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.

What is Bluetooth?

Do you want the short answer or the long one? Well your going to get the short answer so we can get on with the fun stuff.

In short, Bluetooth is cable replacement technology which allows you to do many things that would have required a physical cable connection in the past. Bluetooth uses the 2.4Ghz band which is the same frequency as many cordless phones.

We can use Bluetooth to connect our computers and devices to GPS receivers, headsets, printers and a whole range of other peripherals, all without cables.

If you would like an in depth look at what Bluetooth is, check out Wikipedias Bluetooth definition or for an even deeper look, check out Bluetooth.com.

The fun stuff…

All you need to try this stuff out is a Bluetooth enabled computer, and a Bluetooth enabled device such as a mobile phone. I will be using a Windows Mobile 5 powered Ipaq rw6828 and a Nokia N70, though all Bluetooth enabled phones will let you do a majority of the tasks below.

Once you have your device and computer hooked up via Bluetooth, a whole range of tricks become available to you. 

Send and receive files and text messages via Bluetooth

One of the most useful tasks you can use Bluetooth for, is sending and receiving files from one phone to another, or one computer to another. It is a practical solution as it is much quicker to setup a pairing of your devices than plugging in your device, tracking down drivers and installing the software.

As well as files, it is possible to send short messages to people in close range. As you are using Bluetooth, there is no cost.

I have written an article explaining how to do this in three ways: a) from a Nokia phone to a computer, b) from a computer to Windows Mobile device and c) from phone to phone. Check out this article to see how easy it is.

This is really handy if you want to transfer ring tones or pictures amongst friends. While Bluetooth isn’t the fastest protocol around, it is quick enough for most situations, and you should find it to be quite handy.

You may have found that when you are at a shopping centre or a cinema, you get advertisements on your phone. You are able to disable this by turning Bluetooth off, making your device invisible to other devices by turning discovery off, or disabling the beam function itself. Check out this article for a more detailed look at how to disable this on a Windows Mobile device.

Sync your phone with your computer

Most phones will offer you some sort of cable connection and software which will allow you to sync the information from your email program to your device, and vice-versa. With a Windows Mobile device you would use either WMDC or ActiveSync (there are other commercial options out there) and if you use a Nokia phone, you would use the Nokia PC Suite to name a few.

The great thing about Bluetooth, especially with recent phone models such as the Nokia N Series, is that once you have created your Bluetooth pairing, and configured the software correctly, you do not need to press buttons on you phone for a sync to occur. Once you are in range, your devices will recreate the pairing automatically and synchronise.

I enjoy knowing that my wife was walking up my driveway, as my computer would report that her phone had been discovered, and the sync would begin. This gave me enough time to hide the evidence. 

Windows Mobile devices do require you to kick ActiveSync off, but you don’t need to touch anything at the computers end. Once a connection is established, you won’t need to reconnect ActiveSync until you have disabled the connection, either by moving out of range or turning off your phone/Bluetooth.

This sure does beat plugging in your phone to your computer as there are fewer steps involved and there is less cable clutter.

I have written a couple of articles showing how to setup this Bluetooth syncing for both WMDC and ActiveSync.

Search the web

Once you connect through to WMDC or ActiveSync, you are able to setup a pass-through connection. This means that your device will be able to utilise your computers Internet connection, so the device itself can surf the web. There are two modes:

The Internet = No proxy required – eg. Direct connection to the Internet

Work = proxy required – eg. going through work network

These definitions aren’t entirely accurate, but for most purposes, this is the easiest way to understand it.

This lets you browse the web when you are in close range of your computer, as well as use programs that require an Internet connection. This is a nice feature as many devices don’t offer Wifi.

Another way of doing things is to use your device as a dial up modem or GPRS modem. Your computer can then connect to your device via Bluetooth and use your devices Internet connection. This is very handy if you are on the road a lot.

Stream audio from your device to you computer

Using the wireless audio service you are able to stream audio from your device, out to your PC speakers or headphones. All sounds which come out of your phone will be streamed via Bluetooth to your computer. The sound is sometimes a little choppy, depending on your Bluetooth version.

