Turn your laptop into a wireless Access Point

There are a couple of use scenarios where I find useful to providing wireless access from your laptop:

• Creating a network “island” without a router;
• Sharing internet access to other laptops where only one wired point is available;
• Providing network and internet access to your PDA where no AP is available. My favorite usage :)

Here are a couple of tools:

• Virtual Router (Codeplex)
• Connectify

Please note: at least for Virtual Router, there’s a (short) wireless network card short compatible list.

Upgrading HTC Hero to Android 2.1

I’ve finally upgraded to Android 2.1 the HTC Hero (T-Mobile G2) I’ve been using. For the most part this is a safe process, and the chances to brick it are virtually none (if understand it correctly !…).

Here’s the guide I’ve followed: [Guide] Complete Newbie Guide to Install a Custom Rom [Updated 16/07]. And yes, I had to “Goldcard” it…

I’ve tried out a few ROMs and stopped at VanillaEclair 5.0-build7 – for no particular reason. It worked, some of the others had some flaw that I’ve encountered, I’m afraid it wasn’t a very scientific decision...

For the little I’ve tested, I’ve I liked:

• The mail. Finally!
• VPN and proxy support.

What I didn’t like:

• Loosing the cool HTC apps and widget… oh well..

 

<update>

I’m afraid I couldn’t connect to my company’s VPN :(

<update>

32-bit ODBC drivers on a 64-bit machine

Today I had the need to install a 32 bit ODBC driver on my x64 Windows 7. After installing the driver, I couldn’t find it on the 32-bit ODBC administrator.

This tool only configures 32-bit native calls, for 32/64-bit environment we have to set it on %systemdrive%\Windows\System32\Odbcad32.exe. Here’s Microsoft’s support link, and here’s how to debug it on SSIS: