For some reason I've always been obsessed with apps that let you control your phone remotely. I guess I love being able to leave the phone on the charger in the other room and still be able to use it, just like any of my other computers.
The only option I've found so far for iOS is WifiSMS for jailbroken devices. If you've found any others, please let me know in a comment. Obviously you can SSH into iOS, but you can't easily perform phone functions via command line (that I've found so far).
As for Android, there are literally countless options. The first one I really liked was BrowserTexting, but it went pay and it was a 3rd party service (privacy, yadda yadda). EasySMS is free and direct connect over wifi, but I'm picky and I don't want to keep my wifi on or remember to turn it on when I'm at home. Airdroid is really spiffy looking and will let you transfer pics and files, but all that stuff makes it very bloated. There are multiple similar "remote desktop via web browser" type apps, and one of them even has a VNC server plugin and lets you take pics with the phone's camera, but again they are all for over wifi. Pita.
Enter GtalkSMS. I guess it was designed for you to give it a google account, but it supports connecting to Jabber servers over SSL! This means both my phone and I can connect to my home server and the communication between us will be encrypted. It does way more than just sending SMS, too.
The app can be activated by SMS keyword (unfortunately you can't hide the SMS) and if you lose your phone you can tell it to turn on the GPS and start sending you google maps links to its location. If its just lost in your couch, you can tell it to start ringing. You can't transfer files, but you can read and set the copy/paste buffer through a message as well as tell it to open a specific address in the maps app. I tried having it make a call for me, but the dialer just sat there with the number loaded (I'm using the Motorola dialer). Other things you can do via IMs: search for contacts, start applications, view logs, run shell commands, turn wifi on and off, and I'm sure something else I'm forgetting.
As far as the Jabber server goes, there are again a ton of different ones to choose from. I have no idea how I came to pick the one I did, but it's really easy to use and has a nice interface. It's called Openfire, and I don't think it's in the Ubuntu repos. I just grabbed the Debian package, installed it, and as far as I remember that was pretty much it. I think there's a configuration screen via the web interface. The install docs don't say much about Debian at the time of writing this, but it can't be that hard to figure out if I did it :).
The only option I've found so far for iOS is WifiSMS for jailbroken devices. If you've found any others, please let me know in a comment. Obviously you can SSH into iOS, but you can't easily perform phone functions via command line (that I've found so far).
As for Android, there are literally countless options. The first one I really liked was BrowserTexting, but it went pay and it was a 3rd party service (privacy, yadda yadda). EasySMS is free and direct connect over wifi, but I'm picky and I don't want to keep my wifi on or remember to turn it on when I'm at home. Airdroid is really spiffy looking and will let you transfer pics and files, but all that stuff makes it very bloated. There are multiple similar "remote desktop via web browser" type apps, and one of them even has a VNC server plugin and lets you take pics with the phone's camera, but again they are all for over wifi. Pita.
Enter GtalkSMS. I guess it was designed for you to give it a google account, but it supports connecting to Jabber servers over SSL! This means both my phone and I can connect to my home server and the communication between us will be encrypted. It does way more than just sending SMS, too.
The app can be activated by SMS keyword (unfortunately you can't hide the SMS) and if you lose your phone you can tell it to turn on the GPS and start sending you google maps links to its location. If its just lost in your couch, you can tell it to start ringing. You can't transfer files, but you can read and set the copy/paste buffer through a message as well as tell it to open a specific address in the maps app. I tried having it make a call for me, but the dialer just sat there with the number loaded (I'm using the Motorola dialer). Other things you can do via IMs: search for contacts, start applications, view logs, run shell commands, turn wifi on and off, and I'm sure something else I'm forgetting.
As far as the Jabber server goes, there are again a ton of different ones to choose from. I have no idea how I came to pick the one I did, but it's really easy to use and has a nice interface. It's called Openfire, and I don't think it's in the Ubuntu repos. I just grabbed the Debian package, installed it, and as far as I remember that was pretty much it. I think there's a configuration screen via the web interface. The install docs don't say much about Debian at the time of writing this, but it can't be that hard to figure out if I did it :).
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