1. Install the Tablet Remote app on both the tablet and phone.

2. On your tablet (or the device that you wish to control), run the tablet remote app and go to Setup.

Select the two settings: “Enable Tablet Remote in the settings” and “Change the input method for tablet remote”.

It will bring you to the Settings page. You will have to change the keyboard setting to “Tablet Remote”

3. Next, turn on your tablet bluetooth and pair it with your phone.

On your phone,

1. Turn on the bluetooth and pair it with the tablet. Run the Tablet Remote app and go to the Connection page.

Click on the tablet device to connect to it. Once you see the connected icon, you are ready to control your tablet from your phone.

This is what you will see at the remote control page.

There are a few things you can do with this remote. You can access the Home screen, Menu option, issue the Back command and perform a search. You can also Play, Pause, Fast Forward and Rewind the current video or music. At the two sides are the Volume and Brightness control.

If you put your phone in landscape mode, the remote control will turn into a gamepad where you can use it to play game on your tablet. However, this seems to work only for games that support key input with the gamepad.

The navigation (left, right, up, down and Enter button) is rather filmsy at the moment and it is always a hit or miss when trying to launch an app. However, if you are only using this to control the video playback, volume and brightness, it is a good app to use.

Tablet Remote (market link)

For security sake, it is best to set a password so others can’t access your desktop easily.

That’s all you need to do for your Ubuntu.

Configuring remote access in Android tablet

There are several apps in the market that allow you to connect to a remote device, but the one that I found to be working best is Wyse PocketCloud RDP/VNC. It is free, fast and easily configurable.

In your Android tablet,

1. Download and install Wyse PocketCloud RDP/VNC (market link)

2. Run the app. Select the “Add Connection” link at the top right corner.

3. Select the Manual Connection, follow by “VNC”.

4. At the configuration window, choose “Windows” under the Operating System dropdown (it will work for Mac as well). Give the connection a nickname. The most important part is the Host address. This is where you enter the IP address of your Ubuntu machine. If your Android tablet is on the same WiFi network as your Ubuntu machine, all you have to do is to enter the local IP (192.168.x.x) of your Ubuntu machine. However, if both are not connected in the same network and your Ubuntu machine is using a dynamic IP, you may want to configure it with a dynamic DNS. Lastly, tap “Save”.

5. Back to the main screen, tap the big “Connect” button. If everything is set up properly, you should be connected to your remote machine in less than a minute.

Wyse PocketCloud even comes with a mouse icon that you can use to simulate left and right click of the mouse and also the keyboard so you can type on the screen.

To exit, simply press the Back button and it will prompt you if you want to exit the session.

Conclusion

As can be seen, it is very easy to connect remotely to your Ubuntu machine. There is no need to install additional software on your Ubuntu. In addition, even on a slow network, the remote connection on the Android tablet works well too.

What other apps do you use to connect remote to your desktop?

After downloading the Splashtop app on the iOS device, it asks you to download the “Splashtop Streamer” app on your desktop computer. It comes up with the same message seen above. It made it seem like you had to make up a security code and install it on both. Instead, what they are asking you to do is to create the code and install it on the desktop, then insert it in the app a few screens later.

At this point, you will have a list of available computers you are networked to. In my case, I was only connecting to this one computer in the network, but I just might add the one my daughter uses as well.

If you’re having trouble finding your computer in the listing of available desktops, there is a link in the bottom right that says, “How Do I Find My Computer?” Clicking this brings up a screen that explains how to locate the computer. It gives you tips on finding it on your local network, as well as finding it via the Internet. To use this option, you’ll need to connect the service to your Gmail account.

Once you are fully connected, a Hints screen explaining how to adapt the Lions finger gestures for the iPad experience appears. You can opt to have this show every time or never again.

Once you have the desktop “live” on your iOS device, you have an option of having the “special” keys, such as Alt, Command, Fn-keys, arrows, etc., in a pop-up row along the bottom of the screen. I use a keyboard/cover with my iPad, and I find that I can’t use all those keys on my keyboard with this app, and sometimes have to use them on the bottom row. Additionally, when I re-enter the app, I sometimes have trouble getting the editing/typing to begin working again until I pop up that bottom row of special keys.

At first it seemed as if I didn’t have the top menu bar available to me in this app, then I realized I just had to scroll around to find it. I normally keep my Dock hidden until I need it, but found it difficult to use it in Splashtop then, so I just made it visible all the time.

