So you’re on the road and you do not have Mobile WIFI for your laptop – or you just straight-up want to get Internet off a device bigger than 3 inches!  I understand.  You’re already paying  your cell provider for Internet access – wouldn’t it be nice to use that internet on your laptop, to surf the web in “real time”?  You betcha – and you can – by tethering your devices.  Get ready to go Macgyver.

Rumors have circulated that the iPhone/Android/Smartphone’s with Internet access do not offer “tethering” on your service plan.  This could not be more false and I will show you a simple and easy way to get internet access off your android Smartphone device.  For those of you unfamiliar with Tethering (according to Wikipedia):

Tethering is the use of a mobile device such as a mobile phone to supply Internet access for another device which is otherwise unconnected, using the mobile device as a modem.[1] This can be done through Bluetooth wireless technology or cables (such as USB).

Tethering has been used to gain access to the Internet since mobile devices started using their networks to give users Internet access, but has increased in prevalence due to Internet connectivity in modern cell phones and laptops.

Methods of Tethering:

There currently are two different ways you can tether a phone, via:

1. Bluetooth: Use of Bluetooth wireless technology to pair your phone and laptop together to share a internet connection.
2. USB Cord:  Use of a USB cord to connect between your phone and your laptop to share a connection.

Bluetooth in general is the most wire-free (cool) tech way to go about it.  But it will involve a couple extra steps such as pairing.  USB is pretty much a no-muss, no fuss easy solution if you’re in a rush.  (Did I really just rhyme?)

Simple and Safe Tethering Solution:

This solution works for the iPhone, Treo, Palm OS, Windows mobile, Blackberry, and Android operating systems on phones.  I personally have experience using it with the Android platform and feel it’s top notch.  This information I post is generally geared towards installing it on Android/Motorola Droid/etc.  For me personally, I chose it as opposed to “rooting” my phone.  For the those uninitiated in what this means – it generally means illegally gaining core level operating system access to your phone.  Can it ruin your phone make it stop working all together? You bet.  So take the safe path unless you’re real daring, have money to waste, or a hardcore technie. 

A Company called JuneFabrics makes the experience pretty easy and tidy to use. Therefore…

1. Surf to: www.junefabrics.com
2. Choose your Operating System: Android, iPhone, Treo, Windows Mobile, Blackberry
3. Download and Install the PDAnet software on the laptop/pc you want to tether to your phone
4. Go to Android Market or the iPhone Apps market, etc and Download/Install PDAnet to your phone.
5. Note for Android Owners: You will need to enable USB debugging. Go to > Settings > Applications > Development > ENABLE USB Debugging
6. Reboot your PC and your Phone
7. Connect the Phone either via Bluetooth OR USB to the PC.  Try USB first – its often easiest.
8. Your devices will recognize each other.  If at this point it asks for drivers, approvals, firewall changes – Approve them and move on.
9. On the PDA/Smartphone/iPhone/Android device: Right Click on pdaNet Application on taskbar > Connect
10.  
11. Click ENABLE USB TETHER or ENABLE Bluetooth DUN
12. The devices should sync up and you should now have Internet Access off your laptop. CONGRATS!

This process took me approximately 5-10 minutes to complete.  Really great, fast, and reliable.  All in all, great product.  By the way, if you find this product useful then I suggest buying/donating to the software designer – they deserve it.  Depending on your plan and 3G status signal strength, you’ll get decent speed internet.  When you’re ready to stop surfing off the phone – go back to pdaNet application and turn off/disable the connection.

Some Warnings:

Bandwidth: One word – Bandwidth usage!  Sure, you can tether your phone. Does your carrier probably want you to?  Most likely not.  Do not give them a reason to cut your service.  If you’re surfing the web, checking email, stocks, etc well then I am sure the bandwidth usage will be pretty low and they will not care.  Thinking about downloading full movies off iTunes or using torrents?  Think again.  Just a word of advice that I’ve read amongst the many forums. 

Battery: You are using your phones internet, therefore you will drain the battery faster then usual.  Keep this in mind when using this method.

Maximum Battery Usage TIP! (Post Update)

A.J, a TftM reader, brought up a good point in the comments below and it relates to battery optimization.  If you want THE MOST BATTERY LIFE out of your MOBILE DEVICE then you should use USB TETHERING. 

