If you own the wifi model of the iPad, you’re chained to anywhere there’s wifi. Fortunately, wifi is available almost anywhere, except when you’re away from a building or on the road. The new iOS 4.3 enables wifi hotspot on your iPhone which then allows you to tether your 3G to other wifi devices like your iPad. However, it’s a switch to flip on and then its a battery draining experience.

Enter the jailbreak community. Mywi ($19.99) by Intelliborn had provide hotspot functionality before 4.3 enabled that function. The latest update also includes an On Demand function ($4.99 extra). What this does is configures bluetooth between your iPhone and iPad. When your iPad is not connected to a wifi network and you’re attempting to use the Internet, it will automatically connect to your iPhone and create a tethering setup. When you are back on a wifi network, or when you put the iPad to sleep, the connection is broken which saves your iPhone battery.

I’ve been experimenting with this function a few days now and can attest that it works beautifully. As long as I have my iPhone with me, my iPad is always ready to be connected.

The setup was a bit confusing and there weren’t very many guides out there. Here’s my take on the process.

Setting Up Your iPhone

1. Jailbreak your iPhone and install Cydia. This is the jailbreak app store.
2. Open Cydia and click on Manage Account from the Cydia home page. You can connect with either Facebook or Google. This simply ties your login with your Cydia purchases.
3. Click Search from the Cydia dock and find “MyWi”. The purchasing process uses Amazon payments to process. You’ll only have to buy this once as Cydia allows up to three copies on three devices.
4. Open MyWi, from the home screen, click on iDevices. Choose MyWi OnDemand. This will initiate an in-app purchase for the OnDemand license for $4.99.

Setting Up Your iPad

1. Follow the same steps above to jailbreak your iPad and install Cydia.
2. In Cydia, use your Facebook or Google account to log in. You should now be able to download MyWi without paying for it again.
3. Open MyWi and follow the same procedures to install the OnDemand license. Instead of buying, click download license.

Creating the Connection

1. Open MyWi on both your iPhone and your iPad.
2. Click on iDevices and then OnDemand. Click Setup MyWi OnDemand. Your iPhone should say waiting for ondemand clients.
3. Open up MyWi on your iPad and then click on OnDemand. Click Setup Mywi OnDemand.
4. Your iPhone name should show up. Click on that.
5. A notification should show up on your iPhone called OnDemand Request. Click accept.
6. You are done

Using OnDemand

With most installations, I do suggest you restart both devices. You can do so by holding down the home button and the sleep button until it powers down and then powers up again. Carry your iPhone with you and turn off wifi on your iPad. Open up Safari and try opening up a webpage. It should take a few seconds and you’ll see the bluetooth logo light up on your iPad and the page should load. Make sure you have bluetooth turned on in your settings for both the iPhone and iPad.

Watch the YouTube video that shows the click through steps as well.

Google has announced that it’s going to build a gigabit fiber network to nearly every home in Kansas City. See Google’s blog for more details. Consumer internet lines today are typically less than 20 megabits per second. That’s a cap, meaning your actual speed will be much less. Also remember that a bit is different from a byte. So downloading at 20 megabits does not equate to download at 20 megabytes per second. To do the conversion, a gigabit line will provide 125 megabytes per second service to your home. That’s a gigabyte (GB) of data in 8 seconds. For context, a DVD is 4.7GB. That will take 37 seconds to download. A blueray disc is 50GB. That will take you a bit under seven minutes.

All this is theoretical of course. In reality, we’re not really downloading raw data files. We’re streaming.

Gigabit access will allow new applications that don’t exist for consumer use. For example, HD video conferencing. Or streaming HD videos, or steaming high quality music. Even then, the applications aren’t even invented yet because the infrastructure isn’t available.

Google’s project is aimed at proving to the industry, and ultimately to the consumers of the possibilities of truly high speed Internet. The hope is that this would spur demand and be a kick in the behind to the telecom companies to build out the infrastructure.

I can’t even imagine what other applications there will be. How would you use a gigabit line?

There’s many studies out there on the difference between writing notes and typing notes. I’ve done both, primarily handwriting during my K-16 years, and typing in my graduate studies years. Anecdotally, I can say that I comprehended and remembered more when I wrote my notes by hand. My handwriting will never be able to capture notes verbatim as my typing can but I find that I remember more when I write.

Lifehacker wrote a great piece that includes links to several studies on why you learn more effectively by writing than typing.

As a personal experiment, I’ve been migrating toward using ink and graphite as an alternative to these nice keys on my Mac Book Air. Conceptually, it makes sense. Writing a “p” or a “d” is significantly different than pressing those keys. The peak of my comprehension and memory from notes came from my chemistry class in undergrad. My notes were full of doodles and imagery. They weren’t verbatim recordings of the professor’s verbal speak. They were synthesized thoughts that summarized the concepts and ideas of the lecture.

To commit to this, I signed The Doodle Revolution manifesto by Sunni Brown.

Finally, AP changes their style guide for e-mail to email. No more dashes. It’s not “electronic mail” anymore, it’s just email. The times have finally caught up.

Graphic facilitation and visual thinking is one of my personal interests. I’ve been reading up some a variety of topics. This community is very tight knit and there’s always a common set of players. One of them is Dave Sibbet of The Grove Consultants International.

Below is a very detailed webinar (90 minutes). I’ve watched the entire recording to confirm that it’s very valuable. I definitely recommend you watch it. Dave also demos Sketchbook Pro as a digital recording device.

Infographics are fun. They visually stimulating and is very loud, bold, and sometimes obnoxious. However, good statistical and data principles still apply. Present the data objectively and fairly. Don’t create conclusions where none exist. However, infographics is to data as newpaper headlines are to news. Below is a fun poke at infographics by Think Brilliant. Click through to see the full size image.

In my search to learn more about visual thinking, visual note taking, and better idea facilitation, I came across Gamestorming (Amazon Affiliate Link). It’s written by Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, and James Macanufo. They even have a great blog and forum for all kinds of user experiences and examples.

Gamestorming is about an innovation method to creating new ideas and strategies for success. The standard business process isn’t designed to accomplish this no matter how much resources you put into the beginning of the process and how many measures you put to track the outputs. Pumping more and more through the Henry Ford conveyor belt isn’t going to help your company come up with new ideas. Instead, Gamestorming is about getting people to get up, move around, and design.

Traditional business meetings has the three basic roles:

1. Facilitator
2. Scribe/Notetaker
3. Time Keeper

People sit around the table, a facilitator hopelessly tries to engage the group of executives around the table to answer questions while the notetaker scribbles the babble. After the designated time, the time keeper calls time and everyone, with a sigh of relief, gets up and leaves.

Using the book’s tagline, Gamestorming is a playbook for innovators, rulebreakers, and changemakers. There’s no reason to follow the traditional model of group facilitation. In the modern information era, the traditional chain of command approach to management no longer applies. As a result, there is a need for a modern playbook, a set of strategies for the modern workforce. Gamestorming realized that the here’s a list of commands tasks approach doesn’t work. Modern workers need a new way of working.

What are some of my favorite games?

Dot Voting – In many occassions, there are just too many good ideas running around. As in everything we do, there’s only so much time and resources going around. I like to use sticky tabs for voting. Each participants gets a set amount of sticky tabs, as agreed upon by the group. We then determine if an idea could have more than one vote.

Forced Ranking – I also use forced ranking to get a group to agree on one prioritized list. I like to run through the process several times, each with discussion, to make sure that the group really agrees.

There are so many more games in the book I look forward to using.