Share Screens Remotely With Quick Screen Share
January 16, 2012 4:00 PM Subscribe
Share screens easily in real time with Quick Screen Share [Beta]. No registration required, and it features remote mousing and keying.
I'd consider this risky because (a) their site apparently doesn't support SSL, meaning anyone could hijack your connection, and (b) their software looks closed source.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:31 PM on January 16, 2012 [4 favorites]
posted by jeffburdges at 4:31 PM on January 16, 2012 [4 favorites]
I've had really great success with https://join.me, which is a product backed by a larger company.
posted by felix at 4:32 PM on January 16, 2012 [4 favorites]
posted by felix at 4:32 PM on January 16, 2012 [4 favorites]
I always thought it was a little crazy how MS wanted you to pay 300-something bucks for Windows Ultimate for remote desktop.
posted by dunkadunc at 4:43 PM on January 16, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by dunkadunc at 4:43 PM on January 16, 2012 [1 favorite]
On further thought, I've always thought it was a little crazy how MS wanted you to pay 300-something bucks for Windows Ultimate, period.
posted by dunkadunc at 4:44 PM on January 16, 2012 [7 favorites]
posted by dunkadunc at 4:44 PM on January 16, 2012 [7 favorites]
Oh goody! It's been years since I've remotely xroached someone.
posted by Westringia F. at 4:57 PM on January 16, 2012 [3 favorites]
posted by Westringia F. at 4:57 PM on January 16, 2012 [3 favorites]
That's so weird I just got invited to my first join.me session literally five minutes ago. It wasn't that bad.
posted by phaedon at 4:58 PM on January 16, 2012
posted by phaedon at 4:58 PM on January 16, 2012
I always thought it was a little crazy how MS wanted you to pay 300-something bucks for Windows Ultimate for remote desktop.
Eh, remote desktop is supported on Windows Professional. Ultimate just adds full-drive encryption and support for language packs, I think.
posted by disillusioned at 5:18 PM on January 16, 2012 [1 favorite]
Eh, remote desktop is supported on Windows Professional. Ultimate just adds full-drive encryption and support for language packs, I think.
posted by disillusioned at 5:18 PM on January 16, 2012 [1 favorite]
This could be really handy at times, as I work with a remote team and am occasionally asked to troubleshoot issues for them. But, I tend to agree with jeffburdges.
posted by asnider at 5:32 PM on January 16, 2012
posted by asnider at 5:32 PM on January 16, 2012
ssh -X kaibutsu@your.box.com
I'll keep that in mind when my grandparents in Arizona call me about something regarding the HP Shitbox running Windows they just picked up at Best Buy. Getting grandma to install & configure the SSH server and public/private key authentication should be a breeze in comparison to the OP's website.
posted by ferdinand.bardamu at 6:03 PM on January 16, 2012 [4 favorites]
I'll keep that in mind when my grandparents in Arizona call me about something regarding the HP Shitbox running Windows they just picked up at Best Buy. Getting grandma to install & configure the SSH server and public/private key authentication should be a breeze in comparison to the OP's website.
posted by ferdinand.bardamu at 6:03 PM on January 16, 2012 [4 favorites]
No offense but there are a bazillion ways to do this. gotomypc, vnc, teamviewer, mikgo, join.me. Why this one? This seems like an ad for something no one needs.
posted by RustyBrooks at 6:48 PM on January 16, 2012 [3 favorites]
posted by RustyBrooks at 6:48 PM on January 16, 2012 [3 favorites]
Also for me it's stuck at "Starting up" and not doing anything.
posted by RustyBrooks at 6:50 PM on January 16, 2012
posted by RustyBrooks at 6:50 PM on January 16, 2012
We need a mefi roaches greasemonkey script that makes roaches run around and hide outside the viewport or under text.
Just fyi, there is a VNC server built into Mac OS X meaning you don't need to instal any remote software for that.
posted by jeffburdges at 6:59 PM on January 16, 2012 [1 favorite]
Just fyi, there is a VNC server built into Mac OS X meaning you don't need to instal any remote software for that.
posted by jeffburdges at 6:59 PM on January 16, 2012 [1 favorite]
And windows comes with Remote Desktop, right? So you don't need any software for that, although you'll also need it on your side to connect to someone else. Linux doesn't "come with" anything but installs VNC quite easily.
posted by RustyBrooks at 7:07 PM on January 16, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by RustyBrooks at 7:07 PM on January 16, 2012 [1 favorite]
Yeah, but the OSX VNC server doesn't get around the firewalls, it's just a VNC server. join.me and these guys get around that.
posted by jonclegg at 8:08 PM on January 16, 2012
posted by jonclegg at 8:08 PM on January 16, 2012
Back to my mac is supposed to work through most routers, but I must say I've never used it as my office machine is on a university network which means a fixed ip address and no firewall to speak of. Still, its easy to forget just how good Windows remote desktop really is. Compared to most everything else, it is responsive and easy to use. I hadn't used it for years, and my wife used it to access her work machine while we were out of town over the holidays, and I was quite impressed.
posted by sfred at 8:27 PM on January 16, 2012
posted by sfred at 8:27 PM on January 16, 2012
Yeah I was going to mention the thing in OSX as well.
By the way Skype does screen sharing. It doesn't let the other person click, which can be incredibly frustrating.
