JoikuSpot + N95 + MacBook = :-)
I tried out JoikuSpot yesterday for a while. It’s a bit of software that turns your Nokia phone into a Wifi access point using the cellular connection as the backhaul. It worked perfectly!! I have a 3G N95, so the connection is very fast. No setup at all, I just installed it and started running it, told it to connect to cellular for the backhaul, and it started broadcasting an ad-hoc access point SSID I was able to connect to from my Mac. Sweet!!
The first page I brought up was actually redirected to the JoikuSpot homepage, but that’s just a flash screen. Connections after that go through as they should. Pretty sweet if you’re out somewhere with a bunch of geeks and everyone wants to check their email or scan their blog comments right in the middle of some other outing. That never happens though, right? Especially not in the Bay Area, where everyone is well adjusted and normally socialized.
Another cool thing, my MacBook stayed connected and constantly using the connection for 45 minutes using the wifi bridge. I’ve yet to get the Bluetooth modem scripts for my Mac to stay connected consistently for more than 15 minutes at a time. W00t!! So this might become my new defacto access method. Or does anyone out there know the magic settings to keep pppd from barfing every once in a while when connected to the N95?
February 8th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Yep, We tried it too in the office, same setup, macbooks and N95 on AT&T. worked fine with connecting windows machines too. so simple solution!
I wonder how long before N95 battery drains though
April 9th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
I just installed JoikuSpot and have been able to successfully connect my N95 8GB to my MacBook Pro. Initially I had problems with it hanging after a couple of minutes (although giving no indication on either my Mac or in Joiku that the connection was lost), but I narrowed it down to Adium being the culprit. At some stage while it was attempting to connect it obviously borked the Joiku connection. I have accounts in all the most popular IM networks, so not sure if its specific to one network, or if its an Adium issue, but its definitely related to the fact that only HTTP/S are supported by Joiku at the moment.
Despite being able to make HTTP connections successfully, I havent been able to establish a HTTPS connection, for example using my bank’s website login. I have read the Joiku documentation, but unsurprisingly it’s Windows-only. The Safari proxy preferences kick you to System Preferences, which I have had a poke around in, but there doesn’t seem to be any equivalent to the “automatic” setting referred to in the Internet Explorer Joiku setup docs. Have you had any success with HTTPS? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
I too am long-time frustrated at the poor implementations of Bluetooth in both the N95 and OS X, so a wifi solution like Joiku is very welcome indeed!