Internet by Tethered Cellphone - Reboot

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our E-mail Digest or RSS Feed. We will then send you the stories that are posted each day in an e-mail digest. We use a service called Feedburner for delivery of these emails. You will receive an e-mail from Feedburner after you subscribe and you must click on that email to activate your subscription. Thanks for visiting and enjoy all the information! RV.Net Blog AdminWe are currently at a rally in Albert Lea, Minnesota.  We’re using our Verizon Cell phone, tethered to our laptop , for our Internet access.  (To see what I mean by Tethered cell phone, watch the video on this page.)  Albert Lea is not a Verizon area.  Our cell phone reports that we are on an ‘Extended Network.’  It’s actually working quite well… Except when it doesn’t work at all! Read more Tell a Friend Read More →

Wireless Internet - 3 ways

Even though we’ve been covering this topic for 6 years now - it’s still the most popular question we get from people just starting to experience the joy of RVing. “How do I get Internet access on my laptop while we’re traveling? Read more Tell a Friend Read More →

How (and why) to disable Verizon/Sprint Roaming

In addition to providing service from the cellular towers they own, most cellular providers also have roaming agreements with other providers in order to allow their users to stay connected in areas where their provider does not have their own towers. For example, if you subscribe to Verizon for your cell phone service and travel to a rural area where Verizon doesn’t own any towers, your phone will automatically connect to the tower of a local provider if Verizon has a roaming agreement in the area and you’ll be able to stay connected. Sounds great, right? Yes and no. There are certainly a myriad of benefits to being able to roam seamlessly as you travel, but there are some situations in which staying on your own provider’s network becomes very important. Depending on your carrier, monthly plan, and location, roaming may not cost you anything - or it may cost you a lot. Typically, cellular providers do not charge any fees to allow you to “roam” within the USA, but crossing the border into Canada or Mexico (or even connecting to a Canadian or Mexican tower from the USA side of the border if you’re close enough!) could prove to be disastrous for your monthly bill as you unknowingly rack up massive international roaming fees. Read more Tell a Friend Read More →

Blogging Offline with Windows Live Writer

by Geeks on Tour: A while ago, in my personal blog I wrote about discovering Windows Live Writer. It is a program, freely downloadable from Microsoft, which allows you to compose blog entries offline. It works with several blogging systems, including the 2 I use - Blogger and WordPress. After you compose your blog post, it will take care of uploading it to the web, including the pictures. Last week, we had some trouble with our Internet connection and I wanted to write a blog post, so I dusted off Live Writer and gave it another shot. It’s really an amazing little program! I’m using it now, even when my Internet connection is working fine. In a couple of my recent personal blog posts, I have maps as part of the blog post, and the maps don’t come from my normal Google Maps. They’re from Virtual Earth, Microsoft’s competitor to Google Earth. That’s because I used Live Writer to insert the map. Since Live Writer is by Microsoft, it uses Microsoft’s maps. Live Writer makes it just SOO easy to insert a map. It’s also waayy easy to insert a link, and the links automatically open in a new window! If you’ve been using Blogger, you know that making a link open in a new window is a painful process there. If you hate how Blogger adds new photos to the top of your post, you’ll love how Live Writer adds them at your cursor position. AND, you can even set it up to so that your photos get uploaded to your own hosted webspace (FTP)... Read more

Changes to Verizon Mobile BroadBand can save you money

Last week Verizon made several changes to their 3G / EVDO “Mobile BroadBand” data plans, including increasing the limit of their $39.99/month plan, lowering the overage charges across the board, and lowering the most expensive tethering fee (data feature) for cell phones. Verizon’s press release announcing these changes was vague on some topics and left many people with more questions than answers… this article should help to clear up some of the confusion. THE CHANGES: What they are, who they effect, and how to take advantage of them! Read more Tell a Friend Read More →

