AllThingsD » LogMeIn

Converting Cassettes to CDs

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 01:02:25 +0000

Is there a way to convert cassette tapes to CDs through the computer?

Yes, there are a variety of hardware gadgets, that, with accompanying software, can plug into computers to convert the contents of cassettes to digital files, which can then be burned to CDs.

I can’t recommend any specific products, since I haven’t tested any. But you can find some by searching for “cassette to CD.”

Note that such conversions, like conversions of records, can be very time-consuming.

I will be on the road this summer and I don’t want a large laptop. I’m wondering what your opinion is on a tablet vs. netbook. My main purpose is to retrieve/send email, access the Internet and download important files. If I bought a tablet, it’d be an iPad.

Most of what you want to do is easy on the iPad. But downloading of files is a bit trickier.

The iPad makes it easy to view — and with extra apps, to edit — files received as email attachments. And it has some apps that allow file retrieval from the cloud.

But a straight download from a website usually doesn’t work well. So you might prefer a laptop. In that case, I recommend a full-sized, but thin, light laptop over the generally cramped netbooks.

I live in the U.S. and have a mother living on her own in Montreal. I would like to video chat with her on a daily basis. She is elderly and has some memory/dementia issues. I’d like it set up so I control the whole process from my end, leaving her to do little more than turn on a monitor. How can I do this?

By taking remote control of her computer. There are a number of simplified remote-control software programs that would allow this, and I have no reason to think they wouldn’t work across a national border.

Two I have tested are LogMeIn and CrossLoop.

But you would first have to install these on your mother’s computer and make sure her machine is turned on and connected to the Internet when you want to initiate a video-chat session.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and Walt’s other columns at the All Things Digital website, http://walt.allthingsd.com. Email mossberg@wsj.com

The iPad Now Can Take Command of Computers

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 02:03:08 +0000

It has long been possible to control one PC or Mac from another, legally and with permission. Though the process can be tricky to set up, companies often use it as a maintenance and training tool, and some consumers use it to help others solve computer problems, or to reach back to their home or office machines while on the road to access information.

But what about remotely controlling a PC or Mac from the newest category of digital device, a multitouch tablet? Well, it turns out there are apps for that.

[ See post to watch video ]

Such apps have been around on super-smart phones like the iPhone for years, but phone screens are so small that using them to open and operate programs and folders on a Mac or PC is very frustrating, at least to me. The iPad, with its roomy 10-inch screen, is a different story. It actually has the real estate to make the process much more practical.

I’ve been testing a couple of these apps on my iPad, using them to remotely control Windows PCs and Macs at my home and office. In fact, I’m typing this paragraph in Microsoft Word on a Mac remotely from the iPad.

My conclusion is that these apps do work, but even on the large iPad screen, they’re too clumsy and confusing to use on a regular basis, mostly because touch-screen tablets aren’t a great match for the way traditional computers—designed for a mouse and a physical keyboard—work. Also, the apps have some functional limitations, and they are heavily dependent on the speed of the network or Internet connection, which can make them slow at demanding things like video.

A view of a Windows PC on an iPad via LogMeIn Ignition.

For my tests, I selected two apps squarely aimed at average consumers. One is called LogMeIn Ignition, and is the iPad and iPhone incarnation of a longstanding computer-to-computer remote-control product called LogMeIn. The other is called iTeleport. It has been around, under various names, since the early days of the iPhone, and now comes in an iPad edition as well.

Both apps get around the complexity of setup by installing a special free program on the computer you wish to control that talks to the iPad app. The apps can see and control all the computers on which you have installed companion programs. I found setup easy and the connections generally reliable and fast enough, except for video.

But the big drawback to these products is that they are clumsy in controlling the target computer. Each allows two basic methods for this. In one, your finger moves the computer’s mouse cursor and you click the virtual mouse by tapping. In the other, you can directly tap on things on the remote screen. In my view, LogMeIn was better at the first method and iTeleport was better at the second. But I found both clumsy and tedious in both programs, especially when I tried to combine controlling the remote computer with the frequent need to use touch to move the image of the screen around the iPad’s display.

LogMeIn Ignition costs a one-time fee of $29.99. The iTeleport app can be used free for 30 days, after which it costs either $2.99 a month or a $24.99 one-time fee. For the next seven days, iTeleport is running a sale that cuts the price to $1 a month, or $10 for the one-time fee.

Both apps can control multiple Windows or Mac computers, at no extra cost. For my tests, I used each to remotely access the same two Windows PCs and two Macs, both desktops and laptops. One limitation: neither app allows you to transfer a file from a computer to the iPad.

While there are some differences between the products, they are fundamentally similar. Once you log in, you see the remote computer’s screen on your iPad screen. In my tests, with both products, I was able to open Web pages, check email, view photos and use productivity apps. I also was able to print documents from the computers on my home printer, even while I was miles away.

In both apps, you pinch and zoom to enlarge or reduce the view of the target computer screen, and can rotate the image of the screen.

The iPad can’t play Flash videos, but these apps allow you to view such videos from your PC or Mac on the iPad. But there are catches. For one thing, neither program lets you hear audio from the computer through the iPad, so the videos (and music you play remotely) are mute. Also, in my tests, even over a fast connection, I could never get a video from the remote computer to play smoothly over either app.

