Pidgin VNC integration

[Andrew Sayers]

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