So I came home from yoga, and checked my iPhone messages as I walked up the stairs from the subway to the street. Darn it! A little unfinished work bobble had popped up after hours! It had to be taken care of right away.
But I was standing on the street corner in Brooklyn! What to do?
Well, in my case, I connected iPhone to the free-range Wi-Fi that floats like an invisible miasma all over my nabe, logged into my private folder on my personal Files2Phones (F2P) webpage, tapped on the Monitor icon to show my Windows desktop in my office in Manhattan, tapped on the iPhone screen and nudged right to use the right-click context menu to pop open the Word doc on my desktop in my office, got the required answer, tapped my Windows desktop taskbar to maximize my office Outlook, clicked New to start a new Outlook email from my work email account, tapped in the To and Subject fields to enter the recipient and the subject from the iPhone keyboard, tapped in the email body to write the answer, tapped Send, and well, sent.
Yes, freaks, you read that correctly. I was controlling my work computer from my iPhone while relaxing under a leafy tree by the historic church in my picturesque Brooklyn nabe. I had full control of all applications, and even Windows right-click! It took about 2 minutes to do this small but necessary task.
Welcome to the great world of iPhone productivity with Files2Phones.
The window above is the F2P client. Run this on your desktop, and
you can serve your work desktop out to your iPhone or iPod Touch 24/7.
But notice the 3 yellow folders in the F2P Folders pane in the above
screenshot: Guest, Public, Private. You can put different files, apps,
media (even video!), folders, what have you in each of these areas and
set a different password combo for each one. Just drag the items you
want from the My Computer pane to the appropriate folder or right-click
to create a shortcut.
That’s right, you can share out stuff to your colleagues from your
desktop by giving them a password so they can log onto the correct
folder from your F2P webpage! To increase security, you can even set
time limits on when these folders are available! You can see exactly
who logged in and when, as well as everthing they did — it’s all
logged in F2P’s top Security pane.
But it gets even cooler. Notice the Other Image Sources pane. That’s
right: I can upload pix from iPhone to my desktop. But F2P can also see
my office webcam and transmit pictures from it to me on iPhone! I can
use my desktop Skype to call my work contacts! To interact with my
desktop, I dragged the Monitor into my private folder.
It’s amazing stuff.
Installing the latest version of F2P is very straightforward, it’s a
simple Windows-type installer that runs in about a minute. When you
install, you select the name of an F2P webpage to serve out over the
‘net, a page that hosts your folders and apps.
It’ll be called username.myf2p.com. As long as your client is
running on your desktop and the desktop has internet access, you’ll be
able to see this webpage. Thus you can login and control your desktop
and other features thru Safari on your iPhone. This means if your work
desktop crashes or loses ‘net connectivity, tho’, it will stop serving
your page and thus you won’t be login to control your desktop!
I’ve also found issues where your webpage will stop serving if your
desktop goes to sleep or auto-locks. So you’ll want to disable sleep
and auto-locking.
I’ve been working with the F2P tech folks for a couple of weeks to
debug and get the app where it would work flawlessly on my prime-time
enterprise VPN-with-industrial-strength-firewall. I figure if it works through that, home computers and small offices should be ok.
Dick, Ratko, and Mel at F2P have been great, esp. Dick and Ratko.
One thing I can say about F2P is that they have fantastic tech support,
which is largely due to Dick.
They have enhanced the functionality of F2P a couple of times during
my test, and I believe they have yet more features up their sleeves! I
plan to keep on working with F2P as it continues to evolve.
The 2 highlights that blow me away are the Skype and the Windows
right-click. The right click is awesome: tap to access the usual
Windows pointer. Then do a very slow double-tap and a tiny two-fingered
nudge to the right. This turns the right-hand side of the Windows
pointer red! Tap again and the right-click (context) menu opens on
screen for you to tap on and use!
The Skype is also interesting. Drag Skype from the Image Sources
pane and drop it into your private folder. When you log into your
private folder, you can tap the Skype icon to launch your full,
regular, desktop Skype. Choose a contact and call.
F2P will place the call to them, mute your desktop speakers so people in your office won’t be disturbed by the conversation, and then call you back on your iPhone so you can talk!
I’m in love with F2P and Dick! Now my iPhone or your iPod Touch
offers the power of your full office desktop in the palm of your hand!
Finally, don’t try this over EDGE or you’ll die of tedium; this is a
Wi-Fi situation, for sure.
The F2P desktop client works with Macs and Windows desktops/laptops.
It costs just under US$100 a year. And the tech support is great; even
when special conditions call for adding funky Windows switches on the
end of the .exe command, Dick is there for you!
October 27th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
I have tried F2P and believe it has a lot of potential, but cannot see this happening until they can make it work with your desktop locked as other remote apps do. How many of us leave our computer unlocked?
October 27th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
I agree completely. Luckily, F2P is under development, and I hope this feature will be added. To be honest, it’s quite necessary in anything outside a home or small office environment. At my enterprise, we have robust policies. Even if I turned off auto-locking, the next time I rebooted (or was rebooted centrally) the network policies would reset it. I hope Nigel, Dick and Ratko consider the highly restrictive and centrally managed features of enterprise desktops in their future releases.
That iPhone is now the 3rd or 4th best selling smartphone means it’s going to start showing up in the enterprise, and so there’s a good market for F2P if they decide to accomodate the common features of large corporate desktops.
I think they will — I did manage to convince them to consider the fast-growing use of VPNs for example, to ensure they would factors tunnel support into their roadmap. In my experience, they listen and are serious about their market, so that’s a good sign!
October 30th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Steven I:
Talked to F2P’s Dick G. this morning. They are already working on the locked desktop issue, and also showed me a workaround for file access. Once they offer the fix for locked desktops, I’ll write a review update!
Thanks,
F
November 1st, 2007 at 10:41 pm
Very nice. Will be looking for it.
November 2nd, 2007 at 6:22 pm
Need to check this out. Still in Beta for the iPhone but seems a more mature product, most likely since they have already developed for other mobile phones. Looking at the pricing on the other phones, it looks more economical as well.
November 7th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
I cannot wait to be able to do this. I’ve been dreaming about it!! Work from my iPhone? SO AWESOME! I just got my iPhone and have it working overall but there are so many apps that I want to explore still!!! I can’t wait until this works with a locked desktop. Until then, it’s unfortunately useless to me.
November 7th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Hi Corinne:
I talked to Dick G. today about this. They expect to have it working with a locked desktop in about a week or 10 days. They have now released 2.0, with new ways to control apps. Also Dick told me that they have succeeded in having it work behind a screensaver so to speak, so that people can’t see what you are doing on the machine — this could be useful for security if you are looking a confidential information and don’t want the janitor or the entire office to wander by and watch what you are doing.
Hth,
F
November 23rd, 2008 at 3:08 am
i would like to use my email on my desktop that already existin in my mobile phone nokia 6110