Using your BlackBerry (or other bluetooth phone) as a "remote control" for your PC

I'm not talking about VNC. Remote desktop is totally irrelevant here.

What I'm going to talk about is something light, just click through your PowerPoint slides, or change to next track in your iTunes' or Windows Media Player.



They use Bluetooth, instead of your air time/air packets. So basically the connection will be "local" - which means you are not depended upon Internet, cell phone connectivity, etc.



I've found several solutions sofar:

Vectir [Free! Well paid version is more powerful] - http://www.vectir.com/

Mobile Witch Remote Control [Free!] - http://www.mobilewitch.com/bluetooth-remote-control.php
Bluetooth Remote Control - http://www.blueshareware.com/bluetooth_remote_control.asp

WMOUSEXP - http://www.clearevo.com/wmousexp/



An application (sounds) very promising is Salling Clicker. However, the Balckberry support is still under consideration by the author, not available yet. http://www.salling.com/Clicker/windows/



Vectir seems the easiest to use from my perspective. However, it is realatively limited. Applications are supported through "plug-in" and so far only 4 applications are supported this way. No 3rd party development plan published. However, you can config mouse mapping and do mouse similation, which I am not a big fan of. Anways, if you only want to control iTunes/Win Media player, try Vectir first. Nice and easy.





Other interesting stuff - use your headset to control powerpoint:
http://www.headsetpresenter.com/



I don't like other hardware solutions given the tradition of hard to upgrade limitation. Saying that, the impatica ShowMate worth mentioning http://www.impatica.com/showmate/.

It's not too expensive and you don't need your Notebook at all. It's a piece of small hardware connects to VGA port of a projector and accepts screen from Blackberry via Bluetooth or USB. A piece of software need to be run on the Blackberry.

Well, I still have trouble buying into it yet, as the flexibility of Blackberry is not yet satisfying my last-minute update of PPT habit.