Hutchings Software announced on Thursday that a Beta of its Bosco’s Screen Share is now available for download. The application provides a cross-platform solution for sharing desktops between Mac OS X, Mac OS 9 and Windows computers over a network or the Internet. Company founder Brad Hutchings told MacCentral that Bosco’s Screen Share eschews the open source multi-platform screen sharing technology VNC in favor of a proprietary protocol, with graphics compression handled in the JPEG format and graphics scaling accomplished by using his Component X Graphics software. REALbasic was used to implement the communications protocol, which operates over TCP/IP.
Bosco’s Screen Share requires Mac OS X v10.1 or higher, a 500MHz or faster processor and 256MB RAM, with a broadband connection recommended for sharing desktops over the Internet. You can download the Beta now and use it until the final version is released on Sept. 1, at which time licenses will be US$24.95, although Beta testers can save $5.00 if they buy one before then. After its release, a demo will be available that times out after five minutes, superimposes the word “demo” on the other party’s screen and won’t connect to remote copies of the software.