{"id":885,"date":"2012-07-27T07:38:21","date_gmt":"2012-07-27T13:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/?p=885"},"modified":"2012-07-07T07:52:22","modified_gmt":"2012-07-07T13:52:22","slug":"tips-for-using-your-phone-as-a-wifi-hotspot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/archives\/885","title":{"rendered":"Tips for using your phone as a wifi hotspot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I recently was working remotely.\u00a0 Typically when I do this, I try to find a coffee shop or library&#8211;someplace I can park for free or cheap and get access to wifi.<\/p>\n<p>On this trip, for a variety of reasons, finding such a place was going to be more of a hassle than usual.\u00a0 I had noticed my phone had wifi hotspot capability in the past, so I decided to try it out.<\/p>\n<p>I have AT&amp;T service, and an Android phone (an HTC Inspire running Android 2.3.3).\u00a0 With my existing 2GB\/month data plan, I could not turn on wifi hotspot cability.<\/p>\n<p>However, a quick call to AT&amp;T customer service revealed that the only obstacle was upgrading to a 5GB\/month data plan, and that I could downgrade easily if I wasn&#8217;t happy.\u00a0 The change would take place immediately (or at the next billing cycle if I desired). After a day of deliberation, I placed the order, and started using my phone as a wifi hotspot.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pluses<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>great to work from anywhere where I can get a decent signal<\/li>\n<li>able to use go to meeting, video, browse the web, email, skype&#8211;there was really no online tool I was not able to use<\/li>\n<li>you can control number of users and apply access control<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Minuses<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Speed was like DSL (I had 2 bars most of the time and was on the 4G network, but the phone was a 3G hotspot&#8211;not sure what that means)<\/li>\n<li>A variety of things could cause internet access to stop: incoming phone calls, downloading lots of data (photoblogs), having three or more browser tabs downloading data, trying to upload a photo and download data in another tab<\/li>\n<li>Internet access would stop working every thirty minutes or so with normal usage, requiring me to &#8216;reset the router&#8217; by turning off the hotspot and mobile data, then turning them back on<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Tips<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Use an offline mail client (thunderbird is my favorite, even though <a href=\"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2012\/07\/06\/so-thats-it-for-thunderbird\/\">it is no longer being developed<\/a>).\u00a0 This will let you respond to emails without using notepad or some other desktop app to capture your thoughts.<\/li>\n<li>Practice patience, and if you absolutely must have bulletproof network access, go to a coffee shop.<\/li>\n<li>Focus browsing on crucial pages.<\/li>\n<li>Having another phone available (for web meetings or regular phone calls) is really helpful<\/li>\n<li>Have someone else host skype calls&#8211;trying to host didn&#8217;t work, but I could participate just fine if someone else hosted<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Even though the experience wasn&#8217;t optimal, frankly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk\">it is pretty amazing<\/a> that I can use my computer and have reasonable access to the internets from anywhere that has a decent phone signal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently was working remotely.\u00a0 Typically when I do this, I try to find a coffee shop or library&#8211;someplace I can park for free or cheap and get access to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology-and-society","category-useful-tools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=885"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":886,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885\/revisions\/886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}