One of the new features of Mac OS 10.5, a.k.a. Leopard, is .Mac’s Back to My Mac, a way to connect to your computer at home remotely. Back to My Mac allows a user log into another Mac remotely via internet. This is a great feature but it is only available if you are a .Mac subscriber. However, the new iChat supports Screen Sharing, so the only thing to figure out is how to auto-accept a Screen Share invitation and how to do it securely. This quick tutorial will show you how set up iChat to do just that.

Requirements:

This set up requires that both computers run Leopard. If you don’t have it yet, here’s the Amazon link to buy it. It is well worth the price. You also need two separate iChat supported IM accounts, one for each computer. This could be AIM, .Mac or Jabber accounts.

Step 1: Limit Users

It is very important this step is not skipped. Not limiting the users will open up to anyone taking over your computer.

From your Mac at home, launch iChat and from the top menu select iChat > Preferences and from the Accounts tab select your account from the Accounts list on the left panel.

From the Security tab, select Allow Specific People and add the username of the ichat account you would like to allow to auto-connect.

Step 2: Set Up Auto Accept Screen Sharing

From the Alerts tab in the ‘iChat > Preferences’, select Audio Invitation from the Event pull down menu. Then check-mark Run AppleScript and select Auto Accept.applescript from the pulldown menu. You can close the Preferences window now.

Now, we’ll need to edit the Auto Accept script we selected in the previous step. Click on the desktop to go to the Finder and from a new Finder window, navigate to ‘Your Hard Disk/Library/Scripts/iChat/’. This is the folder that contains the iChat AppleScripts provided by Apple in Leopard. Double click the file Auto Accept.applescript to open in AppleScript Utility.

A Screen Sharing invitation is sent to iChat as an Audio chat with a Screen Sharing flag. We will need to locate the audio invitation section and comment out the screen sharing if statement by enclosing the lines with (* and *). See example bellow. Additions are marked in red.


on received audio invitation theText from theBuddy for theChat
   (* if (screen sharing of theChat is none) then *)
    accept theChat
  (* end if *)
end received audio invitation


Save the document and quit AppleScript Utility.

Step 3: Set Home Computer To Stay Awake

Next, we need to set the home computer to stay stay awake, otherwise it will automatically go to sleep when not in use. From the top menu bar, select ‘Apple > System Preferences’ and click on the Energy Saver Preference Pane. From the Sleep tab, set the Computer sleep mode to never and check-mark the Put the hard disk to sleep option then quit System Preferences.

Step 4: Connect Remotely

Now we’re going to connect to our home Mac. From the other computer, add the username to the buddy list, select it and click the ‘Start Screen Sharing’ button on the bottom right of the buddy list window.

From the ‘Start Screen Sharing’ pull down menu, select ‘Ask to Share Username’s Screen…’ to begin the process.

iChat will ask permission on the Home account, but it will be automatically approved by our script there.

iChat will do it’s magic and your screen will shrink down to the corner as the remote Mac at home will go full screen.

Conclusion

I thought ‘Back to My Mac’ was going to be the .Mac feature that will make me renew my .Mac subscription, but the new iChat has proven more capable than the demo Steve made in his keynote.

Determining what computer a kid should have and at what age is a very tricky and personal matter. It varies from kid to kid and from parent to parent. For example, my daughter(5 years old) has yet to break anything on her iMac. However, my son(2 years old) has gone through 3 keyboards, two mice and has filled up the DVD drive with coins (a common trait amongst boys i’ve found). They each have had their own iMac since day one. These old iMacs are sturdy and durable. And although 12 gigs is not that much hard disk space, it can hold a good 10 to 15 game CD images.

This is Part 1 in a series for a kids Mac setup.

The Kids Gear

iMac G3 SE 400 MHz ($200 @ eBay), 256 RAM, 12 Gig Drive, Airport Card

iSkin Keyboard Protector ($27 @ Amazon, fits only the new keyboards not the original iMac keyboards)

Ikea Round Table (not available online)

How long will the iMacs last?
Right now these old iMacs serves us good. They recently got updated to the latest Mac OS X Tiger and they zip along just fine for having only 256 of RAM. They chuck a bit during some new games like The Incredibles, but for the most part, kids games like Dora the Explorer are a lot less demanding than grown up games. For a couple of hundred dollars the iMac could be upgraded with more RAM and bigger Hard Drive, but I personally wouldn’t spend any more money on them and rather use that money towards a replacement in the next year or so. My daughter is about to turn six and I recently set her up with email and aim (with parental controls). She uses these (under supervision) to communicate with her grandparents and aunties who live in other states. This is where the iMac starts to drag. Because of the processor speed, she can do voice chat but not video. She can receive pictures through email, but accessing my shared iPhoto library to send some images is impossible. Next year I want her to learn to edit some videos but she will have to do that in mine because her iMac is not up to the task. So most likely she will be getting a faster computer in a year to handle all these new tasks. As for Dante, well, he will be looking at a Graphite iMac for a few more years to come or until his iMac dies.

