On the new US air traffic control infrastructure, imaginatively named NextGen. "Leighton Quon, project manager of NextGen Systems Analysis, Integration, and Evaluation at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., answers eight questions about what NASA is doing to help improve air transportation for all of us in the future."

A must-read interview with Greg Lindsay, author of Aerotropolis, a book that argues - if the interview is anything to go by, persuasively - that the cities of the 21st century will be designed around airports.

"BAA said it had handled 7.2 million passengers at its six UK airports in December, down 10.9% from a year ago." Also, Virgin Atlantic is witholding fees because of the "slow reaction" to snow. Fun times.

If you liked the first episode of BBC Four's Secret Life of the Airport, or just want to know what Heathrow was like when it was the village of Heath Row, this is probably worth watching.

"These are the absolute busiest hubs, and it takes a rich and populous city or country to support one. Not by accident, fully half of these airports are in the United States."

Apply for a visa waiver at least 72 hours before travel, online, or you're not getting US entry. "Esta is free but [Frances Tuke, from Abta] warned that searches for Esta online brought up numerous websites offering to process the application in return for personal details and a fee." So BBC News have it as a Related Link? No, of course they don't.

Alain de Botton: "it was not until the end of the 18th century that anyone ever thought of describing the Lake District as beautiful. For most of human history, mountainous regions had been thought of as frightful places which must have been overlooked by God" "The holiday I'm most interested in is a two-day trip I'm leading to Heathrow in November."

The lack of availablity of the laptop-tethering app isn't new news, really, but there's some interesting points in here. I hadn't thought about the fact the iPhone can't stream to an AirTunes receiver (why should I have to faff with Remote, after all?) and the multiple libraries point will probably bite me eventually.

That title, subtitle and author in full: "Naked Airport: A Cultural History of the World's Most Revolutionary Structure: A Gordon". US import, with a quite nice cover.

A review of Naked Airport, as seen on Boris Anthony's Flickr page. Sounds like it could be an interesting book.

If you have old hardware (hello!) then you'll want this, as the admin utility that comes with 10.5 won't talk to the UFO-shaped access points. I'm not sure what needed fixing for Leopard; the previous version works for me.

Nice lens flare.

Diamond Geezer gets there with the architecture and tube photography, even as the baggage reclaim falls apart around him. A typically British start, I feel.

"After yesterday's Airport updates, folks starting noticing that USB drives plugged in to Airport Extreme Base Stations were suddenly recognized by Time Machine as valid backup drives." Hurrah! Not that I have an Extreme. Ah well.

"the current word is that AirPort Extreme owners are out of luck when it comes to turning their AirPort Disk into a Time Capsule" but it might come in 10.5.2?

Impressively fast (if also fairly empty) page, but it lets me hang a question here: does this mean that you need this device (as opposed to any random server) for wireless Time Machine?

"Exclusive to Terminal 5 will be a breakfast menu" "Traditionalists can also plump for the more straightforward full English breakfast, or the US favourite of pancakes and maple syrup" Full English at Wagamama? That's just wrong.

"by 2000 the U.S.-UK market had grown to 18.5 million passengers" I was looking for that number. Wonder how it's changed in the last few years? Also interesting stuff about the change in hubbing for transatlantic flights

Bad: even more intrusive Music Store. Good: apparently streams to multiple AirPort Extreme base stations. (All the useful detail's in the comments.)

Oops. My previous annotation was wrong; it's not daap, it's ALC. Could make third party support... tricky.

AirPort router with built in daap client, and cheap/tiny to boot. I think I'm going to go mad.

The existing terminal buildings

Grimshaw gets the job