What it is: Yuuguu (from the Japanese word for fusion) is “a solution to help people work together remotely, through any firewall, across different platforms, with as many colleagues as needed, just as if they were sat right next to each other.”

Executive summary: Good way to quickly get up and running and share screens and chat online with colleagues and friends. Don’t expect cute graphics; the name is about the only Web 2.0 thing about this service. And the price: free.

Installation is pretty smooth. A 10 MB download, the usual installation stuff:

You sign up from the application itself:

It’s cute enough to try to figure out your name from your email address. Always a good sign.

You can add people manually, or have Yuuguu find them for you:

It’s early days, I guess: No one I knew seemed to have an account, or it didn’t find them:

Which was weird because I know at least one person using it who is also in my address book:

Still, it works pretty well from there on, if you don’t mind the Java feel to it all. Add contacts and you can share screens straightaway, either at high res or faster low resolution:

Both seemed to work even on slower connections. You can chat at the same time:

You can also get cheap international calls through the software, though I didn’t try that.

Verdict: There are other products out there, and they may be as good, but this is a good simple effort for collaborating, or, as the company says, just surfing and co-habiting online.