Hasta La Gadget!

Remote Desktop is probably one of the most used feature in the IT industry to manage servers and provide technical support to the end-users. From one physical location, Remote Desktop allows an administrator to take control of any workstations or servers anywhere, as long as the equipment is online. There are a lot of options available, the most popular are, MS Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), VNC, Teamviewer, Join.me, GotoMyPC and LogMeIn. Although, LMI was a good option until they discontinued their free version.

Part of the Google ecosystem, Chrome Remote Desktop is worth a look for its simplicity to setup and it is widely supported. Although not all Operating Systems and devices can host the CRD service, anything that runs Chrome should be able to connect to another computer hosting the CRD service.

Prerequisite & Limitations

You will need a Goggle account.

• Chrome Remote Desktop service, as a host, is not supported on, Mac OS X 10.5, Chrome OS (meaning Chromebooks), Linux and Windows OS below XP.
• Remote access is available to any devices that runs Chrome.

Steps Overview

• From the Host Computer, log into Google and install the “Chrome Remote Desktop” application from the Chrome Web Store.
• Configure and set up a PIN for authentication
• From the Remote Computer, install “Chrome Remote Desktop”.
• Connect to the Host Computer

Chrome Remote Desktop  installation

Log into your Google account, head over to the “Chrome Web Store” search for “Chrome Remote Desktop” (#1) and click on “+ Free” (#2) to install the application.

Review the permissions and “Add” the application.

From the “Chrome App Launcher”, find the newly application and start it.

In the next two screenshots, confirm the access permissions to the host computer.

Chrome Remote Desktop can be used in two ways.

(#2) Remote Assistance, attended mode. Attended mode means, you will need to get a third party involved to remote into a computer, like to provide you with a unique and “use only once” session ID to complete the screen sharing.

(#1) You remote into a workstation linked to your Google account, by contrast to the “Remote Assistance”, it is called unattended mode.

I will review the unattended mode first (#1).

Accessing your own computer

Under “My Computers” > “Get Started”.

The “Chrome Remote Desktop” feature must be enabled. Click on “Enable Remote Connections”.

The next step is to create an access code or PIN to authenticate to the host computer from a remote workstation. The PIN  requires at least six digits, however the longer the more secure. I tested the PIN length and it appeared that the input form accepts up to 30 digits.

Acknowledge that the Chrome Remote Desktop has been enabled. There is a warning about making sure that the power settings are not enabled in which case, the network interface could go into sleep mode.

If successful, your computer hostname will show up. At this point, the hostname “Win7wn” is ready to accept incoming connections. Access will be granted upon authentication based on the PIN.

Remote Assistance Mode

The Remote Assistance mode allows one party to share its screen to another party. This is the ideal feature to perform screen sharing with another remote user for educational purposes, collaboration or technical assistance. Which is much easier than one person trying to describe the issue to someone else.

The person who wants to share its screen will initiate the process by click “Share”, a code, or session ID will be generated (#1). The code is valid for ONE and only ONE session. Once the remote session is terminated, by either party, the code is unusable. If there is a need to resume the sharing session, then a new code must be re-issued to the other party.

I edited the screenshot to show the difference between “Share” and “Access”.

Connect to a host from a remote client.

Log into your Google account from a remote computer, Google will automatically download the application. Proceed with the installation.

For this tutorial, I am using my MacBook Air as the remote client.

Once the application has been installed, start the Chrome Remote Desktop.

Click on the Computer name you are going to remote into.

Wait for the connection to initialize.

Enter the PIN (#1) and Click “Connect” (#2). As always, I recommend against any “remember my credentials” feature (#3).

I have now established a Chrome Desktop Remote connection to my Windows 7 from my MBA.

There are a few options to manage your Chrome Remote Desktop session (#1)

To accommodate different screen resolution, click on “Screen Options” to adjust the display.

“Send keys”, not much options here beside “CTRL + ALT + DEL” and “PRINT SC”.

To terminate the remote session, just click on “Disconnect”.

To terminate the session from the host session, click on “Stop Sharing” at the bottom of the screen (#2). Note, the tab can be moved out of the way if needed.

Troubleshooting

I noticed a little issue with the Mac. After entering, my PIN, the session kept spinning and never connects.

I quickly found out that the plug-in was blocked. Once I enabled it (#2 then #3), it connected.

Keep in  mind that if you are using a firewall, port 443 (SSL) and 5522 need to be opened.

For more troubleshooting tips, check out Support.Google.com site.

