Telepresence

This summer I traveled across the country to stay with my mom as she recovered from hip-replacement surgery. My wife - a college professor - was mid-semester, so we planned to video chat often to stay in touch. What actually happened in the first few days was, for me, a revelation/revolution in the human communication experience...

THE FUTURE WAS THEN...
During a visit with my father in 1967, we attended Expo 67, the World's Fair in Montreal, Canada. One of my few enduring memories of the trip was talking to my father on an AT&T Picturephone inside a glass-enclosed pavillion, next to a full-sized mock-up of NASA's Apollo Lunar Excursion Module on a simulated moonscape. My father was only about 50 feet away on another Picturephone, and it was only black & white (hey, my family didn't own a color television until 1979), but the promise was that some day, we all could not only hear but see our friends and family over great distances.

Forty years(!) later, we still don't have Picturephones. There are a lot of reasons, possibly the best reason being that much of the time we just don't want to be seen in whatever state we're in when the phone rings. We've gotten used to the paradigm of speaking to a disembodied voice injected directly into one ear - we've been doing so for well over a century.

Of course, there have been solutions for getting that past-future Picturephone into the home. I the past decade and more, there have been expensive consumer devices that connected to a user's phone line and provided choppy video and gravely audio by digitally compressing them to pass through the same "pipe" intended for only audio.

Today, of course, personal computer users can use inexpensive cameras (which may already be incorporated into their computers) in concert with a broadband Internet connection in their home or business to "video chat" or even "video conference" (with more than two people concurrently) with others anywhere in the world. Video quality can be quite good, depending upon the speed of one's Internet connection, and audio is excellent.

Like many, I have been regularly using video chat on personal computers since 2003, when Apple Computer introduced the "AV" version of their "iChat" text- and voice-chat client application. Starting in the early 1990s, I'd periodically played with Internet telephony, but with disappointing results. Attempting to establish test conversations with other geeky friends always resulted in burning up hours in futile troubleshooting, often with one party hearing the other but not vice versa - sometimes with audio skipping most of the words, and sometimes humorously spitting out 10 seconds of speech in a 2-second Chipmunks-style burst. When Apple introduced iChatAV for their Macintosh operating system, they presented a mature and relatively stable technology for easy audio and video communication over the Internet.

This maturation of teleconferencing was possible too because of the increasing penetration of "broadband" Internet access. Increasingly, consumers around the world subscribe to various methods of delivering 24/7 Internet access at data speeds many times greater than those achievable through the half-century old paradigm of the telephone modem.

TOGETHERNESSWhen preparing for my trip to North Carolina, I discovered that the hospital where my mom was having her orthopaedic surgery had free WiFi in some parts of most buildings, but was still in the process of extending coverage campus-wide. I had no idea how much time I'd spend in the hospital, but I prepared for the worst, including acquisition of a WiFi range-extending solution. While in the surgical waiting room, I was delighted to discover that I did indeed have WiFi access in our wing of the hospital.

As soon as my mom was out of surgery and post-op ICU, she was moved to her room. I blogged her status for family and friends, and phoned the less tech-savvy. As soon as I was settled in her room, I set up my laptop and its video camera and discovered my wife online (very early in California). We started a video chat, and I updated her on my mom's status. My wife re-met a friend of my mother's who had stayed with me through the surgery. The laptop was on the rolling hospital bed table, and I showed my wife my mother sleeping off her anesthetic. In these critical first post-op hours, hospital staff popped in every 10-15 minutes, so I'd introduce my wife and each staff member to each other. In every case, the staff seemed delighted and surprised. When my mom first regained consciousness, she was very enthusiastic, if groggy, to be able to speak to her daughter-in-law before she again fell asleep.

The day of surgery was a Friday, and my wife was grading student projects on her computer at home all day, so we just left the cameras going. Staff would come and go and exchange pleasantries with my wife. When the nursing shift changed, new staff would be introduced. Later in the day, I walked my wife around the hospital floor (with her full face on the laptop screen facing forward) and introduced her to the nurses at their station.

After several hours, I was quite hungry, having never left the room. At my wife's encouragement, I went down to the cafeteria, leaving her to watch my mom with the plan that if anything needing my attention happened, she would call my cell phone. I took a break, confident that my wife was "watching" over my mom.

