Control Your Mac With Bluetooth Phone

reidconti writes "Ever wanted to control your Mac remotely? Now you can, with the Sony Ericsson Clicker by Jonas Salling. Play MP3s or DVDs, command Keynote and PowerPoint presentations, all from your Sony Ericsson Bluetooth phone. Nifty proximity mode lets you pause your music when you leave the room and automatically resume when you re-enter." It uses AppleScript, to control whatever AppleScript can control.

Comments

Finally

[neillewis]

Bravo, if this works, it looks like Bluetooth might finally turn the corner to become more than just a way to have a wireless headset...

Great geek aid

[MrMickS]

This is a great addition to my hotel room automation kit. Now as well as being able to use my Palm to control the TV I can use my T68i to control my computer. I never need to leave my bed again :)

On a serious note it's saved me having to buy a remote from Keyspan.

Re:Great geek aid

[MacGod]

...it's saved me having to buy a remote from Keyspan

I actually own one of the keyspan remotes, and I gotta say, it's great. One of the coolest features is that you can program it for any remote (this only works in OS 9 unfortunately). If you know the bit time and frequency of your remote, you can point it at the receiver, press a button, and it will tell you what the command consists of. This is great for those of us with huge universal remotes.

Plus, the Keyspan remote costs $50US, the T68i cost about $100 more than a similar-but-not-BlueTooth phone from my carrier.

Is Ericsson the new Newton maker? ;-)

[capmilk]

Seems like Ericsson now provides all those cool features that made having a Newton so exciting. Reminds me of the software that turned a Newt into a remote control for Sony CD Players and a couple of other things.

Need longer battery life now..

[davo39]

This is really a geek tool. I love it .. especially the proximity sensor. You can actually program your Mac to execute a task via Applescript when you leave the BT radius, or re-enter it.

We need longer battery life now. Bluetooth is a real drain on your cell phone (or your Palm for that matter).

Re:Need longer battery life now..

[thatguywhoiam]

I tried this, and its really hard for me to test - the range of those DLink BT adapters is a good 10 meters. My phone gets picked up before I'm even in my apartment.

On another note, I've finally realized my dream of having theme music on cue when I enter the building.

Re:Need longer battery life now..

[thefinite]

I can go *three* days on my T68i, with Bluetooth on the whole time, before I need to recharge the phone. I realize this doesn't say whether or not BT is a drain, but it does say it doesn't matter on a T68i if it is a drain.

Re:Need longer battery life now..

[sean23007]

Then you just have to figure out how to hack into your friend's Mac so that when you walk into his house the music changes to what you like. Damn, I need a Bluetooth phone.

Re:Hmmm...

[matthew.thompson]

Bluetooth includes encryption as standard and before a connection can be established both devices must approve.

This software only listens to a bluetooth connection from a specific device which has to have been paired with the Mac before hand.

It's quite safe - robably more so than having WiFi connections.

Think how many businessmen who use WiFi in Hotels etc have firewalls running. My Mac does all the time - even when I'm at home behind a hardware firewall.

Re:Hmmm...

[DJPsychoChild]

I didn't say it would be quick and easy for someone to do. Are you willing to take the chance, however, that someone COULD take over your computer with a cell phone? It may never happen to you. Chances are, unless you're high profile, no one cares. But are you willing to take the risk?

Re:Will it work with Nokia 6310i?

[Lebannen]

Afraid not. At the moment, it doesn't even work with the P800 - this relies on the menu publishing capabilities that Ericsson put in phones from the T38 to the T68i.

I'm working on alternative methods for the P800 though, as it seems to be the hot new phone to have :)

[Note: am in no way connected with Clicker]

Re:Hmmm...

[tbmaddux]

It's quite safe - robably more so than having WiFi connections.

If it's so safe, why is security guru Bruce Schneier using it as an example of failed authentication schemes? A quote from the bottom of that Cryptogram section:

"I said something like: 'I can hardly wait for Bluetooth to become universal, because I really want a wireless keyboard and mouse with the "base station" built into my computer.' He said: 'Yes, but you really probably don't want to use Bluetooth for that, because then somebody could stuff keystrokes or mouse clicks into your system.' I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Talk about not getting it."

At least WiFi has "progressed" to the point that we all know it's insecure and those of us who are concerned about security can easily workaround it by using secure tools, just like we already do with email.

