The Torque converter's running low on Torque (UAB1)

Been busy with school so it has been a while since the last post here. Anybody still reading? Ah, that is the magic that is RSS. Time lapse is really irrelevant.

Anyway, this week off of school has allowed my brain to resume normal, free thinking rather than stuffy, pointless thinking. This led to me coming up with some new software/hardware that I need to create.

You'll see a new acronym in the title. Similar to the Ultimate Box (UB) topics that I have talked about and will continue to talk about in the future, but this one is actually the Ultimate Accessory Box. Specifically, a box that is going to sit on the nightstand/dresser in our bedroom.

This started one day with me wanting a few things early in the morning, and looking across my desk at work and seeing a small, simple touchscreen device not being utilized. This nifty device, made by my company about 6 years ago or so, runs a 32-bit flavor of Windows. Given that this piece of hardware is free, and that I can actually attempt to mangle together software for that platform, I thought I might give it a go.

Here are the current features I intend to have in this box:

1. Large Clock. This is the primary function of the device, as it will be replacing our alarm clock. This screen will be maximized whenever nothing else is occurring on the box. It needs to be large, and legible from across the room in the middle of the night. The colors should be such that they are readable, but not so bright they keep us awake all night.
2. The next obligatory feature, if this is replacing our alarm clock, would of course be alarm functionality. In addition to being able to set multiple alarm periods for each day, there should be a customizable alert for each one. This could be any audio file I feel like supporting. It should be a specified file, or a random selection. The choices of audio I have in mind currently would be MP3, AAC, iTunes playlist, xmradio.com stream.
   
   <Whine>It doesn't play ogg? I won't use it.</Whine> --> Me beating the hell out of the slashdotter saying that drivel.
   
3. Next, one of the first features I wanted to add is a weather forecast. I want to know what the current temperature is, as well as the daily inaccurately projected forecast. I plan to simply tap into the same interface to the Weather Channel used by forecast fox. Eventually, I would like to add a serial interface to a thermometer outside my house to give a more accurate temperature for my specific location.
4. Another important one to add, school cancellation notices. These are going to be scraped from web feeds produced by the local television channels. I had a system for this in place last year, but it required me coming downstairs to one of the other computers. The neighbors would probably appreciate if I stayed in the bedroom to check this, since I want to do it before I start getting ready in the morning. I would like to actually tie this into the wakeup sound, giving me instant notification. Something like this would be a good choice I feel.
5. Next, there needs to be a convenient little pop-up app listing important or useful phone numbers. This box is sitting right next to our phone, so it would be handy many times early in the morning/late at night to have this. It would be even cooler if this just interfaced to some central location with all of our contacts, talking some universal contact protocol, right guys?
   
6. Finally, to go with the last point, there needs to be a memo application for jotting down phone messages. Until I get Asterix setup in our house, we still translate phone messages the old fashioned way.
7. Later, if I can figure out how, it would be nice to make use of a microphone to implement voice activated features. Yell at the thing to tell you the time, snooze the alarm, etc. Nice and geeky, yeah.

Okay, that's my thoughts. What would you add?