E.T.(T.) iPhone Home
Ask and ye shall receive (at least some of the time). BubbleTimer is now accessible from an iPhone and iPod Touch optimized interface. If you open bubbletimer.com in Mobile Safari you will be greeted with the new iPhone login screen:
Login with your normal email and password and you will see today's times and all of your activities. Time that you bubble in on the Web shows up on your iPhone and vice versa (after a page refresh). You can see the total time for the day and for each activity and the activity totals are color coded (red, green, orange) just like in the regular Web interface:
Once you select an activity and you can bubble in your time for it. And just like in the regular Web interface, a blue bar indicates the current time and you are taken there to start:
Flick up and down with your finger to move through the hours; the total for the activity and the goal are shown at both the top and bottom of the screen:
Since you can't see multiple activities at once on the iPhone like you can on the Web, it can be a little more difficult to know if a particular time has already been bubbled. Similar to how the time display at the top of BubbleTimer, if a time has been bubbled for another activity, the border around that time is light gray.
By default you are working with today, but you can go back and see and edit the last 6 days:
The idea with this initial iPhone interface is as a companion to BubbleTimer on the Web. Use it when you are away from your computer, but it can't yet be your sole interaction with BubbleTimer. Here is an incomplete list of things you can't yet do on the iPhone:
- Register as a new user
- Add / edit or remove activities
- Add / edit or remove goals
- Bubble in a range of times at once or multiple activities for one time
- See the activity or time allocation charts
- Access days besides today and the last 6 days in the past
- Have a 15 minute chime
- See or edit any of your account or sharing preferences
These things will be added over time so that you can do more and more with your phone. If you have an iPhone please let me know what you think about the new interface. If you're not an iPhone user but are interested in mobile access, be sure to contact me if I haven't heard from you about it already.
After some free time for good behavior, Eric is now back in my basement working on categories. If you don't know who Eric is, or why he'd be in my basement, you can find out.
Trackbacks
Use the following link to trackback from your own site:
http://blog.bubbletimer.com/trackbacks?article_id=32
Looks fine! What's with the AM/PM lingo though? :P
One thing I'm wondering about... What happens if you by accident press a bubble that had been bubbled in another activity? I can imagine this might happen with those fat fingers people have these days :P. My concern is that if you mis'press' (instead of misclick) you might not remember that timeslot had already been bubbled in another activity.
I was just wondering if it is possible to use long clicks or presses? Say for example that time slot 1 has been bubbled in activity A. If you want to bubble time slot 2 in activity B you need a short press, while to bubble time slot 1 in activity B (i.e. to overwrite activity A for this bubble) you'd need a long press.
Maybe this could be used for the normal version as well? Meh, I'm just rambling.
Hey, works great! Thanks for releasing this!
One suggestion I have would be to see if there's any way to use dynamic html to cache all of the bubbles for one day at a time. Right now, moving between activities requires navigating up to the activities page, then back down to the time page. On the Edge network, that can be painfully slow. It'd be handier if moving between activities on a single day just swapped out divs or something, because that'd be much quicker to use.
Also, it's making me log in every time I use it, which is a bit of a hassle.
Otherwise, great!
@Tijl I know you are joking, but it respects your BubbleTimer settings, so if you are set for 24-hour time you will see 13 rather than 1 PM on the iPhone too.
@Ian Good stuff... I'll check on the login every time problem. I'll also try it out next time I'm out of 3G range and on edge. I think we can speed it up in some of the ways you suggest.
Thanks!
Sean
Hey, works great, but I don't like the style.. I know that it must be hard to create a stylish, useful tool on such a small display, but I miss the beautiful blue as well as the scratchy way the bubbles are filled in the normal web interface.. And since you're doing a great job with "normal" BubbleTimer, I know that you can do that better. The workflow is fine, but the optic is bad :S
I appreciate your efforts to implement our wishes and I don't want to sound unthankful, but maybe my feedback helps..
@cephyr It does help. I've gotten some feedback in emails too that it's not quite up to the visual design standard set by the full Web application. I'll work on that. It is important.
Thanks,
Sean
@Ian It's no longer requiring the login everytime. This was a big pain in the butt. Thanks for the feedback.
-Sean
Is there a URL to redirect to the mobile site, so those of us who prefer Opera Mini can use the same interface? Thanks :)
Adrienne, there is:
iphone.bubbletimer.com