Women in Technology

Article:		Build an iTunes Remote Control
Subject:		Why this hack?
Date:		2005-03-02 06:26:13
From:		ptwobrussell
Response to: Why this hack?
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!

Showing messages 1 through 1 of 1.

• 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 ;-)