Data trouble

I saw super freakonomics was out and thought that would make a nice presence for my wife. I was on a trip in the US so bringing something back could maybe make up a little for the fact that I left just after we moved and left her with many boxes.

But then the boxes sprang back to mind. A lot of them are filled with books. Do we really want more books? I did buy her a kindle for her birthday to fight this sort of thing, didn't I? I should buy her that book on her kindle. And then also put it on my iphone to read it on the plane - seems like the sort of book you can read on a phone chapter by chapter.

So I open my laptop, connect to the tmobile hotspot. But that doesn't work of course without paying. Aha, but I my laptop has iPass. So I use that to log in. Go to Amazon, buy the book, which takes 2 seconds. Start the kindle app on the iphone, click update. Nothing. No Internet connection.

I go hunt on the appstore and find the free iPass app, download to my machine, connect my phone, sync my phone, start it up. Doesn't let me in. But there's a button for corporate logins, so maybe that's a hint. Back to my laptop, login to the VPN, login the intranet and find the information on iPass. Indeed there is a code. Back to the phone, enter the code. iPass app says: no valid internet connection!

Finally I switch on data roaming praying they won't charge me more than the cost of the book for the handful of bytes I need here, go back iPass, enter the code again, now register, switch dataroaming off again, connect the phone to tmobile, enter my iPass credentials and voila, I am online.

The kindle app now sucks down the book and I can read. There's gotta be an easier way than this to connect. Especially if you compare it to how easy Amazon makes it get the book to the phone if you have a connection. Maybe the should get into that? I suppose the new international kindle that has build in data roaming is actually going into that direction.