The proposals talk about hosting media for playback on phones and laptops, which could create a compatibility nightmare for the airlines and passengers, and will create an IT nightmare for cabin crew. Then there's the matter of keeping all these gadgets charged: demanding that passengers all use DC adapters to keep their smartphones and laptops charged would work, but it's not exactly elegant.

Having locally hosted media as an option would be a nice additional perk for wi-fi users, and for airlines that don't already have entertainment systems built into their planes it could well be a cheap way to offer their passengers something to do during long flights, but as a total replacement for kickass system like Virgin's? Maybe not. [NYT]