Joy of Gadgets

The folks at Joiku, makers of the awesome JoikuSpot for S60 now offer a similar program for Windows Mobile devices: WMWiFiRouter. Both of these programs turn your mobile phone into a WiFi hotspot!

The theory is that the program uses the data connection on your mobile phone–which is hopefully 3G. That data connection is made available over WiFi as a regular access point to other WiFi-enabled devices. Sort of, at least on S60, as it is only able to use an AdHoc network type, not infrastructure. This limits you ability to use it with, say, a Nintendo DS or Sony PSP. However, it works great with computers.

JoikuSpot is also currently 40% off: 15 Euros instead of the normal 25! While that’s still a lot of clams in U.S. Pesos, it’s still a nice investment. Where else are you going to get a portable WiFi router for that price?

A couple of months ago, the folks at Cahoona Games sent me a review copy of Marble Maze for the Nokia N95 and Nokia N82. I feel bad that I didn’t review it before now, but I certainly played it several times in the meantime!

The reason this game needs these two specific phones is that it actually uses the accelerometer to move the little ball through the maze. This limits the game to the N95 and N82, both of which contain an accelerometer.

It’s like that old labyrinth game where you take the ball on a table and try and navigate it through a maze without the ball falling into a hole. Marble Maze is exactly like that, except you can hold the maze in the palm of your hand and there are 40 different mazes to go through.

This game is so worth the $5.99 it will cost you to pick it up.

Losing a cell phone sucks. I’ve been lucky enough to not do it myself, but I know what a pain it can be. This Mobile Superhero software from YouGetItBack.com provides a very useful feature when this happens: the ability to remotely lock your phone!

When you lose your phone, you simply log into yougetitback.com and with the click of the mouse, your phone is locked. You can’t use the phone for anything–even if you power cycle it! There was a brief period of time–maybe 30 seconds–where I could do something before the software is activated.

If someone finds the phone, they can use the phone to report it lost or stolen. That’s it. All the phone will allow you to do is make a call to report the stolen phone to YouGetItBack.com.

Mobile Superhero can be downloaded for free and it supports a number of Blackberry, Nokia, and Samsung handsets. After the 30 day trial, it costs $19.95 a year.

You can also opt for physical asset tags for $9.95 that are good for three years, but they do not protect the access to your phone. The tags can be used on any item, though, not just mobile phones.

If you have a Nokia N800 or N810 like I do, and you’re a fan of Jaiku, chances are you’ve heard of Mauku. I actually like Mauku better than the Nokia S60 client for Jaiku, and like it even better now that it also has Twitter support!

Twitter and Jaiku messages intermingle in your timeline. You can post messages to both services at the same tme. You can also respond to either Jaiku or Twitter messages. The refresh interval is configurable, but you probably don’t want to refresh Twitter too often as they tend to limit the number of API calls you can make per hour.

And yes, I’d love to see this client on S60 to replace the “official” client, which is starting to age quite a bit.