Introduction

First I would like to introduce myself. My name is Jason Emerick. I am a senior at Virginia Tech studying Computer Engineering and a minor in Computer Science. I am not quite sure when I started using the Remember the Milk but it has been a while I’m sure. I use it mainly to manage my school work as well as other little things that may pop up and my shopping list. About six months ago, I got my BlackBerry 8830 and love it just as much as Remember the Milk. I have been using the mobile web interface to Remember the Milk, which is great by the way, however, I would like an application for the BlackBerry to provide access. With the combination of me wanting to learn how to write applications for the BlackBerry platform and the seemingly high demand for a Remember the Milk BlackBerry application, I have decided to take on the challenge.

So what about this application, eh?

Well I have only begun developing it, mostly just hacking around doing some proof of concept stuff. I have started writing a class which interfaces with the public API. I have been testing that and have run into a couple minor hiccups that hopefully I can work out with the Remember the Milk team. My goal by the end of this week is to have the API class fully implemented and have a very basic user interface going. The application will be a fully stand alone application that will have a similar look and feel as the Facebook application. As far as features, my initial goal is to implement something similar to the iPhone version as well as some features unique to the BlackBerry such as alerts similar to those generated by the Facebook application or the native task application. Of course your suggestions are always welcome. There is still a lot of work left to do to make this a great application so I hope you can all bear with me.

Now what is all this talk about money?

There was initially some talk about charging for this application, however, that is not what I intended at all. This application will be completely free as required by Remember the Milk’s API Terms of Service. In addition to being free, this project will also be open source so you can modify it to your own desire and see my code. However, there is still some talk about donations. Donations were solicited to help cover the cost of applying for BlackBerry Code Signing Keys which cost $100. The explanation of why this is required is available here: http://na.blackberry.com/eng/developers/downloads/api.jsp and the actual form which shows the actual cost here: https://www.blackberry.com/SignedKeys/

Donations are not required whatsoever to use the application and will just be used to cover the cost of code signing keys as I am a stereotypical poor college student. Any extra donations received before I can stop them will be donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (http://www.eff.org/). If you do not want to donate to me or the $100 has already been collected, I would like to encourage you to give by purchasing a Remember the Milk Pro account (http://www.rememberthemilk.com/upgrade/) to support the great application that makes this all possible. Now if not enough donations are received, don’t worry, I will find a way to cover the cost of the signing keys. Either way, you will have Remember the Milk on the BlackBerry. If you wish to donate, please contact me.

Some other quick notes

As I mentioned earlier I am a student so school will have to come first over this project. But don’t worry too much, this is my last semester and I am only taking twelve credit hours however they are still challenging classes. I will find time to work on the application and fix bug as well as implement new features.

As far as device support, I will strive to be as accommodating as possible. From the outset I plan to support as many devices as possible. If you find that your BlackBerry is not supported, contact me and I will do as much as I can to make it compatible.

How to contact me

I have established a Google Group at http://groups.google.com/group/rtm-on-the-blackberry?hl=en. Please join this group and post there anything there concerning the application. Submit your questions, comments, or suggestions.

The project will be hosted at the Google Code page located at http://code.google.com/p/rtm4bb/.

You can of course always email me personally at jemerick@vt.edu.

Thank you,

Jason Emerick