Thought and Freedom

Fon, an internet hotspot company, is giving away free wireless routers to new customers. This is perhaps one of the best deals I have ever seen on the internet.

Fon has an interesting business plan that I wish I had thought of. They eliminated much of the infrastructure cost by getting home users and businesses to provide their internet connection as a Wi-Fi hotspot.

In return for the use of part of the person’s internet connection, Fon gives the user unlimited free access to all other access points around the world. On their website, they provide a map containing wireless hotspots all around the world. It appears that Fon is big in Europe, but just starting to develop in America.

Fon charges $3 a day for other non-Fon users to utilize any and all Fon hotspots for a day. Fon offers businesses an opportunity in this area as well. Fon will give half of the profits generated from a business’s hotspot to the business if they subcribe for the free business grade service.

If you are worried about security, rest assured that the router has two “channels,” one for your own local network, and the other channel for general plone users.

For those interested in receiving the free wireless router, the company is currently celebrating their first birthday by giving away free wireless routers (normally cost about $30). They charge no shipping and no tax. I just ordered mine today. You can order yours by going to http://www.fon.com/1yearold/.

If you would like to find out more information about the deal, you can also visit Jonathan Zittrain’s blog entry on Fon. He explains his setup of his new router and expresses some concerns and opinions about Fon.

Web programming can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. The easiest web publication is a simple text file. You could upload it to the web and it would show up as just text.

From the text file, you could progress to a simple HTML file. This is basically a specially formatted text file.

As complexity increases, so do your options and features. Languages like Coldfusion add another layer to the complexity. But, they open the door to many more uses. PHP would probably come slightly after Coldfusion.

Eventually you come to a category called “Applets.” I am sure you have heard of them, but they can be seen as mysterious in nature. They are Java Programs that are compiled and all, and told to run within the confines of a web browser.

Applets are just past the edge of the “scripting universe.” In a way, they are the bridge between compiled code and scripts. They themselves are compiled, but closely relate to their scripted environment.

Learning how to program applets can be rewarding and can extend the usefulness of your website. My advice is to start by going to WebChalkboard’s lessons on applets. They are concise and to the point and will get you started in no time.

After you go through the initial tutorials on WebChalkboard, go over to Sun’s own applet tutorials. Sun’s tutorials will show you how to use pictures, sounds and more. It will take your applet building to the professional realm.

Once you know the basics, applets can be a fun way to create an interactive and informative website!

Facebook recently expanded to include people outside of the college ecosystem. Now everybody can sign up. This is a good thing for their company. After all, why throw out dedicated customers just because they now have real jobs?

Even though Facebook will allow me to be a member when I graduate from my university (In 3 months!), I do not feel that it is orientated for a professional network. I am sure that one day this will change, but it currently feels like a big party for freshmen college students.

If you wanted to make contacts to get hired in the career of your choice, Facebook would probably not be your first choice, but LinkedIn might.

The Social Networking site is designed with professionalism in mind. Of course that means they don’t have the option to “Poke” your friends, and you don’t have the option to join clubs with names like “If this group grows to 1 Million Members I will move to Uzbekistan.” Instead, it emphasizes work history, and recommendations from people that know you. It is really like a dynamic resume.

One of the major uses of the network is the fact that you can see who your friends know and can request an introduction. This is perhaps one of the best ways to get hired (other than knowing the person yourself).

LinkedIn allows you to search by company name and see if there are any connections between yourself, your friends, and the people who can hire you. It is a unique and excellent idea.

They also have some great tools (much better than AOL’s Plaxo Service) that allow your contacts to stay up to date. There is an Outlook plugin just for this. There are also plugins for Internet Explorer, Firefox, and even for Mac Widgets. I have tested the Firefox plugin and outlook plugin and I am impressed.

Anyway, be sure to check them out and add me to your network when you do!

Have you noticed all the junk that comes along with various weather websites? It’s crazy. I think it is amazing at how many blinking ads and popups they can cram into something the size of a web browser.

It’s not that I hate advertising, after all, that is what funds these free to use websites. The thing that I dislike is the blinking ads and the flash based ads that fly around the screen. But, I have to give the site credit, it looks like they are successful at it.

Anyway, I have found that there are better options. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) also provides weather forecasts. The catch is that you don’t get all those blinking ads! Well, you can’t get it all I guess .

All you need to do is go to their site and fill in the City and State (or the zip code) to get that area’s weather forecast. For example, Minneota, MN (My home) has the following forecast for this week:

Overnight: Partly cloudy, with a low around -3. West wind between 5 and 10 mph.

Thursday: A 40 percent chance of snow, mainly after 3pm. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 17. West wind between 5 and 10 mph.

Thursday Night: Areas of blowing snow and a chance of snow, mainly before midnight, then areas of blowing snow after 3am. Mostly cloudy, with a low around -9. Wind chill values between -22 and -32. Windy, with a north northwest wind 5 to 10 mph increasing to between 25 and 30 mph. Winds could gust as high as 40 mph. Chance of precipitation is 50%.

