It has started, Virgin America has dropped Flash content from its new website in order to allow users with Apple iPhones to check in for flights using their mobile.

In an interview with the Register UK, Virgin’s chief technology officer Ravi Simhambhatla said, “I don’t want to cater to one hardware or one software platform one way to another, and Flash eliminates iPhone users. This year is going to be the year of the mobile [for Virgin].”

The Register reported that Virgin’s new Flash-free website is responsible for bringing in 70% of the company’s $100 million in quarterly revenues. The airline’s “crown jewels” website replaces a previous version that used Flash and was less than three years old.

iPhone launches a migration from Flash

The move illustrates the leverage Apple now exerts in being able to drive new web development to use open web standards rather than proprietary binary platforms like Flash and Microsoft’s Silverlight, which exist as closed alternatives to the Web’s simple HTML and JavaScript.

Apple itself dropped Flash from most of its web properties the iPhone debuted, and just before its launch, the company worked with Google to begin serving YouTube videos without requiring a Flash wrapper. Apple chief executive Steve Jobs insisted that Flash was simply not well suited for mobile devices like the new iPhone.

Google has since floated a beta version of YouTube for desktop users that drops Flash entirely and instead presents videos using the native multimedia delivery support written into HTML5, the latest specification of the Web’s standard for semantically marking up content.

Virgin said it is planning to make use of new features in HTML5 as the standard is ratified. Until then, company representatives said today’s HTML is “good enough” to do what the company had been using Flash to do on its previous sit

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Google just announced that it’s bringing some serious location-based integration to its services, all centered around the new Buzz social networking tool built into Gmail. Google’s going to do location better than the usual latitude / longitude coordinates — it’s able to snap those to actual place names and then take context-aware actions depending on where you are. The new location services is integrated into the main mobile Google.com search page and the new buzz.google.com page for the iPhone and Android, and into maps for Android, S60, and Windows Mobile. Buzz is rolling out starting today, and it should hit everyone within “the next few days.”

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What’s to say about the new iPad that hasn’t been said already? Like the iPod and the iPhone it will grow into it’s own in a year or two. Not having seen one in person I can’t review it, but on paper it’s an add on product. It will not replace my laptop or my phone, and since I have both it doesn’t look like I’ll need an iPad.

With that said it’s still fun to discuss it’s possibilities. I’ve heard sales people looking to run their presentations on it, families strapping it to the back seats of cars as a portable DVD player for the kids. Doctor offices replacing paper charts. It’s in the hands of the developers now.

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Just thought I would share this photo. I came across a person today who thought they had a real iphone. I had to break the news to him it was fake. He let me take pictures though.

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