Get More Out of Bluetooth

Bluetooth-enabled devices put a massive amount of power in the palm of your hand. With a Pocket PC, cell phone and computer connected via Bluetooth you can manage music, phone lists, and much more from your Pocket PC. All you need are a few low-cost applications to become a “Bluetooth power user.”

Wirelessly control desktop PC Windows Media Player from your Pocket PC

Required: A Bluetooth-enabled Pocket PC and a Bluetooth-enabled desktop or laptop PC

Be one of the first Bluetooth-equipped DJs around with Rudeo Control for Windows Media Player 9 (http://www.rudeo.com). This software installs a server program on your PC and a client on your Pocket PC, which gives you total control of the PC version of Windows Media Player from your wireless Pocket PC (Fig. 1). It works with either a Bluetooth or a Wi-Fi connection. The first time you run the software it downloads your playlists from the PC and displays songs, videos and Internet radio sites that you can quickly navigate to in order to create your ultimate party mix.

Fig. 1: The Rudeo Control Playing screen offers one touch access to the Windows Media Player controls as well as a current song display, volume control and a slider to jump to a different point in the song.

Once the party begins, one touch on your Pocket PC will play, pause, stop or skip tracks. You can edit your playlists on the fly and even change the visualizations displayed on the PC. If you make changes to the playlist from your desktop computer, you can update the playlist on your Pocket PC by selecting Download Library from Rudeo Control’s menu. The library is stored on your Pocket PC for lightening-fast access, even with large lists. Best of all, you can work the party. Even if your Pocket PC powers down or loses its Bluetooth connection, the music plays on. Simply reconnect to the PC when you need to make another change, or if someone asks you a question about the song that’s playing (artist, song title, the album it’s on, etc.).

If you use Winamp instead of Media Player on your PC, you can do the same thing with IRemote by Mark Majeres (http://www.mcmajeres.com). Truly hardcore music lovers should check out 2nR-Musiker from Sensate Inc. (downloadable from http://www.handango.com). This free program acts as a “music server” to deliver music from a central PC to other PCs as well as to Pocket PCs.

Bluetooth chat and profiling

Required: Two or more Bluetooth-enabled Pocket PCs

When Windows CE devices first came out, infrared chat applications proliferated on the Internet as the high-tech way to chat with nearby friends. But infrared required close proximity and line-of-sight, so maintaining the connection was troublesome if you wanted to move around while reading or writing messages. Now, HS-Messenger by Hühn Software (http://www.huehnsoftware.com/eng/index.html) allows you to chat between Pocket PCs that have a Bluetooth partnership. Starting a conversation is as easy as entering a line of text and pressing Send. Your messages and the responses appear in the program’s main window (Fig. 2). The programs color scheme can be changed and chat logs can be saved to a text file.

Fig. 2: HS-Messenger’s simple interface makes it easy to send text messages via Bluetooth.