iPhone Hack: Remote control your PC from your iPhone! ~ Ask The Admin

Thursday, July 12, 2007

iPhone Hack: Remote control your PC from your iPhone!


Those guys over @ BoyGenius are on point today!


Every now and then a 3rd party developer will come up with something that is so ingenious it makes you wonder why it wasn't included out of the box. This iPhone Remote Desktop Client is one such invention. Developer Nate True has come up with a way to modify TightVNC's open source VNC app to run on the iPhone. You would expect such a Frankenstein-esque creation to have some serious hiccups. Think again, Batman. This thing runs like butter. WebVNC as it's called gives you unprecedented mobile access to your Windows desktop from the convenience of your iPhone. Once configured, you are free to use your desktop PC to your heart's content, zooming, right/left clicking, entering text, and much more. It is, for all intents and purposes, a full featured mobile VNC client. The app works over EDGE and Wi-Fi, simply connecting to a local, or external IP address through iPhone's Safari browser. The best part? It's completely free. If this sounds like something you'd like to take for a spin, hit the link for the full details, and be sure to give Nate some much deserved support for his good work. Let us know what you think!!

I cant wait to try and remote into my pc's from the iPhone. Stay Tuned Boys & Girls!
Direct from the source cre.ations.net:
The idea seems simple enough. I want to be able to use my PC from the comfort and safety of my iPhone. I got to thinking about it, and it seemed that modifying VNC was the best option. It already has the remote framebuffer thing down pat and I just had to write a web interface for it so the iPhone could connect up. I decided on TightVNC as my starting point. There was already a built-in HTTP server that I modified heavily. Right now it's Windows only because that's all I have to develop on, but I didn't use Windows-specific functions so porting should be trivial. (Update: now it does use Windows-specific functions for window choosing. Sorry!) To use: - Download the Binaries from my website (Developers: source, patch) - Extract all files into some folder and run WinVNC.exe - It will ask you to set a default password. CAUTION: At the moment the web client sends your password in plaintext. Use caution when connecting over open Wi-fi access points. - Note your computer's IP address, and type it into the iPhone Safari address bar, appending :5800, like http://192.168.10.13:5800/ - Enter the password in the password box, and hit Log In. - A list of windows will show up. Choose one or use Full Desktop to show it all. Use the iPhone's excellent zooming and panning capabilities to move around your desktop. To perform an action such as clicking or typing, tap the screen where you want to do it, and a menu will show up, along with a crosshair for accuracy.

most part self-explanatory. Supported actions: - Clicks: Left, right, middle, double - Scrolling: Mouse wheel up and down - Dragging and dropping (click Drag to hold mouse button down, click Drop to release) - Text entry To enter text, use the Text Input button. VNC will click where the crosshair is centered, then create a text box for you to enter text. button to type your text onto your PC. Press the X button below the input box to close it. How it works WebVNC is a modification of the VNC server. Where before the HTTP server in VNC would just serve a Java applet, now it serves an AJAX application that downloads the screen as a set of JPEG images. The application then checks back with the server to see which ones have changed, and reloads them. Input is just another message to the server. The window list is done with Windows-specific functions, enumerating top-level windows and returning a list of their titles and positions. When you click one the VNC server activates the window and the AJAX app limits its window size to just the one window.