Richard's Tech Reviews

iPhone 3GS tether to Win XP over Bluetooth

Not a whole lot to say about this, it's pretty straightforward - turn on Bluetooth and Internet Tethering on the phone, turn on Bluetooth on the XP machine (Dell Latitude XT laptop running XP Tablet, in my case), then discover the phone.

Double-click the network icon in the Bluetooth Settings screen

(it may ask you to pair the first time you do this) and you're online.  Note: it's possible your Bluetooth settings interface may be different.

I'm seeing reasonable speeds, about 1.4 Mpbs down and 250 Kbps up. About the same as I saw over Bluetooth to my Mac.

Rogers Canada network, Ottawa area.

This entire article was posted (including uploading the screenshot) over Internet Tethering.

Apple has a couple articles that may be helpful:

• iPhone 3G: System requirements for Internet tethering
• iPhone: Troubleshooting Internet tethering

Previously:
June 22, 2009  iPhone 3GS tethered over Bluetooth to Mac PowerBook G4
June 20, 2009  tethering iPhone 3GS with Windows XP over USB

MacWorld on manual geotagging in Places

A MacWorld article "Working with Places" by Derrick Story (@Derrick_Story) goes through the steps to manually attach a geographic location to a photo in iPhoto '09, and gives some suggestions on how to do it efficiently.  Online date is April 2009, and there is also a version of the article on pages 68-69 of the July 2009 MacWorld in print.

iPhone 3GS tethered over Bluetooth to Mac PowerBook G4

My computer just meets the specs for Internet Tethering over Bluetooth: I have Mac OS X 10.4.11 and Bluetooth 2.0 (the minimum specs) on my PowerBook G4.

The tethering process is a bit different from what is described in the Bluetooth tethering troubleshooting (see section "If Internet tethering using Bluetooth does not work, follow these troubleshooting steps") - I don't see any option to "Use device as a network port" in my Bluetooth config when I pair with the phone.  Just click "Continue" to get to the end of the pairing setup and at the end (on the last screen) it just says it has set up "Use as a Personal Area Network" (which is a bit confusing as a PAN can mean a lot of different things, not necessarily Internet access.

Once I paired with the phone (I selected "Mobile Phone" as the type), I turned on Internet Tethering on the phone, and selected the Bluetooth menubar item "Join Network on (phone name)".  Works fine.

Phone has to be quite near my aluminum PowerBook for pairing, and the speed is less than over USB, but still quite usable: 790 down, 260 up.  Rogers Canada, downtown Ottawa.

UPDATE: I removed the SpeedTest graphic that was here because I'm not seeing consistent numbers.  It looks like roughly a megabit (1000 kbps to maybe 1.4 Mbps) down, and about 250 up (this represents some speed loss as over USB I saw about 1.8 or on the iPhone directly it's about 2 Mbps down).  Also I found that the tethered connection used cellular data - 3G (or EDGE if 3G was disabled) ONLY, even if the iPhone has a wireless (wifi) connection active.

Summary - fastest connection to the net on iPhone itself, next fastest tethered over USB, some reduction (but still over a megabit) tethered over Bluetooth (note this will depend how "noisy" your environment is - if there's a lot of interference you will get less Bluetooth bandwidth).  I recommend you keep your phone reasonably close to the laptop - it will still be able to send data over the tether even from metres away, but the connection will be much slower.  END UPDATE

Note that this process will work a bit differently if you're using Bluetooth on OS X 10.5, and that you need OS X 10.5.7 to tether over USB.  You also need Bluetooth 2.0 and Win XP SP2 or later Windows OS in order to do Bluetooth pairing on Windows.  See the Internet Tethering system requirements for more info.

Previously:
June 20, 2009  tethering iPhone 3GS with Windows XP over USB

tethering iPhone 3GS with Windows XP over USB

This is really straightforward

1) Install iTunes 8.2 on the Windows machine

2) Activate Internet Tethering on your iPhone 3G or 3GS (note: Rogers supports this in Canada if you have a data plan of at least 1GB/month).

(You may need a carrier settings update file, which iTunes 8.2 will push to you if needed.)

3) Connect the iPhone

and XP will automatically use the LAN connection it makes.

When Tethering is active on the iPhone, it will add a blue bar reading "Internet Tethering" at the top of the display.

Apple has some good support articles - see iPhone 3G: System requirements for Internet tethering and iPhone: Troubleshooting Internet tethering.  You need at least XP SP 2 for Windows.  On Mac you need OS X 10.5.7 for USB, or OS X 10.4.11 or newer and Bluetooth 2.0.

