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reducing iPhone data charges

This is not going to be a post about how cool the new iPhone 3G is. In some ways it is an amazing product but I don’t think another post like that is going to contribute anything further in this discussion. I wouldn’t say that the honeymoon is over, but I’m starting to feel a little more ambivalent towards the iPhone, at least how it is sold in Australia.

I think that the iPhone experience in Australia is going to be a little different than it's been in many other countries. The reason for this that the Australian mobile networks have fundamentally misunderstood the iPhone. They think it's a phone first and an internet device second, and have priced their plans accordingly with data limits laughably low.

There is no denying that the iPhone is a data hog. Some people are going to receive a very big shock when they receive their first bill for the iPhone, mainly because of excess data charges. The ACCC is sufficiently worried that it’s just issued a warning about this.

In this post I'm going to look at ways of reducing iPhone data consumption.

• Be careful of what you view in Safari. Safari is one of the iPhone's best applications, it is very nice to use with the ability to turn the phone for landscape browsing as well as zooming in and out when browsing web pages. But if you're anywhere near your bandwidth limits, using Safari for an extended browsing session on the iPhone is not a good idea.
• In particular be wary of newspaper websites and other bandwidth heavy sites. If you want to stay on top of the news, it's more data efficient to subscribe to that news source's RSS feeds rather than refreshing Safari on the website.
• If your carrier has any free unmetered web content, don't forget to make use of that if it's at all helpful (I know, often it's mediocre, but maybe it's better than nothing).
• If you want to read blogs on your iPhone, you really must use an RSS reader, unless you like the idea of paying more to your mobile phone company. Using an RSS reader strips out a lot of the junk which can increase your data usage. Don't click on outbound links if you can help it. If a post has some links you'd like to follow, mark the post (star in the Google Reader, “add to clippings” with NetNewsWire) and follow that up later on your home or work computer.
• Change the fetch new data settings to manual, so the iPhone only updates when you tell it to update and not on a regular schedule.
• Think about turning off email accounts at times when you’re not interested in reading or checking your email.
• MobileMe users: you may want to disable the push updating, unless you really need it
• Think about having a separate email account to use on the iPhone. You can set up automatic forwarding rules on your main email account, so that you only see the more important email on your iPhone and hopefully avoid the lolcats pictures and other large files being forwarded around
• Telstra and Optus users: make the most of any free wifi you may have access to in your plans.
• I love watching things on YouTube, but there's no way I'm ever going to look at YouTube on my iPhone unless I'm using "free" wifi. It's just not worth it.
  
• The iPhone supposedly has a way of tracking data consumption in Settings / General / Usage. I have found these figures to be wildly inaccurate, significantly less than the data consumption records kept by my carrier. Do not rely on that to track your data usage.

I write all of this with very mixed feelings, because right now it seems that occasionally  or regularly crippling the iPhone is the only economically sustainable way of using it. I hope this will eventually change, but in the mean time, it’s not so helpful to dwell on all the cool things the iPhone can do, focus on what you can afford.

customer service by chat

So I've just moved. Until I have broadband internet access set up at my new place, please excuse if I'm slow at replying to emails, moderating comments or indeed reading many blog posts. As well as all the unpacking and setting things up for a new household, I am also trying to get reconnected at home.

Seeing that I don't enjoy making (or receiving) phone calls to call centres, I thought that I'd try out the chat system offered by one of the bigger players in the Australian telco market. Big waste of time.

Things were going ok up until the point when I checked to see if they supported Macs - knowing before that they used to have issues with Macs. Just after telling me that Mac OS 10.4 should be ok, the customer service rep. asked me, "which version of windows does it have?" I explained, patiently and tactfully I hope, how that wasn't relevant.

There was a pause for several minutes - and then the chat session was abrubtly ended. I can only assume that he hung up on me. It's a bit of a worry.

