Life’s too short for you to spend any more time on this.  Buy the Jabra Extreme Bluetooth Headset from Amazon here http://amzn.to/fWumip. When it arrives, unpack it, turn on your Android phone’s Bluetooth, turn on the Jabra Extreme (slider on the side). Wait for them to pair. Job done! Media though the headset.

If you have more time, read on….

I couldn’t play media (podcasts or music) on my Android phone through either of my two Bluetooth headsets. I had been able to do this with my Windows Mobile phones using an app called ‘BT Audio’.  I wanted to make this work so I can listen to podcasts while carrying my baby without her pulling on my headphone wires and eating my earbuds.

I spent way too long looking into this online and found that stereo headsets can do this, but the sort of headset you use in your car (the type that fits on one ear) don’t usually do this on Android.  What you need as an A2DP enabled headset, but these are usually the stereo ones.  It’s very hard to find out online whether any particular headset is A2DP enabled.  I even bought a new cheap Bluetooth headset in case my existing ones we’re too old, but the new one didn’t work either.

I saw a couple of people online had had success with the Jabra Extreme, so decided to buy it from Amazon; it’s worth the extra money!

As you can see from the first paragraph, it’s very easy to set up; you don’t even have to charge it first. It looks good, appears well made, comes in lovely packaging, and has good accessories; a selection of ear hooks, mains charger, in-car USB socket, and a brilliant hinged USB to Micro USB adapter.

The sound quality is good, and so is the range.  You can pair it with eight devices, and have any two connected at the same time (ie work and home phone).  It has two microphones so it can cancel out background noise so people can hear you better.

Just goes to show, if you spend a little more, you get a lot more value.  Go on, treat yourself!  Jabra Extreme Bluetooth Headset.

This is another post made on my Android phone while feeding baby.

I was having a problem where events I add on my Android phone would sync to Google, but events added on Google Calendar would not sync to my phone.  I searched Google Help, and a wider internet search on Google, but there were pages and pages of people having the opposite problem; their phone would get new events input on the web, but new events on the phone weren’t syncing.  Synchronizing is a major part of the Google-Android system, but there seemed to be nothing from Google about these problems.

Anyway, I found the answer to my problem.  On the Android phone, go to the Home Screen, Menu, Settings, Applications, Manage Applications, Calendar Storage. Then select Clear Cache.

If you found this useful. Please leave a comment or link to this site from your site.  Thanks.

This is Tesco’s response to the email I sent yesterday about their Unlimited tarrif being subject to a limit, as explain in the post below this one. 

Tesco replied:

I am sorry to hear that you feel our advertising for the unlimited tariff is misleading.

Unfortunately, as with every network, there is a fair usage policy on the tariff, which has been set at £500.

I have replied to that:

Regardless of what other networks do and say, the fact is that you state that the tariff includes “Unlimited calls, texts and browsing” but it is limited; it’s limited to £500.  To say it is unlimited is not true.

I’ll post what they say next.

The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) recently said that telecoms companies can call their plans ‘unlimited’ even though they’re limited by the companies’ “fair use” policies.  This just does not make sense.

If the regulators can’t protect the consumer against such an obviously misleading practice, we can’t trust them to protect us against other bad practices.  It’s quite simple, you just ban the use of ‘unlimited’ if there are any limits at all on the tarrif.  If they don’t take action on this, the Regulators are either in the pockets of the telecoms companies or they are impotent and need reform; there’s no other explanation.

We as consumers need some sort of campaign for fair and honest treatment from these companies.  If you have any suggestions, please let me know in the comments.

That’s odd.  I just got an unsolicited SMS from “TfL 60835″ saying “To permanently stop receiving Travel Alerts please text ‘Unsubscribe’ to 60835 by 15/01/09″.

I don’t even live in London, and have never subscribed to anything at Transport for London (www.tfl.gov.uk).  They don’t have my permission to send me texts, and I suspect this a breach of the Data Protection Act, or maybe the the EU laws regarding elecronic communications (I can’t remember its name at the moment).  Could this me another case of the Government losing or misusing our information?

If you’ve also received such a text, please leave a comment, even if it’s just to say ‘me too’.  If you figure out why this is happening, please also leave a comment.  Thanks.

I just noticed that visitors to this website increased sharply over the last few weeks.  Looking into it further, it seems that 60% of the people who visited the site had searched for something about T-Mobile’s ‘Fair Use Policy’ (see earlier posts).

My guess is that most (if not all) of those people had had letters about so-called ‘excessive use’ of their T-Mobile broadband. 

T-Mobile still has “Browse as much as you want and never worry about cost with our unlimited price plans” on its website.  It is not unlimited!  There is a maximum speed, and if you download too much they slow the speed down so much that surfing is impracticable, and it’s slowed for the rest of the contract term.  How is that ‘unlimited’?

No other (major) mobile broadband provider caps the speed if you exceed the usage limit, but they do charge for any data you use in excess of the limit:

Vodafone Mobile Broadband charges £15 per GB if you exceed their limit.

3 Mobile Broadband charges £100 per GB thereafter if you exceed their limit.

O2 Mobile Broadband charges £200 per GB if you exceed their limit!  £200 per GB!!!!

If you feel that these caps and charges are unfair and/or extortionate, please leave a comment (even if it’s just “Me too”).

Still want to buy mobile broadband?  If so, check the ads to the right, and send a few pence my way (at no cost to you).  Thanks.

Well, I guess that ends any hope of a mobile telecoms company sponsoring my motor racing career.  Come to think of it, I’m looking for work at the moment too, so I guess these are four companies I won’t have to contact.

