I know that users of the iPhone have been able to tether their phones to a mac from quite a time now (backward minded telcos and their ridiculously archaic pricing not withstanding). I always assumed that it would be as easy with a mac, and I was almost right.

There is a free android app called PdaNet that will allow you to share the data connection on your phone with a computer connected by USB. It requires installing a desktop app on your target computer (PC or Mac). This software will create a virtual network adapter and (with the Mac version at least) a status bar icon.

You can find the instructions for tethering your Android phone to your mac on June Fabric’s PdaNet Desktop for Mac page.

So why was I almost right? Well, I have a HTC Legend that, when plugged into my Mac, gives me an ‘Internet sharing: Share phone’s mobile network with PC’ option. It turns out to use this option you need to have HTC Sync installed on your machine. Which is a Windows-only option. PdaNet solves this problem and is both unobtrusive and simple to use.

My biggest challenge (or at least a major one) over the last two and a half years of my PhD and online projects has been keeping my files in sync across my work computer, home computer and my travel laptop. I’ve tried a number of things such as working from a USB stick and using a software-style versioning control (ala CVS or Subversion). All methods I’ve tried have sucked.

USB sucks, because the idea of having all of your critical files on something that is inherently lose-able (esp. if you are me) is a bad idea. The stop-gap solution is to copy files from USB to HDD and back: Good luck keeping that all in sync.

CVS/Subversion suck because I am trying to clumsily use a software versioning system for a task that it is not optimised for. These technologies don’t handle file system structural changes too well, and forgetting to commit a change can screw things up royally.

I figured that I would look in to the cloud computing side of things, as the idea of having a centralised ‘cloud’ of files that my various computers (satellite cloudettes) had a synchronised copy of seemed ideal.

I tried a few different services, including Ubuntu One, and settled with Dropbox. It offers the same usage allowance as Ubuntu One, but has clients for Mac (incl. iPhone app), Windows and various Linux distros, whereas Ubuntu One is only for Ubuntu installations.

I also have an Android-based phone (HTC Magic) and an Android app for Dropbox is coming out in the next couple of months.

Anyway, the deal is that there is a free account that will allow you to sync 2Gb of files, $10/month for 50Gb and $20/month for 100Gb. Needless to say, for most peoples (e.g. me) needs 2Gb is more than adequate. You choose which folders on your computer(s) are on the cloud.

Obviously all files are also stored offline allowing you to access them, which also keeps your data pretty safe. You can even store files in a special ‘public’ folder, allowing you to give people a http URL to download the file from. Pretty stylin’.

Anyway, here is an invite link to try it out. This link will give both you and me an extra 250Mb allowance, which is a nice little bonus to get started with!

https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTQwODUyNDY5

The device works using a small camera to track movement and a projector to display information on any surface you present (from the wall to your hand).

Imagine picking up a book in the book store and having the Amazon.com or Goodreads.com reader rating projected on its cover (and reviews projected on the blank inner sleeve), a clock projected on to your wrist or a picture taken by making a square around your subject of choice with your hands. All of these are demonstrated in the below video.

And the best bit? Sixth Sense is going open source. I am so going to be one of the first in line for this.

Now, I should additionally mention that before this little discovery I had received an email from a guy about some MESH-related projects he was working on. He actually mentioned FSW in his email. I hadn’t thought anything of it at the time but once I realised there had been a write up and a degree of traffic coming to WiAU from the userbase it all started to piece together.

The end game is that I wouldn’t have known of the writeup today if it hadn’t been for GA as I’d no notification of its existence with the exception of a casual reference to the site in an email. Unfortunately I’m not one for picking up on subtleties so a big ‘traffic analysis’ hammer in the face was something I might just notice, and was just the call I needed.

Now, I would like to let everybody on the internet know that my mother is actually pretty tops. Since I’ve come back from the UK she has been a veritable champion and been there for me and helped me get back on my feet back here in Australia.

Talking about my mum might seem to be a bit of a diversion from the post’s original content, but it isn’t as out of the blue as it might first seem. The reason I am mentioning this is because today is her birthday (I won’t divulge her age on account of my very occasional gentlemanly tendencies) so a BIG HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY MUM!!!

Josh is a twitter user, and found out about the project by the wifi-in-australia twitter page.

I’ve been pretty amazed by how this project has really taken off using twitter and I think really shows how powerful twitter currently is as a social media marketing tool. I’ve been actively maintaining both a Facebook Group for the project, and a twitter page. I started pushing the facebook group about 3 weeks ago, and pushing the Twitter page about 2 weeks ago.

The facebook group has a little less then 100 members, whilst the WiFi in Australia now has around 150 followers on Twitter (and this number is very literally growing DAILY, averaging an extra 10 followers a DAY). Interestingly though, 30% of the traffic comes from facebook, compared to around 20% of the traffic coming from twitter. Despite this, most of the community activity on Wifi in Australia has originated from the Twitter followers.

There are a few possible reasons for this. The most likely (to me at least) is that I believe the twitter followers of WiFi in Australia represent a slice of the online community that have a greater interest in Wireless internet (and computing culture in general) then their facebook cousins. This is in no small part due to many of the Twitter followers coming from the follower list of freeAusWireless.

Any other ideas of why this might be the case? Throw your theories at me!

The Firefox 3 interface for OSX is pretty good, but I’ve become accustom to some of the features of Safari 3, such as the minimal screen real estate, private browsing and resizable text fields. I’ve compiled a list of plugins and themes I used to get my Firefox working like the safari I knew!

