Virgin Blue has launched a revolutionary, innovative new process to check in and board on domestic flights via a traveller's mobile called "Check-Mate". Gone are the days of booking the flight in advance at a desktop computer, getting to the airport, lining up to check-in and getting a printed boarding pass, with the new Check-Mate process eliminating all paper boarding passes in favour of electronic boarding passes on mobile devices including mobile phones, BlackBerry Smartphones and iPhones.

"Want to know how many people are microblogging in Australia? Or uploading photos online in Brazil? Or writing blogs in the Netherlands? There's a map for that - literally. TrendStream, who publishes the Global Web Index, has created a fantastic visualization that shows the penetration of different social technologies in major markets around the globe. The research is based on interviews with 32,000 Internet users in 16 countries." http://www.globalwebindex.net/

For years we have navigated our way through unfamiliar locations by looking at guidebooks and matching their contents to what we see around us. What if we could look at both at once? This is the promise of augmented reality (AR), which uses computers and mobile phones to overlay additional information and images on what is visible to the naked eye.

Lost in a big city? It is a familiar experience. So imagine if you could use X-ray vision to see what was on the other side of the building in front of you.

My avatar has just experienced its first true taste of freedom, whacking a ball back and forth in a simple game called Ricochet guided only by the motion of my body.

Microsoft's Natal Project