Smarterware

Todo.txt Touch Now in the Android Market

My new Android app Todo.txt Touch is now available in the Android Market. Search for "Todo.txt" in the Market, or scan the QR code below on your Android device to get it. The latest release 14 includes a gaggle of bugfixes, a couple of new features, and our gorgeous new project icon that looks great on any screen resolution courtesy of John Rowley.

You saw the full screenshot tour last week. The biggest feature addition in this release is standard Android-style task search: tap your device's search button to try that out. The prettiest bugfix is our new login splash screen, shown here, which appears when you initially launch the app or log out of Dropbox.

Todo.txt Touch will always be free to download on the web, but it costs $2.00 USD in the Android Market. Your two bucks buys you two things:

1. The convenience of auto-updates to the app via the Market;
2. Good karma and the satisfaction of knowing you've supported the whole Todo.txt project.

Don't underestimate #1. That convenience will be worth it, I promise. There are tons of interesting ideas and features we hope to build into this app, and updates will come frequently. You don't want to have to do it manually.

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Todo.txt Touch for Android Now Available to Test

My first Android app, Todo.txt Touch, manages your todo.txt file stored at Dropbox—and it's now available for beta-testing. Before it hits the Android Market, there are some issues to be ironed out, but in the meantime, you can download an early apk to give it a try on your Android handset.

Todo.txt Touch is a companion app to Todo.txt CLI, a command line task manager that adds, updates, prioritizes and completes items on your todo.txt list in the terminal. It supports task priority, projects, contexts, and an archive of completed items. Once you store your todo.txt file at Dropbox, you can update it at your desk in the terminal, on your Android device using this app, or using any text editor anywhere and all the changes sync to your devices automatically. Eventually we hope to support other cloud sources, like perhaps Simplenote.

Here are some screenshots of Todo.txt Touch in its current state in action. Click any image to enlarge it.

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WhereDoYouGo Heatmaps Foursquare Check-ins

At the end of the year, it's always fun to look back at the places you've gone and things you've done in the past 12 months, and if you log your comings and goings with apps like Foursquare or Twitter, doing that year in review is even easier. Today I stumbled on Where Do You Go, a Google Maps mashup that generates a heat map of your Foursquare check-ins, and lets you take a snapshot of a city and publish it. Here's my NYC heat map.

To use Where Do You go, you've got to log in with your Google Account and authorize it to index your Foursquare check-ins, which gave me pause, since I keep my Foursquare history private. But, the app doesn't publish check-in details, just your past whereabouts in aggregate. You can delete all your data from the app if you want to just try it and bail. If you keep your account, the map updates with each new check-in, but only displays check-ins which are more than 24 hours old for privacy reasons. It's fun to see what areas of different cities you favor most--apparently I rarely travel above 34th street in Manhattan--and it can give you even more motivation to visit areas you normally don't, even in your home city. Someday I hope to get a similar heatmap view in ThinkUp for posts from Twitter and Facebook, too.

Now Available: The Complete Android Guide

My fellow Lifehacker Kevin Purdy has just published The Complete Android Guide, a soup-to-nuts how-to book on making the most of that Android-powered computer in your pocket. The book is available to browse freely online, as a $9 PDF or ePub file, and in print for $20. (This week only, if you follow @completeandroid on Twitter and send them a direct message, you'll get a 20% discount code.)

Congratulations to Kevin for publishing his first book, and to our publisher 3ones for continuing this iterative, collaborative tech book publishing model that we started with The Complete Guide to Google Wave.

I look forward to watching this book evolve as Android does, and also, asking Kevin all my hardest Android questions.

The Complete Android Guide

Android Tip: Swipe Up to Extend the Keyboard

Commenter seguetonowhere points out a useful Android keyboard feature I missed in my original Froyo rundown: if you swipe your finger over the top of the Android 2.2 default keyboard, it will extend two more rows out and show you keys for common punctuation and numbers. Click on the thumbnail to see the expanded keyboard.

This is a faster way to punctuate and/or add numbers than tapping the ?123 key or tap-and-holding the period key. However, as seguetonowhere points out, parentheses aren't included on the two extra rows of keys in the extension.

It took me a few tries to get the swiping motion just right, and this doesn't work with my favorite alternative swipey keyboard ShapeWriter/Swype/SlideIT. But definitely a must-know for Froyo users who use the default keyboard.

Other keyboard shortcuts: You can swipe to start voice input, configure multiple languages and swipe across the Spacebar to switch between them, tap and hold the dot and .com keys to reveal more choices (like .org, .net, .tv), and tap and hold the : -) key to choose from other emoticons, too.

Thanks, seguetonowhere!