team live streaming takes on Twitch

alve is jumping on the game streaming train by introducing Steam Broadcasting. The feature is launching today in beta for gamers to try out. Steam Broadcasting will take on Twitch's monopoly on game streaming.
To start broadcasting your game, just click the Stream button and your friends will be able to watch your game session. Steam Broadcasting currently only supports live streaming so you can't record a game session to stream it later.
Friends can hop onto your live stream by right-clicking on your Steam name in their friends list and clicking Watch Game. They are also given a choice to join your game as usual.

The privacy settings for Steam Broadcasting are very basic at launch. You can decide who can watch your stream by limiting it to requests, friends only, or anyone. If you choose to stream to anyone, your feed will show up on the game's hub.
Watchers don't have to have the Steam client downloaded to watch a stream. Chrome (PC | Mac) and Safari (PC | Mac) are supported, but there's currently no support for Firefox.
Broadcasting is also limited to Windows 7 and 8, though Valve promises to bring the feature to OS X, Linux and Windows Vista in the future.

Santa Trackers - Google and Microsoft go head to head

Google has launched its 2014 Santa Tracker, which has been running since 2007. For the last two years, Google has not had its traditional help from the North American Aeropsace Defense Command (Norad), which took its Santa Tracking services to Bing in 2012.
This means that you have two ways to track Father Christmas around the globe: Norad's Bing Maps powered tool, and Google's very own Santa Tracker. Both feature a countdown to the start of Santa's journey around the globe, but until then, both sites have plenty to explore.
Google's Santa Tracker works like an Advent Calendar, with a new link to click every day. December 1st gave you a free Android Santa Tracker app. Visit the site to see what more it has in store. Over at 'NORAD Tracks Santa', there's a new game to play every day, plus Christmas songs and a lot more, including video and reading material. If we're being forced to make a decision, Google's Santa Tracker is the nicer site, but there's no reason not to use both.
TeamViewer is a proprietary computer software package for remote control, desktop sharing, online meetings, web conferencing and file transfer between computers. Versions are available for the Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X,^[1][2] Linux,^[3] iOS,^[4] Android,^[5] Windows RT,^[6] Windows Phone 8^[7] and BlackBerry operating systems. It is also possible to access a machine running TeamViewer with a web browser.^[8] While the main focus of the application is remote control of computers, collaboration and presentation features are included.^[9]
TeamViewer can be used without charge by non-commercial users,^[10] and Business, Premium and Corporate versions are available.
TeamViewer GmbH was founded in 2005 in Uhingen, Germany. Permira acquired TeamViewer GmbH from GFI in 2014.^[11]

Contents

• 1 Establishing connections
• 2 Security
• 3 Fraudulent uses
• 4 Version history
• 5 See also
• 6 References
• 7 External links

Establishing connections

TeamViewer may be installed with an installation procedure, although the 'Quick Support' version will run without installation.^[12] To connect to another computer, TeamViewer has to be running on both machines. To install TeamViewer, administrator access is required, but once installed it can be run by any user. When TeamViewer is started on a computer, it generates a partner ID and password (user-defined passwords are also supported). To establish a connection between a local client and a remote client, TeamViewer generated ID and password of either client are required. The local client requires the remote client's ID and password to gain control over the remote client, whereas the remote client requires the local client's ID and password to gain control over the local client.^[13]
To start an online meeting, the presenter gives the Meeting ID to the participants. They join the meeting by using the TeamViewer full version or by logging on to http://go.teamviewer.com/ and entering the Meeting ID.^[14] It is also possible to schedule a meeting in advance.^[14]

Security

TeamViewer uses RSA private/public key exchange (2048-bit) and AES (256-bit) session encryption.^[15]
In the default configuration, TeamViewer uses one of the servers of TeamViewer.com to start the connection and the routing of traffic between the local client and the remote host machine. The software then determines how to establish a connection. In 70% of the cases, after the handshake a direct connection via UDP or TCP is established; the other connections are routed through TeamViewer GmbH's router network (via TCP or HTTP-tunneling).^[16]

Fraudulent uses

TeamViewer and similar services have been used to commit fraud via telephone calls. People are called, either at random or from a list, by criminals claiming to represent a computer support service which has identified the victim's computer as being infected by malware, sometimes using the name of a company such as Microsoft. They then ask the victim to give them access to their computer via a remote control service. From this point they can do anything they want. Typically they confuse the user with spurious jargon and offer to "repair" the computer and supply several years' of service for a payment; in addition to a freely offered agreed payment, this gives them the victim's payment card details. They may also infect the computer with malware, delete files, and steal files.^[17][18]