The Pinged Hobbit

Moving between multiple computers can be making having upto date copies of files with you rather hard and there are times you just need to be able to access a program on your own computer. Previously I have touched on tools such as Dropbox that allow you to keep files synchronised between computers quite easily.

One problem I have with Dropbox is that any file that you are synchronising has a copy on their servers as well as your own computers, for most people this isn’t a worry but when dealing with sensitive information it might be a little off putting to know that in theory your data is open to reading from some faceless employee at this company you don’t really know. If this is a concern for you then you might be interested in Gbridge. Gbridge is an app developed as an add on to Google’s Gtalk infrastructure although it isn’t affiliated or endoursed by Google. Gbridge allows you to create a Virtual Private Network (VPN between two computers with very little in the way of end user configuration.

Normally if you wanted to run a VPN between multiple machines you it would require setting up a VPN server and probably some port forwarding on your router. For some one with a reasonable amount of technically knowledge this isn’t a hard task but it can be a chore. Gbrdige gets around this however, it uses your Google account to create a zero configuration VPN between your machines. Simple install Gbrdige on each machine and log in with your google credentials. Gbridge deals with configuring the link between machines for you.

Once the VPN is created you can set up shared folders similar to how you would in Windows, these shared folders can then be accessed from the other computers in your VPN. Alternatively you can can set up tasks to sync and backup your folders and files for you. These backups don’t depend upon an intermmediate server however you do need to have both machines switched on for it to work. Gbridge also allows you to share out access to your files to your Gtalk friends with out any additional configuration, effectively allowing you to share large files without the use of tools such as MailBigFile which again depend on using thrid party servers.

One advantage Gbridge offers over Dropbox and the others is the ability to not only share files but also share control of a computer. Gbridge runs a built in version of Ultra VNC to allow you to remotely connect to and control your machines from each other. This can also be shared out to your GTalk friends just as files can. There is also the facility to set it up to use Windows Remote Desktop. This could be very useful for accessing machines behind a firewall as once again there would be no need to put in place any port forwarding.

In theory you should even be able to play multiplayer lan games across the network, good for when you want to run a private game of something like Comand & Conqure Red Alert (yes I know I am showing my age there!)