Podcasting Hacks

Control Your Recorder with Your Mobile Phone

Use the awesome Salling Clicker system to control your whole computer, including your recording setup, right from your cell phone.

Computers, and in particular computer fans, make a lot of noise that can really screw up your recording [Hack #15] . But many podcasters use their computers to record their podcasts, so the computer has to be nearby so that they can turn the recorder on and off, play cuts, and read the show notes. Some podcasters invest in a home studio and have a great recording booth with clean sound, but their computer is on the other side of the glass wall. What can they do to control that computer remotely?

Sure, they could use a wireless mouse or keyboard, but the key and mouse clicks can be noisy. Plus, it’s not as cool as this solution; using a cell phone.

With a program called Salling Clicker (http://salling.com/) for Mac OS X, you can use your Bluetooth-enabled phone to control every application on your computer. And you can arrange them on your keypad in any way you want.

Figure 3-11 shows the Salling Clicker Preferences panel. On the left is the menu for your phone, and on the right is all the stuff you can assign to buttons on the phone. Most of the items on the list come with Salling Clicker right out of the box. An excellent iTunes controller for navigating playlists and selecting songs is also available, as is a Keynote controller that lets you use a Keynote slideshow to prompt you when you have canned segments ...