AT&T blinks

For the past few months AT&T has been throttling me when I use more than 2 gigabytes in a month on my iPhone, that is, they slow me from megabytes per second to a paltry hundred kilobytes per second.  I try to avoid using cellular data to avoid this, but once they throttle me, I have no more incentive and can broadcast video all I like, since they only throttle downloads, not uploads.

However, this month it looks like that won't happen.  I have been working less, and using Onavo to compress my data.  Now AT&T has announced that they're raising the "unlimited" data cap from an unstated 2 GB limit to an explicit 3 GB per month.  Since I probably will be using less than 3 GB this month, this could be the end of my broadcast career.

Full Time

For the past couple of years I've been working only part time, mostly on Sundays and Mondays, and whatever other nights they needed me.  But now I'm assigned four nights a week: Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, which is 40 hours, and sometimes other nights.  So I'm going to be broadcasting a lot more than I used to.

I already miss having the time off.  At least I'm not working every night, like I was over the holidays.

I lost my Bluetooth

Wednesday night, after I finished my broadcast, I parked my cab and gathered up my stuff, and realized that I could not find my Bluetooth earpiece.  I  looked everywhere, but it was gone.  It was a Jawbone ICON.  I used to have a different one, but got the Jawbone a couple of years ago because it supported the A2DP Bluetooth profile, which lets me listen to audio wirelessly from my iPhone.  It listed for $100, but I got it on sale for $80.  Last year it went through the laundry, so I got another one off of Amazon for $50.  I've been using it mainly to listen to podcasts while I work.

I was tempted to get the latest version, the ICON HD, which lists for $100, $90 on Amazon.  The difference is that it supports AVRCP, which means that you can pause and play audio with the "talk" button, and the speaker is 25% bigger, i.e. louder, which are exactly the two things I find lacking in the ICON.

However, I found the ICON on Amazon for only $18, so for now I'll settle for that.  Maybe next year...

Update: I saw my day driver searching the cab, so I asked him to let me know if he saw my Bluetooth. A minute later, he had it in his hand. (He didn't find what he was looking for.) So now I will have two. Maybe I'll keep the new one as a spare.

Broadcasting again

AT&T has been throttling my bandwidth for the past few months.  As soon as I hit 2 GB, my downloads slow from up to 5 or 6 Mbps to about 120 kbps.  However, my upload speed is unaffected, at around 1 Mbps, so I can still broadcast video.  Therefore, I have decided that I will refrain from broadcasting at the beginning of my billing cycle, until I reach the cap and get throttled.  Then I have no incentive to not use any more bandwidth, since it's still "unlimited".  My billing cycle ends on the 16th, so I will keep broadcasting until then, then take a break until I get throttled again.  

But just the normal, conservative use of an iPhone when I'm driving full-time uses up the bandwidth fairly quickly, even when I'm not broadcasting.  I know that some might think I'm a "data hog" who is slowing down the network, but I do most of my broadcasting late at night, when there is little network traffic, and the rest of the time my usage is just a trickle.  That trickle adds up when you're away from wifi all the time.  The reality is that the problem is not caused by "hogs", but by signing up more users than the capacity of the network.  See this article at Boing Boing.

iPhone carriers

Yesterday someone suggested that it would be better to use a different carrier for my iPhone.  The iPhone is now available on AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, and you can also use it unofficially on T-Mobile, but with some limitations, such as no 3G.  I use AT&T and here's why.

The main reason is price.  I am on a family plan, which means I pay only $10 for talk.  AT&T offers data plans starting at $15 for 200 MB, which means a minimum of $25/month, but I pay $30 for unlimited data, for a total of $40/month.  If I were to ever leave AT&T I would lose that plan, which I need for broadcasting from my taxi.  Verizon no longer offers unlimited data.  Sprint does, but I would end up paying more.