For each addon I’ve linked to the homepage of the developer where possible, which is only fair with regards to true credit. If you would prefer the links for the official Firefox Addon Repository, they can be found at the end of the post in a table.

The Theme

The theme I found that best replicates the safari interface is Arronax’s GrApple Yummy (graphite) theme. There are four themes on the site, you may like on of the others better, but I felt this one was the truest recreation.
[GrApple Yummy (graphite)  -  http://www.takebacktheweb.org/]

Combined Progress/Address bar

The Fission addon moves the progress bar from the bottom status bar and combines it with the address bar. It is quite customisable and has a feature that I feel allows you to break apart from the status bar all together. I always kept the status bar on in Safari as I want to know where the link I click is heading, and the URL when mousing over a link is displayed in the status bar by default. With Fission, you can have the URL show in the address bar for the current link.
[Fission  -  http://mozilla.zeniko.ch/fission.html]

Private Browsing

This is by far one of the most important features of Safari. I think it is a mushave when visiting sites linked in any way to your financial details, such as internet banking, PayPal, eBay, etc.. The Distrust addon gives Firefox a similar ability. It will take note of when it is first turned on and when it is next turned off, deleting any private data recorded in the meantime including: passwords, history, cache, etc..
[Distrust  -  http://www.gness.com/distrust/]

Resizable Textarea

Another handy feature in Safari, this is great for resizing comment fields on blogs or online email contact forms to a size that is actually useable! The addon here is called Resizeable Textarea by Raik Jürgens. The resizing can be slightly finicky when trying to find the anchor for diagonal resizing, but it is still very useable.
[Resizeable Textarea - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3818]

Combined Stop/Reload button, and hide the main throbber.

I have combined these two features, as they require the same plugin! In Safari, when a page finishes loading, the Stop button gets replaced by the Reload button, and vice-versa. Also, each individual tab has a throbber icon that represents loading activity. Firefox also has a master throbber to the right of the address bar, which many feel is is redundant (and indeed missing from Safari). Stylish is an addon that allows you to add ‘modules’ that modify the CSS outlay of the Firefox interface.
[Stylish - http://userstyles.org/stylish/]

Once Stylish is installed (and firefox restarted) you can visit Stylish module pages to adjust the appearance and behaviour of Firefox.

Combined Stop/Reload button module:
http://userstyles.org/styles/10 – IMPORTANT, make sure you follow the instructions provided for this addon to work properly!

Hide Throbber module:
http://userstyles.org/styles/13762

Official Firefox Addon Links

GrApple Yummy (graphite): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7525
Fission: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1951
Distrust: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1559
Resizeable Textarea: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3818
Stylish: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2108
[Stylish modules: http://userstyles.org/styles/10 , http://userstyles.org/styles/13762]

DONE!

This has given me an experience that is pretty similar to using Safari, but with some of the extra benefits of Firefox, I like the better support for tabbed-browsing in Firefox, and I really like the del.icio.us plugin. Let me know if you know of any other addons for Firefox that have helped make Firefox feel more OSX-like.

Overburning is the process of recording data past the normal size limit. Generally, an optical disc has a lead-out of approximately 10% of the stated disc capacity. Having recording software that supports overburning will allow a user to exploit this extra space.

Unfortunately, Finder and Disk Utility have built-in checks to ensure users don’t try to burn over the stated disc capacity. However, OS X ships with a command-line program called hdiutil that does not perform such a check and will allow users to overburn a disc.

Step #1, create an ISO image

Use hdiutil to make a temporary ISO image. The easiest way is to put all the files to burn in a directory, lets call ours overburn. Once you have done this, open the Terminal [Application/Utilities/Terminal]. Navigate to the parent directory of the temporary directory you just created (for example, if the absolute location of overburn is /Users/cduran/overburn, navigate to its parent directory by typing:

cd /Users/cduran

Then, in this directory run the hdiutil program to create the ISO image.

hdiutil makehybrid -o tempimage overburn/

This will make an ISO image called tempimage.iso in the parent directory.

Step #2, burn the ISO image to disc

This step will use hdiutil to burn the ISO image file you just created to your disc. to do this, type the following (remember to put a disc in the drive!):

hdiutil burn tempimage.iso

DONE!

That’s it, you’ve just overburnt you disc! Now that you have burnt the disc, you can get rid of the tempimage.iso file, and the contents of the overburn directory. The thing I like most about this method, is it doesn’t require the installation of any third-party software – less rubbish to bloat your harddrive with!

The general premise is that using google maps, somebody (me, you, that guy over there.. anybody!) creates a publically editable map. This map serves as a WiFi map for a given location. The creator and the general public can then go to town and add landmarks for their favourite wireless hotspots. The Google Maps Interface allows people to choose from a variety of landmark markers. For a wireless map, the convention that has been adopted is that GREEN markers denote free WiFi locations, BLUE denotes paid for WiFi locations and YELLOW denotes WiFi that has access restrictions (i.e. membership of an organisation or group is required for login access). Unfortunately URLs for user-created Google Maps are about as beautiful as Gordon Brown having a good hair day. Because of this unfortunate fact, the final step is to give the map a friendly URL. This can be done a number of ways, including giving each map a unique domain (such as www.wifi-in-oxford.co.uk or www.wifi-in-cardiff.co.uk – this is Neil’s model), or giving each map a subdomain (such as brisbane.wifi-in-australia.com – my model).

I’m really excited about the possibilities of these projects, and am interested to see how they develop!