When I returned from the basement cafeteria 20 minutes later with my tray of food, I pushed open the door to my mom's room, and this is when I had an experience:
...the door opened to reveal the contents of the room and in that moment, when I actually saw the mostly-empty room around my mother's sleeping form - there was an expectation, a mental prediction, a mind's-eye image of my wife in the room - that vanished like an unremembered dream upon waking. For that moment, I believed that my wife was in the room. But she wasn't - and she was.

In all the years I've used telephones and Internet-based audio- and video-chat, it was always an "event." You call, you talk. You finish talking, you hang up. The difference here was that for 10 straight hours, my wife was virtually "in the room." For most of the time, we didn't talk. She was doing school work, and I was tending to my mom. When things happened in the room, visitors arriving, staff checking vitals, she interacted with them in the same way that a person physically in the room would, making conversation. I was just as meaningful when she'd go off to get a snack that we could see the empty chair in our office in California, as though that room were now just adjacent to the North Carolina hospital room. It wasn't a communications "event," it was just being there. "Telepresence" comes to mind. Usually referring to technologies that bring more sensory information than the familiar video and audio of our media world, it seems most appropriate here to describe this committed emotional congregation made possible through technological infrastructure more typically utilized for terse bursts of pure information.

Upon further reflection, I remember that in my youth, I did on several occasions watch television while not talking to friends during a phone call - for hours. We were watching the same show, and not really talking but for an occasional "you still there?" In truth, that's kind of the same thing - emotionally, psychically sharing a common, if virtual, mental space. And in the same way, it's similar to my hospital/video-chat experience because of the intent, or lack thereof, to actively use the communications technology for interaction. It wasn't about what we said - it was about spending time with someone.

The tech geek, futurist and creative thinker in me were all caught unawares by the powerful but unobvious meaning of this only recent possibility for mankind. It's something I think others would find similarly satisfying, particularly in the context of being able to provide long-distance emotional support for something like a hospital stay.

EPILOGUE
My mom's hip replacement went spectacularly well. She was completely off her walker and cane in seven weeks, and has more physical stamina than she's had in years. Most impressively, she's talking about having the other hip done.

Our laptop will be there.

Time Travel the Internet

Want to know what a given Web site looked like at some point the past? The Internet Archive Wayback Machine has been archiving Web pages since 1996. Check out your favorite site's headlines over the years.

Setting Up a Webcam in OS X

We began running a webcam many years ago to see how our pets were doing while we were away on vacation. Here are some fundamentals about setting up a webcam on Mac OS X.

CAMERAS

A webcam camera can be a number of possibilities (in no particular order):

Network Camera - This is a relatively recent type of product - wired cameras which plug into Ethernet patch cables which can be hundreds of feet long and wireless (802.11/WiFi) video cameras which (if you already have a wireless network) only require AC power, and can be placed anywhere they can hit your wireless network. Wired cameras area available for under $100 and wireless cameras start at under $200. If you've already got a wireless network, webcam software that *supports* the camera and you don't mind the expense, this is the easiest path to getting a camera. This page at the EvoCam webcam software site (more below) lists compatible network cameras.

USB Camera - Though inexpensive (as little as $30-40), these suffer from a number of drawbacks, chief among them a short (typically under 6 foot) USB cables, meaning that the camera is forced to be near the computer. USB extension cables up to 10 feet or so can get your camera as far as 16 feet away from your computer. You can buy _powered_ USB extensions which amplify the signal - but each 15 feet costs $35-40. These cameras won't perform well in low light, and will generally have a "normal" focal length lens - meaning that covering a wide area means having the camera far back from the subject.

FireWire Camera - Some webcam software (see below) supports DV cameras connected via FireWire, including iSights. Similar cable length issues to USB exist. I've seen 100-foot FireWire cables, but they cost $300 (FireWire specifications limit single cables to 4.5 meters - 15 feet).

FireWire Converter - This is an expensive solution, but if you already have one around, an analog-to-digital FireWire converter (such as the ADVC-50 from Canopus) allows you to connect an analog camera at the end of a very long conventional video cable. This is kind of overkill, but if it's something you already have or want...

USB Video Digitizer - For all the reasons I've already mentioned, I use this somewhat obscure solution - an "InterView Lite" USB video digitizer and USBVision for Mac OS X driver software. This is a hardware product from a now defunct company, sold now by EchoFX who wrote their own software to support it. Actually, I use their software to connect to an InterView Lite (purchased from someone else, I think) *and* an older Belkin USB video capture device (USBVision can drive many USB video devices, including USB cameras).

