Tethering with your Android phone

So you’re in a place without wifi (or with wireless that costs money, which to me is the same thing) and you’d like to use your laptop/tablet/etc…now what? My job’s wireless was out for a while, and even though we had some wired computers, I really wanted to sit at my desk with my computer, rather than use a communal machine. I did, however, use one of those those wired connections to search for a solution.

I first started with Barnacle Wifi Tether, which was recommended on an XDA-Developers forum. I used the settings that worked for some other Galaxy S owner, but to no avail.

Then, following instructions given on another thread, I downloaded Android Wifi Tether, which is a Google project. It only works on rooted phones, though, so make sure you’ve rooted your device before trying this app. Make sure you select the build that works on your phone. Once Wireless Tether is installed on your phone, take a look at the security settings. It would be wise to update the suggested passphrase if you keep the default encryption method. What I like most about this method is that, not only is it convenient, it’s also fairly fast. Keep in mind that you’re tethering using your data connection, so this is really only a good idea if 1) you have an unlimited data plan or 2) somebody else pays your phone bill.

It should go without saying, but maybe it’s not, so please be aware that I am not responsible for any damage that may occur to your phone  in your attempts to duplicate my awesomeness. You follow these steps at your own risk.

Let me help you slack

We all know that a little bit of procrastination just revs us up for when we get back to work, right? Right??? Anyway, in case you’re addicted to the mobile version of Angry Birds but are also aware that hunching over your phone at your desk is really conspicuous, I have good news for you: Angry Birds is now available as a web app for Google’s Chrome Browser. I don’t know how this could have seemed like a good idea.

I can haz oversight?

Or, why it’s not a good idea to display unmoderated tweets in any sort of official setting. Like, say, during an EU summit where dirty old man Silvio Berlusconi is going to be front and center?

It’s not enough to know that a technology exists, if you have no idea how to use it effectively.

Keep dreaming, Gates

Let’s face it, no matter how awesome Windows Phone 7 is, there’s no way that it’s immediately going to make the iPhone and Blackberry obsolete. Why then did the eggheads at Microsoft throw a funeral for these phones? Not a mock funeral with engineers high-fiving each other and saying things like, “You’re going down, dude!” but an actual black-wearing, hearse-having parade. I have seen delusion, and it is not pretty.

Luckier than I knew

I’d like to thank Apple’s overloaded web site and AT&T Premier for preventing me from ordering an iPhone 4 last week. I was initially pretty bummed out, especially when I learned how long I’d have to wait to get a phone if I ordered online any day after June 15 (and AT&T isn’t taking new orders until June 29), but now I’m feeling pretty okay about “missing out.”

A lot of iPhone 4 owners have experienced a loss of signal or dropped calls when they hold their phones in the left hands. I’m left-handed. This means that I generally hold things in my left hand. It seems that using this phone would not go well for me.

Steve Jobs is all over this one, promising that Apple will do everything they can to fix this problem ASAP. Just kidding. Actually, he’s telling people that it’s not an issue, or maybe it’s not much of an issue, or that they just shouldn’t hold the phone that way. Because now there’s an Apple-endorsed way to hold a cell phone? Madness! Real Steve Jobs is starting to sound more and more like Fake Steve Jobs.

If there was a Webby for best art accompanying blog posts, Engadget would have to win it:

Finally, here’s Apple’s official response:

Gripping any mobile phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.

iPhone scoop

If you, like me, are considering purchasing a new iPhone, here are some of your best bets for preordering (keep an eye on the Engadget updates). I haven’t 100% decided for sure that I’m getting one. I may switch to Android. All I know is that I hate hate hate my Touch Pro 2 (but that’s more WinMo’s fault than HTC’s), and am sick of installing ROM after ROM to barely approximate what Android and iPhones do with much greater ease.

How much do I love tech stuff?

I’m at home with a blistering headache (fully dressed, because I still almost dragged myself to work), and I’m glued to Engadget’s liveblogging of the Apple event where they just introduced the iPad. Damn you, Steve Jobs!!

Also, lol at the name iPad!

(image ripped off from Jezebel)

First impressions: Barnes and Noble Nook

I read all the time, even when I should be doing other things. I take a ton of books with me on vacation, and as any student/or big-time reader can tell you, lugging around a lot of books gets really old, really quick. I’d been toying around with the idea of getting an e-book reader for a while, and even went so far as to compare the Amazon Kindle, which seems to be the industry standard, to e-readers from Sony and other companies. Nothing really screamed “buy me,” so I put that search on the back burner. I was surprised then, by how fascinated I became when Barnes and Noble announced their Nook. For some reason, it seemed like a better fit for me than a Kindle, which I’ve only briefly seen in action. Why? Now, I really can’t remember, but maybe it was the newness of it. It seemed to me that something newer, which reasonably stood to benefit from the examples of Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s e-book readers, would present the end user with a better product. Is this the case? I don’t know.

The wait

After an agonizing day of going over the pros and cons in my minds, and looking at comparison charts, I decided to buy the Nook the day after it was announced. I waited with baited breath until November 30 (the original estimated ship date), and got really angry when, at 4:30 that day, B&N sent out an email stating that the Nook wouldn’t be delivered until December 10. That was a week and a half away!!! I would have felt better if they’d been upfront about this earlier, as they had to have known that they wouldn’t make their initial market date.

