Today's PCs are fast becoming home entertainment centres, with DVD players, music jukeboxes and even TV recording facilities.

This is all very well, but it's not much fun if you have to use a number of key presses and mouse clicks to launch the required programs and get them working. While we're at it, using cabled mice and keyboards is hardly as easy as operating our domestic TVs either.

IR Assistant solves both problems in one fell swoop. It allows you to create macros to emulate mouse actions, keyboard presses and to launch programs exactly the way you want. Better still, you can execute these macros by joysticks, infrared remote controls or even (with the right hardware) text messages from a mobile phone.

The IR side of things works with a wide range of infrared modules and it can even learn commands from many popular domestic remote controls. So before long, your Sony TV remote control could be launching macros on your PC to activate your MP3 collection - great!

You will need to download a driver for the device you will be using (i.e. GSM phone or IR receiver) by clicking here.

IR Assistant is free for personal and educational use, but costs €24 for a commercial licence.