AirDroid is an excellent application for utilising the functions of your Android phone via a web browser. This doesn't require root access to your phone, and should work with pretty much all current phones on the market.

One of the most annoying things for Linux users (myself) is the total lack of software available for doing tasks with your phone. Most manufacturers that supply software usually only support MacOS & MS Windows so if you have a need for syncing your calendar (example exchange calendar) with your phone then you are stuck with nothing that can do it. OK now my example of exchange calendar might be a bad example as I don't have/use exchange so don't take it as gospel, OK so what does AirDroid do? It starts a Web Service that you can connect to over your LAN. You then have access to read/write/delete SMS/MMS messages, read/write/delete calendar items, read/delete your call log and the item that is possibly the most useful is transferring of files to/from the phone as well as upload/download music

 

 

 

AirDroid is set up into 4 screens (virtual desktops) that you can customise to your liking, the pictures above show the default layout. Then here is how the connected session appears on your phone (In my case the Galaxy Nexus).