The Milk Bottle Elephant

I have been using one of the spare iPod Touches which is not currently involved in our HEAT 3 project.

I really like using it. I didn’t go the whole hog to synchronise the iPT with my entire life when I first started using one at the beginning of the project, back in October, but having seen my husband’s glee at using his iPhone since Christmas, I went mad and just hit that sync button. I have been a .mac subscriber since the time it used to be free iTools back in 2000 (yes, I should I know better but it’s a habit I can’t kick and the autorenew is so cunning), so over the air syncing of calendar and mail is seemless, painless and rather wonderful.

However, I need a task list manager. I love a good list and like ticking things off a list even more, so naturally I need something on the iPT that can satisfy this need. The task list on iCal has never done it for me, and it doesn’t show up on the touch anyway.  I need something in the cloud that will follow me round when I  need it.

I have been trying to use Remember the Milk this week, but it’s only Wednesday and I’m struggling. I just don’t grok it, maybe it’s the interface, may it’s because I am too cheap (or too skint after paying for the .mac account) to pay for the iphone version, but it’s just not doing it for me. I set up the twitter syncing, and I can send tasks by twitter, but can’t get the daily download working and it’s annoying me.

Perhaps I work across too many systems? Gmail and iCal at home, outlook email and calendar at work. Perhaps I just don’t want to tag my lists. Perhaps my list writing ability has deserted me. If anyone else is using RTM successfully, will you let me know why it works for you?

Yes, I admit it, the iPod touch has grown on me. In fact, as colleagues, so generously pointed out yesterday, I can’t actually put it down. What changed from my last post? Getting my work email, contacts and calendar on the mail client. Now my problem is mainly stopping looking at the wondrous friendly red ‘you’ve got mail’ icon and working night and day.

you've got mail

Yes, typing is still a nightmare, and the auto-correct spelling drives me potty, but I am getting better and have come to realise it is a tool good for reading and not input (as a wise man once said). Watching anything on iPlayer is just a lovely experience and twitter is my lifeline on it . I still prefer a simple webclip of hahlo over twitterific – there was something about the interface for twitterific that I couldn’t get my head round, couldn’t find how to do direct messages, for example, or see all the tweets of one person, which I can do easily on hahlo. I also like the way hahlo will highlight and automatically twittersearch any hashtags in tweets – very useful for our smallworlds project.

We are hoping that the students we give the touches to will have the same love affair with them. Actually if they don’t I may want to question their sanity, but then what do I know about the youth of today?!