Nickels, Dimes, and Two Dollar Bills

Today I spoke with an AT&T customer service representative about my bill.

On June 30th I had 24KB of data usage in a single instance.  The purpose of this usage was to test my data connection at the request of an AT&T customer service representative who was restoring data service to my phone.  Data had stopped working after I had requested that data be disabled on my parents' numbers.  I had not asked for them to do the same for my number.  I don't use "data" per se, but I do upload Multimedia Messages, which are charged to my Messaging plan along with SMS Text messages, but MMS rely on the phone's data capability.  My parents and wife don't use Multimedia Messaging, and had become annoyed at the few cents charged every time they hit the wrong button.  Getting rid of those charges was the motivation for blocking data on Elizabeth's and my parents accounts, especially since Shoshana had taken to mashing buttons on Elizabeth's phone.

When I got the bill, I called to see what the $2.00 charge was for.  I had previously been on a $0.01/KB pay-per-use plan, but since that plan was no longer available when they added it back, I was now being charged $2.00/MB.

I had begrudgingly come to accept the few cents that I was charged almost every month when I accidentally hit a button or menu item that launched a web service.  These buttons and menu items are, naturally, featured prominently everywhere on the phone.  It's difficult to avoid them. 

But this $2.00 for-the-first-byte thing crossed the line.  This, I would not tolerate.

I called.  I was told that my options were to block data on my phone or just pay the charges:  the plan I was on before was no longer available.  I told them that was ridiculous.  I had not asked them to change the plan.  They had changed the plan by mistake.  I would not pay for their mistake.  I would most certainly not pay month after month.

They told me it was impossible to enter the old code into their system.  I laughed and told them that they were wrong.  Perhaps they did not have the right permissions to do it, but it could be done.

I asked for a supervisor.  They gave me a higher-ranking customer service agent who told me that they would refund the $2.00 as a one-time courtesy, but in the future I would either need a data plan or pay the charges.

I asked for a real supervisor.  They told me they would probably say the same thing, but ok.  I waited on hold for a while.  The supervisor came on and told me that she could have a case written, and they would get back to me.  She warned that if I did that, she couldn't have the $2.00 charge removed as a courtesy.  I told her that it didn't scare me.  She also warned me that I couln't appeal whatever they decided.  I laughed and said I didn't believe her, but just to put it through.

They said I would hear from them by the afternoon of July 30th.

A Change in my Twitter/Facebook/Posterous Usage

Originally, I started using Twitter so I could get the status updates of the few friends of mine with accounts.  Not long after, I set it up so that my Facebook status imported from Twitter, and I have used that mechanism, with a few rare exceptions, to update my status.
I set up an account with TwitPic and used it to occasionally post links to photos uploaded from my phone.  Back then, I didn't have a messaging plan (because I think that text messages are grossly overpriced--they are!), so I would pay 30 cents for each uploaded photo.  I considered it worth the money with Multimedia Messaging, and as long as I sent fewer than 17 a month, it cost less than the lowest plan. 

Eventually, I started uploading more and subscribing to others' tweets via SMS, and I sprung for the five dollar per month plan for 200 messages (text and multimedia combined).  I have other things sending me text and multimedia messages, like Google Voice voicemail "transcriptions", certain Facebook events, and certain e-mail filters from Gmail.

Anyway, most people who actually look at (and certainly most people who comment on) my uploaded phone pictures have always been doing so through Facebook.  When I switched from TwitPic to Posterous for phone uploads, I was able to have the actual pictures (and videos) themselves imported directly into Facebook, whereas with TwitPic, people had to click on the link the external site to view the pictures. 

It occurs to me that this feature obviates the need for me to send my Posterous posts to Twitter.  The exception would be someone with a smartphone who sees the pictures in (or from) their Twitter client, and wouldn't necessarily catch them on Facebook. 

It also would have the effect of de-cluttering my Twitter feed for SMS-only followers.  Someone (like me) with a non-smart phone isn't able (or rather willing) to open links in Twitter posts, because I don't have a data plan.  Posts with hyperlinks are mostly useless, unless I manually transcribe the links into my computer's browser.  If I'm going to be at a computer to enjoy the posts, I might as well just subscribe via RSS, and get them through Google Reader.