I am asking myself - did I waste as much time this way as I would have if I'd phoned them, waited on hold for 5-10 minutes, and then spoken to the same clueless person over the phone? Maybe not, but I am guessing that it would have been easier for me to ask for this person's supervisor as soon as I started having doubts about his expertise. Also, if my experience at Vodafone is anything to go by, it's very rare for a call centre operator to be allowed to hang up on a customer. We were only allowed to do it when they started swearing at us and we had warned them that we would not put up with that sort of language. Released calls were monitored and counted, just like everything else, and always had to be justified. Maybe the online chatting is still so new that it's not monitored as vigourously.

Which is quite short-sighted - after all it would be very difficult for me to post an audio recording (or even transcript) of a call centre exchange on the web - but it was very easy to take a screen shot and post this on the web. It makes me think about virtual reference in libraries too - with a different medium comes different expectations and standards.

left-handed adventures with Mighty Mouse

I am somehow doubting that Apple's Mighty Mouse is going to be a raging success. Even at the Apple stores I've been to lately in Australia and the US, Microsoft and Logitech mice seem to be getting more loving than Apple's new mouse. I'm no marketing person, but I think that Apple needs to give this product a different name. Mighty Mouse may be a good nickname or something catchy to use in advertising copy, but I don't think it works as the official name. Even I felt a little embarrassed asking for the Mighty Mouse.

Other than the name, it's a pretty nifty mouse. I was worried that the scroll wheel/button was way too small to use effectively - but that hasn't been a problem at all. It seems to allow for some very precise scrolling. And it is very nice to be able to do horizontal scrolling - especially in the Finder and applications like Photoshop.

My scroll button is set up so that clicking on it opens and closes the Dashboard. For me at least, this has made the Dashboard a lot more accessible and I may use it more.

I wasn't so sure how the idea of invisible left and right buttons would work - but it hardly took anytime to get used to. Clicking on the top right area of the mouse is the same as a regular click (well for most people, see below for my left-handed experience), clicking the top left area is a left click.

The weirdest thing about the Mighty Mouse are the side squeeze buttons. Maybe in a few more days, squeezing the sides of a mouse will be second nature to me, but it still seems kind of odd. Initially it was quite awkward - what if I don't squeeze the two side buttons exactly simultaneously - will something bad happen? (the answer to that question is no) The squeezing movement is different - the only analogy is like giving somebody a bad handshake where the hand doesn't open properly. The necessary pressure would greater than a dead fish handshake but the firmness of a good firm handshake wouldn't be necessary - not that this would break the mouse.

I have Mighty Mouse set so that the side buttons open Exposé - something which will make this a lot more accessible and useful for me - the idea of using Exposé by function keys or screen corners never ever worked well for me. But it's also possible to set the side buttons - or left click or right click or scroll button - to do anything else - such as open the desktop, any application or an Automator workflow.

Now for my left-handed story. I'm a left hander, and prefer to do my mousing with my left hand, using the forefinger for most of the clicking. This means setting the buttons the other way around from the default - so that right button is the main one and the left button brings up the contextual menus. Like most left-handers I need to survive in the right-handed world. In my current job, the shared reference and circulation computers have right-handed settings - and I am able to use them without too many hassles. That said, on my own computers at home and work, I always do left-handed mousing - I work faster and think more clearly and am happier this way.

Anyway, when I first tried using Mighty Mouse I thought it was badly broken. There seemed no way getting a regular click - everything seemed to open the contextual menus. After some tweaking, I got it so it worked as a regular right-handed mouse held in my left hand - the most annoying and confusing of all mousing worlds for me. Then I realized what was going on. I unplugged the Apple mouse and returned its predecessor, a fairly basic Logitech two-button mouse with a scroll wheel. With that mouse plugged in, I changed the Logitech mouse settings back from left-handed style mousing to the default right-handed settings. When I plugged the Mighty Mouse back and set its settings to left-handed mousing, everything worked as expected.

no more rumours - the iTunes Music store is finally open in Australia!

I haven't had time to take a really good look at it, but it's definitely open and features Australian artists. But nothing from Sony. There's more information in the Sydney Morning Herald. I know I'm going to waste a lot of money on this, just as I did with the US store while living over there.

still no comment from Apple about the opening of iTMS in Australia

Of course, it would be some consolation if the Kazaa decision might speed things along with the Australian iTunes Music Store, but I think that is extremely wishful thinking.

