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“You can now receive coupons for Hollywood Video on your cell phone now“. If that piece of news does not give an orgasm then there is definitely something wrong with you!

When I received an unsolicited email from Handango a couple weeks ago about CellFire, I was more annoyed than excited. However, I added the link to my TODO list and over that weekend had a few minutes to explore new and noteworthy stuff. I started looking at the CellFire website and I really started digging the idea. Especially after I realized I could get online from my smartphone only using my laptop’s internet connection. I installed the special smart phone version of the software on my Cingular 2125 and have not looked back since.

Here’s a quick screencast on CellFire works:

Money saved per month because of CellFire Hollywood Video coupons: $15.16
The amazed look on the clerk’s face when validating my CellFire coupon: approx. $220.00
The embarrassment in my wife’s tone when she blurted out, “My husband is a freak!”: Priceless

Technorati : CellFire, Coupons on mobile phone, Hollywood Video, smartphone
Del.icio.us : CellFire, Coupons on mobile phone, Hollywood Video, smartphone

When I first bought my smartphone, I signed up for the Unlimited Data plan (20$/month) so I could stay connected all the time. But after a few months I realized that the unlimited data plan was not paying off as I anticipated for a couple reasons:

1. My laptop (with a internet connection) is handy 95% of the time so the internet connection on my smartphone was simply redundant
2. Even for the remaining 5% of the time (e.g. while driving) I never desperately needed to be online to get some urgent info

So, I canceled my data plan a couple months ago and life went on happily until I came across CellFire! (please await more info about the goodness of CellFire in an upcoming blog entry). In essence, I needed internet connection on my cell-phone to be able to leverage cellfire.
I desperately searched all over on google to see if there was a way to cheat and connect to the internet by piggybacking on the host computer’s internet connection. There were several posts that claimed this was possible but somehow the steps they listed did not match what I saw on my smartphone. A couple hours later I figured out how to accomplish the result:

Step 1. On your host computer, make sure your File -> Connection Settings -> This Computer is Connected To: is set as “Internet”

Step 2. Connect your smartphone to the computer via ActiveSync.

Step 3. Follow these steps on your smartphone to use the passthru internet connection!

Technorati : CellFire, internet passthru, smartphone
Del.icio.us : CellFire, internet passthru, smartphone