Tech @ FuryTech

I found the Android Bluetooth Remote on the Android Marketplace, and decided to give it a try, as I have bluetooth on my computers and thought it’d be a fun program. It claims to be a remote control for your computer, and it fulfilled that claim beyond my expectations.

It acts as a remote control for most media programs, with start/stop/next/previous and volume buttons. It also lets you lock your computer, and handle shutting down and restarting.

Now, the coolest feature is that it lets you use your Android phone as a keyboard and mouse for your computer. If you have a phone with a physical keyboard (like the droid) you can use the screen as a touchpad and the keyboard as a keyboard at the same time, otherwise you have to bounce between the two applications. It’s pretty responsive and very quick at updating on the screen. There’s a fraction of a second of lag on the keyboard, but it’s not too noticeable.

It connects to your computer via bluetooth, and requires a small helper application installed on the computer. It’s pretty useful if you want to control a computer that’s not easily accessible or watch movies across the room.

Just a reminder that I offer prints of some of my photography here.

Profits go to keeping me from becoming the stereotypical starving artist.

I’ve been looking for a good, affordable office application for the Android for a while. A few days ago, I came across Documents to Go, and gave it a try.

It’s without a doubt, the best mobile office application I’ve ever used. It handles Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and PDF documents, including Office 2007 filetypes. Not only does it view them, but it can also create word, excel and powerpoint files.

The editor is full-featured, handling tables and formatting well. I didn’t notice any glaring errors with its handling.

About the only issue that I’ve got with it is that it doesn’t link in with any of the online document storage services. Having Live Mesh or Google Docs support would be amazing, and hopefully a future version will support them.

It’s currently on sale in the Android Marketplace for $15 (normally $30), so I’d recommend picking up a copy. There is a free demo version that views files without creating or editing them if you want to get a feel for the program before you commit.

I’ve spent the last day or so working on a major overhaul of the Angband Mirror. The new access URL is here. Let me know if you have any suggestions or bugs.

Android already has a great contact sync feature with both Facebook and Gmail. It’s fast, effective, and doesn’t seem to mess up very often. However, the people who use Outlook and Android are pretty much out of luck out of the box if they want to sync their contacts or calendar events.

Fortunately, there is a cheap solution for this. Gsyncit, which I believe I have mentioned in the past, will sync your contacts and calendar events to gmail, where they will then be picked up by your phone, and vice versa. This saves a lot of time, and makes it much easier to keep track of your schedule and contacts on the go.

I’ve recently gotten Left 4 Dead 2 to run on three screens using SoftTH. To run this, all you need is Left 4 Dead 2, and a computer that supports 3 screens. It’s a lot of fun, and highly recommended. Here are instructions and screenshots.