I am not getting anything near the vaunted 7.2 Mbps that the iPhone 3GS is capable of, getting instead in the mid-range (about 2 Mbps) of the older 3.6 Mbps HSDPA speed for downloads and only about 100 kbps up.  Considering that cellphone data in Canada was a fraction of those speeds just a few years ago, 2 Mbps is not bad, but I thought Rogers Vision was supposed to be a full 7.2 Mbps HSDPA network in city cores.

Rogers PR says

Canada's fastest network just got even faster, with the Rogers 3.5G Network. We've increased our network download speed from 3.6 Mbps to up to 7.2 Mbps from coast to coast

Also note you should make sure you have your dataplan added to your account and active BEFORE you start any attempt to tether.

First because it may prevent you tethering until it sees at least a 1GB plan in your account, and second because if somehow you are able to tether without a data plan, your costs will be astronomical.  (The best deal right now is the $30/6GB plan, but keep in mind Rogers may add Tethering charges on top of that starting in the new year.)

It took several hours for the plan to be added to my account after I got the phone, but the Rogers rep was professional: persisted in trying to add it, and called me once it was added, both of which are great service on what was a very busy and stressful day for her.

free wifi in Rome

There is free wireless available at some locations in Rome, but it's not as straightforward as one might hope.

The city wifi is called Roma Wireless.  In order to sign up for an account, you must provide a valid Italian cellphone (mobile) number.  (I can't imagine many scenarios where you could use a fixed line number.)  The phone number will be your account number.  In order to activate the account and get your password, you must first call an automatic validation number.  There is no option to enter non-Italian numbers, and there is no way to get a password without calling the validation number.  You have about five minutes after account creation in order to validate the account, otherwise I assume the account expires and you would have to re-register.

I had an Italian number as I got an Italy SIM (TIM network) from Roam Simple before I left.
NOTE: Make sure you have an unlocked phone that supports the right GSM bands in order to use this SIM.

Once your account is validated, you can log in at any of the hotspots and get one hour of free wireless per session.  I found that after the session expired, you could login again and get another hour.  You can only login from one device at a time.

I had a lot of trouble using Yahoo properties (Yahoo Mail, Flickr) and Facebook with the service, it seems there is something about the https secure login for Yahoo that Roma Wireless doesn't like.  I had no problem using Google sites (gmail, picasaweb).

I initially used the hotspot in Piazza di Spagna (Spanish Steps) but I don't recommend this as it is crowded, noisy, there is very little shade and it's not that comfortable to sit there for very long.

I found there are tons of hotspots in the Villa Borghese park.  There are maps at some of the park entrances that clearly show where the hotspots are (look for the wifi logos - click the image below for a larger version).

This same information is also available in the online interactive Villa Borghese map, but I can't get the map to work in anything other that IE on Windows, even though it appears to just be regular Flash. It would be really useful if they would provide the map as just an image as well.

I sat in the shade on a park bench just beyond the Pincio terrace, I was sitting in behind the Casina Valadier (outside, not inside the building gates).  Strong signal.  Very pleasant.  Here's a screenshot of that location.

You can see a Google map of hotspot locations, as well as a text listing of the locations, at

http://www.romawireless.com/hotspot_eng.htm

The Roma Wireless service is actually provided by Unidata (Uniwifi), there's more information on their site. Your account will actually be an @uniwifi.it address. Depending where you login, you may get a Roma Wireless screen or a Uniwifi screen. I think that only the romawireless SSID is free hotspots, there are more locations in the city than that but I don't know if the other locations are also free. I think the Uniwifi site is only in Italian.

You can see a map

http://www.uniwifi.it/Rete%20HOT%20SPOT/Mappa%20Hot%20Spot

and a text listing including SSIDs

http://www.uniwifi.it/Rete%20HOT%20SPOT/Elenco%20Hot%20Spot

I wasn't able to find any hotspots in Piazza del Popolo or Piazzale Flaminio.

If you don't have an Italian phone number, things are considerably more challenging.  The days of open wifi access points (no password) are pretty much gone. Near Piazza del Popolo there are a few cafes I found with wifi, but not many. The only ones I found were pretty fancy - the Adriana Cafe on Vicolo dell'Orto di Napoli off of Via Babuino - it's on the 2nd floor, the access is from di Napoli.

Visualizzazione ingrandita della mappa

and I also saw the TAD Cafe (which I didn't try) at Via del Babuino 53.

The iPod Touch

This was my first time using the iPod Touch as a wifi access device, it worked pretty well, but it has a fairly weak antenna, so you need a good signal.

One thing I noticed is many of the apps expect always-on connectivity, so for example if you load up a page in Safari and expect to be able to access the cached version later when you're no longer connected, it won't work (at least I couldn't get it to work) - if you try to access it, it will try to reload the page, find no connection, and just show you a blank page.

It is a great portable web surfing device, thin and light, good for searches, maps, Twitter (I use TwitterFon), Facebook, weather and such.  I have the 8 GB one.