Links for 16 June 2009 through 20 June 2009

Stilgherrian’s links for 16 June 2009 through 20 June 2009, posted with a distinct sense of “better late than never”:

  • Tether me!: How to tether your iPhone (that is, use it as a broadband modem for your laptop) when when your carrier doesn’t officially support it. (I haven’t tried this. I don’t have an iPhone.)
  • Hobby Horses | Blackbeard Blog: Tom Ewing observes that it might be better to stop trying to think about the “usefulness” of social media and instead consider it as a hobby. He draws some excellent parallels to hobbies and sport.
  • Optimizing Rural E-service Engagement | Information Technology in Developing Countries: A paper comparing development-driven and entrepreneurial models of Internet services in rural third-world locations. On of the examples is India’s DakNet which I mentioned the other day.
  • First Dog on the Moon | Crikey: The entire First Dog on the Moon back catalog is now online. 300+ images. Enjoy.
  • Letter Opener | restoroot.com: A plug-in for OS X’s Mail.app to handle those pesky winmail.dat attachments that sometimes, even today, still infect some emails from people with Exchange servers (which have been poorly configured).

A Series of Tubes on iPhone tethering

Should iPhone users pay extra for using the device as a tethered modem? Optus thinks so — but me and A Series of Tubes presenter Richard Chirgwin don’t entirely agree. Yes, the latest edition of the podcast is online for your listening pleasure.

We also talk about YABS (yet another broadband statistic), Twitter and Iran, and of course Project TOTO. Tubes also talks to Alcatel-Lucent’s Geof Heydon about the NBN: it’s more than just a fast Internet connection.