The two digitizers are plugged into one computer (our server, a 450MHz G4), and 50-foot video cables cross our house (through a wall, in one case) where they are connected to small low-light, high-resolution monochrome video cameras. These cameras have really come down in price in recent years - here's a typical example which advertises for $35 mail order (we've paid over twice as much for both of our non-illuminated cameras), and features built-in infrared illumination (which means you'll be able to see things relatively close to the camera without visible light).

If you have an old VHS camcorder or camera lying around and it has composite or S-video output, this can serve as a camera as well (we had an old full-sized video camera as our CatCam for almost a year), though it'll use far more power and be generally hard to discreetly position in your house.

SOFTWARE

I've used two pieces of webcam software, and reviewed perhaps a half-dozen over the years when seeking replacements. For many years I used Oculus, which had really nice features, but was never stable. On a ridiculous number of occasions I had to ask our cat-sitting friend to restart our server because Oculus had locked up.

Today I run EvoCam. I miss a few cool features of Oculus (automatic thumbnails, NOAA weather data overlays), but EvoCam also has a few tricks that Oculus didn't - especially live video, where it allows you to view live full-motion video (at very low frame rates - even over ADSL, it delivers 2fps at best). This is pretty exciting, to be able to see your webcam right now from anywhere in the world. This live video is viewable by any modern browser via Java technology, and doesn't require that the viewing computer have any special software installed. EvoCam has proven to be tremendously stable - running now for 10 months or so with no noticeable problems.

I've considered the kind of big project of having multiple X-10 (remote control over AC power lines) controlled cameras, switched remotely over the Internet via web page, feeding the live EvoCam stream. That means we could switch around our house to our cats' favorite six places and see who is where at any time. Geeky, fer sure.

As mentioned earlier, EvoCam supports all kinds of cameras (see their site), even supporting multiple cameras (we run two cameras all the time).

"Motion sensing" features in EvoCam and Oculus store images based on how much has changed in the frame. The webcams can also take periodic stills. But with motion sensing set up, we see only when our pets actually spent time in a particular location - which is exactly what we want to know.

WEB PAGE

There are a lot of variations possible here. I try to "tune" the motion-sensing so that in the 30 "recent" images on our CatCam page allow us to see something like most of a full day of activity at a glance. Oculus and EvoCam provide a way to retain recent images (actually renaming all the old images every time a new one is added). Super-simple pages included as examples with webcam software often only display one recent image.

EvoCam and Oculus also support archiving QuickTime movies of every image taken when motion is sensed.

COMPUTER

In order to host a webcam, you'll need a computer. I'm assuming you'll want that to be a Mac. This could be all kinds of things, but you want something that can run OS X. If you want a dedicated server, any old iMac would be just fine, though you can't turn off the CRT - a bit of power use you don't need. An old blue-and-white G3 or newer (I don't recommend trying to run OS X on a beige G3) would be a good web server. Of course, you can use any existing Mac you might have, as long as you're willing to let it run whenever you want the webcam to work.

There are actually computerless solutions to webcams - network cameras that upload to Internet ftp locations - but they don't allow you a lot of flexibility about how the site looks and works.

INTERNET SERVING

In order to view your webcam's images, you have basically two alternatives: 1) have the webcam upload images to a remote FTP space hosted by a private or public server (such as your ISP); or 2) serve the images directly from your home computer.

Sending images to a remote FTP server is less difficult than serving the files yourself. However, depending upon the amount of activity your webcam sees, this means your webcam may create a large amount of outbound traffic over your Internet connection. Not only does the image file need to be uploaded whenever the camera takes an image, but if you (like us) have a page with multiple previous webcam images, there will be a lot of traffic while the software renames all the previous files on the remote server. I did this years ago, but we've run our own server with our own domain name (see below) for years.

OS X has a built-in web server, the famous Unix-based Apache. So you don't need any other software to host web pages from an OS X Mac.

DOMAIN NAME

We've used two free services to maintain domain names with a dynamic IP ("dynamic IP" means that your broadband ISP might reassign your home's Internet address at any time - allowing them to have a smaller number of IP addresses than users). For years I've used a free service from DynDNS. This service uses a piece of software running on your Mac which informs the DynDNS servers what your current IP is. The software checks every few minutes and updates the DynDNS servers - this Domain Name Server (DNS) begins to propagate throughout the Internet. We've almost never had to wait to connect to our server because our IP had not been updated at the time we were making the connection attempt. And the process is transparent - ours has been running for several years without maintenance.

