New Wireless Handheld Touchpad!

Okay, not really... While my in-laws were here over the weekend, my father-in-law bought a Nokia 770 Internet Appliance (http://www.nokiausa.com/770/). From what I can tell, it doesn't do much but access the internet in wi-fi hotspots and do instant messenger. I thought it would be a pretty useful handheld touchscreen device to use as a remote in our house. Since the house has a wi-fi network setup, it could just connect to MisterHouse in the palm of our hand.

But then I got to thinking... it's not really necessary to buy one of those. My wife used to have a Sony Clie PEG NX70V, a PDA with Palm OS on it. And with it, she had a wireless network adapter, enabling this PDA to surf the internet at wi-fi hotspots... eureka! With the hardware that we already had, we have a remote touchscreen interface to MisterHouse (you know, once I found the appropriate software... damn Sony).

I set it up and it seems to work okay, but it could really use a specialized interface. Fortunately, MisterHouse provides the capability of customizing interfaces depending on what type of device is connecting, so I'll have to find out how to do that.

In other news, I'm still in conversations on the MisterHouse mailing list about how to get Jabber working (although, it's been a couple of days since the last reply). With the finding of the Clie, I'm not sure that it's as high a priority immediately as I had originally thought, but it would still be nice to have for notification purposes while I am away from the house and on the computer (i.e., at work). I'd also like it to be able to send SMS to my cell phone, and I'd like to get telephony working so I can talk to it over the phone line... but for now, those are things for my to-do list, and can't be considered realistic for the immediate future.

What the immediate future does hold is installation of a few more switches, this time in the entry-way, the kitchen, and the breakfast room... I'll give another update when that finally happens.