Cellphones

DIY Cellphone door opener

DIY Cellphone door opener

AutoitZerocool60544 in the AutoIT forums writes about a PC control project using a browser or cell phone “I use lego mindstorms’ motors, they don’t a lot of torque but I geared them down to be a little slower but stronger. The water bottles are the counter weights so their is always tension on the line. There are two motors on either side. (one near the closed position and one near the open position).” [via] Link.

Building the Tux-Phone…

Patel 550X425Surj writes “Today I presented the Tux-Phone idea at the O’Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference in SFO. An open cell phone platform named tux-phone. Three important disclaimers: It is not a novel idea. People have thought and written about similar equipment. We just started building it. The engineering process is fairly straightforward except for finding the right parts and putting them together while keeping it small.” Link. See previous.

Run an Apache web server on your phone…

Run an Apache web server on your phone…

Apache“For quite some time it has been possible to access the Internet using mobile phones, although the role of the phone has strictly been that of a client. Considering that the modern phones have processing power and memory on par with and even exceeding that of webservers when the web was young, there really is no reason anymore why webservers could not reside on mobile phones and why people could not create and maintain their own personal mobile websites.” [via] Thanks Brian! Link.

Do-it-yourself cheap, easy mobile Wi-Fi access point

Do-it-yourself cheap, easy mobile Wi-Fi access point

12-ArtsyNathan True’s excellent mobile hotspot – “Wouldn’t it be great if I could just plug my phone in… and have it automatically connect to the phone and serve its sweet, sweet Internet over a Wi-fi connection? Better still, have it transparently proxy all connections so that nearly all Internet programs will function properly? Maybe even prioritize certain types of traffic, or encrypt everything so my wireless carrier can’t spy on what Slashdot stories I like to read? All of those things would be just great. And all of those things are exactly those things which I set out to do (and/or enable you to do!) in this project. ” [via] Link.

Verizon Prevents Treo Use As 3G Modem…

TreoKeylock has an interesting post about cell phone ownership in other countries in response to the Verizon crippling of our phones – “In Qatar I pay a security deposit and then my mobile phone is billed like a landline phone. I pay for the calls I make–no limits and full access to all my Nokia 6230’s features (like bluetooth) without being billed for it. The coverage in Qatar is good (albeit a small country) but it is also an all digital network. The USA is a mix of analog/digital because the companies that put up the analog towers are trying to wring every dollar out before they have to replace them. The USA is behind in the cell phone market considerably…don’t believe me? Check out Nokia’s website and click on the Middle East. I’ll bet you’ll find phones that you haven’t even heard of over here. I bought my buddy a Nokia 6600 cellphone while I was in Qatar and brought it back for him. It works fine over here and his bluetooth chip wasn’t disabled and he isn’t billed when he transfers his photos, movies, music, etc…” Link.

HOW TO – Make any website a mobile site, with Google…

HOW TO – Make any website a mobile site, with Google…

GooglephoneJeff at Palm addict writes – “Somehow tonight I stumbled on something I’ve never heard of. It seems that Google has a page that will optimize any website for viewing on a mobile phone or PDA, similar to Skweezer and IYHY. All you see when you load the page is what shows in the included graphic. No Google logo, no explanation, nothing. But simply enter a URL and you recieve a quick-loading mobile optimized version of the page you requested.” [via] Thanks, Brian! Link.

Verizon Prevents Treo Use As 3G Modem

TreoPretty unfortunate. I suspect we’ll see a hack to work around this soon – “So you just bought a Windows Mobile Treo with EV-DO service and you want to use it as a modem for your laptop? Forget it. Verizon Wireless says you must buy a second 3G subscription and they have the technology to back it up. Specifically, while the device, which has well-reviewed, comes with Bluetooth, Verizon has disabled the Bluetooth dial-up networking capability that would enable the Treo 700w to act as a modem for laptops.” Link.