This could be used for streaming audio to various rooms in your house, or to use your device as a baby monitor. It’s not the cheapest way of making this happen, but it is fun to play with. I hope that this feature is able to be utilised more in the future.

There are not really any practical reasons for using this, but it is great for playing practical jokes on people who have unexpectedly left their Bluetooth turned on. You could be the person inside their computer, knocking on the screen trying to get out.

If you use your phone as a dicta-phone, you may want to stream the recording out your PC speakers for transcribing. Your PC speakers will probably be much clearer than a phones speaker. 

Use your computer to report incoming phone calls

Just as you would use a Bluetooth headset to answer, hear and talk to people calling you, your computer can act as a headset. This is a nice touch for anyone who doesn’t like to be too attached to their phone. This feature is likely to work on just about any phone, as it is using the same service as a headset does.

Once this is setup, you can use your computer to receive calls, giving you a ring tone and a screen prompt, with caller ID, asking if you would like to accept or decline a call. If you accept the call, you can then use your PC speakers to hear what the caller is saying, and a microphone to say what you have to say.

I use this feature purely to let me know of incoming calls as I often keep my phone on silent. Once I see the pop-up, I see who is calling and if I want to speak to the caller, I will then start to look for my phone. If I don’t want to speak to them, the phon stays put and I have a reminder of who called.

I have written two articles on this in the past, cover 2 phone operating systems.

Use your computer to receive mobile phone calls via Bluetooth: Symbian(Nokia)

Use your computer to receive mobile phone calls via Bluetooth: WM5

This is a fun one to play with, and very practical in many situations. Give it a go.

Some other uses for Bluetooth

If you do have a Bluetooth headset, you are able to pair it with your computer so that you can listen to music and answer Skype/MSN calls, without requiring any extra components.

Another scenario which you probably wouldn’t want to do is… if you have a laptop in your backpack, turned on with an Internet connection of some kind, you could have your phone and computer connected via Bluetooth. This will enable you to get Internet on your phone as well as receiving any new email, all from your phones interface.

Yet another scenario is if you have your computer on in your office and you have a meeting in a nearby room. You can communicate with your computer via your phone so you don’t miss a thing. You can even go to the extent of browsing your desktop computer from your phone using either terminal services/remote desktop or a file explorer of some type.

Conclusion

I hope you have enjoyed reading this article and have learnt something new. Bluetooth should be around for quite a while, with version 3.0 just around the corner. If you have found any other fun things to do with Bluetooth, please put them in the comments section. I have very much enjoyed writing articles on Bluetooth in the past, and I hope to write more in the future, as Bluetooth develops. Please stick around and read some other articles at Inspect My Gadget.

So I did some research into what Web 2.0 is, mainly to find out how it can help us in our day to day computing. From the little snippits I have read so far, it does not seem like Web 2.0 is anything new.

This article will hopefully clear up what Web 2.0 is. A lot of Internet sites are making a lot of money out of it, and I want to know what all the fuss is about. Currently it feels like I am going to be let down by something that has been around for years. Let’s have a look into it.

I have had a long search around the web to investigate this strange term. Luckily it does not really refer to a new version of the Internet, but rather an advancement of something we have been using for the last few years.

The web used to be a place where we would look for certain information within a search engine. We would easily find pretty much any information we wanted, on a page which we could read, print and think about.

Web 2.0 makes use of new technology by allowing us to interact with each other through the Internet. Web 2.0 refers to the interaction with sites, and other users of the site, that was not possible in the past. It also refers to programs making use of the Internet which allows us to communicate with each other and not the website directly.

One of the first programs to allow for this type of communication was Napster. When we searched for music to download (if we did? naughty), it was not directly from the Napster website, but rather from other Napster users computers. We were able to interact with each other and share the goods.

Many websites are now allowing us to have this same huge input. It is no longer down to the web designer themselves what goes on the site, but instead, sites readers and visitors contribute their own material.

Sites such as Youtube.com and flickr allow you to put your own movies and pictures online for everyone to see. Myspace allows everybody to have their own piece of the web and technorati sucks out every blog post from every blog and puts them into a huge database (no idea how they manage that!). All of this happens in the background with visitors input. Wikipedia is another fine example where the majority of the content is contributed by visitors. None of this was possible 10 years ago.

