Phone as mobile wifi hotpot

Byrichard

Finally I have received the Over the Air (OTA) update from 2.1 to 2.2 for my nexus one. As a result of this my mobile phone can now be used tethered to a computer for internet access or as a wifi hotspot. The WIFI sharing option allows you to use wpa2 PSK encryption.

The reason I was so interested in this update is for use with the iPad. I already have two mobile contracts, one through work and the second private. Both of them allow for at least a gigabyte of data per month. With these contracts and tethering I have the ability to download 2 gigabytes of data from anywhere without paying an additional 19CHF per month to swisscom.

the next step will be to see by how much my data consumption will go up as a result of this option. At least one side effect is a lot more freedom.

Disclaimer, I would add an image if it was easy to get screengrabs with the nexus one but it’s not. Google, can we get that built into the system?

The summer eccentricity.

Byrichard

There are four phones on my desk that are well adapted to tracking hikes. There is the nexus one, the e51, n95 and n97. The reason I mention this is battery life. In my experience if you go on a long hike at least one of the phones will die.

You could buy an extra battery or two to make sure that this never happens but a more practical solution is to take all of your phones, install the tracking application on them and swap phone once the battery dies.

Of course this would involve taking three chargers with you but at least this way you could track the hike in terms of chapters and somehow aggregate the data for a true hike map.

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Google Latitude and Automatic stalking for only your closest friends

Byrichard

logo of google latitude Google latitude is the perfect tool for anyone that works and has a life where logging into locations would be an unsightly thing to do. By that I mean that you can’t arrive at work and log into the location. It gives colleagues the impression you are not serious about your work.

Now take this same situation in a social context. You go hiking and the people around you are not necessarily as passionate about technology. They’re walking around with paper maps after all.

That’s where Google latitude comes into it’s own. Location is tracked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week every single day that your device is on.

Why am I doing this? Am I not mad? Do I not have this location information to hide, and no shame? Well of course I have things to hide and shame but with this network only your closest friends can see where you are. And they only know your current location, not your previous locations.

That’s where the service differs from foursquare, gowalla, yelp and all the others. Your location history is private. Only you have access to it.

Then why use it in the first place? Well that’s simple. It’s a lifelog that’s not broadcast. You can keep track of how much time you’ve spent at home, at work and out socialising. Once a week I get to find out whether I was at work for more than fifty hours, whether I was at home for too many hours. More importantly i get to see whether I should not be a little more active in going out, from a personal life point of view. That’s where I’m lacking at the moment. Google latitude’s dashboard will help change that.

Now, how could it improve? First of all automatic location check in. If I’m by starbucks in Geneva airport log me in if I’m seeing that network more than ten minutes. If I’m at the apple store for that amount of time log me in there. If I’m at a bar and I lose signal in that region due to poor network coverage then assume I’m in that bar.

By being automatic and private location information could be quite a bit more interesting. More to the point that data is being collected anyway by mobile operators so why not take advantage of this?

I believe this to be the future of mobile geo-location. With more android phones out there and more devices capable of multitasking this could easily become the norm.

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Google chrome as a PAF

Byrichard

PAF is not just the way you discribe something hitting something else. It is also used to define a portable application file. These are self contained executables that you can use for mobile versions of your favourite browser.

chromo logoOne of my personal favourites at the moment is Chrome, it’s fast, light, and behaves the way I want it to. Better still it incorporates flash into the code. This means that I can view flash content without it being installed on the computer I’m using.

Get it here