All about pissing off your wireless carrier and using the Internet willy-nilly like? Then you’ll love the new Open Garden app that creates simple tether wireless connections between your devices.
You know all that junk you like to use that uses the Internet? Well it all pretty much blows without the Internet (sort of like batteries). After all, think when about it when’s the last time you used a computer that wasn’t connected to the World Wide Web? If you said today then just go punch yourself right in the face.
We’ve featured a few different tethering apps on the site and most of them are not only hit-or-miss for set up but also require root access. But Open Garden is different for at least two reasons. First, unlike most tethering apps that use WiFi based tethering Open Garden uses Bluetooth. So, for example, if you had a Peer-2-Peer network set up on your laptop and couldn’t use WiFi you could use Bluetooth instead. Or you could be at a coffee shop and be connected via WiFi but then Bluetooth your Internet connection to your Android tablet. In other words, you simply get more options and flexibility.
The other good part about Open Garden is that it’s minimal on setup, which is assisted by the individual apps you install on all your devices. Right now, Open Garden has an app for Android, Windows and Mac (Sorry iOS) that makes for easy set up.
I know it seems like I’m very pro Open Garden already but the app also has a few other thing that, again, just make it smart. Open Garden display everything in this dynamic visual flow format ( just made that up) that gives you a quick graphic layout of how all your device are connected.
Open Garden also gives you a quick read out on how much data you’ve transmitted, battery life and battery temperature. Open Garden is currently a beta, so expect some hiccups here and there.
Even if you only occasionally need to tether, Open Garden makes a good fit for people that like apps to work and need the flexibility of Bluetooth.
Free: Open Garden
Sadly, Open Garden does not want to make nice with my Windows 7 laptop (will be dual-booting into Ubuntu and reviewing). It seems this is a problem others are experiencing as well.
Nice option to have, but for my very infrequent tethering needs I’ll still stick with my root-required tethering program that presents as a standard wifi access point, since I have no Windows or Mac devices.
What makes this app interesting to me, but which you didn’t touch upon in your review, is that it’s a mesh networking app that doesn’t take a computer science degree to operate. Next time some group takes over a BART station, it may not matter when the city turns off cell service underground.
My interest is tempered by the fact that they haven’t (to my knowledge) released the source to this, whereas their earlier traditional tethering app is available on github. Mesh networking’s not useful for activism if the possibility of a backdoor/kill switch exists, whether the activists are first world hippies, third world educators or Libyan rebels.
Yeah self admittedly the Mesh aspect of this app escapes me. I think, for me, it was more interesting that you don’t often see much in the way of new apps focused on bluetooth so I thought Open Garden was innovative in that sense.
I think you hit the nail on the head in saying that it doesn’t take the smartest cookie to operate an app like this even though most folks will gloss over Open Garden/not really find much use for it from a day-to-day perspective like they would Facebook, Instagram, etc.