Tech help found for in-laws in Timbuktu

I have cracked the mother-in-law technical-support code! Bow before my greatness. That is, before you start lobbing stones when you understand I'm about to turn you into even-more-dedicated family tech-support personnel.

My mother-in-law, Dianne, a wonderful woman with a lifetime of work in the study and improvement of early-childhood-development education, cannot use a concrete noun to save her life when confronted with a Macintosh graphical user interface (GUI).

"I moved the thing onto it, and then the other part moved onto the thing," she might say. (I rib her about this in person, not just in print.) Ironically, early-childhood development revolves partly around the transition from concrete to abstract thinking. She's just too abstract for GUIs.

With Dianne on the other coast — in West Hartford, Conn. — my wife, Lynn, and I provide blind-man's tech support. The breakthrough for us will come from Netopia's Timbuktu Pro (www.netopia.com), software I've written about that lets you remotely control another computer's screen, and Skype (www.skype.com), the Internet telephony program.

Months ago, Timbuktu Pro 8.6 was released with Skype support, but I confess I saw this as just another news release bullet point. My mistake. In fact, Skype provides a key tool to make Timbuktu Pro work on the modern Internet.

Many home networks use Wi-Fi or wired gateways that share an incoming DSL or cable-modem connection with several computers. Those gateways mask the machines inside the home network, providing a sort of passive firewall.

This breaks how Timbuktu Pro works. It can reach over a local network or the Internet to exchange files and messages with another computer with Timbuktu Pro installed.

When you use Timbuktu Pro to connect to a computer that's not on the same local network as yours, that other machine must have a routable Internet protocol (IP) address.

Some Internet service providers offer routable IP addresses for each of your computers at extra cost. But most home users have a single address, which may not be routable, and which generally is assigned to your network's gateway.

Timbuktu Pro can't reach the computers within the network, because the gateway then assigns each machine a private, nonroutable address that can't be accessed except within the network.

Enter Skype. It handles voice over IP (VoIP), video conferencing, and instant messaging. Its program connects outward from the local network, traversing the network labyrinth.

Like Ariadne's thread that let Theseus escape the Minotaur's lair by retracing his steps, Skype's "string" lets Timbuktu Pro trace its way inward.

Rather than trying to force my way onto Dianne's machine from the outside, I can direct Timbuktu Pro to establish a connection via a Skype-to-Skype connection that then links up with the copy of Timbuktu Pro on her Mac.

Making this work for the average geographically separated family does involve some expense and effort, but there's no second-best solution yet. Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) will include a similar screen-sharing feature that will work over iChat, but that's several months away.

To use Timbuktu Pro and Skype, every computer involved needs both packages installed. Timbuktu Pro is expensive, designed for tech support professionals and corporate environments. A two-user version costs a whopping $180 for the Mac (www.netopia.com/software/products/tb2/buy/index.jsp).

The Mac and Windows versions work fine together; a two-user Mac/Windows package is $200. Consider it a frustration-relief tax, however.

Timbuktu Pro can be purchased as a download. On your own computer, you'll find it easy to install, but if your other party is far away, you may need to talk them through a number of steps.

Timbuktu is about 13 MB, which makes it hard to send as an e-mail attachment. You may need to burn the disk image on a CD to carry with you or send in the mail; or you can use a Web-based file transfer site like Dropload (www.dropload.com), which allows attachments up to 100 MB at no charge. Follow Netopia's instructions for installation.

Skype is much simpler. It's free and has a guide on how to install it under Mac, Windows, or other platforms (www.skype.com/help/guides/howtoskype/">www.skype.com/help/guides/howtoskype/). After downloading and installing Skype and setting up an account, be sure to log into Skype when you want to use Timbuktu Pro with it.

Timbutku Pro uses accounts with passwords to control access. While you can use Mac OS X accounts within Timbuktu Pro, Skype requires that you set up Timbuktu Pro-only accounts. From Setup, choose Define Users. Click New. Enter a name (like "Good Son In Law") and a password. Click Save.

The final step is critical. From the Setup menu, select Incoming Access. Check Skype in the dialog box. You and the other person should add each other as contacts with Skype to make sure that you can see each other when you're logged into Skype.

To connect to another computer, the other user must be logged in to Skype. From your machine, launch Timbuktu Pro, select New Connection, and click the Skype tab. You should see a list of your contacts from Skype, and any contact who's online and has Timbuktu running with Incoming Access enabled will show a Yes in the Timbuktu column.

As I write this, my in-laws are on their annual trip to Maine, but my co-columnist Jeff Carlson tested this setup with his mother-in-law in Glendale, Calif.. It works like a charm. I am now also able to access my computer at home that's buried behind layers of firewalls and gateways with a second Skype account that I set up for this purpose.

You can thank me or you can blame me, but the tools are now in your hands.

Glenn Fleishman writes the Practical Mac column for Personal Technology and about technology in general for The Seattle Times and other publications. Send questions to gfleishman@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists