I’ve just spent the last hour or so going through my last-minute check-list of things to sort out before I fly to India on Friday to kick-off some new projects with our Software Development teams over there.

One of the things on my list was “Investigate cost effective WiFi service at Heathrow and Doha Airports”. As I spend a lot of time travelling on trains and in airports, I often need access to the Internet from my laptop (when Internet access on my phone isn’t quite enough). The usual answer to this is to pay £5 a go for an hour’s worth of WiFi Hotspot access on BT Openzone (using my PlusNet WiFi minutes), T-Mobile or The Cloud or whatever else is in range; hardly a cost effective way of doing things.

My investigation lead me to some interesting software that I can install on my phone that will turn my phone into a WiFi hotspot. I can then connect to this hotspot with my laptop and surf away.

The good news? The software is free and I don’t pay for data usage on my phone.

For those people that are interested in this sort of thing:
• The software is called Joiku
• My laptop is a very small Sony Vaio; Great for taking on the plane.
• My phone is a Nokia N95 8GB

There are a few limitations, mainly that the Joiku software only works with HTTP and HTTPS traffic, so if I want Instant Messaging access I need to use Fring on my phone or a browser Instant Messaging interface such as Meebo, but I can live with that.

If anyone else has any recommendations that can beat this then I’d be very pleased to hear from you. I’ll report back with my findings as to how well (or otherwise) this goes…

Matt Grest
Head of Future Development
PlusNet

Twitter: MattGrest

13 Comments »

McDonalds are going to offer Free WiFi in all 1,200 of its UK outlets. This is an interesting story. Not just because McDonalds now becomes one of the largest if not the largest WiFi provider in the UK but also because it opens up a number of questions on what impact this will have on other sectors within the Internet space.

Will this kick start the SaaS (Software as a Service) model in the UK. I mean if all of those business travellers that McDonalds are trying to get in through the door actually use the service for connecting back to head office to catch up with company news etc.. then more companies will have to start offering access to their systems just to remain competitive.

How will this type of service impact social networking sites like bebo or facebook? When my teenage neice comes home from school she runs to the computer to “log on” to her friends ( the very same friends she has spent all day with in the classroom) and socialise electronically. Now she can sit in McDonalds and talk face to face with some friends and as a group they can interact with other members of their social circle remotely. I’ve still not worked out what they talk about (it seems they have their own language at times :-)) online but they share photo’s and gossip at alarming speed.

Either way its going to be interesting to see how this story plays out.

Regards

Dean

2 Comments »

I love gadget in general. I’ve got slingboxes, Internet enabled PDA’s, digial media servers, digital photo frames, next generation games machines and touch screen tablets around the house. In fact if its got an Internet connection somewhere in its capability I’ve got to have it. However, this means a number of compromises. For example, the latest and greatest invariably are unreliable to begin with, the amount of wires behind my TV set is scary (think of the snake pit in the Indian Jones movie) and it means I constantly need to have either rechargeable batteries to hand (for all of the remote controls) or I need to take different power supplies when I go abroad.

There may soon be light at the end of the tunnel. A small US based company called PowerCast has developed a smart little chip which retails for $5 per device and it able to be embedded into all types of technology. This device recharges the device via RF waves from a unit that you plug into the mains.

Imagine it. You could have remote controls that you never need to change batteries for again. Or you could take your PDA, portable DVD player, laptop on the move and only require 1 pluggable unit.

How cool is that?

Powercast have recently signed a deal with Philips electronics to start integrating the device in a number of consumer electronics such as mobile phones etc.. and this promises to be an interesting development.

Keep watching this space

Regards

Dean

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