By the time I submit this article, I will have done the whole thing from my iPad, when normally I would have only been able to do half of it before switching to my MacBook. I would be able to do it from my iPhone too, but doing this via such a small screen would drive me crazy. There are definitely things that could have made this process easier, such as being able to switch from app to app, and by that I mean on my iPad, not my Mac. You can switch, but you have to log in and start all over again. However, all in all, it still helps to make the process just a little easier.

One thing to bear in mind is that you might have trouble with connections if your router is blocking port 3389. So keep in mind that you might need to forward that port to resolve connection difficulties. Other remote support software tends to be very clever in getting around firewall restrictions, so there’s always Teamviewer if you get stuck!

Configuration

The configuration component is important only for the machine that you wish to control (i.e. the slave machine), not for the machine doing the controlling.This guide is written for Windows 7, but the configuration is similar in Vista and XP.

Step 1. Browse to Control Panel and select “View by: Small icons” in the top right hand corner.

Step 2. Click on the System icon.

Step 3. Click “Remote Settings” in the left menu. A popup box with “Remote Assistance” should load, as per the below image.

Step 4. Ensure that “Allow Remote Assistance connections to this computer” is ticked. Then click on Advanced.

Step 5. Reduce the time period for the maximum invitation time to 1 hour as a security precaution. Click Ok twice and close Control Panel.

Starting a Remote Assistance Session For the PC to be Assisted (Slave)

Simply run Windows Remote Assistance, by clicking Start, Maintenace, “Windows Remote Assistance”. Select “Invite someone you trust to help you” and you will see the following window:

The easiest connection method to use is “Easy Connect”, which will just provide you with a text password. Alternatively, you can generate a file which you need to share with the other person via email or similar, for added security. You will still need to share the 12 character password.

For the PC that is providing the Assistance (Master)

Run Windows Remote Assistance and select “Help Someone who has invited you”. Then select the appropriate option for your situation. Assuming you are using the Easy Connect method, you will be prompted for the 12 character password.

Enter it and hit OK. After a short delay you should be connected.

Features While Connected

When you are first connected, you are not in full control of the remote machine. Rather, you can see what is on their screen. You can also chat with them by clicking on “Chat”. If you wish to take over control of the mouse cursor and keyboard, you will need to click “Request Control”, and the remote user will need to authorise you.

Conclusion

While Windows Remote Asssitance isn’t the fastest remote control software I’ve used, it’s certainly the free-est! Being built-in is a great advantage. Nothing to install, and should work right out of the box. It’s got enough features for you to be able to provide occasional help to your friends or family, and strong enough security for you not to worry too much about unauthorised users.

Image credit: BigStockPhoto

Overview

GoToAssist is a very user friendly piece of software, with full support for both Windows and Apple OSX. When you run it, it provides you with a a support key to give your customer, and the option to copy the support URL to the clipboard or to email it. The customer can follow the link you send them, or just go to www.fastsupport.com and type in the support key and their name. Once they click launch, the download of the client side portion of the software begins and the support session is initialised shortly after that.

I have used GoToAssist from behind various different kinds of proxies and firewalls and never had any trouble establishing a connection both to and from such clients. Its routing abilities appear to be quite advanced.

GoToAssist offers a variety of great features that make your life as a remote support technician much easier. It’s possible to setup full unattended support with your clients (they must give permission, obviously), so that you can manage client machines out of hours or when they are not around. It also offers live chat during the session, file transfer, annotation tools and even a reboot and reconnect feature. The latter feature is invaluable as often a client will go off and do something else while you work on their system, and it can be time-consuming to have to call them back and ask them to reinitialise a support session once the machine has rebooted.

Options

There are a number of options in GoToAssist, primarily surrounding the quality of the visual experience at your end. The idea is to conserve bandwidth in order to improve the speed of your experience. If both you and the client have a fast broadband connection and are located in the same country then 24-bit colour and display effects should all work fine. If there are any bottlenecks, however, it’s probably best to revert to 256-colour and to disable any display effects as they will probably slow down your support session.

Speed

This is the one place where I find GoToAssist lacking in comparison to Teamviewer. Citrix does not specify whether GoToAssist uses multichannel routing, but my belief is that it does not. Speeds in Teamviewer are mostly superior to those of GoToAssist. That said, the speeds in GoToAssist certainly aren’t a deal-breaker

Wrap-up

If you’re looking for a strong alternative to Teamviewer then you could do much worse than to give GoToAssist a try. They offer a 30-day free trial, so you can evaluate if it works well for your needs. Please let me know how you find it.

