There is a new feature in Windows XP that I read about tonight called Remote Assistance. If you are having a problem with your computer that you can't figure out, you go to the Remote Assistance area, enter the e-mail address of the person you want to help you, and they get sent an invitation and some kind of password key. That person can then click a button in the e-mail and access your computer just like they were actually there. How cool is that? Both sides have to be running Windows XP, and, of course, both sides have to be connected to the internet.

The person sending the invitation call also specify how long the password is good for. For example, 1 hour, and after an hour the password expires and they can't get back into your computer. The person sending the invitation also has to click a button when the helper actually does try to log-into the computer. It's not like you are just opening your computer to the world. Very clever.

So now instead of a friend calling me up and describing a problem, and me trying to diagnose long distance, I can actually take a look myself, see the error messages, etc. and fix things a lot quicker. Also, the person with the broken computer can see exactly what I am doing. They will see the mouse move around, words being typed, etc. right on their screen.