ASPEN, Colo.--One thing I love is finding uses for things that perhaps no one has thought of before.
I'd already been on Road Trip 2009 for several days when I arrived in this tony Colorado mountain town known best as a playground for the rich and famous. I was hoping to go for a walk and find something good to eat.
It had been a long day of driving, starting in Colorado Springs, and traveling over Independence Pass, a 12,095 "Top of the Rockies" spot just on the Continental Divide. I had planned to stroll around Aspen for a bit and then use my iPhone to get online and find something inexpensive for dinner.
But I had neglected to charge the iPhone, and by the time I got to town, the battery was more or less dead. This is Road Trip, however, and as someone carting around a car full of high-tech gear, I was determined to find a workaround.
Though it is designed to provide a hot-spot for as many as five people in one place, the Verizon MiFi 2200 allowed CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman to create a mobile Wi-Fi connection for an iPod Touch as he walked around Aspen, Colo.
(Credit: Verizon)One of the gadgets I am road-testing is a 32GB iPod Touch, a device that, if it has access to a Wi-Fi connection, can do much of what the iPhone can do. But on a walk around a town you don't know, it's hard to count on finding such a connection, especially these days when most people password-protect their Wi-Fi.
However, I also am carrying Verizon's MiFi 2200 mobile hot spot, which converts the carrier's EV-DO signal into a Wi-Fi connection that up to five people can share. I had already used the MiFi to provide a signal for the iPod Touch at the very beginning of the trip so that, while sitting on a boarding airplane, I could download a large file from iTunes.
Now, I realized that by turning the MiFi on and sticking it in my back pocket, I could become, in essence, a walking hot spot, allowing me to get online on the iPod Touch, no matter where I was in town. That meant that I could use the Skype app to make a phone call, run several other apps for one reason or another, and look up good places to eat using the device's browser.
Of course, this is the kind of workaround that isn't going to make sense for most people. If you're going to bother paying for an iPod Touch and a MiFi, you might as well just get an iPhone. But if you're road-testing a number of tech gadgets and you see a way to jerry-rig something to solve a problem, why not do it?
It turns out that it's hard to find decent, inexpensive food in Aspen. But thanks to being able to get online while I walked around, I did end up at a terrific place where I had a good, moderately healthy meal for under $20.
And, since I became a walking hot spot, I was also able to get online on my computer, as well, meaning that I was able to actually do some work while I ate, despite the fact that the restaurant where I found that inexpensive meal didn't offer Wi-Fi.
In the end, one thing puzzled me, though. When I first linked the iPod Touch to the MiFi connection, I tried to locate myself using the device's map feature. But instead of pinpointing where I was in Aspen, it told me I was somewhere in Virginia. I thought that was odd, but I chalked it up to the fact that without a GPS chip, it figures out its location relative to the Wi-Fi signals it finds. Given that the MiFi is a loaner, I thought that maybe it had come from Virginia.
Later, however, when I returned to my car and got ready to head out, I plugged in my iPhone and again, with some power, tried to see if it, with GPS, it could locate me. Oddly, though, the iPhone also told me I was in Virginia.
My only conclusion for the fact that both devices told me this: that the folks in Aspen have figured out some way to trick Google Maps so as to keep out the hoi-polloi. But maybe it was something else. If you have any thoughts, I'd love to hear them.
For the next several weeks, Geek Gestalt will be on Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be writing about and photographing the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and Colorado. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.
The world's largest corn maze is open to the public in Dixon, Calif., through at least November 5. It is estimated to take an hour to work your way though it. If you don't get lost, that is.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)DIXON, Calif.--I'm sitting on a stairway in the middle of the world's-largest corn maze and blogging the experience. Literally.
I like to say I'm the first to do things, and of course, you never really know if it's true. But I have to say I think the odds that someone else has been blogging inside this maze, which comprises 40 acres of healthy cornfield in this small farming town near Sacramento, are pretty small. But you never know.
I'm doing it thanks to the Verizon EV-DO card I've been using, and the ability to log on, get e-mail, upload pictures, and blog from inside a huge cornfield is kind of strange. Probably not what the maze was intended for. But, hey, the signal is fantastic. What could I do but get online and blog?
At some points, the pathways seem like they never end. But it's important, if you're following the provided map, that you can tell the difference between the official paths and ones visitors have cut themselves.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)So here I am. I entered the maze awhile ago intent on finding my way through without getting lost, even though I knew that my chances of that were pretty slim. After all, while you get a very detailed map when you start, people have cut a lot of illegitimate paths through the maze. And so just when you think you know where you are, the map tells you something different from what you see.
This maze is very, very cool. From inside it, you can't see out at all. The stalks are 8 to 12 feet high, and so there's no visibility to the exits. Matt Cooley, who along with his brother Mark, created this maze, say that often, lost people just push their way out, ending up nowhere near where they're supposed to be. But that's better than being forever trapped in the middle of 40 acres of corn.
I am determined not to get irrevocably lost, however, and so I am marking my map religiously as I go. I've only been sure I was screwing up at least four times in the first quarter of the maze. I think that means I'm doing well.
I'm going to stop writing now and get back to the maze. I'll file a longer story and a full gallery later. Stay tuned. And if you don't hear from me, can you call someone? I may still be in the middle, trying desperately to find my way out.
I'm sitting in a tent at 4,000 feet, surrounded on all sides by national forest. And I'm online.
It's astounding.
This is where my in-laws live, on top of a mountain, a 45 minute drive to the nearest town. I've never been able to get online here before. In fact, when I was first coming here, in 2000 or so, we could barely get a cell signal.
But here I am, connected--albeit, certainly not at high-speed--via Verizon's EV-DO network. Doing Google searches. I even got into Second Life for a moment.
I mean, I'm online. It's the weirdest thing, and totally great.
Though it's a slow connection today, I bet that within a year, I'll be able to get high-speed via the EV-DO network here. And with that comes the ability to work up here. With views to die for, the cleanest air and fresh vegetables every day.
Hmm. I might not ever return to the office. But don't tell my editor that.
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