Another good thing about Remote We Desktop is that it doesn’t require you to install a separate app on your desktop. This means that it is cross-platform compatible and can work anywhere with a browser.

Getting Started

To get it working, first install the Remote Web Desktop app (free version) from Android market.

Open up the app and click the “Start Server” button (if you are connected via WiFi). Optionally, you can enter a password so only you can access. After 10 – 25 seconds, you will see a web URL for you to connect on your desktop browser.

If you are on 3G connection, select the bridge mode and enter your email address. Click the “Start Server” button and it will show you another web URL for you to connect to.

Once you are connected to your phone, you can access the various apps and settings on your phone.

Sending/Receiving SMS

As shown in the screenshot below, you can receive and send SMS right within the browser. This is handy if you are always typing long messages or are always on your desktop.

WiFi Keyboard

If you install the WiFi Keyboard app from the Android market, you can integrate it with Remote Web Desktop and type on your Android phone with your physical keyboard.

File Explorer

The File Explorer app allows you to browse your system and SD card files. You can upload (via FTP)/download or even view any file. Best of all, if you right click on an apk file, you can get it to install in your phone as well.

Screen Capture

If you have rooted your phone, you can make use of the Screen Capture feature to capture screenshots on your phone.

Webcam

Not all Android phone comes with a front camera, but most, if not, all of them came with a back camera. With this app, you can turn the back camera into a webcam for your Skype or video conferencing session.

Shared Clipboard

You can copy a text/word/sentence/paragraph/image, paste it in the Shared Clipboard and it will instantly become available in your phone.

Other than the above mentioned apps, there are several other features (Contacts, Notes and Mobile Settings) that are still “under construction”.

Conclusion

Remote Web Desktop doesn’t control every single aspect of your phone, but for those it does, I think they are very impressive.

There are two version of Remote Web Desktop in the market, free and paid. The paid version ($3.99) is ad-free and comes with a HTTPS secure mode and unlimited FTP file transfer.

Remote Web Desktop (free) | paid

To be able to remote control Windows 7, we need to install both the mobile app and the desktop app. The desktop app will start the necessary services and listen for remote input while the mobile app allows you to enter, transmits and control your computer.

Download the Windows Remote Services here (desktop app). Install the app in your Windows 7. Once installed, go to “Banamalon -> Windows Remote Services” folder in the Program Files folder and double click the WindowsRemoteService.exe file to start the server.

Next, on your Android phone, go to the market and download WIN – Remote (web market link). Once installed, open the app. You should see the following:

Tap on the Menu button and select Preferences. Tap on the Server Settings, followed by IP address. Set the IP address of your computer.

Assuming you are connected to the same Home network as your computer, you should now able to remote control your computer.

First thing first, tap on the Input button on your Android device and start moving around in the blank canvas. You should see the mouse cursor pointing in your computer too.

There are several applications that you can control with WIN Remote. Other than the mouse and keyboard, you can also browse your files and open the files in your computer. For example, I can navigate to my wallpaper folder on my Android phone and open the wallpaper on my computer.

Other applications that you can control include browser, task manager, various video and audio players (including Windows Media Player), image viewers, Windows Media Center, Powerpoint, OpenOffice etc. Lastly, you can also power on/off, reboot or hibernate your computer.

In conclusion, WIN-Remote is one of the most complete remote control app for Windows 7 in the market. In addition to opening the application, you can also control the volume, play next/previous track, refresh the current web page, and many more things. The interface might be plain, but most of the stuff just worked.

WIN Remote is free to download, but it is ad-supported. You can also download the ad-free donate version if you want to.

WIN Remote (homepage)

Recommended read:
How to Control Your Computer With Your Android Phone

Remote control VLC with your Android Phone

My mission over the past few months has been to find the best apps that I can use to control my PC with my phone. I have tested a number of free and paid apps and put together a great list of apps that makes the life of a couch potato that much easier.

Over the next few articles I will highlight some of the apps that have really made my life much easier.

Like most people my age, I love watching videos on my PC and my player of choice is of course the Swiss Army Knife of media players: VLC”.

VLC is a versatile application and there are a number of ways of controlling it from your phone. However, my preferred method has been the free app VLC Remote. It does the basic tasks of volume change, play/pause, forward and rewind easily and without any great difficulty setting up.

1. Set-up your Computer

First, you will have to download the VLC player from their website.

Note: I have tested the Android app with VLC version 1.1.0 and above.