Security & Privacy

Chrome Remote Desktop sessions are fully encrypted via AES over a secure SSL connection.
For your safety and security, all remote desktop sessions are fully encrypted using Chrome’s SSL features, which includes full support for AES.

From Google;

“While your connection setup is mediated by Google’s servers, your actual remote desktop session data are sent directly from the client to the host, except in limited circumstances where they may pass through Google relays. Google can’t let anyone but you access your computer though because of the PIN or Access Code you use when you share it (which client and host verify without ever disclosing it to anyone, even Google). The PIN/Access Code and SSL encryption combination also ensures that when you do connect to your host, whether peer-to-peer or relayed, no one can see your data, not even Google.

None of your session data are ever recorded, and no session data is transmitted in a way that would let Google or anyone else (besides the participants) access it.

We do collect and store data about any network delays and how long your session lasted. This information is completely anonymous. We use it to learn how to improve Chrome Remote Desktop in the future.”

The weakest link is the Google account. Once the Google account has been compromised, all your workstations running Chrome Remote Desktop are comprised since the PIN can be changed. You may want to consider adding Google 2-Steps verification.

Conclusion

Chrome Desktop Remote is mostly a good option for screen sharing where there is a need for the host and the remote user to interact.  It is a fairly simple to implement. There is no need to mess with “Port Forwarding” for instance. Also, the client piece is widely available, if a device can run Chrome, changes are you could use it to remote into your home computer. There is an Android version of Chrome Remote Desktop. It does work, but trust me, you do not want to rely on it too much. The functionality is there, but it is reserved for desperate situation only.

On the host computer, it runs as a service, therefore there is no need to actually log into the computer. Over the LAN, the latency is satisfactory, although the MS remote desktop protocol is a bit smoother and more responsive. Things get hairy when you remote into a host with more than one display.  All the active displays are crammed into the remote client display. This is the same behavior when working with all the VNC alike remote tools. TeamViewer deals with the issue by assigning a tab per display.

Connection to a Chrome Remote Desktop host with more than one display is a big challenge.

If you own a chromebook, this is an extension you would definitely consider.

Use Chrome Remote Desktop To Access Your Computer , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

A design fair of epic proportions descended upon Switzerland last week, bringing with it a barrage of equally beautiful and bizarre objets d’art. Design Basel 2014, named for its location in Basel, Switzerland, introduced eager aficionados to the year’s hottest creations in furniture, architecture, decor and fashion. And it got weird.

As you might expect, given that this is a contemporary art world event, the bizarre sometimes outweighs the beautiful at Design Basel. The real and artificial boundaries between aesthetic and functionality fall by the wayside and sculptural designs of little use at all have fair goers tilting their heads and raising their eyebrows, wondering which masterpieces they should actually buy and which ones they should ogle as a moment in art history.

Case in point: The Chicken Lamp. That is the official title of Chilean-born artist Sebastian Errazuriz‘s Design Basel 2014 artifact. Made from a taxidermy chicken, the avant-garde light fixture is essentially exactly what it sounds like — the body of a chicken paired with a lightbulb, equalling a Chicken Lamp.

It’s based on a similar project, Duck Lamp, in which Errazuriz replaced the head of a duck (rescued from the trashcan of an old taxidermy museum with a broken neck) with the head of a desk lamp. That particular artwork became “an instant classic,” according to the artist.

“I was actually afraid of the public’s reaction when I first presented the Duck Lamp,” Errazuriz writes on his website. “Taxidermy wasn’t a trend yet and I didn’t want to be considered a freak, but felt compelled to make it. Somehow it made sense to me and to my surprise when I presented it in a gallery, it seemed to make some weird, unconscious, fucked up sense to other people too. It apparently felt familiar, beautiful, terrible, and funny at the same time.”

As a press release for the headless chicken notes, it’s meant to explore “the border between the sculptural and functional qualities of both art and design.” There’s is something simultaneously terrible and beautiful about the work, compelling the viewer to wonder about the value of iconoclastic design. It’s up-cycled, one could argue, and while taxidermy of any other form simply glares at you with its deadened eyes, this piece lights your office and spares you the uncomfortable staring contest.

But it’s hard not to imagine the bird had a really great idea, before its heart stopped and it was wired for an electrical current. Or that it belongs in Frankenstein’s laboratory, as mood lighting.

It’s worth pointing out that most of Design Basel’s offerings are not intended to be commercial. “None of these pieces could ever have been shown in a booth,” curator Dennis Freedman explained to The New York Times. However, the fair at large is still a commercial endeavor at heart. Like the art fairs before and after it, pieces are meant to be sold, for money, to rich and famous admirers if possible.