Currently, I don't subscribe via mobile to my Twitter followers who tweet a lot, because I'm still limited to 200 messages a month.  I also don't want my phone going off five times an hour.  It occurs to me that if I eliminate the Posterous auto-posts from my Twitter feed, and only--or mainly at least--send text through Twitter, others in similar situations as me will be more likely to follow me.

The down side is that I've been looking forward to Twitter's upcoming "Annotations" feature.  Basically, Twitter is going to let you attach metadata to your tweets if you have a rich client.  They already allow location information to be added, but soon it will be opened up to anything you can think of, which will almost certainly include embedding thumbnail pictures and blog post snippets into tweets.  My guess is that Posterous will write support for this sort of thing into their auto-post feature.

If I quit sending pictures through Twitter, I suppose I can always start sending them again when the Annotations feature arrives and matures.

Right now, each picture I post to Posterous gets posted to Facebook three times: once via Twitter in my status message, once as a picture with a title in the "Posterous Photos" album, and once as a story to my wall, which includes the text of the body of the post.  Eliminating the Twitter post reduces the number of posts to two.  I could actually eliminate the photo method as well, but I like having the pictures inside of Facebook where they can be tagged and browsed and so forth. 

I think what I'll do is keep the Twitter integration intact, but normally just post to the other services.  If I want a post to go to Twitter, I can send it to post@posterous.com or twitter@posterous.com in addition to my new default facebook+picasa+youtube@posterous.com (which I will need to update if/when I add more services).  That way, I still have the option of posting to Twitter in extraordinary circumstances, but it won't happen very frequently.

If you want to subscribe to my phone posts, please do so using the feed at my Posterous site.

Posterous Posting from my Phone

I just finished describing a script I created in order to have a thumbnail image in my Blogger sidebar widget whenever I send a post to Posterous from my phone.  If you are inclined (and have any idea what I'm talking about) please head over there and check it out.

Okay, über-nerd content is over!  Sorry to scare you like that.  From here on out, normal levels of nerdiness only.

I like to post pictures from my phone to the Internet.  To accomplish this, I have been using TwitPic, which takes the MMS message, posts the picture on the web, and then takes the subject and posts that on Twitter along with a link to the picture page.

It's a well-oiled machine, and it works, but it is not ideal.  For one thing, TwitPic has yet to implement OAuth with Twitter, which means that they require you give them your Twitter password in order to use the service.  This fact alone had me looking for alternatives, and I had been considering switching to img.ly. 

Recently, a friend of mine I follow on Twitter started posting videos using TwitVid, and I thought that was pretty cool, so I decided to check it out.  They use OAuth (at least, it's available--they also let you just give them your password), so that was nice.  But I decided to take a look around at other similar services to see what they had to offer.  In my experiment with TwitVid, the video I uploaded never made it to Twitter because it was still processing the video several hours later.  I canceled the account.

In looking around, I found that Posterous came highly recommended for phone content, and so I did some looking.  Normally, I wouldn't have thought of Posterous as the right tool for the job, most of what I see on Posterous is barrages of information that people share, mostly re-posts of others' material with commentary (similar to Google Reader, but much more like Tumblr).  However, I had seen a good example of original content on Posterous, and I liked the format.

So, after looking into Posterous' features, I created an account and started using it.  Here's what I like about Posterous.

• It supports OAuth, so I don't ever have give them your passwords for other services.
• I can post by e-mail, or, more specific to my case, MMS from my phone.
• Like TwitPic, it will post pictures to Twitter.  Like TwitVid, it will post video to Twitter.  Unlike both those services, it will post pretty much anything to pretty much anywhere and everywhere I choose.
• Whereas before, people on Facebook had to click on the TwitPic link on my imported status update to see the picture, now, the actual picture/video is posted to Facebook (and YouTube, in the case of video).
• It supports pretty much anything you throw at it: text, images, video, audio.  It will store, organize, publish, and push my content out to other services in the way that I specify.
• It supports a bunch of other services that I'm not using yet, but would be simple to set up if I started using them.
• If I want, I can restrict a post to show up on only the services I specify for that particular message--on the spot, over MMS.

I like it, and I would recommend it.

iPhone

This post is on my other (more nerd-centric) blog, but I thought I might call attention to it here.

I Want One

Just announced, the new convergence über-device: iPhone.