Skype uses the Internet to let us communicate in another way, using technology to let us communicate verbally for free anywhere in the world. I could keep using examples all day, but I am sure you get the drift.

We now have a great deal of freedom as to how we receive our information from websites. We can receive RSS feeds, podcasts and vodcasts, all of which are fairly new, in a program of our choice for viewing when it is convenient for us. Vodcasts would not have worked a few years back with so many people using dial up connections. It is only possible now with data speeds exponentially increasing.

Web 2.0 also refers to how sites can be navigated. Tags are a fairly new phenomenon allowing bloggers to categorise articles and make them searchable. This one creeped in and was not noticeable to many as a new feature. Thinking back, I don’t know how the web ever worked without such features. An individual folder for each category was the method in the past, which was really painful for designers. I know that Inspect My Gadget would be incredibly hard to navigate if I was using the same web design methods I did 5 years ago.

So I guess after investigating all this, I can confirm that Inspect My Gadget is Web 2.0 compliant. Visitors are able to comment on articles and share their tips. If I write something that someone disagrees with, they have the freedom to inform other visitors and me what they have found, and collectively we can work through the problem to get it right together. Visitors can even offer how-to’s and the like if they want. I feel a forum coming on.p>

Because of this, the term “Abandonware” started. There are a whole heap of games that were made before 2000 that can now be downloaded and played for free.

I didn’t have a chance to play many games while I was growing up and felt I was missing out. Now I have a second chance to waste my valuable time. These games a lot of fun and bring back a lot of memories.

Many of the available games were hits in their time. The lists of available games are very long so I won’t list them here, however I did find a few highlights such as Grand Theft Auto, Ironman’s Offroad, Street Rod, Dune II and Syndicate Wars.

Applications have come a long way over the years and are also available as abandonware. You may find an application that will do the job for you, but with huge advances in technology, you would probably do better using newer versions. Many of Microsoft’s very early Office applications such as Word 6.0 and Publisher 2.0 are available.

There are bound to be some compatibility issues with some of the games, but using compatibility mode and some extra applications, you will be able to run them. The games I listed above all worked without any tweaks. You can often get the manuals to get past any crack protection.

This is all completely legal and above board. Abandonia which has a database of these games are very specific about what is available for free, and what is licensed so start your search for games at Abandonia.com. They have just celebrated their 8^th Birthday so know more about abandonware than most.

Certain TV channels, websites and individual shows are now releasing their content online in the form of a Vodcast. The Vodcast software which you need to install on your computer downloads the show around the time the show goes to air for you to view at your own convenience at a later time. With this technology taking off and the list of available content getting longer, it won’t be long before we can get all our TV viewing material this way.

This article will look at some of the software you can use to get Vodcasts onto your computer. Vodcasts work very similar to RSS feeds and Podcasts, only this time for video. In fact, a Vodcast is a Podcast. They all provide syndicated content. We can set the content to download automatically to our computers without needing to go to the website to get the video files manually. Vodcasting often offers us entire shows rather than a few select grabs.

This article is in no way comprehensive. It is for people who have not yet experienced watching Vodcasts on their computer and want to give it a go.

Here’s an analogy to describe what a Vodcast feed is: Think of it as a television station that you watch when you want to, only delivering you the shows you like to watch. You don’t have to wait for you shows time slot. You can fast forward and rewind through any of it and save it away for watching later, or delete it. You are in control.

Subscribing

The term subscribing refers to adding a feed to your Vodcast software. Once you have added a Vodcast feed to your software so you receive updates, you have subscribed to that feed.

The majority of the software we will look at have a catalogue of the more popular Vodcast feeds, allowing us to sift through them and select which ones we want to install in our software. Once it is in our software, we can select to download all episodes or specific episodes.

Vodcast software/aggregators

To get access to Vodcasts we first need to download some feed software, otherwise known as an aggregator. Vodcast software and aggregators are the same thing. They scan the Vodcast feed you have subscribed to for updated content and then deliver the Vodcasts to you. The software for Vodcasts and Podcasts are very similar and many will do both jobs for you.

Below is a quick rundown of some worthwhile Vodcast Aggregators, including advantages and disadvantages of each.

