Android Thoughts: On Jon's Phone: ConnectBot

"On Jon's Phone" is an ongoing series of short posts about software that I personally use. The goal is to provide a Android fans a quick spotlight on an app they might have not seen yet, and get those who do use these apps talking. Thanks to AppBrain, you can now view all the apps on my phone, and even subscribe to me within the app (username: jonwestfall)!

Anyone who has a Unix server they are responsible for has had that moment of panic. Something is broken, and one simple command will fix it. But the computer is far away or unavailable, and the smartphone is only good for the emergency call from the boss, not for actually getting work done. But ConnectBot changes all of that. With support for SSH (including tunneling and login via private keys) and telnet connections (with multiple open simultaneously), ConnectBot can be a real life saver. Just three weeks ago it saved me - a website was down and all that was needed to fix it was 1 simple command. I used Dropbox to grab my private key, imported it into ConnectBot, unlocked it and logged into the server. In 5 minutes (in a airport shuttle no less) my site was back up, thanks to one great, free, tool!