Bernie Roehl

  Well, as promised, I'm posting something on how to tether your laptop (or other computer) using your Android phone.
 
"Tethering" means using your phone to provide an internet connection for your laptop.  It's great when you're traveling and don't have easy access to wifi, since tethering will work anywhere that you have data service on your phone.  Keep in mind that not all carriers allow tethering (check your terms of service).  Also remember that with tethering it's really easy to go over your maximum data usage limits, which may result in extra charges on your bill.  You've been warned.   :-)
When the Google Android G1 first came out, it had a tethering app which let you use your phone as a wireless router for your laptop.  However, the carriers objected to it, so Google was forced to pull it.  There are still versions you can use, but they require that you have root access to your phone (which is tricky to set up, and probably not something you want to get into).
 
The other approach, which does not require root access to the phone, is to tunnel higher-level protocols through the phone.  There are three applications for Android that allow that -- pdalink, azilink and tetherbot (also known as androidproxy).  Unfortunately, pdalink only runs on windows computers, so for me it's a non-starter (I have an eee pc and occasional access to a mac, both of which I want to tether).  That narrows it down to tetherbot and azilink.
 
Tetherbot provides a SOCKS proxy for your web server, as well as a general port-bouncer so you can use things like ssh.  Azilink provides an OpenVPN server.  You can use either one, or even both at the same time (though if you're doing OpenVPN, there's not much point in using a web proxy or a port-bouncer).
 
I have both installed on my phone, and they work reasonably well.  Setting them up was a bit complex, so to save you some time I've created a little zipfile containing all the relevant applications and some installation instructions I wrote up.  I would recommend you unzip the file into a directory on your phone, so you always have it with you when you want to tether.  I'll attach the zipfile to this post.
Have fun, and happy tethering!   :-)