Quantcast
iPhone Central
iPhone news, reviews, opinions and more from Macworld's Apple experts

Give your iPhone the power of telekinesis

Posted by Rob Griffiths | Thursday, July 12, 2007 7:37 AM PT

No, your iPhone can’t bend spoons or make pieces of paper slide across your desk…but if you install Google’s telekinesis alpha, you will be amazed at the things your iPhone can make a Mac do.

What kinds of things? Stream videos and music, basic remote screen capture with typing support, browse files, open applications on the remote Mac, iSight image capture, run Spotlight searches, and more.

The interface is definitely iPhone-like, and while you’re still (ugh) running a web app, this is one of the nicer-feeling web apps around. It’s also easily extensible—create a web page with certain code, add an icon, and your program (web page, really) will then appear on telekinesis’ home screen.

It’s hard to describe, but easy to use. Just install the alpha (it’s just an application, there are no hidden bits that I can find), launch it, supply a new username and password (this user will have the same rights as your normal user), and then point your iPhone’s browser to the URL of the machine running telekinesis.

I’m not the kind of person who enjoys using web apps at all, but this one is actually decent. Of course, it would be even nicer if it could be a standalone program with its own icon on the iPhone’s screen…hopefully someday!

Comments (6)

I agree, it's neat.. at least it was until I played with Remote Buddy 1.1. Now it seems primitive by comparison.

July 12, 2007
8:28 AM PT

very cool program! the coolest is being able to browse and launch docs that the iPhone can open (doc, xls, jpg, etc). this is excellent for business travelers who forgot to take a copy of that one file...

July 12, 2007
11:11 AM PT

OMG! This is cool stuff...streaming from my iTunes library to the iPhone as I type this. Remote Buddy? Better check that out too.

Distorted Loop [TypeKey Profile Page]
July 12, 2007
5:27 PM PT

Hmmm...Remote Buddy turns your iPhone into a remote control for your Mac, but it doesn't seem to support streaming stuff to the iPhone. Two different products if that's the case.

Distorted Loop [TypeKey Profile Page]
July 12, 2007
5:38 PM PT

This seems like a cool program and messing around with it on my computer it seems great. The only problem is there are NO Instructions on how to set the program up. It's not exactly the easiest thing to do from what I can tell. Why don't they at least make a doc or pdf with basic set-up instructions? I'd love to get my iPhone going, but I don't want to spend hours trying to get it to connect and having to configure my whole network just for a little app. Am I alone here?

bemused
July 12, 2007
11:28 PM PT

"bemused"

Here are all the instructions you should need.


Mhewski
July 17, 2007
3:02 AM PT

Archives

Categories