The thought process?  USB tethering will keep your mobile device charged while it’s being the source of your internet. The Bluetooth method lacks a continual charge, plus, using Bluetooth itself will put some drain on the battery as well.

   USB = Fuel Efficient / Bluetooth = Super Nifty Gas Guzzler.

Conclusion:

For my part, I’ve only used tethering a couple of times and one of those times was during a road-trip.  In this case, it was a life-saver.  Sure, my Motorola Droid can do most everything for me – but I work quicker on full-screen/full keyboard laptop.  Plus, it brings up the maps and directions a lot larger! 

Was this tip helpful?  What other solutions do you all use?  Has anyone had any positive or negative experiences with PDAnet?  Any good alternatives?  Love to hear from you!

The Hotshot competition basically consisted robots designed to release balls, harvest them, then “shoot” them through a netted goal.  

Teams:

The teams were (from the Pace site):

Hotshot Challenge Video

Tech for the Masses Videos

Photos of the Robotic Challenge

Furthermore, I took a few photos if anyone would like to check them out:

Final Results:

The results are posted on Pace’s official site and should be up within a couple days.  Click on photo below for results.

Results of Competition

Get Involved: More Information

Head on over to these sites for more information and resources about FIRT, Robotics, and Pace University.

• FIRST Hotshot Challenge @ Pace
• FIRST Robotics Program
• Pace University

Say what? Pandoras Box?  That’s right.  While in Puerto Rico a friend of mine turned me onto this free Internet radio service called Pandora.  Pandora Internet Radio isn’t like most online radio stations.  It’s different in that you can customize the radio stations to your preference.  Lets just call it Smart Radio – it knows what you like, what you don’t like, and will play according to your tastes.  How does it does this?  Well, a little training of course. By the way, did I mention this service is FREE?

Free Premium Service for Audiophiles

Pandora is easy to use and right off the bat will introduce you to a customized music station based on your favorite genres, artists, or albums. The entire system is free and will work with an account (free) or without one.  I’d just sign-up for an account anyway considering it will save all your settings and preferences for your return visit.  You may ask why this kind of premium service is free and I wondered that myself.  I believe Pandora makes it money off advertising whatever song you’re listening too. 

Smart Internet Radio: Artificial Intelligence for your Music

What makes Pandora so smart?  If you tell Pandora you like 2 genres of music or 2 different artists – then it runs some statistics on its end.  It will basically find similarities in the music that you like and automatically deliver you a custom radio station with your artists plus others that you’ll “statistically” like.  Sound awesome?  It is.  So you better go check it out.  It’s definitely fun, free, and a good time.

Smart Marketing

If you are listening to your radio station, Pandora will show you the Album cover, song title, artist, and album name of the song playing.  Furthermore, you can click a small BUY button if you want to buy the entire album.  For me, even if I do not buy anything, I like the idea of knowing what I am listening too.  It also don’t hurt to be offered a quick-way to buy the entire album via the Internet.  Entirely integrated and Entirely user-friendly – I like it.  Its soon to be a Tech for the Masses favorite!

Check out Pandora here @ www.pandora.com

Readers, how do you access your favorite radio stations and music online?  Any suggestions?

A hybrid example for this is Gmail (you go to their site, compose, read, and send emails all on their system – not yours).  Typically, people use to email through Microsoft Outlook which had to be installed on your PC and it only used the internet to send the message and ask for new ones.  If your computer crashed, you lost all your email and attachments.

Another newer example of Cloud Computing is Google Docs – which enables you to login to your account and have your documents written, published, and saved on the Internet (in the Cloud).  Typically people install Microsoft Office on their computer then create and save the files to their computer.  If the computer crashes, you have lost all your Documents and the installation of Microsoft Office.

Let’s Expand

The beauty of Cloud Computing is that nothing is kept on your computer system at all.  This is vaguely familiar to “dumb terminals” that make servers do all the processing and terminals to output the result.  However, in modern computing, when someone goes to Facebook to post, comment, or search those operations are being done on Facebook servers – not your personal computer.

