Apple Remote and OpenOffice Impress

I was arranging my drawer yesterday and found the Apple Remote. It came with the MacBook and was lying unused because I don’t really use FrontRow. Then I had a presentation this morning and a bulb lit up. Can I not use the remote with OpenOffice for presentations?

So the first thing I did after coming to office today was to Google for it. I found some good software. Downloaded mira and tried it out. It did not seem to work with OpenOffice. Tried RemoteBuddy and that also did not seem to work. Then I was thinking may be I will have to build on top of Amit Singh’s iremoted and make something up. Just then I found iRed Lite. I noticed an action for OpenOffice Impress in the folder and was excited! And it worked! I had to fiddle around a little bit, the software looks buggy (did not save the actions I defined etc) but it worked. I am going to look deeper into it. I hope source code was available. I also think OpenOffice itself is part of the problem - since it works on top of X11. Hope there is a native build soon.

So for anybody who wants to use Apple Remote with OpenOffice Impress, head on to iRed Lite! For others, mira and Remote Buddy are just right!