How to Remotely Control Other PC Applications with Smartphone?

You also can use ControlFreak to control other PC applications. Winamp plug-ins act as software agents for ControlFreak. Those agents listen for commands from the ControlFreak program running on the handset, and then execute those commands on the PC.

The desktop control mode allows you to do almost anything you normally do with your computer, but from anywhere in its Bluetooth zone. You use the navigation pad to control either the mouse cursor or the keyboard arrow keys; pressing 1 or 2 sends a left-or right-mouse click. It would be very difficult to do anything if the entire desktop was always resized to the phone's screen, so ControlFreak provides zoom functionality. Use 5 to zoom in and 0 to zoom out, just like in the Series 60 image viewer. Useful shortcuts are also provided for sending Enter (7), Esc (9), and Alt-Tab (*) keys. While switching applications, ControlFreak automatically zooms into the switching window to make it easier to see; then you can use the navigation pad to move left or right in the list of applications.

The combination of being able to see what is on the screen and to easily send left/right arrow keys makes desktop control mode a great tool for giving presentations. Showing PowerPoint slides to your customers or photos to your relatives has never been easier.

If you're presenting in the dark and you don't want your phone's backlight to keep coming on when clicking buttons, go to the settings and set Backlight mode to Disabled (although this feature is not present in all phones).

Use ControlFreak for media playback

You can download ControlFreak from http://mtvoid.com/. It contains a Symbian application for the phone and a Winamp plug-in for the PC-8). The Winamp plug-in takes commands from the phone via a preconfigured Bluetooth COM port and controls the PC.

After installing the program and configuring your Bluetooth connection, you initiate a connection from your phone to your computer using the Connect menu option, or simply by pressing the navigation pad. After searching for nearby Bluetooth devices, you will be presented with a list. The next time you select Connect you don't need to search for devices, since ControlFreak remembers which device you last used and asks if you want to reconnect. In fact, if you enable Reconnect on startup in the settings, ControlFreak will automatically connect the next time you start the application. Once the connection is made, the virtual device cover will slide down to reveal details about the current track.

In the main player mode, the top part of the screen shows details about the current track (including artist, title, album, and year if ID3 tags are present). Below that is either more track information, a preview of upcoming songs, or real-time spectral analysis of the current audio, depending on the view selected. You can change views using either the Options menu or 1, 2, and 3 shortcut keys. By pressing 0, you can also open or close the cover.

When you are in any of these player modes, you can easily control the playback of your music by using the navigation pad. Pressing the center key on the navigation pad pauses or plays the music. Pressing and holding the navigation pad stops the music. Pressing the navigation pad up or down increases or decreases the volume. Pressing the navigation pad to the right or left skips forward or backward in the playlist. And pressing and holding the navigation pad to the right or left allows you to quickly skip through the current track.

When using your phone, you might not want to have ControlFreak in the foreground all the time. So, to keep track of what is currently playing, the settings have a "Track change" pop-up option. With this enabled, you get a little pop-up box in the top of the screen showing track information changes, no matter what application you are in. You also have the option of enabling "Phone app" shortcuts. With this enabled, you can use basic controls such as play/pause, next/previous track, and volume up/down from the phone application idle screen.

The other modes available enable you to browse your media library, manage the current playlist, and control the desktop. You also can access these from the Options menu or by using their respective shortcuts: 6, 7, and 8.

The playlist mode displays the contents of the playlist you have loaded in Winamp. You can move the focus up or down by clicking the navigation pad up or down, or speed things up by clicking the navigation pad left or right to move a full screen at a time. The smart thing about the way the playlist view in ControlFreak works is that it loads information from the computer only when it needs it. So, even if you have thousands of tracks in your playlist, you won't be sitting there waiting for the data to be sent to the phone before you can start browsing. If you want to start playing a track, just select it and press the navigation pad. If you want a track to start playing after the current one finishes, just press and hold the navigation pad. The track will flash a couple of times, and then will move to the end of the current track. If you keep repeating this with a number of tracks you can build up a queue of tracks to play. To remove a track from the playlist press the C key or choose Remove from the Options menu.

Searching for a track is a particularly useful feature. You can select Search from the Options menu or just start typing keys, and ControlFreak automatically opens a search query that includes T9 predictive text support. The search results are based on a substring match of the query and the playlist titles (unless the query is only one or two characters). You can also sort the playlist in a variety of ways, and randomize it. This is a better way of playing your music randomly than using your player's shuffle setting, since you are still able to see the track order.

