Reach Out and Support Someone – CrossLoop
The holiday season starts here in the US tomorrow with Thanksgiving. A time of the year when distant relatives make contact. Old friends get in touch. Family’s reach out and touch someone.
And, if you’re a geek, well… most ‘em want some free computer support.
“Happy Holidays! Oh man, we miss you guys so much. Why did you move so far away? Say, since you’re on the line, I have this weird message popping up on my computer…”
Ok, these days (for me) it isn’t that bad, but I’ve been there and I bet a few other readers have been there too. It can be frustrating, can’t it? You want to help ‘em, but trying to talk a non-geek through things like popping into the windows registry or assorted control panel applets makes for a very long phone call. Your fingers ache to just be able to take over and control their machine.
I’ve tried a ton of remote control schemes. You know, the various ways of remotely controlling one machine from another. All with various “challenges” associated with ‘em. Some too slow. Some don’t work well over the Internet. Some need too much firewall tweaking by the person you want to help (omg, as if!). Various account owner schemes. Logins. Blah.
However, I recently found CrossLoop and I think this may be “the one.”
CrossLoop is a FREE secure screen sharing utility designed for people of all technical skill levels. CrossLoop extends the boundaries of traditional screen sharing by enabling non-technical users to get connected from anywhere on the Internet in seconds without changing any firewall or router settings. It only takes a few minutes to setup and no signup is required.
In other words, say hello to free hands-on long-distance tech support!
CrossLoop is based on the opensource TightVNC, but adds all the connectivity stuff to make it easy to get through firewalls and such. Much more user friendly too. The person you want to help downloads, installs and invites you to help which generates a code. They give you the code. You download and install (if you haven’t already) and go to the Join area of the software. Enter the code and you’re off and running. Painless and easy for all involved. Their Help page lays it out very nicely with screen shots.
I’d be curious to know more about how the initial connections are “brokered” by, presumably, some CrossLoop servers. Monitoring netstat shows a few connections opened to CrossLoop.com over port 80 after I’ve told a client to be a host. I’m guessing that the “join” feature hits the same server and then the server brokers the conversation, thus mitigating all the normal firewall stuff that makes these things so typically awkward. More testing as time allows, of course. Right now I’m just tickled at how well it works.
I’ll know more after I try it out in real-world conditions this holiday season, but I’m pretty confident that this is going to be a great addition to the tool belt. I’ve been using VNC for quite a few years to manage remote servers and it just tends to work. This takes that same technology and makes it easier and simpler to use.
Possibly Related posts:
- CrossLoop 1.10 Coming Tomorrow
- Zoho Meeting Public Beta
- Active Virus Shield Rode Off into the Sunset
- More on Remote Desktop: Royal TS
- XP Service Pack 3 — Remote Desktop Change
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Flair and Sparklies
That’s one of the things that I thank to linux…no more support for the family!! “I don’t do windows, sorry…if you want my help, I’ll install linux on your computer and help you with that all you want”
A couple of people from the extended family has taken me on the offer and…no support has been needed lol! That’s the one thing I love about linux…you don’t give them the root password and they can’t break it 
But CrossLoop does look interesting…not for the free support for the family, but for the real support for my clients….if it saves me from opening holes on my/my client’s firewall, I like it! Thanks for the pointer
Looks like CrossLoop might be a winner. Thanks for the info.
[...] I remembered a post I’d read at solo-technology about CrossLoop helping to troubleshoot a system remotely. We installed it and ran it as host and joined with the system we made for her. CrossLoop couldn’t be any easier to set up or use. It’s exactly what we need, and will be a HUGE time saver later on we’re sure. [...]