Apple Australia yesterday refused to comment on a launch date for its iTunes music store, which would allow the legion of Australians who own iPods to legally purchase songs, rather than rip, burn and swap.
[Kristy Needham, Music industry banks on opening of online store, Sydney Morning Herald (7 September 2005)]

still no iTunes Music Store in Australia - a casualty of squabbling between Apple and Sony

[7 September 2005: This post has been followed up]
[15 May 2006: The portion about Australian intellectual property law has been followed up]

An Australian iTunes Music Store (iTMS) was supposed to open in May 2005. This unexpectedly fell through. At the time, there were rumours in Slashdot that one major record company (possibly Sony) was the cause of this delay. Three months later, there is still no iTMS in Australia and there is more confirmation that Sony is the company which has been stone-walling in negotiations with Apple over licensing rates. Joshua Gliddon, "Burning issue", Bulletin (7 June 2005).

In Today's Australian Financial Review there was another article about this, "Apple's turn to bite the download bullet" (9 August 2005). I'm not linking to it, because the AFR has a nasty pay-per-view system. The gist of this article was that the Australian iTMS store has become collateral damage in the larger competition between Sony and Apple. Although Sony did not block the original iTMS in North America, or its other expansions, this time it is putting its foot down and insisting that Apple give some ground over licensing rates and access to Apple's FairPlay DRM system. The Australian market isn't that vital to Apple, and it's not going to make these concessions to Sony, and if that holds up the Australian iTMS, so be it. At this rate, it's possible New Zealand will have its iTMS before Australia. Good on them too (my Mum's from NZ, so I have major respect for the country and its people).

Meanwhile, because of an absurdity in Australian copyright law, there is still no legal way of using an iPod in Australia - unless your iPod is filled with music which you have yourself created. So I'm a law-breaker if I buy a CD and format-shift by ripping the music onto my iPod. So are two other Australian bloggers whom I know (I promise not to turn you in, F & S), so are the dozens of people I see everyday in Sydney with some sort of iPod, whether it's a big one or a mini or a shuffle. We're all law-breakers on this issue, even the lawyers. I'm waiting for the day when police will stop me in Martin Place, "Oi, you with those white earphones, what do you think you're up to?"

screenshots

I just added some screenshots to my last iPod post. Better late than never. It wasn't that painful, so I expect to do more of this in the future.

an iPod playlist to imprint the present and remember the past

[28/7/05 update: I've just added some screenshots of these playlists]

Maybe it's the librarian in me, but I find something enjoyable about organizing iTunes playlists for my iPod.

I have playlists for all sorts of things: driving (some music just does not work in the car), doing the dishes on a mellow evening, cleaning, exercising, good mood music for company (pleasant, but not too demanding or intrusive) and music that usually helps me get to sleep.

But nothing is perfect and there are few things about the iPod which can create a less than perfect music experience.

Firstly, if I am always listening to music for particular moods or circumstances, when I am going to listen and new music and how is that music going to imprint on my present circumstances? By imprinting, I mean when a particular piece of music becomes associated with a particular time/place/event/person in one's life. This isn't always a pleasant thing. Björk's Medúlla makes me recall my time working at Vodafone (not exactly pleasant for me) and reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (which is just plain weird). That said, I still think the association of songs in this way provides a helpful musical map to our lives, and that using an iPod can severely dilute this efffect.

The other problem, kind of touched on in my previous iPod playlist post, that it is so easy for good music to buried and lost in an iPod.

Naturally, I have found one answer to these two problems by creating a new kind of playlist. This is a hybrid smart list, containing two other smart playlists. The best thing is that it's self-updating and requires very little maintenance.

Ingredient 1: Smart playlist of recently added tracks. This is simple, choose "Date Added" in the last 3 months - or whichever period you like, it could also be a number of days or weeks. Make sure that the Live Updating box is checked, so that new things are automatically captured and the old ones will drop off.

