This past Thanksgiving, we talked about how thousands of kids would migrate home to be served turkey with all of the fixin’s, and then be subjected to hours of having to fix their relatives’ computers.

At Fog Creek Software, the interns are working on a project that promises to make life easier for all of us techies who have technically illiterate relatives.

Let me quote part of their post so you know what I’m referring to:

“Click START”

“What?”

“Start. Click Start. It’s in the bottom left.”

“I have C - T - R - L in the bottom left.”

…

This is when you give up and realize that something that could take you 10 seconds to fix in person is about to become a two hour nightmare during which you’ll alienate your family, lose sleep, tie up the phone line while your Auntie Marge is stuck on the turnpike with no gas and can’t get through to your uncle to come rescue her, and curse your lot in life. Just because you’re a programmer doesn’t mean you have to be the help desk for a dozen friends, relatives, and the people in the apartment next door. Does it?

My sentiments exactly.

They call it “Fog Creek Copilot^SM“ (internally they call it Project Aardvark). They aim to create a remote access service than can establish a connection with only a few mouse clicks, and it will work through firewalls and not require any configuration, installation, or uninstallation. Sweet.

I use FogBUGZ, their bug tracking / project management software. It’s a pleasure to use, thanks to Joel and his team’s focus on making it simple to configure and use, and their attention to the little details.