On the other hand, helping someone who's not computer literate go through steps of setting up VNC over the phone can be a pretty big challange too. With my mom I set it up so that she connects to my viewer in 'listening mode' -- so she doesn't need to worry about the firewall, but I do.
Anyway, I don't really like all these 3rd party websites providing what should be basic computer features. Obviously firewalls and IP forwarding make people safer online, but there really should be easier ways for people to connect to eachother directly.
posted by delmoi at 11:23 PM on January 16, 2012
By the way Skype does screen sharing. It doesn't let the other person click, which can be incredibly frustrating.
On the other hand, helping someone who's not computer literate go through steps of setting up VNC over the phone can be a pretty big challange too. With my mom I set it up so that she connects to my viewer in 'listening mode' -- so she doesn't need to worry about the firewall, but I do.
Anyway, I don't really like all these 3rd party websites providing what should be basic computer features. Obviously firewalls and IP forwarding make people safer online, but there really should be easier ways for people to connect to eachother directly.
posted by delmoi at 11:23 PM on January 16, 2012
The problem is NAT, not firewalls per se delmoi. When only the router has a real IP, you need to tell the router which pc to send the connection to; or have the target establish a connection to a third party which brokers the link between you.
If IPv6 ever becomes widespread, so every pc has a unique IP address, this should get simpler; though third party brokers such as logmein etc will still make life easier for those who don't know how to enable remote access.
I use IPv6 to remote into my home network all the time (still
firewalled of course) and being able to go direct to the box i want with rdp/vnc etc is extremely handy.
posted by ArkhanJG at 11:39 PM on January 16, 2012
If IPv6 ever becomes widespread, so every pc has a unique IP address, this should get simpler; though third party brokers such as logmein etc will still make life easier for those who don't know how to enable remote access.
I use IPv6 to remote into my home network all the time (still
firewalled of course) and being able to go direct to the box i want with rdp/vnc etc is extremely handy.
posted by ArkhanJG at 11:39 PM on January 16, 2012
RDP > VNC.
people don't really understand how awesome RDP is. Beats all other remote solutions into a cocked hat.
posted by seanyboy at 2:58 AM on January 17, 2012
people don't really understand how awesome RDP is. Beats all other remote solutions into a cocked hat.
posted by seanyboy at 2:58 AM on January 17, 2012
people don't really understand how awesome RDP is. Beats all other remote solutions into a cocked hat.
Huh? the Linux ports for RDP don't look nearly as well maintained as the ones for VNC. And what's the difference. They both get you a picture of the desktop and you can click on stuff. What more do you need?
posted by delmoi at 4:38 AM on January 17, 2012
Huh? the Linux ports for RDP don't look nearly as well maintained as the ones for VNC. And what's the difference. They both get you a picture of the desktop and you can click on stuff. What more do you need?
posted by delmoi at 4:38 AM on January 17, 2012
delmoi, please try to understand, some of us have to connect to windows machines.. over slow 3g links. dont rub it in!
also, rdp does audio and file sharing by default.
btw is this thing cross platform?
posted by 3mendo at 4:53 AM on January 17, 2012
also, rdp does audio and file sharing by default.
btw is this thing cross platform?
posted by 3mendo at 4:53 AM on January 17, 2012
people don't really understand how awesome RDP is. Beats all other remote solutions into a cocked hat.
For a Linux/Unix environment, what about NX and it's free derivatives? I've had enormous success with FreeNX, and if the maintainers of X2Go would get their act together and provide some proper build-scripts and instructions for a non-Debian environment, I'd probably find that to be extremely useful as well.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:26 AM on January 17, 2012
For a Linux/Unix environment, what about NX and it's free derivatives? I've had enormous success with FreeNX, and if the maintainers of X2Go would get their act together and provide some proper build-scripts and instructions for a non-Debian environment, I'd probably find that to be extremely useful as well.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:26 AM on January 17, 2012
delmoi wrote: Huh? the Linux ports for RDP don't look nearly as well maintained as the ones for VNC. And what's the difference. They both get you a picture of the desktop and you can click on stuff. What more do you need
RDP is much more responsive over cable/DSL than VNC. Whatever LogMeIn does is even better. Speaking of logmein, they seem to have a free screen sharing thing now, which I just noticed because I was thinking about paying for Reach.
posted by wierdo at 12:14 PM on January 17, 2012
RDP is much more responsive over cable/DSL than VNC. Whatever LogMeIn does is even better. Speaking of logmein, they seem to have a free screen sharing thing now, which I just noticed because I was thinking about paying for Reach.
posted by wierdo at 12:14 PM on January 17, 2012
And if I finished my thoughts before posting, that would be great: NX is pretty darn good, if you can get it working, which can be a challenge on certain distributions. It's usually about as responsive as LogMeIn, unless you are sharing audio/disks, in which case it degrades to about the same as RDP. I generally use LMI for Windows desktops, RDP over a tunnel for servers, and NX for Linux boxes with a GUI I'd like to use.
Obviously, my staple for day-to-day admin work on the Linux boxes is plain 'ol SSH.
posted by wierdo at 12:18 PM on January 17, 2012
Obviously, my staple for day-to-day admin work on the Linux boxes is plain 'ol SSH.
posted by wierdo at 12:18 PM on January 17, 2012
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posted by leotrotsky at 4:26 PM on January 16, 2012 [4 favorites]