unlock.

When I recently visited my friend Genox, I discovered the idea to use a mobile phone as a remote control for my PC. He was using his phone as a remote control for iTunes on his Apple laptop. However that didn’t work properly, “probably because of a somewhat bad bluetooth antenna” he said. Yes, a mobile phone remote control working trough bluetooth is a splendid idea, in my opinion. A few days later, I browsed the web for a similar application which would work on my Nokia phone and I found something nice: “Bluetooth Remote Control 2.0″.

Installation worked without any problems and once I managed to get my phone to be connected to the PC via bluetooth, it was also possible to start the Java client on the phone. Unfortunately, the shareware version of the Bluetooth Remote Control only allows a few clicks/commands to be sent from the mobile phone to be PC - I’ll probably have to buy the full version at some point. Why? Because I instantly liked the concept of this piece of software.

There’s a server part of BRC that has to run on the PC. The client part is running on the mobile phone. The server part allows a few settings - but the interesting side is what you can do on your mobile phone, once you’re connected: It allows to steer a few pre-defined programs, such as Winamp or PowerPoint. The Winamp control is easy to use and really cool to allow controlling Winamp while lying on the sofa (out of reach of the PC keyboard). As for PowerPoint, well, I don’t really care about PowerPoint.

The next big thing is something I haven’t really expected to see: It’s possible to move the mouse with the mobile phone. The software even transmits a piece of the Windows desktop to the mobile phone. Like this, I can start programs (click click), read emails (click) or browse photos (click click scroll) without leaving my sofa. All these functions work well and fast, it’s really fun - even if that Windows-dekstop-on-the-mobile-phone feature is more a toy than really useful.

Further functions include file browsing, locking the system (depending on whether the bluetooth phone is in reach of the PC antenna or not), shutting down windows, starting the screensaver and more. All in all, a nice piece of software which a) has really useful functions (mainly the Winamp remote control) and b) offers a few toys for mobile phone freaks, too.

If you want to play around with this thing too, go get download it from the Bluetooth Remote Control website.