by Adam Pash

The proliferation of portable applications makes it more and more convenient to carry your life on a thumb drive, especially if you don't do all of your work and play from one computer.

But it could be easier. Rather than plugging in your thumb drive and clicking through your drive's file system to open every program and document, wouldn't it be nice if your workspace launched automatically? Today we'll set up your thumb to Autoplay, so that you can instantly launch your preferred workspace on any computer. All you have to do is plug in.

First of all, there are a crapload of programs that you can run off your thumb drive. I'll be using a few programs just to give you an idea of how this works, but your imagination is the limit when it comes to what you can run off the thumb drive. For a rundown of several different options, check out Gina's life on a thumb drive feature.

Setting up Autoplay

The key to this whole thing is a Windows "feature" called Autoplay. Although it's caused a bit of controversy in its time, Autoplay remains enabled on most Windows computers. Don't worry - in this case we're going to be using Autoplay purely for good.

Setting up Autoplay is a no-brainer. Create a new text file on the home directory of your thumb drive and name it autorun.inf. There are a number of different ways to deal with autorun.inf, but to keep things simple, I'm just going to use it to run a batch file that will set up our workspace (batch files are easy, and we've used batch scripts several times before, so they should be pretty familiar).

Copy and paste the following text into your autorun.inf text file:

[autorun]
open=launch.bat
ACTION = Launch portable workspace

That's really all there is to it. Next time you plug in your thumb drive, Autoplay should give you the option to "Launch portable applications." Now all that's left to do is create our launch.bat batch file, which will tell us exactly what we want to run when we plug in our thumb drive.

Setting up launch.bat

In the same directory as your autorun.inf file, create a new text file and name it launch.bat. From this point on, we're pretty much dealing with quick launch workspaces, though we're looking for ideas that will work well on a portable drive. For example, you could set up your thumb drive to automatically launch:

• Tiddlywiki:

  If you use Tiddlywiki (and I know a lot of Lifehacker readers love it), you could easily launch it with the following batch script:

  start tiddlywiki\tiddlywiki.html

  start tiddlywiki\tiddlywiki.html

  Keep in mind that you never want to use the drive name when you're setting up your batch script, as this is likely to change depending on what computer you're plugged into. Instead, just omit the drive letter altogether and start with the folder or file name that you want to open.

• Portable applications:
  
  

  Pretty simple, huh? Of course, if you wanted to open Tiddlywiki in your own portable browser, like Portable Firefox, you'd want to tweak this a little bit. Here's what I'd change it to (omitting line breaks):

  start portableapps\portablefirefox.exe tiddlywiki\tiddlywiki.html

  start portableapps\portablefirefox.exe tiddlywiki\tiddlywiki.html

  Easy peasy. Now you can automatically run Tiddlywiki on Portable Firefox as soon as you plug in your thumb drive. The same structure will work for pretty much any portable app you run on your computer. If you want to launch more than one application when you plug in your thumb drive, it's just as easy; just add a couple more lines to your launch.bat script. For example:

  start portableapps\portablefirefox.exe tiddlywiki\tiddlywiki.html
  start portableapps\portablethunderbird.exe
  start portableapps\portableopenoffice.exe
  start portableapps\pstart.exe

  start portableapps\portablefirefox.exe tiddlywiki\tiddlywiki.html
  start portableapps\portablethunderbird.exe
  start portableapps\portableopenoffice.exe
  start portableapps\pstart.exe

  
  

  will open Tiddlywiki in Portable Firefox, along with Portable Thunderbird, Open Office, and Filezilla. When it comes to organizing and launching apps from your thumb drive after you're all plugged in, PStart is a good start menu for the thumb drive. My favorite application launcher, Launchy, would be even better for launching apps directly off your thumb drive, but it's not quite ready for that yet (it was really very close).

• App launchers:

  You can still make use of other app launchers, though. If you're not into bringing portable applications with you, but you still don't feel like digging through the Start menu of the computer you're plugged into, it can be very nice to have an app launcher by your side.

  
  

  Both Colibri and SlickRun can handle this, as it's just a matter of installing the programs to your thumb drive (Colibri even has an install setting specifically for portable use).

Again, you can launch pretty much whatever program or file you've got on your thumb drive at this point - it's really just a matter of what you fits your needs. For more ideas, check out my quick launch workspaces. If you still don't understand the worth of portable applications or drives, check out Gina's life on a thumb drive. Once you get your Autoplaying thumb drive tweaked to your liking, who knows - maybe you'll be ditching your laptop for a thumb drive in the near future. God knows thumb drives are a lot easier on the wallet.

by Gina Trapani

Recently I released a command line script which manages your todo list in a plain text file. One of the best reasons for keeping a todo.txt are the unlimited ways you can interact with it: anything and everything can read and parse text files. So as a programming exercise I set out to write an AOL instant messenger bot that updates and views your todo.txt from anywhere, and after only a few hours, my TodoBot was up and running.