LogMeIn also offers a version for Android, unlike iTeleport, and that allows audio to be transmitted. I tested this on a Samsung Galaxy Tab, and it worked.

One big difference is in the level of security or privacy the two apps offer. Both encrypt the remote connection, but LogMeIn requires you to sign in twice: once to its own service and once to the computer itself. iTeleport skips the computer login, so it feels less secure. In addition, iTeleport outsources its authentication to Google. You sign into the product using your Google credentials. This is simpler, but requires you to trust Google with the privacy of the contents of your computer.

Each program has special keyboards and shortcuts to add things to the iPad that computers use but the tablet lacks, such as function keys. Each also has various gestures you can use as shortcuts. But the overall effect is confusing.

Bottom line: You can control a PC or a Mac from an iPad, without any complex setup, using these two apps. But, unless you spend a lot of time learning to get good at it, the process is clunky and best used only when you absolutely must.

Find all Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos at the All Things Digital website, walt.allthingsd.com.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at mossberg@wsj.com

Is it Wyse to Make Your Best-Selling iPad App Free?

Ina Fried — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 13:00:19 +0000

After selling more than 250,000 copies of its PocketCloud program for iPhones, iPads and Android, Wyse is taking a big gamble. It’s making the remote desktop app free.

PocketCloud is one of a number of programs that let people remotely access a PC or Mac from their iPad or iPod, thereby accessing files or even running full-blown applications that wouldn’t otherwise work on a mobile device. The company originally hoped to sell 100,000 copies, but now expects 2010 sales to be triple that amount.

So with sales so strong, just why would Wyse want to start giving it away?

“We want more people to download it and see the dream themselves,” CEO Tarkan Maner told Mobilized in an interview on Wednesday.

You see, it turns out that a lot of people don’t really think hip mobile applications when they think about Wyse, a company that specializes in the rather obscure world of thin clients.

“People usually do not associate the brand with something this cool,” Maner said.

But things like iPad apps are an increasingly important part of what Wyse does these days. Although PocketCloud’s roughly $3 million in revenue is just over 1 percent of total company sales, the unit is the fastest-growing part of the company.

Maner isn’t totally giving away the store. The company plans to keep selling a premium version of PocketCloud for $15 that includes enterprise features like advanced security, VGA-out and the ability to connect with VMWare’s technology. Maner said he is so sure that enough of the free users will upgrade that Wyse will still be able to grow its PocketCloud revenue substantially next year.

“This is a capitalistic world,” he said. “We want people to go to the premium version.”

Wyse also faces a lot of competition, from enterprise firms like Citrix to rivals like LogMeIn to tiny mom-and-pop operations.

“Every Tom, Dick and Harry has an application” for remote access, Maner said. However, he maintained that most of the programs support only one or two protocols and often use a proprietary back-end system that locks users in.

“In the long term we believe our model is the winning model,” he said. “It gives users freedom.”

The company is also working to add new features. Maner wouldn’t share all the plans, but said to think rich media.

“We are going to do a lot of stuff around video,” he said, pointing to opportunities in both streaming as well as gaming and bi-directional video.

It’s the latest reinvention of a 30-year-old company that dates back to the mainframe and minicomputer era. In the mid-’90s, Wyse went through a reinvention to center around thin clients that allowed bank tellers and other task workers to use a quiet, low-power terminal as opposed to a full-fledged PC.

“We hate PCs,” Maner said. “We want these things in the cloud.”

Of course, thankfully for Wyse, not everyone feels the same way. Free or not, PocketCloud would be useless if it weren’t for the fact that most of the rest of us depend on those bulky, hard-drive-equipped PCs Maner derides.

LogMeIn Logs IPO Gains

John Paczkowski — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:00:22 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

LogMeIn: IPO Drought? Feh…

John Paczkowski — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:50:48 +0000

Earlier this week, John Fitzgibbon, founder of IPOScoop.com, said that LogMeIn was an IPO “candidate that should blow the socks off people.”

Looks like he was right.

LogMeIn became the fourth venture-backed IPO of 2009 this morning, hitting the markets with an offering that raised $107 million for the remote-services technology provider. Priced at $16 each, the high end of the stock’s IPO price range, LogMeIn (LOGM) shares spiked more than 30 percent to $20.90 shortly after the company made its public debut.

Great news for LogMeIn, which filed to go public in January 2008, only to see its prospects for doing so trashed by the econalypse. Great news as well for venture-backed companies hoping to go public. “The IPO window has cracked open a bit,’’ Emily Mendell, vice president of strategic affairs for the National Venture Capital Association told the Boston Globe. “I think the market has become slightly more stable.’’

It would certainly appear that way. Shares of SolarWinds (SWI), a network-management software outfit, are up 24 percent since their debut, and online restaurant-reservation service OpenTable’s (OPEN) shares have soared 52 percent since they began trading in May.

Clearly, we’re seeing something of an awakening in the moribund IPO market, although whether it will continue is anyone’s guess. “I think this is a temporary market window,” David Liu, a managing director at Jefferies & Co., told Forbes. “The economy is still screwed up….We’re telling our clients, if you can get on file and do something quickly, go ahead and do it now so you’re not caught flat-footed.”