We can only hope one of said admirers is basking under the light of a Chicken Lamp as we type.

It’s been 10 years since “Mean Girls” introduced us to words like “fetch” and “grool,” and concepts like pink Wednesdays. Given the thought pieces that continue to be written about the movie’s take on high school politics a decade on, it’s safe to say it’s a modern comedy classic. Meaning its world is destined to be reimagined again and again, today in an 8-bit video game, tomorrow on Broadway.

Sadly, the video above, a creation of 8-Bit Cinema, does not portray an actual Mean Girls video game. But it’s a fabulous blueprint, with such inspired yet necessary inventory items as the Burn Book, an oversized pink Wednesday T-shirt, and a to-be-shattered homecoming crown. There’s even an 8-bit Mathlete contest! Here’s hoping some former, real-life Mathlete cracks her knuckles and makes us a playable version of this game soon.

Zippos and war go hand in hand.

It’s been that way since the early 1940s, when the Zippo Manufacturing Company entered into an exclusive contract with the U.S. military. By the time of the Vietnam War, the utilitarian lighter had been converted into something much softer: barred from altering their uniforms, soldiers were engraving their Zippos with phrases, some of them gutting and sincere, others as self-consciously macho as an “I heart Mom” tattoo engulfed in inked flames.

This is the precedent photographer Henry Hargreaves hopes to channel in his new series “War Phones.” Working with a prop stylist, Hargreaves designed updated “vignettes,” featuring iPhones engraved with messages found on the original Vietnam Zippos.

As Hargreaves explains in a video about the project, he took his inspiration from the versatility of the two tools. Just as soldiers relied on their lighters for various small pleasures — from lighting cigarettes and heating food to illuminating letters from home — today’s soldiers are dependent on laptops and phones to stay in touch with their lives back home.

The project is meant to link the past to the present. “Even though time is passing, the same thing is still being felt,” Hargreaves says. “We’re still getting into these mindless conflicts. Nothing has been learnt.”

This summer on the south shore of Long Island, here in Long Beach, New York, Superstorm Sandy has finally begun to recede in our memory. The boardwalk is open and better than ever, new dune grass is growing and the ocean breezes are as intoxicating as ever. Still, this and other shore communities continue to recover. Writing in this week’s Long Beach Herald, Alexandra Spychalsky reminds us of the storm’s past and present impact:

More than 500 days after being displaced by Hurricane Sandy, which flooded her one-story bungalow in the West End, Sam Gallo finally came home on May 30, having given entirely new meaning to the term “red tape.” …Gallo’s home was one of 865 in Long Beach that were deemed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to be substantially damaged, meaning that the cost of repairs would be more than half the appraised value. Owners of those homes were told to either elevate them or rebuild them. Nearly 20 months after Sandy devastated Long Beach, recovery, for many, is not yet a thing of the past. City officials estimate that fewer than 5 percent of residents remain displaced — roughly 1,750 people. But while some are on the brink of returning home, progress for others has stagnated while they wait for grant programs to distribute funds.

Ms. Gallo and her wife Desiree struggled with delays in federal and New York State rebuilding programs and ended up using their retirement funds to rebuild their home. Spychalsky’s excellent piece provides a vivid reminder of our government’s wholly inadequate capacity to help rebuild and reconstruct communities after natural disasters.

Some analysts and observers think we should abandon the shore, or that insurance rates should be raised dramatically to discourage development in areas of great vulnerability. I think their image of the shore must be based on the Hamptons or Malibu, because once you get past the ocean front, most of my neighbors in Long Beach are far from wealthy. Here on the West End of town, most of the homes are converted summer bungalows that were renovated over generations and represent decades of sweat equity. Moreover, it is not clear to me where one can live without being vulnerable to the growing impacts of storms and other natural disasters. We have overflowing rivers in the Midwest, droughts and brush fires in the west, as well as the possibility of damage from earthquakes, tornadoes and even terrorism.

The reason we have government is to provide security and protect us from harm. We give up some measure of freedom and treasure to obtain this security. In the aftermath of Sandy I proposed that the federal government create a national tax that would provide revenues for a disaster reconstruction trust fund. These funds would be paid out to individuals and communities that suffered from disasters. The criteria for receiving funds and the level of funding available would be clear and set in advance. There would be no political and bureaucratic processes prior to funding. The trust fund would be paid into by all Americans and would include enough money to ensure that it never ran out. In this way all of us share equally in the payment and all of us have the security of knowing that our homes are fully insured.

