Every day I drive my son to high school and then go to McDonalds with my daughter. She has breakfast and we wait until time to take her to her bus stop for middle school. Today I needed to grab some pictures from the Web for a demonstration activity I am going to do with the i>clickers at Fun Friday. (Sign up now, if you can make it today at 12:20 pm, in the Learning Center, Room 170. Go to http://www.miami.edu/iac and click on the "Events" menu item.)
I have an application on my iPhone that lets my computer connect to the Internet through the iPhone. This is called "tethering" and we say that the computer is tethered to the telephone. The iPhone was using its normal cellular signal, so I could have done this from anywhere. It isn't an "official" application for the iPhone, and I had to "jailbreak" my phone to install it, but it gives me such tremendous capabilities I just had to try it out. Now that I have, I will use it a lot.
Anywhere I can get a data signal on my cell phone, I can now use my computer to reach the Internet. I can let more than one computer use it, if I want. So, my family could be driving down the highway, with everyone but the driver accessing the Internet using the wireless Internet access provided by my phone. Or a group of people could get together somewhere and all connect to the Internet to work together. Speed was great for one computer. It would degrade as more are added.
It is always fun to try something new, especially when it works. But it is really exciting to try something new and realize that this changes the size and shape of the box (you know, work outside the box) or exposes a new paradigm.
Bill Vilberg
