Searching Google from a Windows Mobile or Symbian device normally takes a few clicks. You first need to open the browser, open up Google, and only then do you get the opportunity to start your search. It is all a bit slow and frustrating.

Google has released a today screen plugin that makes searching so much faster. Once it is installed, you have the Internet giants search bar directly on your today screen awaiting your every whim.

I have always found the Internet to be a little awkward on hand held devices. This is really going to help me get over my mobile Internet phobia. It is now so simple to find the information I want quickly.

The search bar is available for Windows Mobile and Symbian devices. Simply go to http://mobile.google.com from your device and select “Search (Download)” to install the plugin.

Would you like to control your music player and powerpoint presentations from your phone? If you have a Sony or Nokia phone and a Bluetooth connection, you might be in luck.

JAM SE is a free mobile application for a range of Java enabled mobile phones that will allow you to control your music collection from your phone, using Bluetooth.

You can browse or search your music collection from your phone, as well as having control of the volume, play, skip, repeat and shuffle controls you would expect it to offer.

I use Winamp as my music player as I find it to be be quick and easy to use. This is fortunate as JAM SE currently only works with Winamp or XMMS.

Jam SE is skinnable so you can make it look just right to suit your needs. It runs on both Windows and Linux. It uses the Bemuser program as a backend. I couldn’t figure out what the difference between Bemuser and JAM SE is, but I found out about this via JAM SE, so they get the plug.

JAM SE is a bit of a hassle to install, though on their website there are videos and there is plenty of documentation that should help you through it. You will need to install components on your computer and on your phone and then configure the Bluetooth.

I have tested a number of programs that claim to do similar tasks, in the time of writing this website, but none have worked well enough for me to promote. JAM SE worked great for me straight up on a Nokia N70.

JAM SE is available for free from Sourceforge.

Well, another Rugby Season in Australia has come & gone, and as the dust settles that can only mean one thing: Cricket Season is upon us once again. Robin Williams once called the game “baseball on valium” - and most wives (including mine!) would agree with him - but speaking for myself, I enjoy the subtleties of a good game of cricket and can never resist following the game whenever I can.

I tend to watch it on the television if it’s available, but more often than not, I’ll have it on the radio in the background while I’m working or doing other things. If neither are available for whatever reason, I can usually rely on Baggy Green (www.baggygreen.com.au), the Australian portal of CricInfo (www.cricinfo.com) - the website for all things cricket.

Thus, to keep me informed, I have television, radio and internet to choose from. That should keep me pretty well covered, right? BUT, what if none of those options are available? In order to get to & from work each day, I spend up to two hours a day travelling on the train - normally a peaceful time for me, as I get some time to read and listen to podcasts. But when there’s a cricket game in progress, anything can happen in that time. Cricket games are long. I have my Sony Ericsson phone, which has a built-in radio (as do most phones these days), but alas - it plays only FM stations, and the only local station which broadcasts the cricket here is in AM. So what can I do?

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Watching a film on a small screen is never ideal, but it is a good way to pass some time if that is your will.

DivX has become a very popular video format for movies and online videos. Most full length DVD backups are converted to DivX as the file size can be fairly small in comparison to other formats, and it still plays the video in reasonably high quality video and audio.

DivX has released their player to the public for free, only this time it is for mobile devices.

The player itself is very simple and efficient. I installed it on my Windows Mobile device and copied a few Vodcasts onto my phone. The DivX player handled them without any problems. My Ipaq rw6828 is aging a little but still was not troubled by the videos I tested. It is lightweight and it played the videos in full screen mode.

DivX recommends that your device runs at 200Mhz or faster. If your device struggles, the DivX player will drop frames to recover. This is not likely to be picked up by your eyes very easily.

DivX Mobile Player is available for a bunch of Symbian and Windows Mobile devices. This is a great program for showing off how powerful these devices are. You never know, but you may find a time that playing a movie on your phone is a worthwhile thing to do. I wish I had this on long trips in the past. You can only play so much Kevtris.

DivX Mobile Player is available for free from DivX.

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