Friday: A chance of flurries after noon. Partly cloudy and cold, with a high near -2. Wind chill values between -22 and -32. Blustery, with a west northwest wind between 15 and 20 mph.

Friday Night: A chance of flurries before midnight. Partly cloudy, with a low around -14. Blustery, with a west southwest wind 10 to 20 mph becoming north northwest.

Saturday: Partly cloudy and cold and blustery, with a high near -3.

Saturday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around -13.

Sunday: Partly cloudy and cold, with a high near 0.

Sunday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around -14.

Monday: Mostly sunny and cold, with a high near -6.

Monday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around -17.

Tuesday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 5.

Tuesday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around -5.

Wednesday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 10.

I think I will be a little cold this week. NOAA also offers several other formats of the site. This could come in useful for programmers that want to use a screen scraper to get the weather forecasts.

Want to pursue your dream career? Maybe you just need a few tips on how to get started. There are dozens of well known career sites that are just amazing.

Sometimes, however, it is the sites that you never thought of that really make some great resources.

Take, for example, Robert Half’s Workvine.com. The site is easy to navigate, and filled with some great information for job seekers (like myself).

One area I especially liked on their site was the podcast. This was not your ordinary podcast. It was more like a professionally done audio presentation. The sound quality was awesome. And by the way, the advice was great too!

If you are new to Java, or are more experienced than anyone, you still need to look up stuff. Every developer has moments in their language of choice where they just can’t solve a problem. Or, they may just be looking for an easier way. Don’t be ashamed to look up a result. Doctors do it all the time. Engineers do it. Why shouldn’t programmers do it as well. It helps us all develop cheaper, faster, and smarter code without reinventing a wheel that someone else already created.
To make life easier for us all, Sun publishes some of the best documentation that I have seen for a programming language. In a very clear layout, all functions in the Java API are laid out in one place. Each class has easy to understand instructions on the class in general, it’s interfaces, classes, exceptions, and errors. This is all published on Sun’s website as the Java API Specifications.

I knew about this for a while, but just today realized it’s complete usefulness. This has quickly become my favorite “book” on Java programming. To top that off, it is freely available online.  This is a useful set of documents for any Java coder.
Sun even caters to the more graphically inclined persons, the documentation can be formatted in the form of a tree (extending from the package).

Also, you can use the “index” link to show an entire “glossary” for a package. This can be a speedy way to get results when using the find function on your web browser.

So, whether you are a Java Newbie, or a super Java coder, using the API specs will help improve your programming ability.

If you are often asked to fix your friend’s computers, it would be beneficial to be prepared.

One way to prepare yourself for those unexpected repair calls is to put a PC First Aid Kit on your flash drive.

You can find one such kit at the Daily Cup of Tea Website.

It’s amazing what can be put on a USB drive nowdays.

I was at the Chicago O’Hare airport the other day and our flight was delayed. So I did the thing that any guy with a laptop computer would do. I checked for wireless internet connections.

In fact, there was a wireless connection at the airport, but they charge about five dollars a day to use the internet. However, you could use the internet to check airport information and weather for free.

I thought that it was very convenient to do so. I believe that more places should use targeted internet.

Already, most places that have wireless will first direct you to a specific page for you to sign an agreement  (by clicking on a button).

Why not set up wireless connections in retail establishments that simply direct visitors to only the store’s web information. It could give product descriptions, special deals, maps of the store, order pages, etc.

The visitors could access these pages through a wireless device such as a PDA.

Anyway, just an idea that I had.

The makers of the famous voice over IP phone service, Skype, have plans to once again revolutionize the media on the internet.

The announced today that their project, code named Venice, has entered the Beta stage. This product, now called Joost, will provide near DVD quality television to users over an internet connection. They even claim that you will view the videos in full screen.

This certainly beats watching a 320 by 240 Quicktime based TV show!

AOL has almost always been on my bad side. Well, not quite bad, just not on the good side.

So, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that AOL is doing something really great. They are offering their AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) customers with a free local number. People can then call directly to you and talk to you whenever you are logged into instant messenger.

There is a small catch. They do charge for outgoing calls and as far as I know, you cannot forward the incoming calls to your cell phone.

But, this solution is perfect for me. At my house (near the edge of Verizon’s known universe) getting cell phone service is a lot like playing the lottery: You usually don’t come out that great, but when you do win it makes you happy.

Now, If I am having a typical Not-So-Great-Cell-Phone-Signal-In-Minneota day, I can tell the person to call my AOL number. Then we can talk for free over the internet.

AOL is also being smart with this new endeavor.  For one thing, they are opening up to developers and awarding prizes to the “best” applications developed using the API. This will speed development tremendously and hopefully make it into an even better product.

One thing that would work great about this is if you frequently travel to places where your cellphone cannot be used. People can still conveniently send you voice mails to the AOL number, and you can receive them from any computer. Of course if you wish to call back through AOL, it will cost you, but in the mean time, it costs nothing to get the voicemail.

So, go check it out, get a new “backup” number and tell your friends!