S60 Open to new features

Many of you will perhaps already be aware of “Salling Clicker” from Salling Software in Stockholm. This is a really nice application that allows you to use your S60 device as a remote control for the media on your computer. I should first point out that this isn’t a standalone S60 application since you first need to install some software on your PC or Mac with which you can then create an installer for your particular device, in this case S60 devices. Your PC or Mac will be serving your media and acting as a host device for the client installed on your handset. You start by downloading the application for PC or Mac(you can start with a trial) installing and following the wizard which will help you install the client on your particular S60 device(s) and setting it up for either a Bluetooth or WiFi connection. In this case I’m using a PC notebook as a media center hooked to a 32″ LCD TV, I haven’t installed the application on any of our Macs but I’m sure it would work fine! I tried first to connect the devices(N95 & E90) over WiFi but the third-party firewall I have installed on the Windows XP notebook didn’t seem to like it so rather than spending hours trying to figure out which software components or ports to connect through I decided to use bluetooth which appears to function fine. I decided to use the N95 as the primary remote since I use the E90 as a phone but if you’ve got only once device you can set Salling Clicker to automatically mute the system volume while you’re on the phone. I should point out that only one device at a time can connect, connecting one will disconnect the other, well at least from what I could see, I had to test it!

When connected you can control applications like iTunes, PowerPoint or Windows Media Player. There are third-party plugins available to control other applications which I haven’t yet tried. You can for example connect to iTunes, browse your music or podcast library or playlists, select the item, play and pause it etc. If it’s video podcasts you’re browsing you will of course need to have TV or monitor powered on but if it’s music you don’t need one since all the info you need is available for your S60 device display. This is great in my case since I don’t need to run the LCD TV to play some music. In iTunes a “Salling Clicker” playlist will be created which displays the tracks of the currently selected album. You can search by artist, album or track title and any album art added will also be displayed.

You also have access to some system settings, you can shutdown your computer, set the system volume, display your S60 device info and use the device as a mouse pointer where you use the directional controls to move the mouse. Since in Windows Media Player you can also browse any music videos you happen to have(Video PlayLists) as a bit of a workaround I instead set the video library to browse my video files(home movies etc) and can use my S60 device to start, pause and forward my videos when the TV is on of course!