Hi everyone. Yup, It’s been a long month. Instead of dwelling on the lack of updates I want to announce a new contributor who will be updating here starting next week. Onezumi, the writer/artist of the webcomic Stupid and Insane Defenders Against Chaos will now be writing her own column here at AWSOM.org talking about all elements of web development and promotion. You’ll easily recognize her posts due to the new avatar system we will be using from now on. Plus, the posts will be longer than a paragraph (unlike mine :) )

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This post is slightly off-topic, but still a major concern for any serious blogger/webcomic/whatever WordPress admin. What do you do if you are out and about and you discover that your website has been hacked, or has malicious spam displaying, or whatever you don’t want there? If you are lucky (and rich) you might own a portable laptop that you can use to connect to your site using wifi or a cell network. But in most cases, you won’t have that. So what will you have? Maybe a phone.

Until recently I primarily used a combo of a Nokia N800 internet tablet connected by bluetooth to a Samsung Sync cellphone. This worked ok, but wasn’t very fast. It had other negatives also which would be worse for non-tech oriented people.

Then came the iPhone. It works pretty well on it’s own. However, as most people who have one have discovered, it doesn’t always work well with advanced javascript or other related programming. So it’s not easy sometimes to log into a WordPress admin area using the phone. There are some plugins out there for WordPress that make this better, but it still doesn’t replicate what you can do with other devices.

The biggest drawback of the iPhone was that it couldn’t tether to other devices to be used as a modem. It doesn’t have a dial-up networking or PAN bluetooth profile, and it didn’t have a wifi connection tool built in.

Until now. Yes, a new program out there called PDAnet for iPhone is available, and it turns your iPhone into a wifi router. So now any device that uses wifi (like a laptop or my n800) can connect to the iPhone and use it just like any other wifi hotspot. With a 3g iPhone this makes the connection pretty snappy–I’m actually using it right now with my Macbook pro to post this.

The best of all is this is free once you jailbreak your iPhone. So now I can use my iPhone for most tasks and set it to router mode when I need to use my n800 or laptop for more advanced needs. It’s a system I would strongly suggest to anyone searching for a convenient out and about system for internet use.

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I just wanted to give a thank you to our most recent supporter, Mr. R. Wilder, who used our Paypal donation link to donate to the AWSOM.org development fund. I’m a firm devotee to the free Open Source Software model, and I will never ever charge for anything developed here, so it really makes me feel appreciated when someone feels strongly enough about my work to help keep it going. I would like to point out that purchases from the Onezumi Studios Online store are also a great way of contributing to the site. Also, for those of you who would like to contribute but can’t do so financially, the other way to help is to simply tell others about our software and sites and therefore bring us more web traffic, which is a great alternate way of supporting us.

So, thank you Mr. Wilder and everyone else who has contributed and mentioned us, it’s what really let’s us know that what we are doing is right and is making a positive impact. It’s greatly appreciated.

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Hi everyone, sorry for the lack of posts this week. My regular job had an exhausting week of work that basically saw me get up, work, come home, and crash for the entire week. So nothing of note development wise happened this week. I will be working on some suggested updates to all of the AWSOM plugins and will have something out next week.

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Hi everyone, I wanted to mention that I will be “teaching” a Wordpress setup and install class at this year’s Katsucon convention. My panel is on Saturday February the 16th at 10pm. So this is the opportunity for anyone who has questions on Wordpress, AWSOM plugins, or any other web development related stuff to come and get answers from me in person. I’d also like to point out that I’m helping sponsor a huge contest at Katsucon involving over 10 webcomics giving away one giant bundle of stuff to one lucky Katsucon attendee. The “Epic Webcomic Win” Contest page is over at my webcomic site Onezumi.com.

So now you have 2 huge reasons to go to Katsucon this year :)

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