I finally got around to releasing my script I use for toting my private WordPress notebook around on my iPod. It’s essentially a PHP page that creates a static HTML page with a load of JavaScript to selectively hide and show posts as they’re searched for.

This is my method for getting the resulting file onto my iPod. I’ve included it here in case it’s useful to someone.

Things you will need

• A jailbroken iPod/iPhone
• MobileTerminal (from Cydia)
• wget (from Cydia)
• file:// Schema in Safari (from Cydia)

Setting up the alias

Open MobileTerminal and type the following:

iPod:~ mobile$ nano .bashrc

This will either open your existing .bashrc file or create one for you in Nano.

The following command will create an alias that makes a backup of your previously downloaded export page and then downloads the latest version.

alias wp='cd; mv export.html export~.html; wget http://www.domain.com/pathtopage --output-document=export.html'

Note that if your blog is behind a password you will need to add --http-user=name and --http-password=pass to the wget part of the alias.

Now close the file by typing CTRL-O.

To make sure your .bashrc file loads when you start up your iPod you now need to create a .profile. Type the following:

iPod:~ mobile$ nano .profile

Then add the following to that file:

source $HOME/.bashrc

Close the file by typing CTRL-O.

Now any time you want to download your WP data just load up MobileTerminal and type wp. To load your offline page in Safari you need go to the URL file:///var/mobile/export.html.

I love Remember the Milk. I’ve been using it for about two months now, both for work and personal lists. RTM have recently released an iPhone/iPod app to integrate with their web app. It syncs your data for use offline and unlike Appigo’s Todo (which also syncs with RTM) it supports tags. True you do need to have a pro RTM account but at $25 per year it won’t break the bank. It’s certainly less than buying the awful, slow and crash-prone OmniFocus for iPhone along with either the desktop version of OmniFocus or MobileMe account you’ll need to sync it to. Oh and did I mention that it will eat your data?

So finally the iPhone/iPod Touch App Store is finally official. Having a quick look through there are a few apps that interest me:

Outliner
I’m a sucker for a task list, it would be nice to have a proper app instead of using Notes. Outliner has indented lists, I think this is the one I’d go for.

Bejeweled 2
I love this game, I had it on my Palm, got it on the xBox 360, it only makes sense I’d want it on my iPod.

BookZ Text Reader
An ebook reader with bookmarks.

Just as soon as someone cracks the 2.0 Software Update so I can install these on my jailbroken iPod I’ll be a customer. I’m not prepared to lose my last.fm MobileScobbler or Wiki software yet.

This is a Ruby script for downloading the BBCs iPlayer content so you can watch it offline. It makes much more sense, afterall if I have a wifi conection it’s because I’m a) at home or b) at work. If I’m in either of these places I’m more likely to use the bigger screen attached to my computer. It’s great that PC users can download the content legally but until the same is true for mac, ipod or any other user I’ll continue to use this great script.

I love my new iPod Touch but one thing it’s missing is a simple list I can write my shopping list in. Editing a note whilst juggling a basket would not be ideal.

Due to both the iPhone and iPod Touch’s shortcomings; you can’t save web pages for reading offline and saving a page as a data URL means you can’t have that page write cookies. I had to come up with a way to save the list without relying on a wifi connection.

FRP Shop List is a simple javascript page that is saved as a data URL, it has the ability to regenerate itself and insert the list you enter inside the page code so you can rebookmark the list.

You can try the app here.

When I heard that Tadalists had been updated for the iPhone I wondered if it might work any better than the full version does on Mobile IE (currently it’s not nice to look at). So I changed my user agent to appoximate the iPhone.

Step 1

Download and install PHM Registry Edit on your PDA.

Step 2

Run PHM Registry Edit and navigate to the following:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Internet Settings/5.0/User Agent

Step 3

Make a note of your current settings. Mine were:

• Compatible: compatible
• Default: Mozilla/4.0
• Desc: Default (Windows CE)
• Platform: Windows CE
• UA-Language: JavaScript
• Version: MSIE 4.01
• Post platform: Xda Mini S; 240×320

Step 4

The iPhones user agent is:
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543a Safari/419.3

I changed my settings to:

• Default: Mozilla/5.0
• Compatible: iPhone
• Version: U; CPU like Mac OS X; en
• Platform: AppleWebKit/420+
• Post Platform: Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543a Safari/419.3

Using these setting I was able to load the iPhone optimised Tadalists and no it didn’t work (I didn’t really think it would).

Useful stuff

You can check you user agent here as well as see a breakdown of the various bits and bobs of it.