There's a bit more complication here (like there hasn't been enough already) - if you don't already have a "router" between your home LAN and your broadband connection (DSL/cable "modem"), you'll definitely want one to act as a firewall (you shouldn't be connected to the Internet without the protections of a router anyway). Then you'll need to set up the router to "forward" HTTP requests (by web browsers) to your home's domain name/IP to the right computer on your LAN.

A substantial collateral benefit of having a domain name is being able to communicate with your home computer(s) from anywhere in the world. Not only can you make HTTP connections with one computer's web server, but you can make AFP (Apple File-sharing Protocol), FTP, SSH, and a host of other kinds of connections to any of the computers on your home LAN (though each service can only be associated with *one* of the computers, you can have all the services on one, or a different service on each computer). So you can access files on a Mac at home from anywhere in the world. With Apple Remote Desktop, Netopia Timbuktu, or even *free* VNC software you can even remotely control your Mac from anywhere in the world.

EPILOGUE

With a small amount of effort, an old Mac can become a 24/7 webcam server so you can easily see the activities your family, pets, home or whatever is important to you.

Broadband Primer

This was excerpted from email written to a relative inquiring about getting broadband service for the first time in Fall 2006.

BROADBAND SPEEDS
Speeds are typically expressed in terms of "kilobits per second" or "megabits per second." A dialup modem is typically capable of about 50Kbps downloading, and 33Kbps uploading. Until somewhat recently, a typical DSL residential account has been 768Kbps to 1.5Mbps *maximum* download, and upload is typically lower: 128Kbps to 384Kbps.

(Here, I recommended one increment higher than the slowest tier of service from a local DSL provider.) The 1.5Mbps (actual speeds may be much lower - this is a maximum possible figure) speed would get you snappy browsing, and give you some significant speed (20-30 times a dialup modem) for downloading very large files such as software updates, audio or video files. You may not think you have a reason to download audio or video files, but there's an increasing amount of interesting content online (much of it free) which would be awkward or prohibitive to download with lower-speed connections (i.e., a 3-hour download you won't even notice overnight or while out shopping - but a 60-hour download on a slower connection would hog your bandwidth, making Web browsing sluggish for almost three days).

I'm very conservative about recommending how much money someone else spends, but I think it's worth the $7 extra over the lowest-cost plan for the huge performance difference (as much as 6x faster). The faster plans are probably more than you need at this point.

BROADBAND ROUTERS
I'd strongly recommend that you get a "broadband router" to insulate yourself from the Internet. This $30-60 device allows you to connect to the Internet and retrieve data on multiple computers (if you wish) inside your home, but prevents any outside user from getting inside your home network from the Internet. If you get a "wireless" broadband router, you'll be able to connect a laptop or desktop computer through a secure, encrypted connection up to 150 feet from the router. It's quite liberating to be able to carry your laptop from room to room while maintaining an Internet connection. Note that you may require a $30-40 "WiFi card" in any or every computer - most new laptops have this functionality built-in.

Here are the important things a router does for you:

• Obviates (in almost every case) the need for installing any software related to connecting to your ISP. With a router installed, your ISP won't know or care which OS (Operating System: Windows, MacOS, Linux, etc.) you're using. The router makes an agnostic connection to both your computers and your ISP. I should say that they likely won't be able to help you with this aspect of your connection, but there should be no need for their help. Once properly installed and configured (a relatively simple operation), the computer(s) in your home connected to the router (either by wired or wireless connection to the router) simply know they have an Internet connection.
• Your friend will install the router between your broadband "modem" and your computers. The computers should then be configured to generically connect to "a TCP/IP network using DHCP via Ethernet connection," and they should be able to do any Internet tasks: Web browsing, email, voice chat, etc.
  
• Protects you from unwanted intrusions from the Internet by providing a firewall. A "firewall" prevents any access to your computer from the Internet-side of your router. Though perhaps somewhat unlikely, a malicious user or "robot" (a computer doing malicious activities autonomously) could still randomly discover your computer on an unprotected connection.
• Creates a Local Area Network (LAN). An added benefit/feature of installing a router is that it creates a LAN (Local Area Network) within your home. With your computers properly configured, this allows you to potentially copy/share files between computers, and share resources such as printers. (Note that you may not be able to do some resource sharing in older versions of Windows).
• Allows wireless networking in your home. I should have suggested previously that if you're going to buy a broadband router (some companies will call this a "Cable/DSL Router"), and there's any chance that you'll have a laptop computer, you might as well spend perhaps $20-30 more to get a _wireless_ router. This actually is a wired *and* wireless router, and does serve the important functions we'd like you to have even if you only have wired *or* wireless connections between your computer(s) and the router. But wireless functionality would allow you to use any computer, anywhere in your home without running wires to its location. This could include a desktop computer equipped with a wireless "card." Wireless connectivity is very convenient, allowing you to freely move about your home while maintaining a constant Internet connection.

