How to make your Nokia N95 a hotspot?

Nokia N95

Steps on how to make your Nokia N95 a hotspot:

Robert Scoble made a post about Joiku turns Nokia N95 into Wifi hotspot and that caught my eyes because of my love to nokia and leaning new features this phone has. So what is a hotspot? a hot spot (or hotspot) is a wireless LAN (local area network) node that provides Internet connection and virtual private network (VPN) access from a given location. For example, a business traveller with a laptop equipped for Wi-Fi can look up a local hot spot, contact it, and get connected through its network to reach the Internet and their own company remotely with a secure connection. Increasingly, public places, such as airports, hotels, and coffee shops are providing free wireless access for customers.

JoikuSpot a free mobile software solution that turns a Nokia Smaprtphones to a WLAN HotSpot.
JoikuSpot enables S60 Smartphone to share it’s 3G internet connection wirelessly over WLAN with any compatible WLAN device such as laptop or other Smartphone like Apple iPhone. More than one device can connect to JoikuSpot in parallel and seamlessly share the same 3G internet connection. JoikuSpot acts an internet gateway to external WLAN devices.

Now, I love to lay my hands on of Nokia’s new N-series cellphones which you can read more about here.

Hope you guys find this interesting because I did

Z

Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo!….. My thoughts

 

Well it is all over the news and blogs today…. Microsoft has offered to buy Yahoo! for $44.6 Billion dollars. Wow is all I have to say. If this merger goes through it will definitely put some pressure on Google.For a moment take a look at what this could mean. Yahoo! is an internet giant. They do pretty much anything and everything. Their product services include: Yahoo News, Yahoo Music, Yahoo Shopping, Yahoo Games, etc etc etc. They are also one of the main competitors of Google in terms of their ads system. Of course, they are one of the pioneers in the whole search engine game as well. Now what will this mean for Microsoft? If they do acquire Yahoo then they will become huge players in the online media market. They will have two solid sites in MSN.com and Yahoo.com, and it will allow them to compete more directly with Google in three main areas: 1) Yahoo Shopping vs. Google Shopping, 2) Yahoo Mail/Hotmail/Live Mail vs. Gmail, and 3) Word Processing. Robert Scoble makes a great point in his blog when he says that this merger will allow Microsoft to successfully bring their Office platform online to compete with Google’s Docs application.  I think that overall this is a very interesting proposal, and while I hate Microsoft for many reasons (too many native applications, Hotmail doesn’t work on my Mac all the time, 360’s mess up all the time, etc.) I do feel they need to make this acquisition in order to be able to compete with Google in the future. Google’s whole business model revolves around online content, and right now Microsoft’s is somewhat lacking in that department (or their current offerings (MSN) aren’t as successful as they thought they would be)That’s just my two cents-Dave C. 

Anonymity: The Beauty of the Internet

It will take me a few moments to get to the point of my title, but first I would like to begin by speaking on the popularity of a blogger we should all know by now, Robert Scoble. Many bloggers who are into the whole Web 2.0 thing know who Scoble is. He is so known and respected that when he is kicked off of Facebook, it is the topic of discussion for weeks. With this kind of celebrity, I would go so far as to say he is a leader in the industry, at least as far as blogging is concerned. Proof of this fact, is that his blog was one of the very first that we were required to add to our “required reading”.

To get to my point, I would like to comment on Scoble’s recent post about his dealings with Facebook. He posts on how Facebook has recently joined DataPortability.org, in the hopes of eventually making Facebook portable. He indirectly suggests in his post, that he had a hand in making Facebook take this action. This, of course, is not the point my my post, but the comments made on Scoble’s post is.

Too make a long story short, Scoble pretty much gets trashed in some of the comments on his post. People go so far as to call him “childish”, and say that he is “kicking up a tantrum”.

Maybe I had ignorantly assumed that Scoble was above open scrutiny, like say a CEO of a major corporation would be from his employees. Of course people would see things differently and grumble from time to time, but I figured the criticism would be kept quiet, at the very least not said so openly. On his own blog even!

I guess what I’m saying, in this case due to anonymity, the internet is beautiful. In real life, people would be too scared of repercussions or embarrassment to raise their voice and speak their mind against “a leader in the industry”. Would most average Joe’s even have a right (or get the chance) to talk to a “celebrity”? However, on the internet, where there can be a great deal of anonymity (and opportunity), people will speak their voices and say what they have to say.

A separate case, although still dealing with anonymity, is the issue of Scoble making his cell phone readily available. I have read from his blog that many of his readers are kicking up a fuss about how Valleywag has posted Scoble’s cell phone number online. Scoble has openly stated that he’s fine with this, in fact, he’s even had his cell phone number available on his own blogs for years, but yet his readers were upset with the fact that Valleywag would jeopardize his identity by posting his personal cell phone number.

The reason why Scoble doesn’t care? Because no one ever calls him. Out of all of the years having his phone number listed, he has barely received any calls from his readers. This can surely be attributed to the fact that people like to remain anonymous. If someone has the guts to call such an “industry leader” personally on his cell phone, then they better know exactly what they’re going to say. When you write a post, you know your anonymous, and you know you have time to revise what your going to say. When your on the phone in real time, you only have so long to think of what to say, and if your phone number isn’t private, then it leaves easy access for Scoble to call you back sometime.

Personally, I think this is one of the incredible things about the internet. People aren’t afraid to have their voices heard and post on their extremely relevant perspective, instead of holding it back like many would do in real life. This, I believe, is one of the beauties of the internet.

Cheers

Robert Scoble, “Tech geek blogger”

Next up on our required weekly reading list is Robert Scoble. Scoble became famous as a Microsoft employee given permission (and in fact hired to) blog on behalf of the company. This was a huge step and a big risk for Microsoft and Scoble handled it well. During his tenure there he became the “authentic” face and voice of Microsoft. In the process he helped define the practice of corporate blogging, uncover the pitfalls and issues, and expose its tremendous benefits. Based on that experience he also co-wrote a book, with Shel Israel, called Naked Conversations.: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers. Naked Conversations is one of the key books defining the culture of blogging and social media.

Scoble is currently out on his own. There are hints that he will be joining Fast Company sometime soon.

His blog is a good source of information on the blogosphere in general. As discussed in class, his latest scrape with Facebook is a good study in some of the issues we will discuss over the course of the semester. Also, Scoble’s blog is a great example of blog-as-community and blog-as-conversations. Many of his posts attract over 100 comments each. When you find a post that’s of interest to you, please be sure to look at the comments, too.

Please add Scoble’s blog to your RSS reader.