Ingredient 2: Smart playlist containing good songs which aren't played very often. The first step here is to specify "My rating" as greater than 2 or 3 stars (depending on how picky you want to be). Of course you need to have most of your music rated for this to work effectively. One easy way of doing this is to make an Unrated playlist, containing only the unrated songs - so that you can rate them when you're ever in the mood. The second step is that this must be a limited playlist. For me it's limited to the 25 least often played songs. You might need to tinker with this number at some point to capture the ratio between old and new music which works best for you. Make sure that this list is also live updating.

Ingredient 3: Another smart playlist which combines the contents of the first two lists. At the top of the window, if you'll need to make sure that you choose "Match any of the following conditions", which is basically a boolean OR. Then for those conditions, choose "Playlist" is - and select the other two playlists, i.e. new stuff and good but less played.

At the moment at least, this is my new favourite list. It's not going to replace the others, because there'll always be times when I'll prefer a mood/situation specific playlist. But this hybrid list is a good one to play when I'm not too sure what I want.

the iPod zombie trance

I am an iPod zombie too. This Times of London article points out some of the disadvantages of people wearing iPods – both on an individual level and on a group level.

I concede these. There are days when I’ve forgotten to bring it along or recharge the batteries, and I am amazed sometimes by how much interesting background noise there is to hear. Birds, leaves rustling, snatches of conversation on the footpath, bus or train.

On the other hand, sometimes there aren’t any interesting or appealing ambient sounds. Sometimes it’s just the white noise of traffic.

I definitely use the iPod more in Sydney than I ever did in Hobart. Why is it more of a big city thing? Is it peer pressure, being more reliant on public transport, the busier and more stressful lifestyle?

Listening to music is an escape from the drudgery of the world. After a long busy day in the office, and faced with a grueling commute – it is nice to simply tune out and almost be somewhere else.

Yes, I can see why it isn’t a good thing to have a society where everybody is enclosed in their own personal musical cocoon. On the other hand, this is also a reaction to other things going on in society. If the people who are soliciting donations for charities, selling credit cards or just begging are going to be more upfront about interrupting me – when this isn’t welcome – then I am grateful for anything which makes this more difficult. Acting as if I am in an iPod trance is one way of shielding myself from this.

It’s possible that iPods and other mp3 players are creating a world where people are unaccustomed to silence and where abundance of music is taken for granted as just a background.

It doesn’t have to be like this. It’s also possible that the option of having constant music will help us appreciate deliberate silence.

Zen and the art of creating iTunes playlists

Please excuse this frivolous post and the slightly misleading title.

I have found that it is very easy to get into a rut with what I’m listening to on iTunes. When it is so easy to play only my most favourite songs or my most played songs, that’s often what I listen to. It’s not a good idea to listen to only favourites for a lengthy period of time – it means that I get bored of these great songs and take them for granted

One solution is to sometimes play only the songs that I’ve rated 3 or 4. The problem is that I haven’t rated systematically rated my entire collection. I do this more on a ad hoc basis, otherwise it would be a huge chore. I never rate a new CD until I’ve had it for at least a month, except for those tracks which really leap out as being particularly good or bad.

Here’s one solution which cures this sort of ennui. Morgan’s eclectic sampler playlist.

I use the word sampler in its traditional sense, that this playlist will give a reminder of the breadth of your collection, remind you of the sorts of things which you have.

This playlist has two main guidelines:
1. The idea is to choose only one track from each album. Each album’s representative should ideally be your second or third favourite track from that album.
2. Never choose your favourite tracks – then this playlist would become a just another favourites variation.

Of course, rules are made to be broken. Maybe you’d like to slightly over-represent newer albums, so you can get to know them better. Sometimes you might choose not to represent one-track wonders at all, if you really regret that one track you purchased from that album and don’t view it as representative at all.

The downside is that this playlist takes a bit of work, especially for selecting the second and third-best tracks of albums you haven’t listened to in a while. But that work can itself be enjoyable and illuminating about your collection and how you yourself have changed since adding particular albums.

The other thing is that this playlist is meant to help you escape from your iTunes ruts, don’t let it become a new rut in itself. If it’s a short list, don’t listen to it for more than a few days at once. Even if it’s a really long list, it will have definitely served its purpose after a week. Then leave it for a while and move on, hopefully to some tracks which the eclectic sampler playlist inspired you to rediscover.