The Setup
I have saved all their games into the computer as disc images. This has required some mad CD ripping skills I will be sharing in my next post. Armed with an array of custom icons, no docks, a very cool app launcher and parental control for mail, chat and web, this kids computers are very cool indeed. Not swapping discs(not an option for Dante anyway) needed, all disc images get loaded at startup so all they have to do is click on an icon and play.

Next post: disc imaging secrets

p.s. I’ve tried to track down the flash based launcher used at the kids computer Apple Store with no luck. Any leads are appreciated.

What’s available right now?

1. Email – Most servers have a file size limit for attachments
2. FTP to a server – Most servers have a size limit
3. P2P – Peer to peer transfer is not a private network
4. iChat – Does not provide “Resume” in case you need to reconnect
5. FTP Sharing – Not any size restriction other that your hard drive, can support many connections

This guide will help you set up an FTP server on your Mac in less than 15 minutes using PureFTPd. We’re not setting up the FTP Sharing that comes as part of Mac OSX because that one is tied in to an OSX user. On the other hand, PureFTPd allows you to set up FTP users just for FTP access. It allows you to disconnect them, limit their bandwidth, monitor their activity etc. We are also going to set it up using no-ip.com, a service that will give u a server name in case your dynamic IP address changes.

Step 1: Set up No-IP
Why do we need this to begin with? Every time you are online, your are identified with a serial number called an IP Address. Most users at home have dynamic IP addresses. This means their IP changes constantly. By using no-ip.com we can have the server be automatically alerted if the IP changes.

Go to no-ip.com and create an account.

The basic account is free.

Once the account is confirmed, log in to your account.

Select “Add Host” from the “Hosts/Redirects” menu and create the hostname u want. In our example we are setting it up as allforces.no-ip.info. Change allforces to whatever you would like your ftp host address to be. No-Ip offers a paid premium service if you want to set it up with your domain, but for this example, we’ll use their free service.

Step 2: Making it Dynamic
If you have a dynamic IP address like most people do, you need to download the No-IP Address Client.

The No-IP Client is available from the Downloads section of their website

Download, Install and Launch from the Applications folder.

Enter your No-IP account info

Select the Hosts you want updated

Click on Update Now. It will take the server a few minutes to become available.

Step 3: Set Up Router
If you have a router you will need to configure it so that it opens the FTP port directly to your computer. So much for the thought of going to Starbucks to user their T1. In our example, we’ll configure the Airport Base, although in your case it might be a LinkSys Router. If you do not have access to the router to open the FTP ports, your computer will not be accessible.

First we need to find our current dynamic IP Address. We can find this in the Network System Preferences.

Double Click your active port. In this case, it’s the Airport.

Copy the last part of your IP Address found in the TCP/IP tab. In our case, Airport has assigned us the IP Address 10.0.1.106. The last part of the IP is 106.

Launch the Airport Admin Utility Found in Applications > Utilities

Add a Port under the Port Mapping Tab. Enter 21 for The Public and Private ports. This is the port FTP uses to communicate. Enter the last numbers of your current IP. In our case it was 106.

Update the Airport Base or Router.

Step 4: Set Up PureFTPd
The last step is to download, install and set up PureFTPd.

Download PureFTPd Manager

Install PureFTPd Manager and launch from the Applications folder.

The first time you launch you will be guided with a Setup Assistant. First, you are asked about creating an anonymous account. They recommend you do, so just leave everything as is and press Continue.

Create your first FTP User. You can create many users, or just have one global one. You can even share folders between users. For this step just create the login name for the user. Changing the group name is optional. Keep it all lowercase with no special characters.

Finalize your options and click Continue.

To Finish the setup process, select the location where you want your FTP users to be.

Once set up, select the user you created under User Manager and add a password.

Step 5: Share the files
To place files in your FTP Server, just move the files to the user folder you wan to. In our example we created the user “victor”. That’s the folder we would place the files in.

For someone to access your FTP Server they need to connect with an FTP Application like Transmit to the server yourhostname.no-ip.info. Notice that the FTP server is a .info not .com. Use the username and password you set up with FTPd Manager.

Conclusion
Setting up your Mac as a temporary FTP server takes less than 15 minutes. It works in the background as people connect to you to get the files from your computer. You avoid the hassle of uploading since the files are in your computer. And, its Free! This is definitely the best way to transfer huge files over the internet.