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Yahoo! Tech:

Could the days of having to turn your cell phone off when flying be nearing an end? Aircraft manufacturer Boeing seem to think so. It’s begun the process of outfitting new models of its 747, 777, and 787 airliners with hardware to allow incoming and outgoing calls, with the aim of making them available to airlines by 2013.While this technology sounds like a boon for air travelers who’ve long awaited the ability to make calls while flying, they shouldn’t start celebrating just yet. Whether or not you’ll be able to fire up your phone in-flight still depends on the approval of government agencies such as the FAA who’ll have the final call on, well, calls from 30,000 feet.

Please Boeing, I’m begging you – don’t do this to us.

Some great new features in the SoundCloud for iPhone app.

Josh Centers has some interesting thoughts on Apple’s strategy for Retina displays and which products we should expect to see them in.

Wired:

Alton Brown of Food Network had strong feelings against Twitter, but an even greater aversion to Facebook. When his agent demanded he choose one, he picked what he felt was the lesser of two evils and began tweeting.To spice up his twittering, he began hand-writing notes, then posting pictures of them. Sometimes he’d doodle a message in Morse code. Or draw a sketch. Or set half of a paper message on fire, then tweet a photo of the remnants.

You gotta love Alton Brown.

This.

Well now, this adds a little twist to things.

Wow…Swedes are more uptight with public displays of emotions than Canadians are.

Esquire:

Stealing magic has become a commonplace crime. Teller, a man of infinite delicacy and deceit, decided to do something about it.

Fascinating story about the magic of Penn & Teller and how magicians protect their secrets.

So, let me get this straight. Android is open and freely available until it’s not… and the Open Handset Alliance is even more open, unless you try to use something else — then you get threatened… but openly.

I think that’s it.

Camera maker Leica is collaborating with Apple’s head of design Jonathan Ive to design a camera – but just one. Ever.

There’s no love lost between Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos and Canada’s big Internet providers: “It’s almost a human rights violation what they’re charging for internet access in Canada,” Sarandos said during the Merrill Lynch Media, Communications & Entertainment conference in Los Angeles Wednesday.

You said it, brother!

Much respect to 70-year-old farmer Pedro Martin Ureta for making such a great forest.

I’ve live blogged a lot of things, but I don’t know how he did this.

We’re incredibly grateful for all of your support and hope you’ll join us on the next phase of our journey as part of Google.

Shawn Blanc’s list of three criteria on whether you should continue using a product or not. I like his list.

Sponsoring The Loop this week is SonicPics.

SonicPics is a fun and engaging digital storytelling app for iOS. Turn your photographs into narrated movies to share with your family and friends!

Check out SonicPics today on the app store.

I’ve always been fascinated glassblowers and love watching them work.

Wow, that’s impressive.

HP’s CEO Meg Whitman says the company is working on a new smartphone.

iLounge whines, Peter responds.

TIME:

On Wednesday, 18 workers were arrested for stealing the miniatures from LSG Sky Chefs, the company that provides food and beverages for American Airlines, CNN reports. The majority of those accused were LSG employees, but three were airport security guards. The arrests culminate a nine-month investigation known as “Operation Last Call” carried out by the Port Authority’s Office of Inspector General.Here’s how the whole scheme went down. At the end of every American Airlines flight, workers are supposed to return any unused bottles to a storage facility. Instead, workers began stashing the bottles to sell them to local liquor stores and bodegas.

I love those little tiny bottles of booze.

After Apple’s event finished I got a few minutes with the new iPhone 5, so I thought I’d give you a few pictures and some first impressions. […]

I know it’s a blue shirt and a lanyard, but does everything have to look like Apple did it?

GoDaddy and sites hosted with the popular service went offline on Monday; a hacker associated with ‘Anonymous’ claims credit.

New York Times:

(Here) comes an actor, comedian and writer, seeking to make his way across the country in the next two weeks with only a dream and, oh, yes, instead of a dollar, a trailer filled with 3,000 pounds of a new bacon.The actor, Josh Sankey, will embark this week on a promotion for the Oscar Mayer division of Kraft Foods that is being called the Great American Bacon Barter.

This is just yet another lame attempt by Corporate America to leverage social media (and use the mainstream media as a promotional tool) and turn something viral. It rarely works and often blows up in their faces.

On the other hand – Bacon. So there’s that.

Sponsoring The Loop this week is SonicPics.

SonicPics is a fun and engaging digital storytelling app for iOS. Turn your photographs into narrated movies to share with your family and friends!

Check out SonicPics today on the app store.

There’s always something around to help get that bottle open.

Wall Street Journal:

On Aug. 31, the Federal Aviation Administration requested public comment on its longstanding policy of prohibiting the use of personal electronics during takeoffs and landings. The restrictions date back to 1991 and were motivated in part by anecdotal reports from pilots and flight crews that electronic devices affected an airliner’s navigation equipment or disrupted communication between the cockpit and the ground. Over the years, however, Boeing has been unable to duplicate these problems, and the FAA can only say that the devices’ radio signals “may” interfere with flight operations.

Gadgets may not but the near constant whining of people who can’t use their iPads and Kindles and can’t entertain themselves for a few minutes might drive some of us insane. Our parents seemed to get along just fine on airplanes without needing to be constantly distracted by electronic gizmos.