Skype Screen Sharing Is A Huge (And Free) Productivity Tool | Hacker News Reader

Skype Screen Sharing Is A Huge (And Free) Productivity Tool

techcrunch.com

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A more recent skype feature worth an upgrade is group video calling: http://blogs.skype.com/en/2010/05/group_video_calling.html

Which is Win only for now.

I am looking forward to the time when Skype has cross-platform group video and screen sharing. I don't use gotomeeting nearly as much for one-on-one screen sharing, but need to bring it out for mutli-party screen share.

I use this daily with my dev team. It's great because skype is cross-platform, easily traverses firewalls/NAT, and combines the screen sharing with voice chat.

Any competing tool (or set of tools) would have to accomplish those same goals.

Also, I tend to use skype (or email) whenever I have to paste a large block of text (like a stack trace), since Yahoo and AIM both avoid sending messages if they're too long.

I use Gists for pasting (http://gist.github.com). It's really nice. You can have private gists, which are reasonably secure. You can have multiple files. You get syntax highlighting. And if you paste some code and then want to build upon it, you can edit it either through the web interface or by cloning the repository, working with your favorite text editor, and then pushing your changes.

There's also a handy little project that allows you to Gist from the command line: http://github.com/defunkt/gist/

I've been all over using tmux (http://tmux.sf.net) for remote pairing basically all day long. It's like a reincarnation of GNU Screen that shows internal cohesion and makes more sense.

I've been using Teamviewer for a month now and it's pretty incredible compared to my past experiences with remote desktop tools. It's basically Remote Desktop + Skype (it navigates firewalls, has VOIP, etc.). No chat though. Highly recommended.

The only drawback that I think should be mentioned w/ Teamviewer is that it is only free for non-commercial use. As a RDP replacement it is awesome -- a friend and I troubleshoot problems that way sometimes. But it isn't free for those that would use it in a professional capacity.

If your internet connection is too slow and skype/ichat screen sharing is laggy, I recommend ssh+screen+vim/emacs

Not sure if it is available for Linux yet. One can try yuuguu, but it's only free for up to 100 minutes/month: http://www.yuuguu.com/features/skype-integration

I haven't had a chance to try it on Linux yet, but it seems to be there:

http://lifehacker.com/5453124/skype-21-beta-2-puts-screen-sh...

It's available and works perfectly well.

I used to have issues getting it to run in Ubuntu, but as of 10.04 it works right out of the box.

BTW, the 100 minutes/month is only for web share, where the person viewing only needs a url/pin to see your screen. If you get the other person to use Yuuguu as well, screen-sharing is free and unlimited, as far as I know. I use it at work sometimes.

Skype and a cell phone (with Skype App) are all you need. In many ways, Skype is the killer app of the 21-st century.

That actually brings up a good point. When I was using my iPhone for skype calls, I'd have to first figure out if it was going to be a screen sharing call, in which case I'd use my computer instead. It'd certainly be nice (though probably lots of technicalities to figure out) to link a computer into an existing mobile skype call for screen sharing.

That's a really good idea, and it doesn't seem like it should be that difficult.

The way it should work is that when you log into Skype on your computer and you have an active call it says something like "you have a call going on another device, would you like to join it on this computer?" and then you could screenshare.

I've been giving demo's of my company's beta over skype for a few weeks... it's so simple. Everyone has it and I can tailor each demo to each person and they can actually see it working live, ask questions, etc. It's wonderful.

I would prefer such a thing as an XMPP extension.

Is it remote desktop too? Can you take control of the users computer as well?

No remote control (yet). Remote control + group would almost eliminate the need for GotoMeeting or WebEx for me.

Does anybody know how this compares to AIM screen sharing with audio?

Skype screen sharing is view-only (not sure if AIM lets you take control).

Skype uses a form of UDP hole punching to get through NAT/firewall issues and connect two users directly. Unless AIM has this as well (again, not sure), you'll probably have much better luck getting Skype screen sharing to connect.

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