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Monthly Archive for November, 2006

Remote Control with UltraVNC

UltraVNC

In the last article, I introduced Hamachi, a free software to easily create a VPN. Hamachi works even when computers are behind a router, so you can easily use it between office, home and anywhere.

UltraVNC is another useful remote tool and it is open source. If you have use tools like PCAnywhere, UltraVNC is something like it. UltraVNC allows you to connect to and take control of a remote computer.

Used together with Hamachi, you can connect to a computer behind your office router without having to set up special port forwarding in the router. (In the UltraVNC website, there are some other solutions to accomplish the same thing. I have not tried them since Hamachi+UltraVNC works for me.)

The advantages of using UltraVNC with Hamachi are

  • Encryption. Hamachi already encrypts all traffic by default. So UltraVNC traffic are encasulate within.
  • Private IP. Connect with private IPs and not available on public IP network (for computers behind router).

Let’s take a quick look at how to use UltraVNC.

Continue reading ‘Remote Control with UltraVNC’

Share your LAN with Hamachi

So you have a LAN in office where you share documents between a few computers. Now suppose you are at home and one of the files is on another PC at work. What do you do?

HamachiOne solution is to get Hamachi installed on both PCs.

Hamachi is not open source but the free version is very usable and I have used it on occassions between office, home and client’s location. (Hamachi had just been acquired by LogMeIn Inc in August 2006, it seems like the free version will continue to be available.)

Hamachi setup Quick Guide

There are a number of solutions available to achieve remote connection, even Windows XP comes with Remote Desktop. But what makes Hamachi stands out is the ease of use. Once installed, you just have to follow the few guided steps to get it up and running.

Continue reading ‘Share your LAN with Hamachi’

OpenOffice Solutions

OpenOfficeI had been using OpenOffice for more than a years now for all my office documents.

So far it had been nothing fancy and I had no trouble doing day to day document processing, spreadsheets, drawing, presentation slides etc. Document exchange with Microsoft Office files is also pretty straightforward. There are some glitches in handling duo languages in English and Chinese in the sample document but but not something that cannot be overcome.

My ongoing objective is to extend the use of OpenOffice to other areas and to introduce the Chinese version of this software to my co-workers.

Today, while checking for update, I found OpenOffice.org Solutions on the OpenOffice.org wiki. The wiki itself is a source of excellent information on using OpenOffice.

There is a Chinese wiki as well. From what I can see, much marketing is still needed to get this tool into the hands of the vast Chinese users. Nevertheless a great start!

Have you started using OpenOffice? If not why not?