The Cost Benefits

You’re probably reading this on an overpowered workhorse computer with the latest technology in it.  You probably also paid $1500 or more for it.  What you bought was COMPUTING POWER.  Guess what?  The majority of us never use a computers full computing power.  Web 2.0, Facebook, Hotmail, Gmail, MySpace, Google Docs, etc all do the majority of computing through the internet on their own web servers.  Not your PC.  An obvious cost benefit of Cloud Computing is the diminishing need for expensive computer systems. 

If you recall my article on Buying a Computer, you’ll see I am not a proponent of purchasing expensive machines.  I believe you should buy what is in your budget and according to your needs.  Most peoples needs are for word processing, photos, music, and email.  Sadly, a 10 year old computer can do all of that for you so you have no need for overpriced hardware. 

As technology increases and the web becomes smarter we should not have to be pumping money into costly hardware.

Centralization Benefits

Cloud computing has the distinct advantage of keeping your data and applications located on a remote server and not your local PC.  This means that the provider of the cloud-based application will backup your data for you and make it available as often as needed.  If you use several computers or one crashes, you can still access your data in the same application and files regardless of what computer you’re using.  It basically puts data and applications in a centralized location on the Internet – instead of your PC.

The Privacy Issue

Now all this sounds so promising but there may be one downside.  Privacy is an issue for some people who may not want to keep their personal photos or business information on anything but their own PC.  Keeping it on the Internet (although probably still secure) leads to a possibility for information leakage.  What is important here is to choose applications and online storage that respects the users rights to privacy and offers written Terms of Service on security and usage.  

In it’s hybrid form, you’re already sharing your personal information with everyone when you post information or links to Facebook, share photos on Picasa, etc. Most other users will make be looking at this information, but, Facebook and Google do use “anonymous” user data to fine-tune their search and marketing programs.

The Real Eye Opener

If some of this information has seemed confusing then this explanation should help.  I know Technicians will feel this one!

The benefit in cloud computing comes to realization when your computer system or hard drive crashes and you lose all your information. 

What do I mean?

If you were in an solely Cloud computing environment or Operating System (not Microsoft Windows, OSX, etc) then you could pick up any other computer, login, and have access to your files as if nothing changed.  Super right?  Yes.

Now imagine if you were using a typical computing environment – if your hard drive crashed, then you’d lose all those music, documents, photos, and special software programs like Microsoft Office immediately. 

Delving Deeper

I’ve mentioned things like Facebook, Google DOCs, and Web 2.0 before.  Right now, these are just a step in the right direction and examples of how we cloud compute on a regular basis.  See, you’ve been doing it and haven’t realized all this time!  Congrats! But its a hybrid solution.  Let me explain…

You Cloud Compute when you:

• Type a Document and save it in Google DOCs
• If you write an email on Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail and send it Online
• Search a database online
• Post information to Myspace, Facebook, etc.

You “Locally Compute” (as in solely on your PC), when you:

• Save pictures, music, documents on your computer
• Write a Microsoft Office Word document or Excel
• Open Adobe Reader, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Word, or any kind of manually installed software program.

Bottom Line: 100% Cloud Computing would do all of these things in the Cloud and not on your PC

Computing Nirvana: A New Wave

I’m imagining in the near future there will be a new wave of minimal, easy to use, cloud computing devices (such as Netbooks with Cloud Operating Systems).  This would take us away from typical Operating Systems such as Windows, AppleOS, and Linux which are not 100% Cloud Computing Operating Systems.

This will lead way to a minimal and functional Operating System that has one job: Keep you connected to the Internet to access all your files, applications, and media.  The computer crashes?  Repair, reboot, login – and everything is there.  Changing computers?  Login – and everything is there.  Your house burns down with everything in it?  Login on any other computer or similar OS – everything is there.  Kind of groovy isn’t it?

Want to be a Tech Cowboy and Cloud Compute?

Up until more recently Cloud Computing was something that only businesses were able to take a hold of.  However, as a regular end-user things may be looking up for us to tap into this kind of technology.  If you want to look into converting an old PC, Netbook, or laptop to try out 100% Cloud computing then keep on eye on these technologies:

• Jolicloud – Cloud Based Operating System which is a Linux Distro. Competitor of Chromium.
• Google Chrome or Chromium – This is currently in testing and should release next year.  I have a lot of hopes for this Minimal list Cloud based OS.
• Ubuntu Netbook Remix
• Moblin

Do you have your own ideas about cloud computing or would like to add upon mine?  Please feel free to comment below!