Jaunted

Gogo's Niels Steenstrup, VP of Marketing and Customer Experience at Aircell (Gogo's parent company), is a big fan of the Black Eyed Peas. Wait wait—we mean a big fan of one Black Eyed Peas' lyric in particular, from their song "Now Generation":

Fast internet / Stay connected in a jet / Wi-fi, Podcast / Blastin' out an SMS

As you probably know, when something pops up in a Black Eyed Peas song, it's officially mainstream. How mainstream? We'll let the numbers talk: hundreds of commercial jets are now outfitted with in-flight WiFi, and over 5,000 business jets too. Simply staggering.

Actually, the word Niels would use to describe the in-flight WiFi experience is "exhilarating," and it's pretty obvious users feel the same, since the #1 site visited by those on in-flight WiFi is Facebook. Travelers are anxious to connect with their friends from 35,000-feet, and gloat about the fact they can. After Facebook, the most popular sites visited are Google and Gmail. Since we've been both the sender and recipient of many "I'm on a plane!" emails ourselves, we don't doubt this one bit.

The new Gogo logo—quick, somebody name a cocktail after it

Gogo's had all sorts of success, but it's far from the time to rest on their laurels. In advance of their next big launch, Gogo is rebranding. This is still something of a secret, but since we happened upon the new logo during our HQ visit, we just have to show you. Gone is the green and black, replaced by an airline-friendly red and blue, with a cute little cloud. Watch for it to start appearing when Gogo launches their next advance: that in-flight streaming dealy.

Ah yes, in-flight content streaming. We've already touched on this before, but allow us to explain again. Gogo has spies flying up in the skies right now, onboard American Airlines, testing technology that allows you to end your dependence on the seatback TV for entertainment. Passengers on WiFi-equipped planes will be able to access movies, TV shows and in-flight shopping from an "in-flight library" to watch directly on their own devices, like iPads, smartphones and laptops. Some 68% of people stepping onto planes these days already come with their own WiFi-enabled device, so this evolution is almost past due.

And the whole thing making the WiFi happen onboard your plane is that little black box doohickey pictured above. Its official name is the ACPU, or Aircell Central Processing Unit, and it knows that you're spending a whole flight not working, but playing Farmville. Luckily it hasn't developed HAL 9000 sentience...yet.

[Photos: Cynthia Drescher for Jaunted]