Argh!!!  I want to subscribe to all the Darwin programmes as podcasts, not just one of them.  Why do you insist on trying to force me to use the stupid iPlayer?  I don’t want to listen at my computer, I want to listen when it suits me, on whatever device I choose.

iPlayer looks nice, but it doesn’t function in a 2.0 way.  Maybe I’ll call you Broadcaster 1.1 (instead of 1.0) because you are trying, but iPlayer is just like a TV on a PC; it doesn’t give people the on-demand watch-anywhere experience that people now want.  We want to download when it’s convenient, and watch when it’s convenient; on our PCs or mobile devices (without using proprietry software), whether or not we have access to the internet at the time, on the train, in the car; whenever, wherever, however.  Only when we can do that will you be Broadcaster 2.0.  Come on!  It’s not the future, it’s now!

Here’s an update on the T-Mobile mobile broadband (on my mobile phone) saga.  I received a nice email as a result of my letter to their customer services.  It informed me that my speed would not be reduced in December because my usage in November did not break their 1GB limit.  I don’t understand that, because (apart from the last few days of November) my download habits were the same in November as they were in October, and in October I used 4.27GB!

They did clarify that if I exceed the 1GB limit in the future, the speed would be reduced from the advertised ‘up to’ 1.8mbps to 64kbps (a 96% reduction in speed) for two weeks.  If I went over the limit again after that, it would be a permanent reduction.

So, is the ‘Fair Use’ policy fair?  No!  There is no way to monitor your data usage on the phone, and there’s no way to see it on their ‘My T-Mobile’ online service.  So, how are you supposed to know whether you’re getting close?

Since this all started, a voluntary code of conduct for ISPs has been introduced, part of which states that an ISP will make ‘timely’ contact with a customer to warn him or her that he/she is approaching their limit.  I don’t know whether T-Mobile has signed up, so Google if you want to find out.

What would be fairer is to say that (with adequate warnings) if someone exceeds the ‘fair use’ limit, then any data in excess of that limit would have the speed reduced.  In other words, 1.8mbps for the first 1GB of data, and 64kpbs thereafter.  Otherwise we’d be paying for 1.8mbps each month, but getting only 4% of that speed.

Of course, all ISPs should be banned, yes banned, from advertising ‘Unlimited’ broadband when there are limits as imposed by a ‘fair use’ policy.  If the normal speed is limited (ie 1.8mbps), and the amount of data is limited (to 1GB), then I ask; exactly what part of the service is ‘unlimited’?

Customer services told me that they can’t deal the matter further, and suggested I write to their customer services department in Doxford.  Sent the letter yesterday.  Will let you know the result.

What she did say on the phone is that the 64kbps speed will last two weeks, but if I subsequently exceed the data allowance then they’ll make it permanent.  I’ve asked for confirmation or clarification of the policy as I can’t find it on their site.

My phone, an MDA Vario III (HTC TyTN II) uses WiFi or HSDPA mobile broadband.  If I leave WiFi on, when I leave the house I get an annoying popup every time the phone finds a WiFi connection asking if I want to connect.  So, I’ve been using the mobile broadband exclusively.

What was putting me way over the data allowance was downloading audio and video podcasts overnight.  I use the excellent Beyondpod, a “free, open source, RSS feed reader and podcast manager (podcatcher) for Microsoft Smartphone and Pocket PC. “ 

I’ve set BeyondPod to download new podcasts at 4am daily.  What I didn’t know (and there was no way to find out) is that the podcasts used 4.27GB in October.  The T-Mobile ‘fair use’ amount is 1GB.  1GB = approx eight one-hour audio podcasts or less than three video podcasts a week.  I think it was October that I found the video podcasts, and BeyondPod will have downloaded some older podcasts too.  In any case, three hours worth of video podcasts isn’t that much.  That’s without any surfing too.

The day after my call to T-Mobile about their ‘fair use’ letter, BeyondPod released a new beta version.  One of the features of this new version is an setting that prevents the downloads if the only data connection is mobile broadband.  In other words, it only downloads if I’m connected to my home broadband via WiFi.  I also found a button on the keypad that toggles between WiFi and mobile broadband, so all I have to do is remember to toggle when Ieave or return to the house.  Even if I forget, BeyondPod won’t download the podcasts if the phone is set to mobile broadband.

In summary, I’ve worked out a way of reducing my mobile broadband usage considerably.  I’ve told T-Mobile about this in my letter.  Now I’m waiting to see whether they’re going to take a ‘fair’ view of my situation.

It’s been a difficult couple of weeks, but I hope that’s behind me as I look forward to the new week ahead.  More on that another time.

This is just an unplanned post about some ‘discussions’ I’m having with T-Mobile about their ‘fair use’ policy on their mobile broadband.  This isn’t the broadband USB dongle that I plug into my laptop, it’s the surfing I do on my mobile phone.

They’ve written to me to explain that in October (2008) I exceeded the amount of data that they think is a ‘fair use’ of their service.  The letter explained that if I continue to exceed that amount in November then they would cap the speed to 64kbps (just over dial-up speed).  The problem is that the letter arrived on the 24^th of November, by which time I had probably already exceeded their fair use allowance again.  Basically, I feel like I’ve been stitched up.

I’ve got over a year to run on the contract too, so I’ll be paying the full amount for a ‘broadband speed’ service, but will have little more than dial-up speeds.  Surfing at those speeds nowadays is not practicable.

Okay, so I exceeded the fair use amount in the contract (there are other issues too, but I won’t complicate things at this stage).  The thing is, there’s no way to monitor how much data I’m actually using.  The first I know about it is the letter I receive, and by then it’s too late to do anything about it.

I’ve had a lengthy phone call with them tonight, and will be faxing them a letter tomorrow to try to resolve the situation.  This is T-Mobile’s opportunity to show whether they are ‘treating customers fairly’.