Have you ever left your computer logged in when you have had to race off to a meeting or lunch? I used to leave it logged in. One day my boss questioned me about an email sent from my computer, asking her if I could have babies with her. A colleague had played a joke on me. I soon learned to lock my computer whenever I was not in front of it.

Locking a computer is a fairly simple task. The Windows+L key combination will lock your computer instantly. It is still easy to forget though, so why not automate it with a little help from Bluetooth!

Bluelock is a small program that runs in your task tray. It detects if you (your phone) has moved away from your computer. If Bluelock can no longer find your phone because it is out of range, it will automatically lock your computer. When you return, you can type in your password, knowing that your computer was safe during your trip.

There is no installation required on either your phone or your computer. In fact, no software is needed on your phone at all. All that is required is Bluetooth on both your computer and your phone. I found it to be very reliable in my testing in both XP and Vista.

Many devices still have an older version of Bluetooth in them which has a range of 10 metres. Unfortunately, newer Bluetooth signals can reach up to 100 metres on a good day, so for this program to work, you will need to be more than 100m away from your computer.

Bluelock is available for free from Wuuls Website.

If you spend a lot of time in front of your computer, and also spend a lot of time sending SMS messages, you might want to check this out.

The SMS add-in for Outlook allows you to send messages directly from Outlook. Utilising your address book, keyboard and mouse is much quicker than using your handset to type and send messages.

The SMS add-in uses your phone to send the message, so that will need to be connected via USB, Bluetooth or infra-red. It uses a mobile phones’ modem to send the messages, which most phones will have in one form or another. Ideally, it will be offered as a Bluetooth service, so you can set and forget. As you are using your phone, the cost is the same as if you were sending the message directly from your phone.

Your messages can be drafted, grouped or forwarded just like a regular email message, though you can’t receive messages using this add-in. The add-in is only designed to send messages.

This worked successfully for me using a Nokia N70 via Bluetooth with Outlook 2003. Microsoft claims that it works in Outlook 2007, but I had no luck with this. The add-in didn’t show itself without some registry tweaks. This may be a Vista issue rather than an Outlook 2007 issue. Microsoft doesn’t offer any support for this add-in.

Configuration of this is a little bit of a hassle, so for it to be worthwhile to you, you would want to be sending a lot of messages. Once it is setup though, it works like a dream, saving you a bundle of time.

It is far from perfect, but if you try it and it doesn’t work for you, the uninstall is fairly basic. I am going to continue using it, and I will look forward to updates. I am surprised that this is not a built-in, supported feature for all modern operating systems and email packages. It is yet another tool which will help you keep your phone in your pocket.

Available for free from Microsoft.

I don’t have a webcam, and I don’t really intend on ever buying one. Occasionally there are times that others have requested that I get one, but I can’t justify the purchase.

Most phones these days have cameras built in, so wouldn’t it be great if we could use the phones we already have as our webcam.

SmartCam answers the call. SmartCam fools your computer into seeing your smartphones camera as a webcam. A Windows client and a mobile client both need to be installed for it to operate. SmartCam works with MSN messenger, Skype, as well as a straight forward capture to file.

While this all sounds very good, being a SourceForge hosted project that is still very young, SmartCam has some limitations. It only works over Bluetooth, which is exactly what I wanted, but it may limit some users. It is designed for Symbian S60, Series 2 & 3 devices, although it does run on a Java platform; so it may work on other devices.

SmartCam worked for me on a Nokia N70. I had no success with Windows Mobile, however it has not been designed to run on this platform as yet. It was designed for XP, and I had no problems running SmartCam in Vista.

It is a little fiddly to get up and running. The mobile versions need to be installed from the Windows installation folder. Once you read the Read Me file, and get the hang of how it works, you should be fine. SmartCam fulfilled my needs, and I recommend you give this one a go.

(Update: 26/9/07) To stop the popups for each new frame on your phone, go into your tools folder and select your application manager.
Go down to jSmartCam, select options, and Suite Settings.
Change Connectivity to Always allowed
Change Multimedia to Ask First Time.
For more information, check out the read-me file in the installation folder.

Available for free from SourceForge.net

Bluetooth has been around for a few years now and has become common place in Mobile Phones and laptop computers. Over the last 6 months of writing Inspect My Gadget, a have had a much deeper look into what Bluetooth can do for me.

There are a lot of people who use Bluetooth purely for connecting up a Bluetooth headset to their phone, but Bluetooth can be used for so much more than this. Each Bluetooth enabled device offers its own range of Bluetooth services. Each service can be used to give you a feature you may not have experienced yet. 

This article will explain what Bluetooth is and offer you a lengthy collection of fun things you can try with it, bringing together many of the Bluetooth articles which are already available at Inspect My Gadget.

I have not seen many of these fantastic Bluetooth features reported elsewhere on the web. Bluetooth has not seemed to have been overly embraced by the public. I feel Bluetooth is very powerful and the word should be spread.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was in the cinema a few weeks back and as I walked out, I found my phone had multiple movie advertisements stored in the documents folder. This was advertising which the cinema had placed on my phone whilst the film was on. I was not aware that this was happening at the time as my phone was on silent, they could have sent me anything they wanted. I felt it was quite an invasion of privacy, but it was my problem as I had not set up my phone with adequate protection.

Windows Mobile 5 devices have a simple utility to disable the automatic receiving of beamed files via Bluetooth. To access it, go into your settings and select the Connections tab. You should fine the Beam icon in here. Change the tick box to enable or disable this feature.

You also have the option to turn off Bluetooth when you don’t need it but this is becoming less of an option over time as we are relying on Bluetooth more and more.

If you want to receive everything that is sent to your device, and want to investigate how to use this feature yourself, check out my article on “Sending messages an files over Bluetooth.”