Before installing the Android app VLC Remote, you must first make some changes to the default VLC application on your computer to enable your phone to properly detect VLC.

Open VLC and click on Tools > Preferences. Next, select All under Show settings.

This launches VLC’s advanced settings. Now select, Interface > Main interfaces. In the Main interfaces window select “HTTP remote control interface.”

2. Set-Up VLC Remote

Website | AppBrain | Market Link

Once you have configured VLC on your computer you can download VLC Remote onto your Android phone.

First, launch VLC on your computer. Unless VLC is running on your computer, the VLC Remote app will not work.

Next, launch VLC Remote on your phone. If it is able to detect your computer, the app will automatically pick up the name of the video file that is being played. However, in my experience it has never automatically detected my computer and I must add my IP address manually.

To connect to your computer, first, click on Menu and Settings.

In the Settings menu first ensure you are connected to your home wireless network. Once connected, click on “Add VLC server”.

In the “Add VLC server” type in your local IP address (for example 192.168.1.101) and leave the Port as the default 8080.

You should now be connected to your computer’s VLC application.

3. Features

I like VLC Remote because it is a simple that does not overflow with features but it has just enough to make media consumption easy.

All the basic settings can be accessed from the main interface.

Clicking on the Browse Media button launches a file browser that shows you all the files/folders on your computer. However, VLC must be running on your computer to actually be able to browse your media.

If you have all your media files in a specific folder you can set that particular folder as Home. To do this hold down the home button until you see “Home set to [folder]”.

You can select any media file (that is compatible with VLC) and have it play on your computer.

4. Conclusion

The best thing about this particular app and using the HTTP interface is that you do not need to worry about messing around with your router or firewall settings. So, long as you enable the HTTP interface the app will “just work”. In fact this app has become indispensable. I can now sit on my bed or couch, watch videos on my computer and I don’t have to get up to change the volume, play a new video or play/pause the video. Essentially, this is like a remote control for your computer.

There are a number of VLC remote apps in the Android marketplace, let us know which one you use to control VLC.

Image credit: purpcheese

Configure Firewall

To enable remote control of iTunes in Macl, you need to first configure your Firewall to allow incoming connection.

Go to System Preferences -> Security. Click on the Firewall tab. You don’t have to allow all incoming connections as that will pose a security threat to your Mac. All you have to do is to Set Access for Specific Services and select iTunes from the Application list (click on the + to add application).

Enable sharing of music library

Next, startup your iTunes. Go to Preferences. In the Sharing tab, make sure the “Share my library on my local network” is checked. Optionally, you can set a password for the share.

Pairing of remote device

On your Android phone, start the TunesRemote app (make sure you are connected to the wifi in the same network). It will automatically search for your shared iTunes Music library. In some instances where it cannot locate the music library, you can do a Manual Add.

Press Menu button and tap on Manual Add. Enter the IP address of your Mac and “0000000000000001″ for the pairing code (15 zeroes and a trailing 1)

Back to your iTunes, you should now see a Android device option in the side pane. Click on that. You will be prompted to enter the pairing code. Enter “0000″.

That’s it. You can now browse your iTunes music library, play your playlists and get your iTunes to play, stop, forward, previous.

Conclusion

At the moment, TunesRemote is still quite limited in features and the interface is very simple. It wouldn’t hurt for the developer to decorate up a bit. Other than that, for a remote control app, TunesRemote has done its job well.

Have you tried Tunes Remote? Let us know how you find it in the comments.

iSofa is a Mac application that turns your Mac into a Web server. You can then access the web server from your iPhone/iPod Touch and remote control your Mac from your iDevice. it makes use of the Mac inbuilt web sharing feature and the automator scripts to achieve the effect. The concept is simple, the implementation is simple and the user interface is great.

Download and install iSofa.

Once it is installed, it will show a window showing the IP address that you can access from your iDevice.

Click OK. Your Safari will now pop up showing the iSofa admin page. This is where you can configure your iSofa’s iPhone interface. You can upload a background wallpaper, set a password for the connection, the IP/port for your Mac to listen to etc.

If you have make any changes to the connection IP and port, you need to restart the Web sharing service. Go to System Preferences -> Sharing. Turn off the Web sharing and turn back on again to restart it.

Next, on your iDevice, launch the mobile Safari. Browse to the IP address given to you earlier. You will be able to connect to the iSofa main page.

In the event that you cannot connect, it is probably due to the firewall measure that you have put in place. To solve this, go to System Preferences -> Security -> Firewall. Check “Set access to specific services and applications”. Make sure Web sharing is listed is in the box below.

