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The promise of Wi-Fi on planes continues to creep closer to reality. Today, Delta Air Lines announced that its entire fleet of over 330 planes traveling throughout the continental U.S. will be equipped with wireless Internet.

The service will be provided using Aircell’s Gogo system which promises Internet access to laptops, smartphones and PDAs. Included will be VPN access for corporate fliers and interestingly, SMS text messages, according to the press release. The use of cell phones will still be prohibited, but I suppose you could fire up a voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) app and talk away (at least until they block that).

The privilege of Wi-Fi on your flight will cost you $9.95 for flights three hours or less and $12.95 for longer ones. While that may seem like a lot, it’s practically the price of a drink on a flight now, and the Internet will last a lot longer.

Delta will first begin outfitting its MD-88 jets as soon as next month, reports The Wall Street Journal. By the end of the year 75 planes should offer the service, with the rest getting access by next summer.

Aircell’s Gogo system is becoming quite the belle of the airline’s ball. Back in May it was announced that users of iPass, an Internet access service that a lot of travelers use, would soon get free access to Gogo systems on planes. At the time, it was announced that American Airlines and Virgin America had deals to implement Gogo Wi-Fi in late 2008.

I’ve made it clear in the past that I absolutely need Internet on a plane to make it a bearable experience at this point. Crowded cabins, shrinking seats and rising costs make me fearful of airports. But not everyone is in love with the idea; “I’m conflicted by this development since the plane was the last refuge from the Internet,” writes ZDNet’s Larry Dignan.

May one day thanks to this news, we’ll start seeing the reactions in the commercial below.

[photo: flickr/cubbie n vegas]

Report: YouTube still trying to figure out how to make money — Lots of people have been wondering if the online video site has somehow figured out how to make big money from its huge amounts of web traffic. The answer, according to a Wall Street Journal article (sub required) is, as we’ve been hearing: Nothing mind-blowing is happening yet. Two sources say YouTube will make around $200 million this year, which is short of Google’s hopes. Watch the video to learn more about future monetization plans. However, the article includes some other interesting information about monetization plans. Like the fact that the company is looking to introduce user-hated pre-roll and post-roll ads that run before and after videos.

Mass. governor signs onto ambitious clean energy bill — Among other things, homeowners and business will be able to rent solar panels from utility companies to avoid paying high purchase costs, as well as sell excess energy from the panels and wind turbines.

Vivaty’s virtual world launches in public beta — The company lets social network and instant mssage users go into three dimensional virtual rooms and chat, and do things like choose the room’s decor — decor that can include their photos and other info from social networks. Google also launched a for-now-less-complete 3D chat service today, called Lively, that aims to do much of the same. Maybe, as Allen Stern at Centernetworks says, Vivaty can out-innovate Google on the 3D IM chat room market.

Ocean fertilizer startup Planktos is back, “with science” — The company wanted to fertilize every ocean with iron to produce phytoplankton blooms and thereby reduce carbon emissions. We’ve previously mentioned its re-opening; Earth2Tech has more details but wasn’t impressed with many aspects of the company’s return, including its new name, Planktos Science.

mio knight rider gps from knight rider online on Vimeo.
The Knight Rider GPS system, by Mio, now has the voice of the robot car, KITT, inside — At some point when Knight Rider was a popular television show, somebody must have predicted that one day everyone would have a car that could give them directions, just like KITT. The show’s still-active fan site, Knight Rider Online, was suitably given the KITT-voice scoop. See video for more.

Rosetta Stone sues smaller competitor for infringing on its search results– The smaller competitor, Rocket Dog Languages, allegedly bought Google search ads that negatively described the company. The Wall Street Journal has more (sub required).

Make’n Movies launches movie script idea review site — Submit up 300-500 words, post it on the site’s database, and see what other people think.

Xiaonei, the Facebook clone of China, launches its own developer platform — Built from scratch, not using the OpenSocial platform standard nor Facebook’s licensable platform, the Xiaonei “Open Platform” will compete against the planned platform of rival Chinese network 51.com. Silicon Valley venture firm DCM is creating a fund to support third-party developers on the platform, similar to the fund created by Accel, the Founders Fund and Facebook itself for Facebook’s platform.

MyYahoo launches developer platform — Everyone likes to launch developer platforms these days, including Yahoo, which now has one for its start page web service, MyYahoo. ReadWriteWeb has a good review of it, here.

Aircell, aviation broadband technology company, closes third phase of $265 million financing — The company promises to offer mobile internet and phone access on planes, as you can tell from this picture on its web site.

Shareholders approve $18.9 billion Activision-Vivendi Games merger — The combined entity is now the world’s largest gaming company. Gamespot has more.

MIT researchers announce nanoscale lithographic technology, to create more advanced chips — The results promise improvements in a wide ranges of chips from those used in computer memory systems, to integrated circuits, to solar cells and other devices. The report is here.