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Tasker for Android lets your phone react to its current state or environment
It works by creating rules that question your phone's current "context" (or state): "Is the phone upside down?"; "Have you just missed a call?"; "Is your battery almost empty?" -- if any of these questions returns a "yes," then an action is carried out. That's where this app becomes magical: an action can be almost anything. Your phone can make a call, or send an SMS; it can alter the ringing volume during work hours, or silence it during the night; it can run apps, or react to when you plug in the USB cable or headphones. This is remarkably similar to context-aware patents currently dueling through the US patent system filed by Google and Apple.
The excellent FastCompany review walks you through a nice rule: if you place your phone face-down (say, in a meeting), it automatically switches to silent mode. They also suggest another awesome rule: tell Tasker to SMS "on the way home" to a loved one when your GPS coordinates reach the train station.
My nerdy brain is leaping to try some really crazy ideas, though. How about using GPS so that your laptop only unlocks if your phone is nearby? Or a dead man's switch that formats your phone if it gets too far away from your laptop -- or if you don't open a certain app by 5pm each day? Of course you could tell the phone to take a photo every 10 minutes so that any potential thieves are caught in the act! The possibilities are almost endless.The app itself costs about $5 from the Android Market, but you can download a 7-day trial from the Tasker site (which you can later upgrade). The Tasker Wiki has lots of excellent guides and walkthroughs to get you started, and even some ready-made profiles for every-day tasks.
Comments
13
Subscribe to commentsWKWOct 18th 2010 4:44PM
Wow...this might make my phone smarter than me.
Brian SargentOct 18th 2010 5:21PM
Lifehacker went Tasker Mad in August and have several interesting scripts and tutorials on offer: http://lifehacker.com/search/tasker/
Sebastian AnthonyOct 19th 2010 4:58AM
Cool; thanks for the link :)
frankpreyesOct 18th 2010 5:22PM
I use tasker to turn on GPS before I run Navagator or Sprint Navagator, or any of the other programs that need GPS on before the program will work. I also have a series of programs to choose from when I plug in my head phones, or attach a bluetooth keyboard. The best profiles are location based, however. I have a home, and a work and a driving profile that turns on Bluetooth, connects to my blue tooth speaker and radio when I'm driving (but not connected to my car dock) It also sets the volume, turns off GPS and bluetooth and turns on Wifi when I get home, and sets sound, alarm and brightness levels. I can also turn on safe reader (finally) when I want my SMS and Google emails read out loud when I'm driving. There is a great forum that can answer newby questions without any flaming.
RichardOct 19th 2010 4:26AM
Something like this on the iPhone would be fantastic - sadly even if Apple provide all the API's to do so, they'll never allow it to be put into the App Store.
Sebastian AnthonyOct 19th 2010 4:57AM
Well, according to Victor (he dropped in that sentence about context stuffs), you might see something like this on the iPhone... but natively!
To be honest, this kind of thing shouldn't really be an external app. It's too insecure -- and probably too prone to crashing, too.
A built-in solution would be lovely.
Jeff HesserOct 19th 2010 9:35AM
crossing my fingers for the jailbreak community to take a whack at this. if it ever comes natively it won't be for at least another year. i'd pay $5 to get a one year jump on the tech!
@davey_ladOct 19th 2010 7:23AM
I gave this a shot a few weeks back ... but uninstalled when I failed miserabley to come up with any meaningful tasks I actually wanted my phone to do. the best it got for me was a popup message telling me I was 'Home' when it connected to my home router... cool uh!
It's not unique either. 'Locale' came first but it's a bit pricey I think. The good thing about Tasker (according to the dev) is that 'Locale' plugins will also work with tasker.
RichardNov 4th 2010 1:33PM
Here is a suggestion, get it to announce the name of the person calling or texting you. Useful if you're listening to music as you cannot normally see the screen.
jeadlyOct 19th 2010 10:10AM
Monitoring parameters and calculating output is Artificial Intelligence now?
Sebastian AnthonyOct 19th 2010 10:32AM
That's all a computer does :P
jeadlyOct 19th 2010 10:43AM
Right, computers that have failed to achieve Artificial Intelligence thus far.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence#Problems
It's just a huge subject with a moving target, and I'm nitpicking on the definition of AI that includes a series of steps that produce the appearance of an Intelligent result.
mlittleOct 19th 2010 11:45AM
I've been using this app for some time (not new) and love it. You wouldn't believe all that can be done with it. Spend some time getting to know it and you'll wonder how you got along without it.