Chrome Remote Desktop, it makes the FHG happy.

Many people out there have an FHG-like friend or relative.  And sometimes when you have tech-trouble, you might give them a phone call.

Sad to say, but a "I need help" support call sometimes makes FHG-like people sigh.  Because it is VERY hard to diagnose and fix issues over the phone.  For example, the FHG can't see what you see, and we might be using different terminology or describe things differently.  It makes it hard on both parties.

But what if there was a way for a FHG to see what you see, and even control your computer from their computer?  That would make fixing your issues easier, wouldn't it.

We call that remote access.  It lets one person see the screen of another computer across the Internet.  Not only can the screen be seen, but control can be shared or given.  In other words, you can give control to a geeky-relative and they can move YOUR on screen mouse pointer with their mouse, and type on their keyboard and have your computer act as if they typed on YOUR keyboard.  If you've been using Windows for some  years you may know about Remote Desktop and/or Remote Assistance.  Those were methods of remote access that were built in to some versions of Windows.  The problem being that different versions of Windows had different features.  For example, Vista Home Premium had Remote Assistance but NOT Remote Desktop, making it hard for those with Vista Home Premium to assist others.

But there is other software that can do the same thing, you may have  heard of some:  VNC, X11 forwarding over SSH, Teamviewer, Logmein, etc etc.  But you can ignore all of that, because these days there is only ONE remote access method I recommend to everyone, and that is Chrome Remote Desktop for the Google Chrome web browser.

Unlike other methods it's completely cross platform, works between operating systems and operating system versions, is relatively easy to use and is made by google themselves.  To use it you need to:

Install the Google Chrome Web browser:

 http://www.google.com/chrome/

Install the Remote Desktop app within Chrome:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome-remote-desktop/gbchcmhmhahfdphkhkmpfmihenigjmpp

You will also need a Google/Gmail account if you don't have one already.  Having a headset plugged into your computer also helps so you can chat during the remote access.

Here is the help page for Chrome Remote Desktop to get you started:

https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1649523?hl=en

Here's a video from Revision3's Tekvilla show, explaining the basics:

I just realized one of the hosts was Veronica Belmont, who formerly was the host of Qore on the PS3 for Sony Computer Entertainment America.

You can also start and use Chrome Remote Desktop from within a Google Hangout video chat.

There is a caveat:  Don't initiate a Remote Desktop session and give control to anyone you don't know and trust implicitly, especially not from a stranger who initiates a phone call, claims to be from "The Windows", and tells you to install teamviewer to let them fix "a virus".  You can let someone you trust just "watch" your desktop without giving control, in most cases if they can talk with you, that's all  you need to do.

Mediacom, IMAP and real e-mail clients

The FHG lives in the Midwest and the FHG's ISP, Mediacom,  has been enabling IMAP support for their e-mail accounts for a while now, mine just got enabled yesterday.  You get an e-mail before, and when it's enabled for you. Mediacom gives us a 1GB of mail storage.

This is a good thing, people should be using IMAP with proper e-mail clients, works better with multiple devices that way. With IMAP, your e-mail stays on the server so your inbox, saved mails, read mails, etc etc, are in sync no matter what you access it with.

Was looking around in Mediacom's various webmail UI preferences and saw an export feature for things like contacts, which is a good thing. If you've been using their webmail you can bring over contacts into a real e-mail client.   Said export feature exports what we 'nix users call "tarballs" aka ".tgz"  archives.

It's like a zip file, but it's not commonly used by windows users.   Mediacom must have not checked things over well when they installed their Zimbra setup.  Yeah, it's a Zimbra backend.

If you're on Windows, installing Open Source 7-zip is the easiest way to get tgz support. 

http://www.7-zip.org/ 

In most cases you want the 64-bit MSI, only install the 32-bit version if you're running XP or an older 32 bit Vista.

If you use Mediacom's "webmail", which you shouldn't be doing, here's the real help page on it:

https://mail1.mediacombb.net/help/en_US/advanced/zimbra_user_help.htm

But using a real e-mail client to read your e-mail is better.  Remember kids, using webmail instead of a real e-mail client with GPG and S/MIME support makes the FHG cry.

I usually recommend Thunderbird (with the Enigmail addon)

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/

https://www.enigmail.net/home/index.php

or the GPG4Win packaged version of Claws-Mail (which includes the GPG secure e-mail software as well, which you will need anyway if you use Enigmail with Thunderbird)

You may have noticed the section on "Secure Email", that's for their "Network" version users aka businesses.  Yeah, if you're a business user of Mediacom you can use S/MIME signing and encryption with the webmail version.  (S/MIME is the other system of email security, a good e-mail client supports both.)

But that's okay, because using a real e-mail client anyone can use S/MIME

Mediacom gives you a Calendar too, works like Google Calendar and you can access it with whatever calendar application you have like Calendar on OSX, Sunbird, and probably including your phone's calendar app, but it's fiddly and not quite as easy to use as the Google calendars are. I had to set the webcal URL in the vcalendar plugin on Claws-Mail manually  a la:

<https://username:password@mail1.mediacombb.net/home/email_address/Calendar>

then it worked.  But you probably wouldn't have to do that in Calendar or on a phone.