The media library mode allows you to browse all of the audio and video files added to Winamp's media library. You can browse artists, albums, videos, and playlists. When you find something you like, simply select Play or Queue from the Options menu. You can search for individual tracks in your library from the browse mode list, just as you can in playlist mode. You search for a particular item within a list via the jump-to feature. Just type the first letter of what you are looking for, using multiple taps of the number keys, and the focus jumps to the first item that starts with that letter. If you can't think of what to play, you can always just press the 0 key and ControlFreak will jump to a random item.

One of the more exciting features of ControlFreak is the ability to view your desktop directly on your phone (this is called desktop control mode). Watching a movie on your computer and having it display the video on your phone is one cool use of this feature. To do this, though, you need to disable hardware video overlay in Winamp's video preferences. By default, it plays video directly to the video card to increase playback performance.

Bemused and ControlFreak.

Not long after the first Series 60 smartphone was released (Nokia 7650 in June 2002), a couple of new products were developed that took advantage of the Bluetooth capabilities of the new phone and the music storage and playback of a PC.

Bemused was written by Ashley Montanaro and was released as open source in 2002. You can download the Bemused software, including the Symbian client for the phone and the Winamp plug-in on the PC, from http://bemused.sourceforge.net/. Bemused provides the usual media player options in the form of on-screen buttons in a skinnable interface. It lets you control the current playlist as well as send the entire directory and file structure of your music to the phone. This can take quite a long time if your music collection is large, but once the data is received, it allows basic browsing and loading of your music. Bemused supports both GPRS and Bluetooth connections. With GPRS, you can control your music remotely via the Internet. However, you should be aware that most mobile operators charge for GPRS data, whereas using the local Bluetooth connection is free and more reliable.

Around the same time Bemused became available, a user interface (UI) design engineer, Michael Ahokas, and a software design engineer, Trent Fitzgibbon, were developing a commercial application called ControlFreak for a similar purpose. But compared to Bemused, ControlFreak has a much more polished UI and richer functionality. For instance, most ControlFreak operations are performed with a single click of the navigation pad (i.e., the joystick). You can also set ControlFreak to display track information in any application, and you can use shortcuts to adjust the volume or skip tracks from the phone application idle screen. We believe that usability is the key to any phone-based application. So, we will focus on ControlFreak in this tips.

Both Bemused and ControlFreak are Symbian applications, which run only on Series 60 devices. A Java port of Bemused called Bemused.java is available from http://elektron.its.tudelft.nl/~jkohne76/. It runs on any Nokia mobile phone with Java Bluetooth API support (e.g., the Nokia 6230 phone in Series 40). But Bemused.java is a much less-polished product than Bemused and ControlFreak.

Use your phone as remote control for your PC

One of the coolest mobile phone hacks is to use the phone as a remote control for your PC. Why would anybody want to do that? Isn't the keyboard and mouse enough to "control" the PC? Well, as it turns out, there are at least a couple of reasons you'd want to control your PC via a wireless device:

You can use the PC to run PowerPoint presentations, software demonstrations, and/or photo slideshows for an audience. To capture the audience's attention and convey your messages effectively, it is important that you control the presentation PC remotely while you are walking across the room. Dedicated presentation remote control device are available for purchase; however, the mobile phone eliminates the need for those separate gadgets.

With a remote control, you can turn the PC into a fully functional media player in your living room. The PC plays DVD, CD, MP3, and many other media formats. More importantly, you can update the PC software to support future media formats. The major obstacle that currently hinders the adoption of media PCs in living rooms is the lack of a good remote controla keyboard and mouse attached to the media console are simply not acceptable.

Wireless local connectivity technology such as infrared or Bluetooth is included in most Nokia mobile phones to allow the transfer of data between devices over short distances. Phone applications can use this same technology to remotely control computers. Unlike traditional remote controls for TVs and presentations, smartphones are generally much higher-quality devices with high-resolution, full-color displays. This opens up a whole host of possibilities when it comes to interactivity and the overall user experience.

Using Bluetooth allows you to communicate with devices without requiring direct line-of-sight. So, unlike with an infrared remote control, you can be in another room and still control your device. Bluetooth connections also allow for bidirectional communication of data at higher speeds than infrared, and they support the option of being encrypted to prevent anyone nearby from "listening in" on what you are doing.