Refresh your iPhone mobile Safari. You should be able to connect to your iSofa admin now.

There are several things that you can remote control with iSofa. For example, you can play iTunes music.

You can browse files on your iPhone.

You can also set alarm for your Mac.

Other features include

• Keynote Remote
• VLC Remote
• DVD Player Remote
• QuickTime Remote
• FrontRow Remote
• Screen wake up
• Screen sleep
• Screensaver launcher

iSofa background customization

Optionally, you can also customize the background of the iSofa interface to your liking.

Go to iSofa Gallery. Browse through the collection of wallpapers and find the one that you like one. Download it to your desktop.

In your Mac iSofa admin page, re-upload the wallpaper. Now, refresh your browser in the iPhone. The wallpaper will change.

Conclusion

Considering that it is free (with Creative Common license) and allows you to remote control plenty of stuffs from your iPhone/iPod Touch, I think that iSofa is a great app to have. It might not aid you in productivity, but it sure can allow you to laze in your bed while enjoying the music/video playing from your Mac. And yes, it saves you the effort to get out of your bed to shut down your Mac.

What uses do you have for iSofa and what other features do you hope to see in the future version?

Different people use twitter for different purposes. Some use it to share interesting links with their friends, some use it to share funny jokes and some use it as their own public instant messenger, broadcasting intimate details of their life. All this was before some enterprising open source enthusiasts decided to come together and use Twitter for something even bigger – remotely controlling their PC.

TweetMyPC is an open source application that lets you send commands to your PC via Twitter and instruct it to shutdown, logoff, restart, download files off the internet and a lot more.

To setup TweetMyPC, download the latest version on your windows PC and run the installer.

TweetMyPC works by listening to a Twitter account for updates. I’d suggest that you create a new Twitter account for this purpose and also keep the updates on this account as private so that no one else is able to read the commands being issued.

Head over to Twitter.com and create a new account. Login to your newly created account and click on the Settings link. On the main Account page, you will find a checkbox to protect your tweets. Check it.

Now, launch TweetMyPC and setup the application for the first time by giving it the twitter account details that you just created.

That’s all. TweetMyPC is now setup and will continue to run in the background listening for commands on the twitter account that you set, every one minute.

To send a command to your PC, login to the Twitter account that TweetMyPC is listening to and write the command as a status update.

TweetMyPC will respond back with the physical memory of your PC in a tweet. The responses from TweetMyPC look something like this.

The responses come as updates to the same Twitter account and so everyone will be able to see them. This is the reason why I suggested that you protect your tweets while creating this account – You wouldn’t want anyone to look screenshots of your desktop. Yes, TweetMyPC can also take a screenshot of your desktop and upload the picture to Twitpic if you want to know what exactly is happening on your computer while you’re away.

Some other important and very useful commands that TweetMyPC supports are reboot, hibernate, getfilelist, getfile <filepath>, hibernate and standby. You can see the complete list of commands and their syntax in this blog post by the author of TweetMyPC.

At this moment, GRC only works in Windows XP (no Vista and other OSes) and your remote Window XP machine has to be connected to the Internet at all time.

Download GRC at http://www.gianniamato.it/grc/
Download MSINET.ocx file.

Extract the GRC.zip and double click on the program. It will show an error message that MSINET.ocx file is not found. Now, copy the MSINET.ocx file that you have downloaded to C:/Windows/System32.

Run the GRC again. A small window will pop up.

The predefined tag is [open] and [/open]. If you want to change it, click on Setting (You can’t access the Setting when you are logged in) and change the configuration to what you desire.

Login to your gmail account. GRC will now access your Gmail account every 60secs to check for new instructions.

To remote control your PC, you can send an empty email to your Gmail account with the following subject:

To open a file:

[open]C:\Documents and Settings\Damien\Desktop\Sunset.jpg[/open]

To open an application (such as Microsoft Word)

[open]C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\winword.exe[/open]

To open a webpage

[open]http://maketecheasier.com[/open]

To shutdown the computer

shutdown or [open]shutdown[/open]

Personally, I don’t have the habit of leaving my computer on while I am out, so I don’t really have much use of this application. One of the useful thing that I can think of is that I can remotely shutdown my PC after I leave it on to download a huge file. I am sure you can figure out more ways to use this application. If you have any, do leave your comments and let me know.

Remote Control your Computer With Gmail Remote Command originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
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