Google Earth and The Rally

Yesterday, at The Rally, we presented our Google Earth seminar to a packed room. Happy faces of Google Earth Audience From Geeks on Tour April 2009 It was great fun. Most of the people in the audience had already used Google Earth a little, but I know they learned a lot by the end. At one point during the seminar we mention that ‘some people think that Google Earth is just a way to look at a satellite image of your house.’ That brought a lot of nervous giggles from the crowd – apparently we were talking about them Although we did show how to look at a satellite image of your house, we spent the rest of the hour and a half showing all the other things you can do with Google Earth, and exactly how to use it. Chris Teaching Google Earth at The Rally From Geeks on Tour April 2009 If you missed the seminar, you can download the seminar handout from our website for free. Actually, you can download all of the seminar handouts if you’d like. Just, please respect that this is for personal use only – if you’d like a seminar presented you can contact us with the email link also on our website. Google Earth handout Every RVer Needs a Blog handout High-Speed Internet on the Road handout Managing Digital Photos with Picasa handout There are still two seminars coming up - High-Speed Internet on the Road Sunday 3-4:30 in Seminar A and Managing Digital Photos with Picasa on Monday 10:30 - noon in Seminar E. Here’s a video from the Google Earth seminar: Tell... Read more

Public Earth

While at “The Rally” in Albuquerque we ran into a new company called Public Earth. The site is in private beta mode. In order to access the site you’ll need to login with”therally@publicearth.com” as the login and password is “therally”. Looking for a great campground? PublicEarth has your favorite Trailer Life campgrounds and more. Hiking trails, biking, museums, art galleries, monuments, historical landmarks are all there. Plan your vacation, or just a weekend away from the grind. And the best part: PublicEarth can put these places right onto your favorite GPS device with just a few clicks of the mouse. Do you have a favorite hike or landmark that you’d like to share with others, but somehow PublicEarth has missed it? PublicEarth lets you add that place to their 3 million places and share it with friends and family. It’s a great way to help promote your favorite stops while helping others find them too! If you have any suggestions or problems, be sure to let the PublicEarth folks know. Click the Feedback button at the top of the website, or email them at feedback@publicearth.com. Tell a Friend Read More →

Geeks on Tour – at The Rally

Are you going to The Rally in Albuquerque?  If so, we’ll see you there! My husband, Jim, and I are both computer geeks.  Supporting people and their computers and networks has been our profession since the early 80s.  Now we live in a motorhome and tour around the country giving computer seminars at rallies and RV parks.  So we call ourselves Geeks On Tour! At The Rally, we’ll be giving four seminars.  The links below will take you to our Geeks on Tour website and the page devoted to that topic.  When we’re not in a seminar, we’ll be hanging out at the RV.net booth - #435 which is near the Internet Cafe. Read more Tell a Friend Read More →

Is your Computer Safe?

You may have heard of a nasty virus about to come to life on April 1. It would be nice if this was an April Fools joke, but odds are - it’s not. It’s called Conficker and its all the buzz in geek-land these days. If your computer is infected, it is supposed to start contacting servers on April 1 and get instructions as to what to do. No one knows exactly what this will mean, but it could be pretty awful. Millions of zombie computers around the world all set to march to the bidding of some dark lord. An infected computer could become pretty worthless to its rightful owner. The good news is, if you’ve followed our ‘Safe Computing‘ advice and kept your Windows operating system up-to-date, then you’re fine. Microsoft has known about this vulnerability and they patched it back last October. If you’ve been running your automatic updates, you downloaded the patch last year that makes it impossible to contract the virus now. Read more Tell a Friend Read More →

Internet with Tethered Cellphone

I’ve written about this a couple of times before because I think it is just such a perfect solution for RVers who just need a part-time connection to the Internet. If you have the right cell phone, and the right cellular service plan, you can turn the data feature on and off. No extra equipment, no extra contract, a pro-rated charge. Last week we told a lot of people about this at our ‘Internet on the Road” seminar at the FMCA convention. One person came up to us a couple days later saying they checked with their Verizon service rep and were told it couldn’t be done. Yes it can. We’re using that method right now. I can’t speak for other cellular providers, but Verizon definitely offers it on their phone plans. I do see that they are using new terminology. Where they used to refer to ‘Broadband Access Connect’, they are now using the terms, “Mobile Broadband Connect.” See the Verizon Wireless information at: Mobile Broadband Connect and Mobile Broadband Connect FAQs Here is a 4 minute video on exactly how we use Verizon Wireless Mobile Broadband connect to get online with our laptop - while we’re driving down the road! For a larger version of this video, see Geeks on Tour Wireless Internet video page. Chris Guld www.GeeksOnTour.com Computer Education for Travelers Tell a Friend Read More →

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