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http://www.remote-anything.com/ ^[ 1 ] The most recent archive of the active website

A remote-control tool that can be used without firewall configuration. Port scanner and Trace Route, drag&drop files, get system passwords, Power-down or Wake-Up remote PCs.

By far the most impressive piece of software I've ever used. It's tiny and does the impossible. But it made enemies.

• 2009 - Abandoned

A screenshot of their old website

• twd-industries.com

--

• The software has been abandoned.
• Last tested 2010-11-01 on Windows XP.
• (date not recorded) - Some ancient version on (operating system not recorded)

• 2004-02-23

  • Remote anything magically works. A while back I had figured out how to rotate the licensing so as to re-use my 'number of seats'. Their broken-assed default had the first user eat up a license which wouldn't be released automatically. Sigh.

• 2004-02-13

  • Remote Anything was tried at work, and failed.. and miserably, several times.

• (date not recorded) - First used

Introduction ∞

Remote Anything is a Category Killer. I cannot conceive of a piece of software which does the job better than it.

You can really tell a lot about a piece of software and the philosophy ingrained in the people behind it when you have soulful documentation from, and correspondence with, their team. I can easily tell that Remote Anything is a kick-ass piece of code.

I got it going on my home machine quite fine.. I had to pay special attention to my existing firewall software, so it wouldn't block that software from running. When I went to work to try to take it over - well I failed because I plugged in the machine code the other program gave me.. and not the IP address.. luckily I have the IP memorized.. but no go.

I had later struggled with it at work, because of a licensing recycling issue .. the configuration for which was buried in a place I didn't think to look. Sigh.

I have also noted speed issues, most likely caused by an unforgiving Windows setup.

2010-10-31 ∞

• remote-anything.com is down.

• The website has been thinned out quite a lot. Stuff has been moved into their manuals, including their awesome rants.

  • Technical corner, for example.

• I can't tell when it's last been updated, or if it supports Windows 7.

(date not recorded) - Some ancient version ∞

• There should be a connection wizard walkthrough..

• There should be a link to call up the email program (send to) to send the slave program out via email, and include the appropriate info in that email if necessary.

• Does it have session record/replay? - like a massive macro?

• File transfer resumes?

• The secondary machine should list it's IP address!

• If I try to connect from the master, and I abort, it crashes (goes white, not responding)

• The "licenses" box doesn't come out on top.

• it stops responding during the check for the slave connection (if given a wrong IP address at least)

Usage ∞

False positives ∞

• master - Win.Trojan.Agent-588193

• slave - Win.Trojan.Scar-3075

Farewell ∞

Remote-Anything (RA) was small (100 KB), portable, easier to use and to deploy, faster, much safer and more stable than SYMANTEC pcAnywhere (53% of the market). RA did so well (in 138 countries) that SYMANTEC Norton Antivirus (87% of the market at the time) started to delete RA, claiming that it was an unfortunate (but constant) string of "accidental false-alerts".

TWD responded with the Directory Server (DS), which allowed people to deploy RA on a WAN without having to configure their firewalls and routers. By waving the costs of large-scale deployments, RA became uniquely useful to very important Windows users.

More than 280 millions of Remote-Anything (RA) licenses have been deployed globally until MICROSOFT "Windows Defender" and the MICROSOFT VIA (Virus Information Alliance) deleted it, stating that "RA is not a virus" [ 1, 2 ].

TWD sued for anti-competitive practices five US companies selling 'Enterprise Network Management' products competing with the RA/DS they were sabotaging. The Department of "Justice" fined TWD, deciding that it was legitimate for these companies to automatically and silently eradicate a competing European product relying on a patented technology making RA immune to network attacks [ 3, 4, 5 ] – a desirable feature for end-users, but apparently not for the US security ecosystem.

In 2009, as it was no longer possible to sell products mercilessly deleted by MICROSOFT Windows, TWD released G-WAN, a Windows application server faster in user-mode than IIS in the Windows kernel. G-WAN was immediately deleted by Trend Micro, a founding member of the MICROSOFT VIA. So G-WAN was ported to Linux, a free operating system which doesn't need antiviruses and proved to be faster and more scalable than MICROSOFT Windows. For more information, visit twdi.ch | gwan.ch