This weekend I had to resort to Joikuspot (software that turns your 3G-cellphone into a wireless gateway to the internet) for my web-needs. Because I encountered a few problems setting up a connection from my Ubuntu laptop, here’s a quick recap for documentations sake.
The rather fundamental issue was that I couldn’t get my computer (a Dell D620 running Ubuntu 8.04 with the iwl3945 driver) to join the ad-hoc wifi-network which Joikuspot (on a Nokia e61i) created. As connecting from my wife’s Windows XP laptop did work, I googled around a bit and it turned out I had to specifically set the channel used by Joikuspot to 1 or 6 instead of “automatic” or 11. Although NetworkManager still seemed confused, this did allow me to connect from the command line (disabling wireless networking in NM first and then using iwconfig and dhclient). But why joining an ad-hoc wifi-network on channel 11 doesn’t work in Ubuntu, that I still don’t know.
Once connected to the wireless network, I found out that Joikuspot Light requires your browser to auto-detect a proxy. The proxy in Joikuspot seems to be used to limit the functionality of the free version and gently push you towards the non-free Premium product. As my normal web-connection came back soon after I figured this out, I didn’t bother to test if I could tunnel my way out of those limitations. But crippled or not, Joikuspot is great to have around when your broadband connection is down.
joikuspot
My Nokia e61i really isn’t just a phone
With all the continuous Iphone 3G and HTC Touch buzz, one would almost forget how much truly awesome software there’s out there for Symbian-based handsets.
Just look at my Nokia e61i: it’s not just a phone, but also;
- an online streaming video-camera when i use QIK
- a wifi-hotspot allowing me to share my 3G connection with Joikuspot Light
- a mobile office using Mail for Exchange, QuickOffice and a neat webkit-based browser
- a voip-phone (SIP and Skype) with instant messaging capabilities, thanks to Fring
- the door to my linux webserver using putty for s60
To be completely honest; except for MfE and the browser I don’t use all of this on a daily basis, but I can assure you that just calling someone on the phone works swell as well 😉