The clicker, the clicker, what what, the clicker

The future is near. My dream is slowing taking shape.

You may remember me complaining about remotes back in November. Well that wish got a whole lot closer to granted today. I've known about Salling Clicker for a long time, but I've never made the time to try it out. Today I happened to hit their site and saw a screenshot of a Palm Zire 72 running the software. Hmmm, I don't remember seeing that before. How did I miss that? I had a Zire 72 available to me, so I fired up the software and was blown away. This is incredible stuff.

* iTunes remote display - Yes, this is exactly what I need to work with a Mac mini. Leave the TV off and have the album art and time displays right in your hand.
* DVD player launching - This part needs a little help. I need to launch DVDs that are ripped on to an external hard drive. As of yet, the open VIDEO_TS command isn't available. It looks like it can be added, but for now I'll use the...
* Remote mouse - I couldn't believe it. You can control the mouse on the computer via the touchscreen on the palm.
* Put the computer to sleep - Time to test some Bluetooth wakeup scenarios
* You can even browse your iPhoto library directly on the palm without displaying any photos on screen. This is really cool. I can see this being popular around the holidays. Just pass around the "digital photo album" and never miss a step.

The problem now is finding a cheap handheld computer with Bluetooth. Add-on SD and CF cards are still more than you'd like them to be and the cheapest handheld with Bluetooth built-in might just be the Zire 72. It looks like the Zire 72 is still $300, so things need to get cheaper before many people can go that route, but I love the idea of buying a kick-ass "remote" and getting a free handheld computer out of the deal.

I do wish that Clicker was a bit more graphical but because it is meant to run on phones and other smaller devices, I can understand the menu flavored UI. Seeing Clicker work just might inspire me to get off my butt and write a similar piece of software to run on Pocket PCs.

Last thing. You did remember to configure your Mac mini with Bluetooth in it didn't you?