Information about broadband for which you didn't ask:

• Advertised inbound rates are listed as maximums - actual performance at your home could be lower. Some providers list a guaranteed minimum. Upload rates are typically actual maximums.
• DSL uses telephone wiring - usually existing wiring which the customer already uses for voice calls. DSL data uses the copper phone lines concurrently with, and independent of, telephone calls. So you can use the telephone and DSL at the same time. Indeed, the DSL connection is somewhat continuous, or "always on."
• DSL is only available within a maximum distance from pieces of network hardware in the telephone company's physical layout which are referred to as "CO's," or "central offices." It is possible that you many not be able to get DSL service because you are too far from a CO. You may also only be able to get lower-speed plans further from COs, as signal integrity can be compromised by distance.
  
• Telephone companies are often DSL providers (they own the wires), but because of anti-monopoly laws must also allow other providers to sell DSL service over their lines.
• Broadband service over cable television lines is provided by cable providers. Performance is similar to DSL, and sometimes greater.
• In the correct usage of abbreviating, a capital "B" represents Bytes, and lowercase "b" represents bits. So 768 Kbps/8 bits per byte = 96 KBps.
• "ADSL" stands for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. The asymmetric part describes that the inbound "download" speeds are faster than outbound "upload" speeds. Most consumer services are asymmetric, assuming that users will primarily intake content, and infrequently submit content. Users with high outbound traffic are assumed by bandwidth providers to be professionals, so higher outbound rates are disproportionately expensive. Don't worry about this - [as a consumer] you won't be encountering SDSL (Symmetrical) providers.

Easy Private Networking with Hamachi

Problem: If you have ever wanted to connect two or more computers together over the Internet, you will have experienced the difficulties of configuring network firewalls and routers. Difficult as this is from within your own home, doing peer-to-peer activities such as file-sharing or gaming between computers when inside someone else's network can be nearly impossible. Not only might you not have privileges to configure their network (i.e., inside a corporate LAN), but the network from which you may have Web-browsing access may have absolutely no accessible IP addresses to the Internet.

Problem: when using a public Internet connection (i.e., from a commercial "hotspot" or hotel access service), your network traffic may be exposed to all the other computers on the network. Any user on that network with readily-available "packet sniffing" software can anonymously and continuously monitor and even record the entire network's traffic - eventually extracting any content sent and received by any users. Unlikely? Probably not as much as you'd think. Anyone predisposed to this kind of malicious "black-hat" hacking activity would certainly fire up the packet sniffer on their laptop whenever they were staying in a hotel with WiFi access - the question is whether one of these people is in your hotel at the time. Ditto any public access point: the neighborhood Starbucks or McDonald's HotSpots are likely targets as well.

Problem: Your home ISP (Internet Service Provider) "blocks ports" for certain services over the Internet. They may do this for a variety of reasons:

• They wish to limit the amount of bandwidth users use. Bandwidth is a finite commodity, more so for certain kinds of ISP with inherently lower bandwidth limitations (such as wireless- or satellite-based ISPs).
  
• They with to sell users a service which the user could otherwise do free. A common example is VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) services, which allow users to make phone calls over their Internet connection rather than using their telephone carrier. Many ISPs offer their own VOIP service for an additional fee. Because they compete with commercial VOIP services such as Vonage and Skype, some ISPs deliberately prevent their users - who are paying for the Internet bandwidth through the ISP - from using VOIP alternatives, including free computer-t0-computer voice chat solutions such as iChat, AIM and Skype. This is the heart of a consumer controversy known as "net neutrality" - and representatives of the U.S. government, ISPs and consumer interest groups are gathering for battle.
  
• I've recently encountered filtered ports with ClearWire, a wireless broadband provider. While I don't know their motives, their filtering prevented my remotely controlling my mother-in-law's computer, and prevented her from using voice chat features. ClearWire support would only tell me that those ports were blocked, and that they could not un-block them. ClearWire does sell a VOIP telephony service, so that's definitely suspect. When radio signal propagation issues (brought on by increasing foliage at the end of winter) led to service interruption issues, she gratefully canceled the service.
  

