Productivity in the sky should pick up 
this holiday season, as Google is teaming with a number of U.S. carriers to offer free in-flight Wi-Fi.
Delta, AirTran and Virgin America are all teaming with the search giant to offer the service at no cost between Nov. 20 and Jan. 2. Each carrier has outfitted their entire domestic fleet with the Gogo Inflight service.
Read more at Variety’s Technotainment blog
Disney’s $563 million purchase earlier this month of Playdom 
had its skeptics, but a new survey showing the reach of the social game market could silence the deal’s critics.
The NPD Group, which tracks the sales of video games, reports that 20 percent of the U.S. population has played a game on Facebook or some other social network in the past three months. That works out to 56.8 million people tending virtual farms or collecting virtual bugs.
“FarmVille” has sure grown a lot of gamers. A new study by The NPD Group 
finds that 20 percent of the U.S. population has played a game on a social network at one point or another. That works out to 56.8 million Americans.
Thirty-five percent of those players are new to gaming, having never previously experimented with any form of video game.
Verizon has big plans for the tablet marketplace – 
maybe bigger than they’re willing to talk about right now.
The telecom giant held a press conference Wednesday showing off an app that would stream live television and on-demand programming to the iPad for FiOS customers. The application, which also allows customers to see which shows are most popular with viewers in real-time, is expected to be available next year.
Google and Verizon want to make one thing clear: There’s no 
truth to last week’s rumors that the search and telecom giants were discussing a deal that would effectively end net neutrality. Instead, they’re teaming up to try to push the concept further.
One week after gossip surfaced, suggesting Google was about to sign an agreement to pay Verizon for speedier Internet access to its services, the two companies held a hastily assembled press conference Monday, offering a joint proposal for ways to keep America’s Internet strong.
Google, which has been a looming threat in the gaming world, 
appears to be edging closer to becoming a major player in online games.
The search giant has invested at least $100 million in social gaming company Zynga, the developer of some of the biggest games on Facebook, including “FarmVille” and “Mafia Wars,” to help launch Google Games, which is expected later this year.
Chris Morris: Journalist 