Editing Mobile Device Needs and Wants

I'm broke at the moment, and despite my deep desire not to give more money to Steve Jobs, I do have a bunch of things I'd like from a phone. Use case scenarios, whatever. Basically, I wanted to collect together the various stuff I'd like my mobile device to do. Then perhaps one of my mobile-addicted nerd friends can send me an e-mail telling me which device would best fit me and my wallet. * todo management ** Things.app is awesome on the Mac - the [http://culturedcode.com/things/iphone/ Touch version] seems like a good fit * SSH ** what do you know: I love to log into machines remotely. Logging into a SSH session with [http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/ screen], writing some code in vim, compiling and launching straight from a phone? Nice. * server management ** [http://www.elasticpod.com/ ElasticPod] for the iPhone does management of Amazon EC2 clusters. Spiffy. * Twitter ** on J2ME, I'm using jibjib. What I like about it is that it's really damn easy to ''post'' and reply. I've set the app up so I can launch it and it goes straight into post mode. I'm not addicted to reading Twitter when I'm not at my desk, but I like simple posting. I can't be doing with loading up a complex browser and so on ** on iPhone/Touch, [http://theappleblog.com/2008/12/03/12-twitter-apps-for-the-iphone/ TheAppleBlog says Tweetie is best], and [http://daringfireball.net/2008/04/twitter_web_clients_for_the_iphone John Gruber has weighed in]. Bla bla, lots of choice here. * notetaking ** I haven't found a use for [http://al3x.net/2009/01/31/against-everything-buckets.html Everything Buckets]. Wikis are good because they are on the Web, damnit. I haven't found an offline wiki I don't hate (I've tried most of them). What I really want is some way to basically take my thoughts, back 'em up and have see structure where it isn't there. I want a [http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Pensieve pensieve] but with unique resource indicators on all the bits inside. ** on palm pilot, I use CardTXT. Why? Because it's not a note-taking app but a text editor. I don't do notetaking apps, I do text editors. ** on my Sony-Ericsson phone (J2ME), I use the built-in notes list. It's basically a holding pen: once whatever is in there is done with, I delete it; if the note is still in there when I get back to my computer and am in a sober, responsible mood, I transfer them by hand. Yes, retyping. Syncing is for squares. ** if I were to use an iPhone, I'd probably use Evernote * scripting language ** Why would you need a scripting language on a mobile device? Simple. Imagine you've got to send fifty text messages out with a unique ID number in each one. Fire up a Ruby or Python shell, write the logic as a function, shove in all the data into an array from the phone (presuming there's an API - in Ruby, I'd think something like <code>phone.contacts.collect {|i| [Count.up, normalize_phone_number(i.phone_number), name]}.each {phone.send_txt(i[1], construct_message(i[2], i[3])}</code>. We do this kind of thing on the desktop - basically munge data using shells and scripting languages. It makes hackers very productive. They shouldn't need to be sitting at a 2.8GHz Linux machine or MacBook to be able to hack. There's a computer in their pocket. Let us use it as a computer rather than an appliance. ** I think in Ruby. Well, actually I think in English and then translate that into predicate logic and/or Ruby. It'd be nice if I could try things out in an irb shell, python shell or whatever. [http://blog.headius.com/2007/11/jruby-on-me-devices.html JRubME = JRuby on JavaME devices] - sounds cool. ** The in-built Python on the Nokia platform seems pretty damn nice. You get an interpreter and everything.