Andy Abramson figured out an awesome work around for the alleged VOIP lockout on the American Airlines Wifi service which launched this week. The best part is that it’s pretty damn simple and can be done by anyone once you are connected. Using a new service called Phweet he connected to a Joanna Stern from Laptop Magazine who was in the air using AA’s Gogo Wifi.
Phweet using flash in the browser to connect two twitter users who’d like to have an actual conversation. Instead of exposing a phone number, it enables a VOIP call by connecting tweet’s to the Phweet web service. I actually received a phweet last night on my commute home, but had connectivity issues (thanks for the missing tower in west chester, ATT) so I was unable to try it directly. Signing up for Phweet is simple – just use your existing Twitter credentials.
This is great news for anyone looking to actually use a network connection the way it should be used – open and unrestricted. I really don’t want to hear everyone making phone calls in the air, but at the same time no institution should be restricting how the net is used. I would imagine as a result of this, we are going to see some new VOIP implementations based on flash …
Technorati Tags: voip, american airlines, phweet, twitter, gogo