There are several people looking into this problem in different ways - mostly building on existing frameworks such as telepathy. From a technological point-of-view, the problem is that securely sharing a desktop when both people are potentially behind NAT firewalls and haven't shared public keys is a seriously non-trivial problem.
My approach has been to develop a stand-alone assistant that would guide you through the necessary steps, but without knowing how to build up a userbase to help with development, I'm not sure how to proceed. If you're interested, the program is available here: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~andrew-bugs-launchpad-net/+junk/remote_help_assistant/files It's a one-file Python script, so you just download it and run the assistant on both computers at once. It's designed for use while talking over a phone line, which is more secure than an Internet connection, and more in line with the use case I envisioned (a ringing phone followed by a panicked friend). If you'd prefer to write a Pidgin plugin, I think this program would be a good bit of inspiration, although you'd have difficulty convincing users to phone each other when an IM session is right there. - Andrew * not to say that my idea would be the One True Solution if only I advertised it better, just that I don't know how to find out -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
