What do an MP3 player, a GPS navigation system, digital cameras, e-mail, video games, and browsing the Web have in common? They are things you can do on a cell phone other than talk. Well, here's another to add to the list: airline boarding pass.
According to a story I spotted at USA Today's Web site, Continental Airlines says it will begin allowing customers to substitute paper boarding passes with a cell phone-based boarding pass system.
For the next three months Continental will test the system out of the Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. It won't be the first, according the news report. Since September Air Canada has been using the system and allowing user to board aircrafts with their cell phone or PDA - sans a paper pass.
The Paperless Boarding Pass program, as it's called, was devised by the Transportation Security Administration. The TSA says the chief advantages of the cell phone-based boarding passes are that they are harder to forge than the paper equivalent and that they will reduce the number of lost paper boarding passes it has to deal with.
Here is how the program works: The airline sends a message to the air traveler's cell phone at time of check-in. Next, when passengers go through a security checkpoint or boards their plane instead of pulling out a paper boarding pass all they have to do is present their cell phone and the electronic boarding pass message they received at check-in. The message, which includes a cryptic code, is scanned by a TSA agent using a handheld scanner.
Here is my question: Does anyone actually still use their cell phone to call people anymore?
Source: http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/006020.html
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