Democracy: is an all-in-one free Vodcast management system. Sounds impressive.

It has a  very nice interface and a media player built in so you can play your vodcasts internally after they are downloaded. I had a few problems with video placement in Vista but it is definitely my preferred environment for downloading Vodcasts.

You can schedule your downloads and set democracy to delete files after a set period of days. This nice piece of software is available for free from getdemocracy.com.

iTunes: This is probably the most popular Vodcast aggregator of all that are available. iTunes is sort of where the whole Podcast/Vodcast phenomena started as Vodcasts were designed to be able to be transferred to portable devices such as an iPod.

You can go into the directory and load up a plethora of Vodcasts you can choose from, which iTunes will then download for you. You also have the option of subscribing to feeds that are not in the directory.

iTunes has quite a nice interface and is easy to use. You can play all of your downloaded media within iTunes, making it a complete package for your Vodcasting needs. With regular updates, you won’t go wrong with this. Available for free through Apple.

Juice: is another popular piece of Vodcasting software. It has a simple interface and does the job. Yet again you have the directory to find Vodcast feeds and you can schedule your downloads.

This system is very bare bones, without an inbuilt video player. Instead it will load your downloaded Vodcasts into another player on your computer such as Winamp or Windows Media Player.

This is a good way to go if you want a small package to get your Vodcasts.

This is available for free from http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/.

The list of available Vodcast software is very long and you can have a search around the web for many more pieces of software that will look after your Vodcasting needs.These applications are a good place to start.

Once you have the files on your computer, many portable devices will be able to play the file formats podcasts come in. Transfer the file to your devices storage card and try playing it.

If you are on an internet plan which has download limits, take caution when downloading Vodcasts as they can make quite a large dent quickly, and could result in excess usage charges.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this article and hope it has cleared up what Vodcasting is for you, getting you started in the Vodcasting world. Find out more stuff at Inspectmygadget.com.

Podcasts are the next step in this evolution. Podcasts are not streamed live but that opens us up to many more listening options. We are no longer limited to radio shows as many websites are now offering their genre and news in the form of a Podcast, releasing regular episodes for free to the public. The information you can get covers as many genres as there are websites. Some of the content is produced professionally and others are very amateur.

The Podcast software which you need to install on your computer, downloads the content for you so you can listen to at your own convenience at a later time. Using Podcasts is very quick and easy and I want this article to encourage the use of this fairly new technology as it is getting more and more popular.

This article will look at some of the software you can use to get Podcasts onto your computer. Podcasts work the same as RSS feeds as it is also syndicated content, only this time for audio. We can set Podcasts to download automatically to our computers without needing to go to the website to get the Podcast audio files manually. This article is in no way comprehensive. It is for people who have not yet experienced listening to Podcasts on their computer and want to give it a go.

Here’s an analogy to describe how Podcast feeds work: Think of it as a radio station that you listen to when you want to, only delivering you the shows you like to listen to. You don’t have to wait for you shows time slot.

Subscribing

The term subscribing refers to adding a feed to your Podcast software. Once you have added a Podcast feed to your software so you receive updates, you have subscribed to that feed.

The majority of the software we will look at have a catalogue of the more popular Podcast feeds, allowing you to sift through them and select which ones you want to install in your software. Once it is in your software, you can select to download all episodes or specific episodes.

Podcast software/aggregators

To get access to Podcasts we first need to download a feed reader or aggregator. Podcast software and aggregators are the same thing. They scan the podcast feed you have subscribed to for updated content and then deliver the Podcasts to you.

Below is a quick rundown of some worthwhile Podcast Aggregators, including advantages and disadvantages of each.

iTunes: This is probably the most popular Podcast aggregator of all that are available. iTunes is sort of where the whole Podcast phenomena started as Podcasts were designed to be able to be transferred to portable devices such as an iPod.

You can go into the directory and load up a plethora of Podcasts, which iTunes will then download for you. You also have the option of subscribing to feeds that are not in the directory.

iTunes has quite a nice interface and is easy to use. You can play all of your downloaded media within iTunes, making it a complete package for your Podcasting needs. With regular updates, you won’t go wrong with this. Available for free through Apple.