Some Additional Applescripts

[thefinite]

Here are some scripts that add to its functionality:

-DVD player - get back into the menu

tell app "DVD Player" to go to the main menu

-Start up the screensaver (for when you leave the range)

tell app "ScreenSaverEngine" to activate

(make sure screensaver is turned off or two of them will run)

-Telling you when you are in or out of range (so you know how far you can go).

say "You are out of range"
say "You are in range"

This application is so great. The possibilities are endless. -

Re:Some Additional Applescripts

[Mikey-San]

That is /quite/ a nifty idea, the screensaver thing. (Assuming there's any security with the phone range thing at all.)

How about some more:

say "Get back to your desk you slacker" -- going out of range

say "Help me, he's coming right for me" -- coming into range

tell application "Safari"
set docList to index of every window as list
repeat with theWindow in docList
if URL of document theWindow contains "microsoft.com" then
quit
else if URL of document theWindow does not contain "microsoft.com" then
end if
end repeat
end tell

-- coming into range or going out of it! ;-D

-/-
Mikey-San

Beware it's time limited

[rleyton]

The program is truly awesome in it's usefulness and geek-chic factor, but don't forget that it's time-(limited/crippled), ie. it's good to the end of February, which gives you a mere week!

There's no indication of how much it'll be to buy at the moment, but hopefully not too much. I'd not want to spend more than £10-£20 on this, as a techy it's of limited 'real' use.

Here's hoping the author will issue another time-limited release...

Getting Powerpoint/Office X setup

[jarrod.smith]

The PowerPoint control requires "Visual Basic for Applications" to be installed. If you haven't got it, PowerPoint will tell you. In this case, run the Office X installer and select only the "Visual Basic for Applications" option from inside the "Tools" dropdown - then finish the installation process. If you've already applied the Office 10.1.2 patch, you will need to patch it again. PowerPoint kept crashing on me when I tried to start the slide show from my phone until I re-applied the patch. This is a truly awesome application.

Simple Bluetooth Keychain

[affegott]

All-

Does anyone make a very small Bluetooth keychain type device? I really like the "Proximity Sensor" mode... but I don't want to need a Sony/Ecicson phone to use it... :-)

Something like a keyless entry keychain, but with Bluetooth... someone must make one, right?!?

Later,
-Affe

Scripts to automatically lock & unlock your sc

[blootooth]

I have proximity locking and unlocking both running beautifully here. 10-12 second delay for either. Big wow factor around the office.

Range on my T68i is way more than 30 feet. Maybe the author will add a range slider on the proximity tab. For unlocking you need something like Extra Suites http://www.kanzu.com/ ($10) or your prefered OSAX that can generate keystrokes. This allows you to enter text via AppleScript as if from the KB and thus unlock the screen. The 'type string' and 'type key' commands are part of Extra Suites.

To lock the screen use this as your action.

set previousState to do shell script "defaults -currentHost read com.apple.screensaver askForPassword "
do shell script "defaults -currentHost write com.apple.screensaver askForPassword 1"
tell application "ScreenSaverEngine" to run
do shell script "defaults -currentHost write com.apple.screensaver askForPassword " & previousState

This will not permanently alter the preference you have set in your screen effects panel.
To unlock the screen you can use the following script. NOTE! This requires entering your user PW as plain text into the script. Use this method with caution. A person who gets access to your box could, with the appropriate tools, extract your PW from the preference pane plist and then get access to your box!
Oh, I guess they'd already have that huh? ; )

tell application "Extra Suites"
type key "enter"
delay 1
type string "YourUserPasswordGoesHere"
delay 1
type key "enter"
end tell

Hoping this helps someone wow their boss into mac lust.

demo movie

[stux]

very interesting demonstration of this nifty utility in use

http://homepage.mac.com/rtouris/iMovieTheater38.ht ml

This is the first truly cool thing I've seen with BlueTooth :)

Re:Scripts to automatically lock & unlock your

[mithras the prophet]

For the unlock script, may I suggest the following:

do shell script "kill `ps axww | awk '/ScreenSaverEngine/ {print $1}' | head`"

which doesn't require saving your password in the script. (I used that construction instead of killall because killall wasn't working for me. YMMV.)