One of the problems with the Address Book's Bluetooth phone connection functionality is that usually it only stays active for about 10 minutes, meaning that its caller ID capabilities are diminished since you have to manually reconnect the phone. I've figured out what appears to be a solution while investigating a way to share my highspeed internet connection over Bluetooth to my Nokia 3650 phone.
In that process, I found that part of the SyncServices included with the new version of iSync is a command line mRouter application. Assuming you have iSync 1.1 installed, run the mRouter command -- it's part of the Symbian conduit that's installed in /System -> Library -> SyncServices -> SymbianConduit.bundle -> Contents -> Resources. From the Terminal type (shown on two lines; enter as one with no spaces at all):
/System/Library/SyncServices/SymbianConduit.bundle/ Contents/Resources/mRouterand you'll get the possible command line options. If you run (on the same path) mRouter -a, followed by your phone's MAC address (which you can find in the Bluetooth Preference pane), a PPP session will be created, displaying something like this:
Mon Jun 16 18:21:00 2003 : Using interface ppp0 Mon Jun 16 18:21:00 2003 : Connect: ppp0 /dev/tty.mRouter Mon Jun 16 18:21:08 2003 : local IP address 169.254.1.68 Mon Jun 16 18:21:08 2003 : remote IP address 169.254.1.5Once that's done, your BlueTooth connection will now be alive and persistent. You can hit Control-Z to suspend the active application, or Control-C to kill it (you don't want to do that, though, because it will obviously disconnect you). I guess you could make a duplicate of the mRouter file and run it from wherever you'd like, but I've not tried that yet.
Now go over to the Address Book and click the Bluetooth icon; you'll notice that it turns on immediately since the connection is already established. I've kept the connection alive for quite a while now without a hitch. Pretty cool.
Now, if some of the more network savvy users out there (like the ones who figured out how to share your Mac's internet connection to a Palm device) could come up with something similar to share over this PPP connection, I'd be eternally grateful. This would be useful to Nokia 3650/7650 and Sony Ericsson P800 users particularly.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20030616191119129