Smartphones: 14 Great Things iPhones and BlackBerrys Can Do
Control 7 different devices with your iPhone, play Internet radio on your BlackBerry, and more.
Smartphones are intelligent, but with the 14 tips and tricks in this story, they could approach genius territory. We'll show you how to run seven separate devices from your iPhone, how to play Internet radio (mostly for free) on your BlackBerry, how to make free phone calls from an iPod Touch, and how to revive a dead cell phone battery (if it's detachable) while you're in winter weather.
For more, see the other stories in our "57 Amazing Things You Didn't Know Your Tech Could Do!" package, including our full list of tips and tricks.
Control 7 Different Devices From an iPhone
Perhaps you didn't know that your iPhone or iPod Touch can act as a Wi-Fi remote for many hardware devices. You simply connect the iPhone through Wi-Fi to the same local network, though in many cases you'll also have to install a PC utility (provided by the app developer) that listens for instructions from your iPhone over the Wi-Fi network. Here are my favorite tools to control PCs and other devices.
DVR Remote ($3) lets the iPhone drive a Series 3 TiVo, with access to all of the buttons and features of the innovative DVR. Best of all, you can tap text in with the regular iPhone keyboard instead of pecking at the on-screen alphabet with the arrow buttons.
i-Clickr PowerPoint Remote ($10) manages presentations, even showing your talking notes or upcoming slides on the iPhone. It's a great counterpoint to the remote available for Apple's Mac-only Keynote tool in iWork.
You can control many music devices, too. Sonos owners should get the free Sonos Controller for iPhone for slick remote functionality. Roku Soundbridge fans with should try the $3 RokuRemote. And if you have a Logitech Squeezebox device, try running it with the $10iPeng.
Switching to PC controllers, Air Mouse Pro ($6) acts as a PC keyboard and mouse, so you can control a computer from across the room. Air Mouse Pro's clean design and application-specific functions make it stand out among a crowd of App Store competitors.
The App Store also sells many VNC (virtual network computing) clients, which let your iPhone see the PC screen and control it. Look to those if you already have VNC server software running on your PC. Otherwise, I like the $30 LogMeIn Ignition for its easy setup and interface with LogMeIn remote-access software.
Use Your Smartphone to Sync Files Among Your PCs
You know that you can play music on your smartphone, or even on many generic handsets. But did you know that if a phone has a storage area for music, you can likely use that memory to stow PC files too? If your phone has a microSD slot--included on nearly all music-playing devices--and a mini-USB port, this trick should work.
First, install a flash-memory microSD card; the slot may be hidden behind the battery or in another hard-to-access place. Then connect the phone to a PC with a mini-USB cable. The phone might prompt you to enter the USB disk mode; approve that prompt, and the memory card will show up on the PC as a new drive. Some devices, such as RIM BlackBerry phones with built-in memory, will mount as two drives if such a card is installed; otherwise the device memory will mount as the only drive.
Just copy over your files to the new drive. Unplug the phone, and when you get to work or to another PC, repeat the connection process to move your files to the destination.
Next: Play Internet Radio on a BlackBerry; Revive a Dead Cell Phone Battery
Networking Tricks
Sling Files to Other PCs Over Bluetooth
If your laptop has built-in Wi-Fi, there's a good chance it can also network through Bluetooth. Wi-Fi, ethernet, and other connection methods transfer files more quickly than Bluetooth does, and those networking technologies are better for recurring connections (such as in an office network). But Bluetooth is my secret winner for slinging small files directly--and almost instantly--between any two desktops or laptops that have Bluetooth capability. It's especially handy at my house, where we can't print to an ancient printer with our Vista PC (no drivers); we shoot the document to our XP laptop, which can. If a PC you use doesn't have Bluetooth built-in, you can add aUSB dongle to gain the feature.To begin, on the recipient PC, open the Bluetooth Devices control panel, click Add Wireless Device, Choose the Optionstab, and click Turn discovery on. Click OK.
On the sending PC, locate and right-click the file you want to transfer. Select Send to, Bluetooth device. Click Browse if needed, and select the recipient PC. Click OK. If you're sending something private, click the Use a passkey box and type a password. (Skip this step if you want to keep things simple.) Click Next.
The recipient PC will prompt you to enter the password (if necessary) and accept the transfer. Now you just have to wait for the file. Keep transfers to a couple of megabytes or less, since files of even that size can take several minutes to transfer.
Make Info on Your Home NAS Available Anywhere
Network-attached storage is great for sharing files between connected PCs. But most NAS devices let you access your files over the Internet, as well. Some NAS de vices use FTP for this purpose; others rely on a proprietary Web service. And many (such as the Western Digital My Book World Edition, pictured here) offer both. A Web service is simpler to set up and use; in such an arrangement, you download files through a designated Web site connected to the NAS. Check your documentation for help with this method; you'll likely need only to turn it on and make a log-in account.Setting up an FTP server requires you to know networking basics, but anyone can connect through FTP to make the disk appear within the Windows desktop. First, make sure that your NAS hardware is running; if it isn't, follow its standard setup process.
You'll be accessing the NAS in a browser, so you need to know its IP address. If you know it, type it as a URL, as inhttp://192.168.0.100, into the browser's address field. If you don't know it, visit your router's configuration page by entering the router's IP address as a URL into the browser. If you are unsure of that URL too, open your PC's Network Connections control panel. Double-click the current connection, and click the Support tab. Your router's IP address is the same as the Default Gateway.
In the router-configuration page, look for a table of attached-device IP addresses. (For a Belkin N1 Vision, for example, it's in the DHCP Client List tab.) Enter the NAS IP address into a new browser window. In the NAS-configuration page, you have to enable the FTP server. Consult your documentation; on a Buffalo Link Station, I found the setting on the Network tab.
Back on the router page, configure it to reserve the same address for the NAS drive. Many routers allow you to view a table of connected devices and click a button there to reserve the address. In my case, I clicked Lan Setup, Lan Settings and set the Lease Time to Forever. (Even with a dozen devices on my network and occasional visitors, I have ample free addresses.)
Now you need to set port forwarding. On the Belkin router I used, port forwarding was under Firewall, Virtual Servers. FTP forwarding is a common preset; I selected FTP Serverfrom a drop-down menu and en tered the NAS internal IP address. When an Internet PC tries to make an FTP connection to the router's IP address, the router will send it to the NAS device.
When you're outside your network, use the home router's IP address to connect. OpenStart, My Network Places. Select Add a network place. Click Next, and select Choose another network location. Click Next. Enter the home network's IP address, in the formatftp://ftp.xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx. Finish the rest of the wizard's settings, including your FTP log-in and password, which you can configure on the NAS device. Note: You'll be making these connections without any encryption, so be careful about what you transmi
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