iphone tethering with pdanet
Writing blog posts unthethered from wires is a cool thing. I’m writing this from my netbook at the dog park with full internet access(!), and not hunt-peck keyboard style on my iphone. That’s because this weekend I finally got around to setting up my phone to ‘tether’ it’s internet access to be used on my netbook.
A really cool program named PDAnet made this all possible, but you’re not going to find this iTunes app store. 
It’s downloadable on the iphone through the cydia application that gets installed when jailbreaking the phone with redsn0w.
Once it’s installed you start the app and create a hotspot, complete with an optional WEP key. At that point any device enabled with wifi can connect to your iPhone and slurp up some internet. It’s not blazing fast, (about 1/8th the speed of my dsl and 450ms latency according to a speed test) but it’s fine for light web surfing. I’m still rocking the first generation (2g) iphone that has the EDGE network, so that may be slowing me down a litle bit too.
OK, now I’m having second thoughts about this whole netbook at the dog park idea. My lcd screen just got slimed by dog drool… If I can figure out how to shield myself from these dogs I’m willing to stay a whole lot longer at the dog park, so I think my dog appreciates this even more than I do. Otherwise, PDAnet is a pretty cool way to get your money out of that ~$80 a month cell phone bill.
Here’s a tutorial on how to get it working on your iPhone.
UPDATE: Apparently even though the application says it’s free, it disables your ability to connect to SSL (https://) websites after something like ~14 days after first use until you pay them $29 bucks for the app. Kind of annoying if you can’t access sites like Gmail. I haven’t seen this confirmed anywhere, but I’m having the same problem as this post. I guess you could disable ssl logins in Gmail, but that doesn’t work for all sites. Kind of annoying! I’ll be on the lookout for another free option.
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