Status-Q

Just outside a picturesque Hampshire village you turn off the road and go up a long drive through beautiful grounds to the campus. It's centred around a magnificent 18th-century house, and though this is rather dwarfed now by the extensive modern buildings which are home to the nearly three thousand IBM employees there, it must be very pleasant to stroll through the gardens at lunchtime. And I doubt many other technology campuses have their own cricket pitch.

It was also the first time I've given a technology talk in a former ballroom! I met some great people and had good discussions. But we stopped short of dancing.

Here's a thought...

My Nokia E61 can be used as a 3G modem via its Bluetooth connection. The very popular Nokia N95 does the same. But they also have WiFi. I wonder if it would be possible to create software that would allow them to become WiFi routers? I don't know enough about the radio hardware involved to know whether this is viable. I fear not, or somebody would have done it by now.

Lots of interesting devices now have WiFi - the iPhone, the iPod Touch, the Nintendo DS... Just imagine if I could just switch on my pocket WiFi basestation and give them all 3G connectivity. That would be exceedingly cool.

What's the nearest I can get to this - anybody know?

My brother Simon sent me a link to this splendid short performance by Raymond Crowe (who describes himself as an 'unusualist').