How would you like to be able to post to your blog through your mobile phone? OK this is interesting but it has been happening lately.

Perhaps upload photos from your mobile? No? Yes, it is also happening…

But what I really found interesting, is the ability to connect remotely to another machine (such as your web server?) and administer it securely!

Here is the story: I recently got the new Sony Ericsson w960i, a smart-phone with lots of capabilities (but this is the subject of another post I guess!). As I was playing with it and looking for nice little applications to load, I stumbled upon PuTTY -the famous SSH client! [* PuTTY allows someone to connect securely to a remote machine]. As it happened I got an email from a colleague notifying me that our Research Group Web Server was down for some reason. Since I was on the move at that time, I though I should put my new remote connection phone to the test!

• Step 1: start-up PuTTY and give it permissions to access the internet. Keep in mind that while this is not a very data-intensive application it would still be better if you had a mobile internet pack from your telephone provider, or access to a public Wi-Fi network
• Step 2: supply the details of the remote machine you wish to connect to, something like myserver.mydomain.co.uk
• Step 3: once connected, you will see the familiar black console screen where you can enter your username and password to log in
• Step 4: start working on the remote machine normally just like if you were sitting in front of it!

…and thats it! It took me about 40KB of data transmissions just to provide my password, and execute a couple of commands. And because currently the “pay as you surf” mobile internet charges are very high on virtually all operators it is worth considering a pay monthly package or subscription -especially if you can figur out many ways to use your internet-enabled phone on the go! As I have done…

Another thing about PuTTY is that currently it is only available for Symbian-based phones (S60 and UIQ) which restricts it to the relevant Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones. I am not aware of any other remote clients for other mobile phones but if anyone does then by all means post it here!

[I must admit: having an Internet-enabled mobile phone rocks! I intend to write a post about the various stuff you can do with such a phone, as well as all the nice applications you can load!]