One of the best ways to get mobile Internet access is through the phone. In our case, our plan allows us to hook up (or tether) the laptop to the phone and get online. I don’t carry a laptop anymore but my husband does. Because of this, we hardly have trouble getting Internet access on the go anymore. It was also a huge life saver when we had to suddenly admit our daughter in the hospital for 14 days.

The down side is, you have to maintain what cell phone carriers usually call a data plan and that is not cheap. At the time of writing for a single line plan, Sprint is charging about $65 a month. I am with Verizon – who bought Alltell so I am grandfathered in at a $90 a month everything included plan.

Technology wise, another alternative is to get one of those modems like MiFi or the Overdrive from Sprint. But those too run at least $60 a month.

Unfortunately there aren’t that many alternatives that don’t require you to sign on to a 2 year plan. The good news is, you could

• Plan to stay at hotels with Wireless access.
• Scope out wifi access points in the city you are traveling to. Many cafes even the small Main Street ones offer free wifi these days.

My only concern with connecting at these places is security. So you will always want to be careful. Someone told me once, they only check emails on these networks, they don’t do banking and anything like that so they aren’t worried. Well, that may be true but if you have ever lost your email account you will suddenly realize how much personal stuff is sent to you via email. And email accounts can be hijacked – a huge upset. I’ll write about this at a later date.

So yeah, even my email account I guard closely.

You know what the funny thing is? Why these companies don’t offer a pay-as-you-go data only plan. They may think that keeping you hooked monthly is earning them more but I think, I’d pay a little more for the convenience to get non-public Internet access whenever I need it.

But no worries. It is also thank to this geekiness I’ve been able to enjoy several eBooks now from Barnes & Nobles without the luxury of owning a Nook and so can you.

What I’ve done was install the eReader software on my trusty old Palm T|X. You see, eReader is now a B&N company and apparently, are using this technology on the Nook.

eReader also has software for the iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and a bunch of other devices. But I’m specifically bringing up the Palm because not too long ago, my husband picked up two old but still very good Palm devices at the local thrift store for $10 a piece.

Plus, at B&N, there are free books to be had. So far I’ve read a few and one was absolutely awesome book. I’ve just loaded a few more to enjoy. And yes, I’ve purchased books too. By the way, if you want to buy, I’ve noticed most books tend to be cheaper at B&N itself than on eReader.com.

$10 for a mobile ebook reader plus free ebooks (don’t forget you can read tons of books from Gutenberg too). And most important of all, no more getting in debt feeding the reading and gadget habit.

Image by Steve Woods

Up until recently, I’ve not owned a cell phone that allowed me to have funky ring tones. When we purchased a smart phone last year, I didn’t bother to change it until I got into one of my music grooves. Now I own a Windows Mobile 6 phone so I’m not entirely sure if this process will work for everyone. But here’s what I did. It is so simple you’d be surprised.

For one, I found out that any MP3 can be used as a ring tone on my phone that made it super easy. I expect most phones will accept plain old MP3′s for ring tones too but don’t quote me on that. There are too many phones and models out there.

So what I did was simply find some music that I like. Using Audacity – a free audio editor, I selected the chorus of the song and ‘clipped’ it. Then I saved the clip. Now, I have a short clip of the chorus.

Next, I transferred this new MP3 clip onto my phone into the MyRingtones folder.

Then, I went to Settings >> Sounds & Notifications >> selected Phone: Ring and simply selected the clip I uploaded.

I also took it a step further and made another ring tone for specific people. Another song was chosen and the steps above followed. On the phone, I went to Contacts, looked up the person whom I want to apply this ring tone to. Clicked on their name. Then clicked Edit. Scroll down to the Ring tone field. A popup comes up so I can select the tone I want. Done!

I was quickly dissapointed when I found out how few alarm and timers work well on my Windows Mobile phone. Many work but if the phone is turned off, they aren’t able to wake up the phone to trigger the alarm.

Finally I tried Spoon Alarm which did what I wanted and best of all the buttons are large enough that I don’t have to use the stylus. Only one alarm and one timer setting though but that is suffucient for my needs.