steven n fettig's Jitterin' Thoughts

    One thing that often disappoints me about my SprintPCS data account on my Treo 600 is that I rarely use it. Other than occasionally checking email or sending a picture of something to my wife, that part of my phone service is practically unused. I think I have finally found a use for the data services that will actually come in handy from time to time - Pocket Tunes.
    What originally caught my attention was that the blurb on Palm Gear mentioned that the player supported streaming music from Shoutcast based servers. This was news to my ears! One of my favorite online radio stations, Digitally Imported, uses Shoutcast servers for their MP3 streams. I thought, if this device will use the network interface on the Treo to connect to one of Digitally Imported's Shoutcast servers, then I just may be able to listen to streaming music on my Treo. While I never envisioned the Treo as a portable music player (I like my iPod thank you very much), this might be a very convenient use of not only one of the Treo's side abilities, but also the capabilities of SprintPCS' Vision network in my area. At the time of finding this little gem, I happened to be waiting at an airport in Copenhagen, Denmark for our flight home, but I planned on trying to see if it would work when we were back in the States.
    Well, now that we are back in the States and I had a few free moments to install Pocket Tunes (Deluxe) on the Treo, I plugged in the 24K MP3 Trance link. It works! Not only does it work (well) with the 24k stream, but it also works (fairly well) with the 56k music stream. I imagine if I were in a moving car, the 56k stream would be harder to keep consistent, but it seems that the 24k stream would hold up well (as long as network coverage was decent).
    The only con I can think of is that Pocket Tunes does not allow you to set a media buffer size larger than whatever the default is. That would help greatly with areas where network connection faded, but where the signal would eventually return (much like when on a phone call and the signal fades in and out). Although I am generally happier with Verizon Wireless' internet/data services - something which I am planning on writing about - it appears that Sprint is more than capable of keeping up with the challenge of plugging that kind of data stream over its wireless network. I'm not sure what the equivalent size data stream a voice call is, but 24kbps is pretty good for audio, especially if I don't need anything more than the equipment I already own, service I already pay for and a relatively well priced software program ($24.95).