[Nexus 7 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ericdjobs:
My Nexus is always tethered via bluetooth wherever I go, and I've never had an issue (T-mobile unlimited data for $30/month for the WIN!)

The speed isn't nearly as fast as you can get with wifi tether (can hit close to 20mbps with wifi tether... around 2mbps tops with BT) but it's MUCH easier on the battery. Wifi tethering can take me to zero battery very, very quickly.. while I can keep a constant bluetooth tether. Bluetooth tethering seems to work as any other internet connection does, all apps recognize it etc.. but I use the built-in bluetooth tethering function of my phone. My guess is for people who are having problems with all apps recognizing the bluetooth connection is that it's uses the older DUN approach instead of a bluetooth PAN, you can try utilizing an app that creates a Bluetooth PAN (You need to have a kernel that supports netfiler/iptables, and you need to have ROOT ACCESS).. a good one is "Wireless Tether for Root Users" on the market.

The way I have it set up now, is I use Tasker/autoremote profiles... I use Bluetooth Auto Tether/Auto Connect (These apps are a pair, great apps!) so whenever I turn on bluetooth on the N7, they are connected and tethering is started automatically. If I need the extra speed from wifi tether for some reason (Streaming, whatever), I have an autoremote command that I can send from my Nexus that will turn on wifi tether and disable bluetooth (for battery) and then another autoremote command that I can send to turn wifi tether off/bluetooth back on, and then trigger bluetooth autoconnect (It has a tasker plugin!)

I also have Tasker/Autoremote commands to launch Airdroid, as well as launch a dynamic DNS updater script (using no-ip.org) to sync the local IP for whatever interface is connected to a static hostname (for SSH access, etc) I have autoremote triggers on my phone that sends me pop-ups/visual/audio alerts on the Nexus whenever I get a phone call or text.. .texts I can just tell the phone to launch airdroid (All from the tablet.. phone never leaves my bag/holster) and manage texts from there

Pretty awesome setup :)

I highly recommend Bluetooth Auto Connect/Bluetooth Auto Tether, because you never even have to touch the phone (if the connection ever does drop, simply switch bluetooth off/on on the tablet and it's restarted)

I also highly recommend the Tasker plugin AutoRemote. Basically what is does is allows you to send simple text strings to any device with autoremote...And it integrates very nicely with Tasker. You can send commands with Tasker/set up profiles/tasks that trigger off commands. You can pass variables, actually you can do pretty much ANYTHING with this tasker plugin. Combine that with an SSH server and FTP server (With Autoremote commands that launch/kill them, respectively.. to save battery!) I practically never even need to touch my phone 97% of the time.

Couple other Tasker profiles I've found useful: When Wifi is connected, turn off bluetooth (minor battery savings). When Wifi is not connected, turn ON bluetooth and trigger Auto Tether/Auto connect (it triggers automatically, but I've found it's much more reliable to have this anyways). When a power-source is detected, turn off bluetooth and enable WiFi tethering. When a powersource is disconnected, popup window asking to continue wifi tethering or disable (this defaults to disable after a 15s timeout)

USeful autoremote stuff: "airdroid on" turns on airdroid, also syncs local IP to a dynamic DNS (using no-ip.org), local IP depends on active connection method.. if it's tethering bluetooth that's "bnep0" wifi is "wlan0" and Cellular network "rmnet_sdio0", which is tracked in a variable (%NETSOURCE) and a Secure Settings shell command is ran ( /system/xbin/ifconfig %NETSOURCE | grep "inet addr" | cut -d: -f2 | awk '{print $1}' ) said command will return the local IP of whatever interface is being used. Said IP address is also stored in a dropbox text file (dropbox sync tasker plugin) in case the NO-IP DynamicDNS sync isn't working, otherwise it's usually always synced to said dynamic DNS address. (This is so I never have to check the phone to connect to the FTP/SSH/Airdroid). DynamicDNS sync is achieved using a small linux utility that's also ran through a tasker profile using the above script to get the IP to sync it to.

Also have "airdroid off" (turns it off, duh!), "start ssh" and "stop ssh" (enable / disable SSH server), "ftp on" and "ftp off" (ftp server), "start wifi tether" (wifi tether on, bluetooth off) and "stop wifi tether" (wifi tether off, bluetooth on, autoconnect/tether), "report battery" has the phone send an autoremote command to the nexus that passes the battery % from the phone.. then a popup on the nexus with the phone's battery % (I usually just use airdroid for this, though.). Also have an autoremote command that sends from the phone->nexus when battery hits 20%, causes a pop-up window on nexus informing me of that, then gives options to turn off all tethering or resume activity (Both tasks that send autoremote commands back to phone)

I have a bunch more that I'd have to actually look haha. All of those are set up toggles/widgets on one of my homescreens on the nexus, so I can just toggle all of that from the Nexus itself..

So yeah, AutoRemote is freaking awesome. It gets reallllly neat when you start doing two-way communication stuff (ie. send phone command which causes phone to send command with information to nexus, which causes a popup on nexus with said information.. like the battery % one)

Also, it's compatible with a ton of other stuff... The creator also has a PC app and something called "EventGhost" which allows you to send autoremote commands for ANY event that happens on the PC it's installed on.. and autoremote messages are sent using a simple HTTP request (using unique key and also supports passwords).. so you can pretty much integrate it into anything you can think of... there's also a Chrome plugin lol.. (I have a tasker profile that will call a number if I highlight it in chrome and send with "call=:=number... I also have ANOTHER that will copy text to phone or nexus clipboard.. that one has been abnormally useful)

Limits are endless. Oh wow didn't know I typed so much! Sorry about that.. I was just excited, haha. I just discovered this thing like two weeks ago and I've been discovering new stuff every day... just wanted to share :) Yeah, the full version is a PAID app ($2.50) but was well worth it IMO, also a lite version (only supports 2 letter commands, so hard to pass variables etc) but still lots of interesting stuff you can do with the lite version!

It also is fully supported by Zapier (https://zapier.com/)... and using it in tandem with Zapier you can achieve practically ANYTHING... Zapier is like IFTTT on steroids, only problem is free accounts on Zapier only sync every 5 hours (and I'm not paying $15/mo for it) Zapier basically 'links' any web-app/social network/anything web-related with another.. and it supports a freaking ton of stuff. Basically it gives you hundreds more possible conditions and actions which to trigger tasker.. But the API for autoremote is so simple and easy to understand you can easily integrate it with practically anything.

Website is here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/9787157/autoremotewelcome.html if you wanted to check out some of what other people are doing etc...