Our September Topic: Helping Someone Online

We get requests to help-out Aunt Sally in Tarpon or nephew Mark who lives in upstate New York solve a computer issue. Maybe it's just the person across town after you're in for the night. We'll explore two online options I did not know about until recently. But remember, the problem computer must be turned on and connected to the Internet for these tools to work.

Show me what's wrong is a nice browser specific tool that allows you to record up to five minutes of narrated video of your desktop showing your problem. This tool is not interactive as the recording and viewing may be done at convenient times for both users (they don't require concurrent sessions). This free closed source tool operates on your favorite browser and can display Windows, Linux or MAC computers. Videos may be downloaded and saved.

TeamViewer is interactive and allows you to control another computer from your own desktop without setting up special networking tools like VNC. Again its free and closed source but may save you a drive across town. TeamViewer appears safe with passwords required in both directions.

As usual, we looked at these interesting news links about open source:

• Fix a Pizza While Surfing the Internet with Your Laptop
• How Free Software Contributed to the Success of Steve Jobs and Apple
• 6 Alternatives to Google Earth
• A Guide to Open Source Licensing
• Why a $25 PC? Because it’s the price of a textbook
• Raspberry Pi demos $25 PC running 1080p video, promises CD-quality audio
• Software Freedom Day 2011: An International Celebration of Freedom

Do you have a topic of interest? Please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

As always, bring your FOSS related questions or issues and we'll try to help you resolve them.