Why would you want to IM your todo list, you ask? Say you're at the store and you forgot what you were supposed to buy. IM your bot list @shopping from your phone to find out. Say you keep your todo list on your home computer and you want to access it from the office. With the TodoBot you don't have to go through the trouble of running a home server - simply IM todo commands to your bot.

Let's take a look at the todo.txt bot in action, and get it set up on your computer.

Note: To get your TodoBot going, you need to be already running the Todo manager script. If you don't know what I'm talking about, start here for a little intro to the thinking behind todo.txt. Then install the latest version. If you're on Windows, you'll need to use Cygwin. Get yourself some detailed instructions on doing that here.

Once you've got your todo.txt going, you're ready to set up your bot.

The TodoBot in action

Here's a short screencast of my TodoBot in action:

Notice that you omit the "todo" part of the todo commands and get straight to the actions. So instead of todo add 'do laundry' you just tell the bot add 'do laundry'. All the bot does is issue todo commands, so the todo bit is assumed.

Neat, huh? You too can know the wonderful marriage of IM and .txt.

Set up your TodoBot

Warning: Setting up the todobot.pl requires comfort with editing and running a Perl script. It's not too scary; but it's not an installation wizard, either.

Here's how to get your TodoBot set up.

1. First register for an AIM screenname which you'll use as your bot at AIM.com. Mine's called gtraptodobot, yours can be anything you like.
2. Get Perl running on the computer where your todo.txt lives. If you're running Cygwin, install the Perl package using setup.exe, as described here. Mac and Linux users, you're all set with the Perl.
3. Download the TodoBot Perl files, which come in two varieties. The bot requires the OSCAR package to run, so for the lazier (and less experienced), download this zip file with OSCAR included .
   If you're all down with the C and the PAN and Perl module installation, download todobot.pl and then grab and install OSCAR.pm separately.
4. If necessary, unzip the Todobot bundle. Then, open up the file called todobot.pl and edit the following lines:
   

   my $screenname = 'yourbotname';
   my $password   = 'yourbotpassword';
   my $commander  = 'yourAIMname'; 
   my $todoscript = 'c:/path/to/your/todo/script/todo';
   

   
   In the first two lines, enter the bot nickname and password you signed up for in step 1. In the third line, enter the AIM name you'll use to run todo commands. In the last line, enter the full path to your todo manager script. Save and close todobot.pl.
5. To start the TodoBot, at the command line type perl todobot.pl. All goes well, your bot will log into AIM without a hitch.

Now's the fun part. Login to AIM with your regular nick and add your bot to your buddy list. Then, message todo script commands from your IM window as if you were at a command line. Try it: IM your bot add get to know my todobot.

And that's that! You're IM'ing your way to todo.txt nirvana; with no server running, no hosted service, no keeping your data on someone else's server. Rock on.

Security

Now, I'm sure I've got a posse of system administrators ready to bust a blood vessel at the idea of an AIM bot running a shell script. Yes, this is highly insecure. Yes, you can stick a semi-colon in your IM and run any command you want. But.

The trick to the todobot.pl is that it checks from whom the command is issued. That is, if YOU message MY bot? You'll get a message that says, "You're not the boss of me." Cuz you're not.

So no one else except your IM name - set in the script - can modify or view your todo.txt with your bot. Doing this means you trust that no one can spoof your AOL username, and of course, all your IM's pass as plain text over the network. It's up to you to decide whether or not you want to take these risks.

Caveats

This is literally the first Perl script I've ever written, and I did it in about 2 hours today. In fact, I didn't even write it; I adapted it from this very helpful O'Reilly article, Build Your Own AIM Answerbot. Without a doubt there are some bugs to be worked out; so back up your todo.txt before trying it out. I'm sure you Perl programmers especially will have lots to say about it. I invite your criticism, modifications and outright scorn. Bring it on in the comments or to tips at lifehacker.com.

Introducing todotxt.com

A weblog isn't the right format to present software, so I've gathered together all the todo.txt scriptyness published here on Lifehacker on a new domain, todotxt.com. Do stop by there to grab latest versions and join the mailing list to discuss bugs, future developments and any other todo.txt-related fun.

Happy AIM'ing your todo.txt!

UPDATE: I (stupidly) forgot to thank Joel Johnson for the TodoBot idea and mwilkie for a long late night discussion on Perl module installation and security implications. Thanks, guys! You're the wind beneath the TodoBot's wings.

Gina Trapani , the editor of Lifehacker, finally found a good use for AIM bots. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.