Yesterday, I attended the National Council for Work Experience awards ceremony where AppSwing had been nominated in the under 10 employees category. The awards are to recognise companies that provide excellent work placements for students of all levels. I am very pleased to report that AppSwing were highly commended in our category.

AppSwing have taken on a number of students over the years from secondary schools right through to post graduates and it has been a rewarding experience for both parties.

We are currently beginning to look for good candidates for our summer placements. This is an eight week scheme where you would be involved in a real project. Past students have worked on projects that have included or AppSwing Management Console and two proof of concepts for forthcoming tools. If you would be interested in joining us for an exciting summer placement please drop me an email at neil.thompson@appswing.com.

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In a classic case of shutting the door after the horse has bolted Whitehall has banned any PDAs that carry personal data that is not encrypted. The move is as a direct result of the spate of data losses that have been making the news over the last few months. Not all PDAs are banned however, BlackBerrys that are running on version 4.0 of the software have been CESG approved and so can continue to be used. This is great news for those BlackBerry touting agencies but not for those that have gone down the Windows Mobile/Palm or Nokia routes.

It is possible to encrypt data on mobile devices through third party tools such as Credant but that put an additional stress on the device itself and also means that the IT team have to install and support the component. Surely a better approach is not to have any data on the device at all? AppSwing have long been advocating this approach with our mobile platform. Taking this approach is the ONLY way of being absolutely certain your data is safe.

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I have been trialing JoikuSpot over the last couple of days as the concept looks great. JoikuSpot turns your wifi enabled 3g Nokia phone into a wifi hotspot. This allows wifi enabled but crucially non-phone devices to connect easily to the internet. So for example the browsing experience on a iPod Touch is great but it can only get access through a wifi connection. Similarly the Asus EEE PC only has wifi and no bluetooth, although that is pretty simple to add. In both cases they can easily search out and connect to wifi hotspots. So with JoikuSpot you can connect to your phone via wifi and use the 3g connection.

OK, so much for the theory. In practice things are a little different. The software installed without any problems on my Nokia E61. Starting it is easy enough and you get sufficient feedback to know that it has initiated. I then tried to connect via my iPod Touch. This instantly saw my phone (listed as JoikuSpot_00119FFA55…) and connected. I then opened up a web page and was impressed with the speed - however, then I got my first problem. After 30 seconds or so the connection was dropped and I wasn’t able to reconnect without stopping and starting JoikuSpot. This pattern repeat on all the occasions I tried it. I then tried from my Asus EEE PC and while it was able to see the network it was never able to connect. A quick look at the logs indicated that there was a problem getting a DHCP lease. At this point I gave up.

JoikuSpot is a great idea and once it it out of beta and has ironed out the kinks in its service it is going to be great. In the meantime I am going to wait until I get my Nokia N96 before I try again as it is, allegedly, more stable on this platform. Then I look forward to easy surfing wherever I am.

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