Late night musings

Up late and feeling guilty for not posting for nearly two weeks.

REMOTE ACCESS
Anyway couple of things come to mind. Susan B on her blog http://msmvps.com/bradley/archive/2005/07/15/57416.aspx mentioned http://www.logmein.com remote control service. Well like the ad says " it does exactly what it say on tin" in this case allows you to login to any windows pc or server from any internet location using almost any webrowser. I hear you say but Mark we have RWW (Remote Web Workplace) ahh but how many times do you have control over port 4125 to allow you to establish an RWW connections or what if your customer has 1 or 2 pc's and doesn't have SBS.

Trust me this is very cool software, even the free version works well enough to manage a couple of client pc's. Susan refers to a good security article on the strenghts and weaknesses of the product well worth a read tiny url link here http://tinyurl.com/8xzt5

Skype
Playing with the best father's day pressie I have ever got, a skype usb phone handset manufactured by a company called yamamoto http://www.yamamoto-group.com/silver.htm
This phone works like a treat, I made a skype out call to a landline in California from my broadband connection in Ireland and the quality was excellent and the handset performed as if it was a standard phone.

So you still think you need to bring your laptop with you or at least a pocket pc with wifi and skype on it think again. Skype have promised to support the U3 smart drive platform as soon as it's available, basically it allows you to run Skype or any other U3 supported application like Zonealarm directly from your usb pendrive and your usb skype phone, imagine plug in your pendrive, plug in your headset and double click, your preconfigured copy of Skype software which will not need to be installed on the host pc but simply run directly from the pen drive.

Take a look at http://www.skype.com/company/news/2005/u3_smartdrive.html
for more details this really could open up a lot of possibilites to extend the functionality of pendrives from mere file storage devices.

Back soon Mark