Juice: is another popular piece of Podcast software. It has a simple interface and does the job. Yet again you have the directory to find Podcast feeds and you can schedule your downloads.

This system is very bare bones, without an inbuilt video player. Instead it will load your downloaded Podcasts into another player on your computer such as Winamp or Windows Media Player.

This is a good way to go if you want a small package to get your Podcasts.

This is available for free from http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/.

The list of available Podcast software is very long and you can have a search around the web for many more pieces of software that will look after your podcasting needs.These applications are a good place to start.

Once you have the files on your computer, many portable devices will be able to play the file formats podcasts come in. Transfer the file to your devices storage card and try playing it.

If you are on an internet plan which has download limits, take caution when downloading podcasts as they can make quite a large dent in a limited internet package quickly, and could result in excess usage charges.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this article and hope it has cleared up what Podcasting is for you, getting you started in the podcasting world. Please feel free to check out some more articles at Inspect My Gadget.

This article will explain RSS (often referred to as feeds) in depth and show you how you can use it and get the most out of it. RSS subscriptions are very easy to setup and there are a number of options for viewing the feeds. I will run through a few of the most popular feed readers.

Here’s an analogy to describe how RSS feeds work: Think of it as a newspaper that is delivered to your door each morning with only the stories you are interested in reading. You don’t have to sift through the sections you don’t care about.

Many sites are now offering RSS feeds as a standard feature so the range of sites you can get feeds from is massive. Many on line forums are also offering feeds which allow you to follow a topic without the need to check in to see if there is anyone has posted a reply.

RSS feeds generally contain the same pictures and text as you would get on the website of that feed. Some sites offer only headlines or the start of an article in which you can click through to get the whole story or to delete it, saving you from downloading an article you are not interested in.

Subscribing

The term subscribing refers to adding a feed to your reader. Once you have added an RSS feed to your reader so you receive updates, you have subscribed to that feed.

Some sites offer hundreds of updates a day so it is important to choose your feeds wisely and to have the right program to view and sort your feeds, so you don’t get overwhelmed.

Feed readers/aggregators

You are able to view feeds directly inside your web browser but receiving your feeds this way does not take advantage or what RSS can do for you. For best results, download a feed reader or a plug in for your browser to look after your RSS needs. Feed readers and news aggregators are the same thing. They scan the sites you have subscribed to for updated content and then delivers the articles to you.

Below are my favourite feed readers, including advantages and disadvantages of each.

RSS Popper: Available from RSS Popper.

This is the feed reader I use as it is simple to use. RSS popper uses Microsoft Outlook as its manager, so you will need to be running Outlook to use it. Each update that comes to you shows up similar to an email allowing you to easily save the stories into your own folders for reading later.

Each feed goes into it’s own folder, keeping your inbox for email use.

I highly recommend RSS popper if you have outlook. The only con I have come across is that you can’t view all your posts from the one folder.

Sharp Reader: Available from Sharpreader.net.

This is my favourite stand alone feed reader. As with most things I like, it is very simple to use and operate. You can view all your updates in the one window or in the individual feed folders. It just works. There is plenty of screen space to see the posts in. The only drawback is that you cannot file stories away for later reading.

As new articles come in, a pop-up shows up on your screen alerting you that a new message has arrived. This way you can keep on top of your reading.

Feed Reader: Available from Feedreader.com

Yet another fine choice for a stand-alone reader. It has pop-ups to let you know when new stories are in and it lets you view all unread items from the same window. A good clean interface that is easy to use.

One great feature Feed Reader offers is the ability to search articles for specific keywords.

So there are some of your options. There are many more free or cheap RSS readers available including plug-ins that will work with your browser. RSS is very basic technology so most feed readers will do the job well. A lot comes down to personal preference, and the programs you are currently running.

You can start off your RSS feed list with inspectmygadget’s RSS Feed. Look for the  RSS logo or name on any sites you frequent and load them up into your reader. I recommend taking advantage of this technology.

There are also readers for Pocket PC’s and Palm devices. You can take the feeds with you and read them whilst on the train or in a boring meeting.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this article and hope it has cleared up what RSS is for you. Find out more stuff at Inspectmygadget.com.