Women in Technology

Article:		Build an iTunes Remote Control
Subject:		Why this hack?
Date:		2005-03-01 23:23:20
From:		ralphscheuer
Nothing against a nice hack now and then, but with this solution, you have to consider that a cell-phone based internet connection also costs money. Moreover, you don't need this considering the fact that most modern phones have bluetooth and Salling Clicker or Romeo do provide remote control functionality via Bluetooth - which takes almost no effort, has a bigger range than most standard remote controls and doesn't cost anything to operate it.

Showing messages 1 through 3 of 3.

• Why this hack?
  2005-03-02 06:26:13  Matthew Russell | [View]
  
  
  You're right about there being a slew of bluetooth devices out there. Some of them cost a few meals; some of them are free; most of them are pretty nice; all of them are pragmatic. This hack was written in the spirit of empowering/educating others, having some some fun, and "getting inside" the design of something like this.
  
  I'm very much a pragmatist myself, but often find myself trying to avoid it because it can usually be more fun and interesting to homebrew something.
  
  I know that at least for me, bluetooth devices often seem to have a little less range than that 30 feet that's advertised, and the concepts from this piece can be taken in a lot of other directions.
  
  Just a fun example of that: you might be out on a date and use your cell phone on the way back home to turn on/dim the lights with some of that cool light controlling hardware that's becoming affordable these days, start up some music with iTunes, etc.
  
  It's all fun!
• Why this hack?
  2005-03-02 12:58:56  ralphscheuer [View]
  
  
  Please don't be discouraged by my comment - I highly appreciate the articles and tutorials at O'Reilly but in this case, after considering all the disadvantages (cost of the cell phone connection, security implications, latency, etc.), I found the choice of the subject for this hack a bit unfortunate because I wouldn't want to solve this particular problem in such a way.
  
  In the spirit of hacking, an even more geeky solution might be building a midlet for the remote control interface and transmitting XML data to the script ;-)
  
  Again, please don't take offence in my comment, "because you can" is still a good enough reason for geeky stuff ;-)

• RE: Why this hack?
  2005-03-02 01:12:32  Derrick Story | [View]
  
  
  I think you're missing the spirit of this thing. In the editor's note I said that this is an Apache tutorial disguised as an iTunes hack. Plus the range of this remote exceeds anything you could do with Bluetooth. Plus, it's a fun way to keep your web serving chops in shape.