The idea that people should be discouraged from living by the shore is built on a set of assumptions about the market and mobility that are ill informed. Raising insurance rates by the shore would not discourage the wealthy from maintaining shorefront mansions, but it would destroy the market for the more modest middle class homes a block or two inland. All that sweat equity invested in those homes would disappear.

Then there is the fact that most cities are located near water. New York City has over 600 miles of shoreline. Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, New Orleans, Miami, and nearly every major American city is located near a body of water. Where would everyone go? And as a society, is it really more cost effective to abandon the shorefront and the billions of dollars we’ve invested in infrastructure? Surely, a more resilient, better-protected community is a better idea than a ghost town. Moreover, what if you moved from the shore only to see your home flooded by a swollen stream? Or destroyed by a tornado or earthquake?

Even without the destabilizing impact of climate change, a nation with more people and more areas settled is likely to place more people in the pathway of natural destruction. Even without more frequent and more intense storms, more and more of us will experience these disasters. Additionally, modern life has created greater dependence on collective infrastructure for energy, water, transportation and sanitation services. We need to recognize our greater interdependency and vulnerability and set aside more resources to respond to emergencies and rebuild after they are over.

I know this is the era of limited government and no new taxes, but we need to acknowledge the need to do better on post-disaster reconstruction. We need a new tax and a more effective government-managed response. Rebuilding a home doesn’t cost less if you wait two years. You just create a more miserable experience for the displaced family.

My guess is that it will take a few more years of climate-driven destruction to build enough of a political coalition to place a community reconstruction trust fund on the national political agenda. It would also require a functioning federal government, and an end to the idea that government is a beast to be starved.

While government is the only institution capable of leading reconstruction, there are deep management problems in current government efforts to rebuild communities and homes after disasters. Due to the political nature of the funding process, HUD and FEMA find themselves in a boom and bust cycle of funding, and resort to overuse of contractors who are not prepared to administer the assistance programs they are being paid to implement. Government managers do a very poor job of managing these contractors and results are fairly predictable. Writing in the Los Angeles Times recently, Joseph Tanfani reported that after Sandy:

New Jersey officials ended up hiring some of the same companies that stumbled in Louisiana and Texas [after Hurricane Katrina]. Today, thousands of frustrated homeowners are still waiting for assistance, and hundreds of millions of dollars in aid are tied up in a system that no one seems able to unravel… Congress funneled billions more directly to cities and states for longer-term assistance. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has issued $41.7 billion in disaster-related block grants since Katrina hit in 2005. That compares with $1.7 billion in the previous 13 years, HUD records show. One result is that local and state governments frequently rely on private cleanup and consultant companies to handle the gushers of cash for them. Critics say those contractors often operate with little government oversight or accountability.

Writing in the New York Times, Liz Robbins depicts the long recovery within New York City and focused attention on the role of non-profits in avoiding government red tape and providing direct assistance to those in need. According to Robbins:

As the second summer since Hurricane Sandy begins, the storm seems like the distant past to many New Yorkers, its most public damage largely erased. But 20 months later, in pockets of the city, there are communities, including several in Brooklyn, where homes still have tarps on their roofs, plywood over their windows and gaping floorboards inside…. But while devastated New Yorkers have been waiting for help, faith-based, community and other nongovernmental organizations have stepped into the void left by a stalled city government to rebuild people’s homes and lives. They work with disaster case managers to funnel aid to those who still need it.

All of this is evidence of our ad hoc, improvisational response to reconstruction. Government, private firms and nonprofits all have a role to play, but it should be a role within a well-managed, carefully organized pre-positioned response. We have such a system for emergency response, but not for reconstruction. Nonprofit and community based organizations should be integrated into a government managed reconstruction program.

In our book, The Responsible Contract Manager, Bill Eimicke and I discuss the need for government managers to become more skilled at contract management. Successful program implementation requires skills at managing networks of organizations cutting across levels of government as well as the public and private sectors. We identify a number of tools that public managers can use to secure excellent contractors and partners and manage their work. Many government agencies lack the capacity to effectively manage contractors, and some even think that once they let the contract, they can turn a key, start up the machine and walk away.

The lack of certainty about funding and the emergency nature of disaster reconstruction make it difficult for government to manage these contractors. No one knows how long the contract will be funded and so the top talent at a firm is not motivated to work on these contracts. The government itself lacks the capacity to effectively manage networks of large firms, state and local governments and nonprofits. A more stable and predictable funding stream and set of rules for reconstruction would enable government and contractors to learn the work and learn how to work together. It would also help if our elected leaders learned the difference between policy pronouncement at press conferences and program outcomes in the real world.