I’ve posted in the past on how much I love Remember The Milk for managing my tasks. My first real use of Twitter was when I found out I could use it to update RTM from my mobile phone. However the twitter interface is a little cumbersome. All updates have to be prefixed with “d rtm today” or “tomorrow” or “wednesday”. I had set up text shortcuts but even that required a bunch of clicks through menus. Then it hit me; I’m a .net developer, my crappy phone runs Windows Mobile, why not try out writing mobile apps?

Enter quickrtm, my first attempt at mobile apps. The idea behind quickrtm is to make it as simple as possible to jot down a quick ToDo on my phone. Once the app is installed, click it to launch, enter your todo item and press the “Send” soft key. There’s an optional menu to select a day other than “Today”. You can also press the other soft key to get a list of your current todo items. The app uses the phone’s text messaging so there’s no need for a data plan. Simply follow the instructions on the Remember The Milk site to link it to your Twitter account.

Head over to the quickrtm project page, hosted on Google Code, to check it out.

The Rationale

Two years ago my wife and I decided to give up our DirecTV subscription. The reason was simple, we didn’t watch enough television to justify the eighty dollars a month it cost. There were 5 shows that we would DVR regularly and the rest of the time it was on as background noise. Our son was 3 years old at the time and he dominated the daytime television with the Disney channel, usually not paying much attention to it either. It made more sense to purchase the 5 shows on iTunes and cancel the monthly subscription all together.

DirecTV – $80 a month x 12 months = $960 a year
iTunes – $30 a season x 5 shows = $150 a year

The savings allowed us to up our Netflix subscription from 3 to 5 discs and purchase new hardware. The project has evolved a lot over the past 2 years and I wanted to make a few blog posts to outline what we accomplished. To start thing off I’m going to dive right into the meat of the system and later post on all the software/hardware modifications I’ve made.

First Steps

The centerpiece of our setup couldn’t be more simple: a MacMini running FrontRow. The MacMini comes with everything you need, even a remote control, right in the box. Those with older televisions will need to get an s-video adapter as I had to. FrontRow is linked directly to iTunes, which is were you’ll be managing you television subscriptions. Rather than use a desktop computer to manage my iTunes library I decided to leave that task entirely to the MacMini, keeping all of my media managed by one computer. Screen sharing tools like VNC allow me to easily control the MacMini from my desktop while it sits by the television. Before the Mac is ready to be installed at the television, there’s a little bit of setup that must be done with a monitor, mouse and keyboard.

The most important thing is to set up remote access. Software like VNC will let you control the Mac from any computer in the house as if it were sitting on the desk in front of you. Directions on how to set up the Mac with VNC can be found here. Next, set up auto log in so it won’t ask you for a password every time you start up.

In the “System Preferences” panel click on “Accounts”. Then click on “Log in Options”. In the “Automatic log in” menu choose your user account.

Finally, if you choose to use wireless networking you’ll need to set that up too. While the Mini is set up on your desk you might as well sign up for the iTunes store and start subscribing.

Hooking the Mac up to the TV is pretty simple. Plug any adapters you need into the video out and then plug it into the television. Add some power and you’re in business. I tried using wireless networking at first but after I moved my movies to a network server, more about that in another post, I found that the wireless wouldn’t hold up through a two hour movie. Also, network activities like VNC are generally faster with a wired network. Once the Mac is hooked up to the TV all you have to do is press the “Menu” button on the remote control. FrontRow will launch and any Music, Movies or Television shows you purchase will be available in the appropriate sections.

I got an hp mini 1000 netbook recently and it quickly became my favorite computer. It’s the first computer I’ve owned that’s worthy of the title “lap top”. Whomever said netbooks aren’t powerful enough to be someone’s primary computer either didn’t try or plays too many video games. Not only is it more than capable of handling 90% of my computing tasks, but more than half of the other 10% can be done, with some inconvenience. I went from using my desktop computer several hours a day to several hours a week and the netbook is quickly become my primary computer for home use. Here are a few things I learned as I got settled into the world of netbooks:

Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) is the way to go.
If you’re thinking of getting a netbook with Windows XP, don’t. Save the money because XP is an inefficient, resource intensive operating system. Throw it on an underpowered netbook and you’ve entered a world of wait. I got the Mi edition of the hp mini because it came with Linux pre-installed. Though hp’s flavor of Linux is more compatible with the netbook’s hardware accessories, even it was a bit slow. I went to the Ubuntu Netbook Remix site, followed the directions, and was up and running with the new OS in less than an hour. There are two major advantages to UNR: First, it’s optimized for the netbook’s Atom processor. Second, the user interface is optimized for the netbook’s small screen. There were some problems, the built-in speakers did not work at first, and neither did the wired networking. Another hour of following the directions on the Ubuntu web site and my system is running perfectly.

