So, Microsoft, seemingly out of the blue, released On{x} for, of all things, Android phones. Why not windows Phone? Who knows, probably a compatibility issue. It works out for me since I have and prefer android. But what is it? It’s basically a simple way to automate tasks on your phone via Java. The example recipies are things like “Text my spouse when I leave work”, or “show me the weather if it’s going to be cold”.
The possibilities here are pretty cool, even with just the recipes. For example, the sample recipes exactly is: “Text my wife "I’m on my way" when I leave work”. Each of the underlined sections are variables which can be modified. So, as an example, I could change “My Wife” to something else, my mother, my kids, Twitter’s SMS number. “I’m on my Way” could also become something else, “I’m coming home”, “I’m at work”, “I’m at the school”.
Leave is interchangeable with Arrive, and the destination can be changed as well, based on GPS coordinates (I’m assuming it works off of approximations).
So, if i picked up my kids after school, I could set this up to text my kids “I’m waiting outside the school”, when I arrive at the school to pick them up. If I want to be really clever, I could set it up to post to Twitter when I do various things.
Which is what I may attempt to do. I like things like Foursquare or GetGlue, but I kind of hate being spammish so I don’t use them as much as I could. What i like is tracking things for my own future use. I’ve been considering for a while, setting up a “dumping ground” Twitter for this sort of thing. Every Foursquare, Raptr, GetGlue, update. I’m sure there is a way to push Last.fm to Twitter. I’m sure there is a way to get this on{X} to tweet when I get to work, when I get home, every time i visit Wal-Mart or Target on a toy hunt, etc.
This sort of data no one really cares about, except myself.
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