Blog of a Long Distance Worker Tech

The blog about mobile tech

Monthly Archives: March 2010

Free WiFi

One of the most under appreciated features of the iPhone is its ability to auto connect to WiFi hotspots as you go. With my current repeated travel overseas to a few locations, I appreciate the way that it picks up connections to free access points and those Hotels I have stayed in that use constant WPA/WEP keys that rarely change. So much, that I almost can get away with not using any roaming data as I ‘drive by’ pick up as I walk through the city.

Of course this works only when there is no registration or login mechansim, which points to the need for the setting of a standard mechanism for doing this which makes it ‘interaction’ free. We can only dream… although wasn’t this supposed to be what 3G data was for? Oh yes, but that was before data was made more expensive than Gold by Roaming costs!

Making your point…

All of us put fingers to keyboard and produce documents that have to put across a specific meaning. Many of us also fail in this respect, because of a loose use of certain English phrases. This is particularly true when you are producing documents for persons of varying cultural backgrounds. Always… always think what each word means, and also have a look at this brief article on one of my favourite blogs.

What do these phrases mean to you?

via Clean up Uncertain Phrases in Your Communication | Ian’s Messy Desk.

Mobile Broadband Affordability for the Traveller

Interesting news around the Internets today – BBC News – EU moves to prevent ‘shock’ mobile internet bills.

As a mobile worker around Europe, I have to struggle with the most cost effective way of having data access for both smartphone and laptop wherever I am. This mostly consists of finding free or low cost WiFi at whatever accommodation or working location I am in, or negotiating the local pre-paid/pay as you go market for mobile broadband. The big challenge for more mobile data working is the cost of mobile data itself, which is still mostly charged in MB chunks such as £1.50 to £3 per MB. This is pretty much extortion when you see that non-roaming data can be between £2 and £4 per day with acceptable use policies applying, and the average web page or email today can be greater than 1MB in size.

So it is good news that the EU has moved to limit the amount of money you can accidentally spend on mobile broadband so you do not end up with the £2000 bill for a little bit of surfing, but personally I believe that they should be spending their efforts investigating the true cost of providing roaming data and limiting the mobile companies profits in this area, or at least educating them that encouraging data use is a good thing for them to sell more services.

What do you think?