A lot of people think that Verizon has the best network.  This is a myth.  It's probably true that they're the best for voice calls.  I have always had problems on AT&T, with lots of dropped calls and such, although it has improved greatly over the past couple of years.  However, I don't use my iPhone that much for voice calls.  It's the 3G cellular data network that's important to me for broadcasting video and such, and AT&T is supposed to be significantly faster.  Verizon and Sprint have 4G, but that does me no good on an iPhone.  I used to have problems with data, but recently it seems like I hardly ever have problems broadcasting video and such, especially on Ustream.  I think AT&T has been working hard to upgrade their network, especially since millions of people are about to get new iPhones.

And the network improvements on the new iPhone 4S only apply on AT&T's network, with potential download speeds increased from 7.2 to 14.4 MBPS only on AT&T.  (Real speeds are always a lot less than potential, and it remains to be seen if I'll actually get faster downloads on my new phone.)  I suspect that next year we'll see the iPhone 4G, but until then AT&T will have faster 3G.  Plus, only AT&T lets me talk while using data at the same time.

Anyway, now I'm locked into another 2-year contract, so I'm stuck with AT&T!

iPhone 4S

I have been broadcasting live video using my iPhone 4. I've been waiting to see if the new iPhone would be worth upgrading to. Now that the iPhone 4S has been released, I can tell you that there have been specific improvements to the camera and video processing:

• 8 megapixels, up from 5
• Wider aperture
• Additional lens (5 instead of 4)
• Faster shutter
• Face detection
• Faster processor
• 1080p HD video
• Video stabilization
• Temporal noise reduction

Hopefully some of those will result in better video broadcasts, with better color, sharper images, less graininess at night, less shakiness and less problems. The download speed is potentially doubled, depending on the network, but the upload speed is unchanged, so that will be of little help.

Another benefit is the integrated Siri voice assistant, which will apparently allow me to do more hands-free while driving, such as getting addresses and directions, sending texts, etc. I'll have to wait to see it in action.

Will it be worth $200 plus $55 tax to upgrade?  I guess I'll find out on Friday, because I've already ordered one!  My wife should be grateful to get my iPhone 4.

It's a shame that Steve Jobs had to pass the day after it came out. This is his legacy.

Podcasts

When I'm not broadcasting video, I like listening to podcasts.

Years ago, I listened to a lot of talk radio, mostly either AM or NPR.  The problem with that was that the shows I like where not always on when I was able to listen.  Sometimes all there was to hear was something boring.  Even if there was something good, I would have to turn it off whenever I picked up a fare.  It seemed like whenever there was not a fare, the AM station I was listening to had commercials, which would end as soon as I found another fare.  I could only hear part of the conversation.

Then I got my first iPod.  I found the podcasts on iTunes and started to listen to them instead of the radio.  Many of them were some of the same radio shows I had been listening to, only delayed, and some were not available over the air.  I was able to pause them whenever I needed to talk to passengers and continue right where I left off.  Since I had to use an earphone, I could play them even when I had passengers, if they were not interested in talking to me.  Although most did not include the commercials or station breaks, I could easily fast-forward those which did, and rewind if I missed something.

A couple of years ago I got an iPhone 3GS, and used it for listening to podcasts.  Now I have an iPhone 4, and soon will likely get an iPhone 5.  I now have a fancy Bluetooth earpiece which allows me to listen to my podcasts wirelessly.  I've been syncing with iTunes for years, but more recently I've been using the Podcaster app, which updates my subscriptions through wifi or 3G, without needing to plug into the computer every day and manage my podcasts manually.  When the new version of iOS comes out in a few weeks, I might use the new iCloud service, instead.

I listen to a lot of science podcasts, like This Week in Science, the Naked Scientists, Nature, Dr. Kiki's Science Hour, NPR's Science Friday, Astronomy Cast, etc.  I've always been a big science fan, and probably should have been a scientist.  I also listen to some podcasts on skepticism, like Skeptoid, SGU and Skepticality, and various iPhone and other technology podcasts.  I also listen to NPR shows, as I said before, and try out podcats on various topics like comedy, sci-fi, politics, history, learning Spanish, etc.

Are you into podcasts?  If so, which ones do you listen to?