A solution to both configuration and privacy issues is to utilize a Virtual Private Network, or VPN, tunnel. VPN tunnels have long been used by corporate entities to encrypt sensitive information which has to travel over public networks. In typical practice, an corporate employee would connect from the field over public telephone or, later, broadband Internet connections to the corporate "VPN server" - a service running on a computer which negotiates and encrypts the subsequent private connection. When this encrypted traffic is viewed by a "man in the middle" with network analysis software such as packet sniffers, the traffic appears to be random noise.

Unfortunately, VPN servers require resources that most consumers don't have or want: dedicated IP addresses, 24/7 server machines, and the VPN server software itself.

Solution: Hamachi - To the rescue comes Hamachi. With this free open-source software, anyone can securely connect two more computers into an ad-hoc network as though they were geographically and topographically on the same LAN.

Most importantly, in all but a few rare possible cases, this virtual network can be created and joined by users having minimal Internet access privileges. If a user has Web browsing access, they can probably use Hamachi.

As the Hamachi site suggests:

• Think:
• File Sharing (Windows, Macintosh, etc.)
  
• iTunes (sharing music over the Internet, disabled by Apple since v4.0)
• Remote Desktop (controlling another computer at a distance)
• Remote Assistance
• Gaming
  

How Hamachi Works (my simplified view):

• Users download and install software on their computers (Windows, Mac OS X and Linux are currently supported).
• Hamachi mediation server(s) run 24/7 somewhere in the world.
• A user configures their Hamachi software client with a personal "nickname" - which represents that user/computer.
  
• A user launches the Hamachi client on their computer and either creates or re-connects to a "network" they have already created - using an arbitrary name and password. This creates a new virtual network interface on the computer (i.e., appearing and behaving similarly to an Ethernet or wireless networking port).
  
• Any subsequent users connect to that same "network" (identified by the creating user's chosen name and logged in using an agreed-upon password).
• The HamachiX client for Mac OS X (an independent project to provide a Mac-like application not yet developed by the original Hamachi developers) provides a nice feature to allow a user to send a small "invitation" file via email or IM client. The recipient (who must also have HamachiX installed) merely opens the invitation file, and the network connection is added to their HamachiX list of networks - very slick.
  
• The Hamachi mediation server takes the "loose ends" of each user's connection and binds them within an encrypted peer-to-peer VPN tunnel. Not only is this extremely secure, but you become peers on a virtual LAN. No port filtering or forwarding issues exist (though you still have to consider software firewalls on the computers themselves).
• The Hamachi application now provides a list of other users also connected to your network(s) (you can maintain multiple network connections in your list). Each user is identified by their chosen nickname, and the Hamachi server has assigned each user a special IP address in the 5.x.x.x range, such as: 5.92.110.102 logjam
• Users can now use these Hamachi IPs to represent the computers of other users on Hamachi networks to which they are connected.
  

For me, this has been a Holy Grail: some computers I manage are topologically inaccessible from the Internet - inside corporate LANs. But with Hamachi, I just need any one machine on an isolated LAN to have a Hamachi connection - then I can remotely control that machine and, in turn, remotely control any other machine's on that LAN to which I have already configured remote control privileges.

HamachiX
I've recently discovered that the newest release of HamachiX (a package with an OS X front-end for some Unix code to run Hamachi) has an extremely simple installation method. You just open the disk image and drag the app somewhere. When you launch the app, if it doesn't find Hamachi system files already installed, it (without any real feedback while it's doing it) installs necessary Unix files (this had to be done in the Terminal before).

Use of HamachiX is simple, but not terribly obvious. When you "Add" a network, you have the opportunity to join and existing "network" or create your own. These are really just accounts on the Hamachi mediation server, and they are permanent. (NOTE: The "Add network" assistant has a bug - after entering a Network Name and Network Password and checking one of the three options, the "Add" button remains greyed out - just hit the key and the button will highlight. Odd.)

INTEL MAC CAVEAT
In the most current version's ReadMe, they state:

• Intel macs are not working very well to date since not all of the underlying components are in universal binary format already. You can find more information on the support forum, check out < http://hamachi.cc>.
  

I can't quite tell if that means there's _no way_ to make it work or not. Actually, there are threads on the Hamachi Forums about Intel Macs, I just haven't dug through them.

Conclusions: Hamachi is a uniquely useful and free (for 16-user networks or less) solution to many networking problems for consumers and pros alike. It's a little obtuse to configure and use, but its immense popularity provides a rich online support community.