They did try to placate those of us who’d expected a Nook on November 30 with a $10 credit to their online store, which was also an instance of epic failure since, at the time, the B&N online store didn’t allow credits to be used to buy e-books. Barnes and Noble’s real books are usually pricey without their $25/year membership, and I’m not a member; 99% of what I want is cheaper at Amazon, so why in the world would I want to buy a physical book from B&N?? Luckily, B&N finally realized how stupid it was not to allow e-reader owners to buy e-books with the “my bad” credit they’d received, and changed to policy to allow store credits to purchase e-books.

The reality

When I first got my Nook, I was in heaven. I was so happy it had arrived that I tore into the packaging as soon as I got home and saw it on my bed. Unfortunately, the people who made the Nook must have thought that a genius would be opening the package only after it was attacked by a band of feral animals, because the opening process was so difficult that it included instructions. And I still found it hard! Once I got over my worries that my troubles in opening the Nook meant I was too stupid to use it, I let it get fully charged and then started to play around with it.

The things I like about the Nook are manifold:

• It’s insanely portable; I ordered  a case that was back-ordered and hasn’t arrived yet, but it fits perfectly into a quart-sized ziplock bag, so that’s how I’ve been moving it to and fro.
• Changing from the default font to Helvetica Neue made a ton of difference for me, and now the text is perfect for extended periods of reading.
• I like being able to browse B&N and Google Book collections on my Nook, and download items directly to it. Also, anything I buy on Barnes and Noble’s web site is automatically sent to my Nook.

The thing I don’t like about the Nook:

• If I’d posted this yesterday, I would have started with the fact that turning pages on the Nook was noticeably slow. I didn’t want to complain about this, but three seconds to get from one page of a book to the next is certainly something that grows tiresome over the course of 800+ pages. Awesomely, the software on the Nook updated today to version 1.1, and now turning pages is much much faster.
• Turning pages by swiping the touchscreen. I have to say that, for the first week or so that I had my Nook, I found this function almost completely useless. When I tried to change the page using the touchscreen, I would be successfully only about 25% of the time. The Nook guide was pretty useless in figuring out the specific movement that would work every time, as it just said to swipe your finger across the touchscreen (um, thanks). And the instructions didn’t mention that I had to swipe toward the left to turn to the next page. Maybe if most English-language books went from right to left, this would make sense, or even if the Nook’s directional buttons functioned in this way, but they don’t, so it doesn’t. Through trial and error, I finally figured out how to swipe in a way that almost always works, but this was no thanks to B&N.
• Although I’m pleased with the now speedier page-turning process, it feels like Nook symbol has become less responsive with this software update. I wonder if that’s possible, but it seems like I have to press the symbol and the touchscreen harder now in order to awaken them after they’ve fallen asleep. This annoys me.

The verdict

I like my Nook a lot, I just don’t love every part about it. I agree with this Engadget review, that says it’s hard to use and lacks any sort of intuitive interface. I think that David Pogue’s review was overly negative, but that it brought up some valid points. I feel that there was a bit of a learning curve, and I’m now familiar enough with this gadget that I understand and like it for what it is. I don’t know if everybody would feel this way, but I’m glad that I bought my Nook.

More on Snow Leopard

Hmm. So I’ve had a bit more time to play with it, and it seems like the backspace/delete thing cleared up on its own after I restarted the computer again. Saft is still NOT showing up in Safari, although the software update says that I have the newest version. Multiclutch commands are still not working with me in Safari, so I’m not sure what’s going on with that program. I know that a new version was included with Snow Leopard, but if this isn’t fixed soon, I am going to downgrade to a previous version and see if that makes a difference.

Update: Yay! I was reading TUAW today, and it seems that the problem may be that Safari 4 is now running in 64 bit mode, and the plugins I was talking about only work in 32 bit. Here’s the post. Whew. I’m not at home, so I have to wait until after work to check, but I really hope this is the solution.

On the plus side, I’ve noticed that my computer seems to charge more quickly.

Snow Leopard

I upgraded my computer to Snow Leopard over the weekend. I’d read all sorts of favorable reviews (TUAW offers a roundup), and I found them convincing enough to plunk down $30 bucks. On the whole, the changes to OS X are small (at least for my purposes). Aside from manipulating my photos, and sometimes editings mp3s and videos, I don’t do a whole lot of media-related stuff on my computer. I do find a couple of the new features in Snow Leopard to be awesome. I like being able to view pdfs right from the folder without having to open preview and I love that transferring data is appreciably faster. Still, and I don’t know if it’s just my computer, I discovered that a few things are not working the way I’d hoped they would.

• Saft doesn’t give me an error about not working with Safari 4, but I don’t see the Saft menu when I go to options.
• Function + delete isn’t working as a Wind0ws-style delete for me, and it’s driving me nuts.
• Some of the Multiclutch functions that I programmed for Safari 4 in Leopard don’t seem to be working.

I actually only noticed most of these things last night, and I didn’t look into them too much, because I was finishing up a pair of socks (which came out beautifully, I know you were wondering). I’m not going to be home tonight until late, so I probably won’t get to it until tomorrow at the earliest. A quick glance at some Mac blogs showed that while people are definitely having problems related to upgrading , nobody has mentioned the problems that I’m having. Yay for being uniquely troubled!

In case you have already upgraded to Snow Leopard, MacLife offers a list of 100 tips, tricks, and features that are new to this version of OS X.