E. Sengo Kiruluta › Comments

Mexican food ranks among my least favorite food,but I do see why people like it. Those spices are quite delicious. - Steven (optionshiftk)

Man I wish we had good Mexican restaurants here in Florida. I miss good Mexican dishes. - Dennis Jackson

Lucky bastard. :-p - Jasmin Patry

Which one Dave? I patronize a couple of them in Berkeley. - E. Sengo Kiruluta

Sounds interesting. Keeps us updated on this little project. - Rutger Blom

AT&T may prevent tethering, but it doesn't seem like this is tethering in the technical nit-picky sense of the word. To me, tethering means you've paired up the phone with the laptop as a modem for dial-up networking and the service provider actually treats those data packets differently. But NetShare just runs a little proxy server on the iPhone and uses the existing data connection. It doesn't seem like an abuse of the service at all. - Paul Reynolds

Although the term obviously originally stemmed from making a cable connection, "tethering" really doesn't have anything to do with physically connecting a phone to a computer -- it's the data connection that's important. And therefore prohibited by AT&T -- and O2 in the UK: "You may not use your SIM Card... in, or connected to, any other device including modems" - Jules

Proxifier (http://www.proxifier.com/) is the key to getting it to work in Windows. - Jules

I always wondered why my iPhone (or any other cellphone for that matter) couldn't act like a wireless internet card for my Powerbook (or any other laptop). Some phone companies were throwing them in free as part of a cellphone contract, so why not just use your phone? Please let me know if you can explain why this bothers the phone company so much. - John Budnik

John, I don't think just email and web surfing should bother them since the new devices don't seem to dumb down or cache content like they used to. In other words, I don't think the data load is very different using Mobile Safari vs Desktop Safari. But I think it's the fear of other applications (looking at you, BitTotrrent and Flash based video) chewing up their bandiwth. - Paul Reynolds

John, I believe it's more of a business reason than a technical one. They can charge you for tethering and generate more revenue if they can control it. Same logic applies to carriers disabling native features like GPS. They can resell GPS services then. - Kevin C. Tofel

John, they charge you $60 per month to use a 3G card in your laptop. I am sure they see this a growing revenue stream as wireless speeds continue to increase. - E. Sengo Kiruluta

Paul, thank you for your comments. They helped me make better sense of the technical issue involved. From a financial perspective, it didn't make as much sense, because they already have me hooked through my cellphone. If my usage goes up from my using it through my laptop and they get the resulting fees. If I get a separate card, I can use a different company and they don't get the fees. - John Budnik

I recently had to activate an AT&T 3G card for my laptop. Even though I have an iPhone contract with AT&T I still had to get a whole new contract with requisite phone number for the extra $60 a month. That seems unreasonable given that I already have a data contract with AT&T with the iPhone. - E. Sengo Kiruluta

Edward, that is unreasonable since they do have tethering options for their Blackberry plans albeit at an additional cost, but no additional numbers or commitment. - Paul Reynolds

Gee, thanks AT&T, perhaps you'd at least offer me the option of giving you another $30/month (or what ever you charge other smartphone users) to tether with my iPhone. - Erik S

The block on this application will ensure that jailbreaking remains attractive, despite the Appstore. - Ian Fogg

I, along with many others I'm sure, was able to purchase and download NetShare with no abuse of the system that's in place. So if Apple cripples or disables NetShare, are they going to refund the purchase price? Do they have the right to legally speaking? Seems like a slippery slope! - Paul Reynolds

The old NYTimes mobile web site actually seems to perform better - E. Sengo Kiruluta

I actually think that of all the old guard, the NY Times gets it (the web) better than the others. Of course, haven't used the iPhone app yet. - Deepak Singh

I dumped it, too. Similar reasons. - Chris Baskind

Interestingly http://msnbc.msn.com was a much better mobile news site (to me) but iPhone 2.0 switched the fonts to serifed. - Chris Messina

why use an app when the website is quicker? And has less ads. - Bob Blunk

@Chris - Isn't a serif font better for readability? (waiting for Messina schooling on this one.) - Chris Brogan

@Chris - on printed media serif is more readable. On screen sans serif is the way to go. - David Petar Novakovic from twhirl

@Edward Kiruluta (ekiruluta): I'm generally much less happy with iPhone apps than with the corresponding web-app versions: NYT, NNW, Hahlo in place of Twitteriffic. - Bill Barol from NoiseRiver

@Edward Kiruluta: couldn't agree more. Something is amiss with the app store. maybe it's too new and we just have to wait. - Bob Blunk

Serif is good for print, and I like reading longer posts in 20px Georgia, but in this case, sans-serif was better. In sum, in depends. ;) - Chris Messina

I like NYT app because it loads for reading when I'm away from 3G or WiFi, like in the subway... - Len Edgerly

Ok, offline reading is definitely valuable. Can't wait for deployment of Gears for Safari! - Chris Messina