Viewing the world at 1024×576.
It’s hard to believe that just 10 years ago 1024×768 was a huge screen. Less than a month ago I was worried that 1024×576 would be too small. Naturally, there are some things that require lots of screen space, but the overwhelming majority of what you do does not. UNR comes with a netbook friendly interface that I originally thought would get in the way. I first switched to the standard Gnome desktop, similar to Windows or OSX. That was a mistake. Working with a standard desktop layout on a trackpad and small screen taught me how inefficient it really is. Screen space is wasted on taskbars and menubars; app (Start) menus are a pain to navigate. It wasn’t until I gave the UNR desktop a chance that I realized how powerful it is. Task bar, system tray, app menu, and window title are all merged at the top of the screen. This allows apps to run with the most screen space possible while still giving you access to those features. Clicking the Ubuntu icon in the upper left corner hides all running applications and brings the launcher panel back to the front. Frankly, I’m beginning to think the UNR interface would work equally well on my desktop computer.

Get a big battery.
The one mistake I made was not upgrading the battery. The standard 3-cell battery the hp Mini 1000 comes with provides a solid 3 hours but not much more. That’s just not enough to make the system as portable as I’d like it to be. To exacerbate the problem, the power cord is not very long so I find myself tethered to outlets a lot. Though Linux is supposed to be less power efficient than Windows, I am consistently getting the 3 hours out of my battery as promised by hp.

Plenty of speed, and get the SSD.
True, the atom processor isn’t as powerful as a quad-core Pentium. True, it doesn’t have an nvidia GForce x99million special edition SLI with 6 terabytes of video ram. But as I said, it’s plenty capable of doing 90% of what you do, so long as 90% of what you do is not video games or making Pixar movies. The web browser is plenty fast, it plays mpeg rips of my DVDs flawlessly, I can even stream hulu. All in all, it’s not measurably slower than my desktop computer. One thing it has working in its favor is the 16 gigabyte solid state drive. The big advantage of the SSD is speed. Any task that requires a lot of disk activity will be greatly sped up. 16 gigs may not sound like a lot, but it’s plenty for Linux. I’ve installed a ton of apps, downloaded files, and I still haven’t filled half the drive. Throw in a stack of SD cards to replace DVDs and you’re set.

I recently inherited a Pantech Duo from the wife. She got it for the keyboard, and found windows mobile more frustrating than hacking out words on a number pad. I’m still on the fence between the iPhone and my dreams of Google Android, so I thought I’d give windows mobile a whack. Honestly, after two days of messing with this thing, I’d rather have the old Razr back. I hated my Razr with a passion but it was a hell of a lot more usable.

Frankly, I don’t know how Microsoft will be able to compete with the next gen of phones. Sure, bullet point for bullet point windows mobile does a hell of a lot more than iPhone and Android. However all of those bullet points are in the least convenient place possible. I can’t put shortcuts on the home screen. I can’t easily re-map the keys on the phone, more on that in a minute. I can’t even send it a sound file and set as a ring tone without hooking up to the computer. Sure, I can hack it to do all of these things but I shouldn’t have to.

At the very least, I should be able to attach the voice memo app to the voice memo button on the side of the phone. Of course that button was dedicated to the voice commands app with no option except to turn off the voice commands app. It took me nearly FOUR HOURS of google searching and registry searching to figure out a workaround. There is no reason why there is not an option to assign apps to the various buttons around a phone. In the hopes that I might save someone else FOUR HOURS in the future, here’s how I did it.

How To Assign The Voice Note Application To The Record Button On A Pantech Duo

• First, turn off hte voice command app by going to Start->Applications->Voice Command and setting the “Voice Button” option to “None”.
• Connect your Duo to a windows computer using the included USB cable
• Find yourself a windows mobile registry editor. CeRegEditor worked fine for me.
• Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Shell\Rai\:MSVOICE
• Find the Key “1″ that is set to “hotvoice.exe”
• Change “hotvoice.exe” to “poutlook.exe notes”
• Restart your phone by turning it off and back on again.

Now if you hold the record button on the side it will start the voice memo app. Hold record again and it will begin recording. Hold record a third time to stop. Not nearly as simple as the Razr’s – hold to record let go to stop – but it gets the job done. I have a feeling I’m going to be complaining a lot with this phone. It does have a qwerty keyboard though, that’s one good thing.