Mobile phones, tutorials, tech in general

I still remember the astonished looks on my friends’ and colleagues’ faces when I controlled my PowerPoint presentation with my phone. I think they listened to me during the first slide, and after that they were wondering who is switching slides… 😀

Soon after that, many of them installed Mobilewitch Bluetooth Remote Control, a freeware Java application that allows you to remotely control your PC (you could never guess from the app name :)) in several different ways.

This application isn’t new, but is very, very useful, so for those of you who still have problems connecting, here’s the (never too detailed) tutorial.

Setting up is relatively easy: after you download the application (from here), install it on your computer. Now you have to transfer MWRemoteCtrl.jar file to your phone. This file should be located on your computer desktop, but if it isn’t, go to C:\Program Files\Mobile Witch Remote Control folder, and you’ll find it. You can send this file via USB cable, or preferably, via bluetooth. (You do need to have a bluetooth adapter to get this thing to work.)

Install the .jar file on your cell. I recommend installing on phone’s memory, instead on memory card, it will only consume 71kB.

Now, this may seem a bit complicated, but it’s quite useful in the long run. You may skip this step, by try not to.

Before launching the application, go to Application Manager, find MWRemoteCtrl (it will probably be at the bottom of the list, so press “Up” a few times and you’ll find it) and click Options->Open. Scroll down till you get to Connectivity:

Select ‘Always allowed’ instead of ‘Ask first time’. This will remove the extremely annoying nag screen that normally shows up on application launch. Exit the Application Manager and turn on the bluetooth on your phone! And the answer is yes, I have switched to new tehkSeven theme “Just Black” (presented here). 🙂

Now run both the PC application (icon is on your desktop), and the mobile application (the icon is most likely located in the ‘Applications’ folder). Make sure that your bluetooth adapter is plugged in your PC and that your computer is discoverable (in Bluetooth Settings check “Allow Bluetooth devices to find this computer” and “Allow Bluetooth devices to connect to this computer”). (Click on image to enlarge.)

We’re almost there 🙂

Click on “Search for servers” on your phone. After a few seconds, you should be able to see the name of your PC (for example My-PC). Click on it, and that’s about it! You are now connected to your computer via bluetooth.

Now you can choose how will you control your PC:

You can move mouse pointer using your cell’s d-pad in the Mouse mode,  or press some keyboard buttons in the Keyboard mode, but the “main”, and, by far, the most useful mode is the Application mode.

Here you can manage and control Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, PowerPoint, Winamp and Windows Media Player. Personally, I don’t find that remote control of any web browser is very useful, and I recommend you to try PowerPoint and Winamp, one for work use, and one for personal. My discovery: Adobe Reader/Acrobat is not listed here, but when you use it in full screen mode, you can switch through pages!

Hope this helps, enjoy changing tracks in Winamp from the comfort of your bed…

Comments and questions are welcome and much appreciated, of course.