I had good experiences with two new tools today.
Co-Screen
Co-Screen is a ‘collaborative screen sharing’ app owned by the excellent Datadog. It’s a video chat app that lets you share multiple separate windows. Everyone in the chat is able to:
- Move the windows around on their own desktops and arrange them as they will
- Take control of the windows
- See each other’s mouse cursors within the windows
- Draw on top of the windows, to temporarily highlight a particular section
And, most fun: multiple people can share their windows simultaneously.
I am training a new employee this week and I got fed up with the limitations of Google Meet screen sharing. Co-Screen turned out to be a whole new world: it’s brilliant. I was watching him set up SSH in 1Password, as detailed below, while he watched me set up the server end in a terminal window.
My only concern is that Co-Screen is somehow free. I would be more than happy to pay for it.
SSH Keys in 1Password
As part of the same employee training I decided to try out 1Password’s ability to act as an SSH agent. This means you store your SSH private keys in the 1Password app, and it handles the workflow of any other Windows app requesting them.
This seemed good in theory as it meant avoiding having to set up .ssh config files, as well as having to find a place to securely store private keys. 1Password just handles it all.
So we tried, and it Just Worked. Not only did it Just Work, but:
IT. WORKED. FIRST. TIME.
When has anything involving SSH keys ever worked first time? I know of no higher testament to the efficacy of an SSH system.
Plus it’s nice to have the keys in 1Password’s silo, so they’re secure but you always have them.
The one limitation is that any application accessing the agent needs to support the Microsoft OpenSSH standard. Notable apps that don’t: FileZilla1, PuTTY. Notable apps that do: Git for Windows, JetBrains, VSCode. So we can live with that.
- That said, don’t use FileZilla any more đ âŠī¸