Automated Living - Automate Your Life with Microsoft and Your Android Phone

Microsoft has revealed a new App that they say will help you Automate your life. on{X} (pronounced "on-ex" uses rules and triggers along with capabilities built into your Android device to automate things that you would normally have to do yourself. For example, you could create a script that would check the weather before you leave for work and send you a notification to grab your umbrella because it will be rainy later in the day.

Rules are created using Javascript that runs on your phone. A rule consists of a trigger and an action much like a home automation scenario. Microsoft has some pre-built sample rules or "recipes" as they call them and encourages developers to create and share on the on{x} web site https://www.onx.ms/.

My Experience:
I installed the App on my Galaxy Nexus. First I downloaded the App and then logged into the on{x} web site on my computer. Once on the web site, you simply go to the rules page and click the "Create" button. Clicking this button brings you to the editor window where a pre-built sample rule is created for you. The sample code simply sends a text notification to your device when it's unlocked. When you are done editing your rule you click the "Save and Send to Phone" button to publish the rule to your device. You will then receive a notification that a new rule has been received and it will refresh itself. The syntax is pretty straight forward if you have experience coding in Javascript, you only need to learn the API's exposed to on{x}. Be aware that when you install on{x} on your device it creates a service that will always be running in the background and taking up resources.

Ok, now for the weird:
First: Why would Microsoft create an Android App before creating an App for their own Windows Phone 7 operating system. This just seems counterproductive to their stated goal of pushing WP7 phones/apps and supporting the developer environment. Perhaps they were too busy completing last minute fixes to Windows Phone 8, let's hope so.

Second: The Android App requires you to have a Facebook account. Sure there are a 900 million people using it by why not support your own authentication service (i.e Live ID). This is by far the biggest negative comment coming out of the App reviews and on{x} forum.