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Mikogo: share screen or access remote PC

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Curt:
Today "Samer" from FreewareGenius is telling about Mikogo, a new free and smart way of sharing your screen, or files, or access and even remote control a PC. The 'smart' thing is that it works via your Internet browser, and your meeting is taking place online at Mikogo's site.

Mikogo's homepage is offering 2 fine video tutorials, one for the inviter and one for the invited, two with- and two without- sound, but the program really is easy to use. Here is a nice 15 pages user manual in PDF with lots of pictures:

MikogoUserGuide.pdf (534.81 kB - downloaded 744 times.)

http://www.mikogo.com/Welcome.aspx

Once you download and install this program, you will have to create an account and log in. What’s really cool is that if screen sharing / broadcasting is all you need your audience on the other side will not need to create accounts or install software (they do, however, need to download and run a single no-install executable). Moreover, all interaction happens through the browser and there are no firewalls or routers to configure, no IP addresses to investigate and ports to open or close.-freewaregenius
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The verdict:[/b] although there exists a number of free VPN solutions, the reasons I like this one are:

(a) avoids the need to configure firewalls, routers, ports, etc, because it is entirely browser based,

(b) avoids the need for others to install software and create accounts to see your screen remotely,and

(c) works very well and does what it sets out to do.-Freewaregenius
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How to share your screen: once you launch your Mikogo account and log in, right click on the Mikogo icon in the start menu and select "Start meeting". You will be provided with a meeting ID (a kind of password) that others could use to view your screen. Once you have your meeting up and running, you can easily switch presenter to view another user’s screen rather than them seeing yours (subject to their acceptance, of course). Meeting limited to 10 participants.

How others can view your screen: all your audience members need to do is go to a Mikogo website and click on "join meeting" which will download a small executable (approx 680K) that they can run and enter the meeting ID into. This will instantly open a browser window that with your own shared screen displayed in it. They can also switch to broadcasting their screen or controlling another desktop without the need for any further download. Once the meeting is over, they can simply delete the executable and the config file that it creates (in the same directory in-which it is placed).

Remote access: allows you to asume control of the remote computer’s keyboard and mouse. What’s worth mentioning here is that Mikogo maintains a list of programs that you can check/uncheck to enable remote access. Performance is a is a little bit sluggish, which is typical for browser based remote access I think (e.g. Yuuguu’s performance was about the same). I would be interested in a comparing remote access performance for freeware VPN solutions; if you know about this or if you use a remote access platform whose performance you like please let us know in the comments.

File sharing: offers a very handy file sharing option which is surprisingly fast.

Portability: you can run Mikogo from a USB. See this page.

Memory use: a mere 10 megs or so in the background.

Privacy policy: the connection between computers is relayed through the Mikogo servers, which means that in theory Mikogo has access to what you broadcast. I did not find any privacy policy in the Mikogo site, but in truth I am not worried about it.
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mrainey:
I'm going to give this a try.  I need a way to help my mother in law keep her new Vista system working (is that possible?) - from 2500 miles away.  Mikogo looks like a zero-configuration way to get control of her computer, if it works.

klsgfx:
Regarding the safety issues, I would like to post a link to babelfish-translated thread in a German freeware forum. On employee of Mikogo explained a few things about Mikogo:  http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=de_en&trurl=http%3a%2f%2fwww.essential-freebies.de%2fboard%2fviewtopic.php%3ft%3d13875%26start%3d0%26postdays%3d0%26postorder%3dasc%26highlight%3d%26

I did not test Mikogo yet but I am going to test it, because they say, I can switch the viewing direction within a session and this way not only give assistance but also show examples and more on my screen to the person I am assisting.

Until now I use for remote assistance (I am currently helping a few old ladies with their PCs ) http://www.showmypc.com/, which is really pretty easy to use - for me and the old ladies.

I hope this post is not understood as promotion - I am not related in any form to either of both companies.

Steffen_Mikogo:
Hi
I noticed this thread about Mikogo, and as one of the Mikogo Team members I’d like to say a few words to clear up a point.
A link has been posted to a thread, which I participated in, about Mikogo and security. However, that thread was originally written in German, and the link is just a translation using babelfish.
Klsgfx, I appreciate you posting a link to the thread, however the quality of translation is a bit difficult to understand, so I thought I should clear up some issues that we had been discussing:

1.Is the transferred data during a Mikogo meeting secure and do we have access to it?
We use a 256bit AES end-to-end encryption. When two computers connect via a Mikogo meeting there is a key-exchange and only those two computers have access to the key – no one else has access to this, including us. We don’t know the key, therefore we cannot access the data.
Also, we are a German company which means that we are bound by German privacy laws. These laws are very strict, and we follow these laws 100% in everything we do, protecting the privacy of our users. We also offer professional desktop sharing tools for companies worldwide.

2.What are the functions of the Mikogo server? Wouldn’t it be possible to use the server only for the handshake?
This server has several functions. The server is always available and you can connect it to it through the standard ports (80,443) and protocols (TCP, HTTP). And these ports need to be open if you want to use the Internet. So these ports are already in use when you’re connected to the Internet. If you wish to connect directly, without the server, for example through VNC player, you would have to open other ports. This could cause a security issue, and is the reason why many companies and computer users have blocked such port access.
Another issue is the performance: If there was a peer-to-peer connection and a meeting with 10 participants the performance would be slow and poor because the organizer would have to establish a connection to all 10 participants with a limited upload speed (private broadband internet connections normally provide much higher download than upload speed).
Our servers are located in professional data-centers with a fast connection to the Internet, so we can provide a high performance even with a higher number of users.

I hope this clears up the issues that were no doubt difficult to read on the German-English translated thread.
I’ll continue to check this thread so if you have any more questions about Mikogo, feel free to let me know and I’ll be sure to respond and help you out.

Regards,
Steffen

mouser:
Welcome to the site Steffen, nice to read your post  :up:

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