How to Remote Control your Windows PC with Email or SMS

It’s a long weekend and you’re happy because you’ll get to spend the next three days with your family. You left the office in an excited mood but as the cab was approaching home, you suddenly realized that you forgot to shut down the Office PC. Oops!

It’s a sinking feeling because there’re so many confidential documents on the computer and since most of your trusted colleagues have also left for the day, there’s no point calling them for help.

So what do you do? Drive back to Office? Well that’s not required – just take out your cell phone or switch on the laptop at home, send an email (or an SMS or a tweet) and that will instantly lock your Office workstation. And if you share the same computer with multiple people, you can use another email command to remotely log off or even shut down the computer from anywhere in the world.

There’s no magic here, it’s the power of TweetMyPC utility that lets you remote control your computer from a mobile phone or any other Internet connected computer.

It works like this. You first install the free TweetMyPC utility on any Windows PC and associate your Twitter account. The app will silently monitor your Twitter stream every minute for any desktop commands and if it finds one, will act upon it immediately. The initial version of TweetMyPC was limited to basic shutdown and restart commands, however the current v2 has a far more robust set of commands, enabling a far more useful way of getting your PC to carry out certain tasks especially when you’re AFK (Away From Keyboard).

Before we get started, it may be a good thing if you can set up a new twitter account for remote controlling your desktop and also protect the status updates of this account to ensure better security.

Protecting the account means that you prevent other users from reading your tweets which in this case are email commands that you sending to the computer. To protect your Twitter profile, log in to Twitter with the credentials you want to use, click Settings and check the box next to "Protect my Updates".

Let’s get started. Install the TweetMyPC utility of your computer and associate your Twitter and Gmail account with the application. It will use Twitter to receive remote commands (like shutdown, log-off, lock workstation, etc) from while the email account will be used for send your information (e.g., what process are currently running on your computer).

How to Send Commands to the Remote Computer

Now that your basic configuration is done, it’s time to set up a posting method. You can use email, SMS, IM, web or any of the Twitter clients to send commands to the remote computer.

By Email: Associate you Twitter account with Posterous (auto-post) and all email messages sent to twitter@posterous.com will therefore become commands for the remote computer. (Also see: Post to Twitter via Email)

By SMS: If you live in US, UK, Canada, India, Germany, Sweden or New Zeleand, you can send associate Twitter with your mobile phone (see list of numbers) and then control your remote computer via SMS Text Messages.

By IM: Add the Twitter bot – twitter@twitter.com – to your list of Google Talk buddies and you can then send commands via instant message.

By Web:If you are on vacation but have access to an internet connected laptop, just log into the Twitter website and issue commands (e.g., shutdown or logoff) just as another tweet.

Download Files, Capture Remote Screenshots & more..

While the TweetMyPC is pretty good for shutting down a remote computer, it lets you do some more awesome stuff as well.

For instance, you need to download an unfinished presentation from the office computer so that you can work on it at home. Or you want to download a trial copy of Windows 7 on the Office computer while you are at home.

Here’s a partial list of commands that you can use to remote control the PC – they’re case-insensitive and, as discussed above, you can send them to Twitter via email, SMS, IM or the web.

Screenshot : This is one of the most useful command I’ve come across after the shutdown command. Want to know what’s happening within the confines of your PC when you’re not around? Just tweet screenshot and TweetMyPC will take a screenshot of your desktop and post it to the web (see example).

ShutDown, LogOff, Reboot, Lock : The function of these useful commands is pretty obvious from their names.

Standby, Hibernate : Don’t want to shutdown the remote PC? Save power by entering standby mode with this command. Or hibernate your PC with a tweet, thereby saving even more power.

Download <url> : You can download any file from the Internet on to the remote computer using the download command. For instance, a command like download http://bit.ly/tCJ9Y will download the CIA Handbook so you have the document ready when you resume work the next day.

GetFile <filepath> : The Download command was for downloading files from the Internet onto the remote computer. However, if you like to transfer a file from the remote computer to your current computer, use the GetFile command. It takes the full page of the file that you want to download and will send that you as an email attachment. If you don’t know the file page, use the command GetFileList <drivename> to get a list of file folders on that drive.

GetProcessList : This is like a remote task manager. You’ll get a list of programs that are currently running on the remote computer along with their process IDs. Send another command kill <process id> to terminate any program that you think is suspicious or not required.

Conclusion:

TweetMyPC is a must-have utility and you never know when you may need it. And if you have been trying to stay away from Twitter all this time, the app gives you a big reason to at least create one protected account on Twitter.

That said, there’s scope for improvement. For instance, the app will wait for a minute to check for new messages in your Twitter stream so it’s not "instant". The developers can actually increase that limit because the Twitter API now allows upto 100 checks per hour.

And since the app is dependent on Twitter and Gmail, it will not work during those rare fail-whale moments.

Thankyou@dattu.

Browse the Web Faster on a Slow Internet Connection

If your current Internet speed is very slow and you are living in an area where broadband connections are still not available, here are some ideas to help you download web pages faster on your computer. You may use the same tips to  improve your web browsing experience on a sluggish USB modem.

Surf the Web Faster on Slow Internet

1. Turn off web images, the Adobe Flash plug-in, Java Applets and JavaScript from your browser settings as these files are often the bulkiest elements of any web page.

2. Increase the size of your browser cache. If the static parts of a site (like background graphics, CSS, etc) are stored in the local cache, your browser can safely skip downloading these files when you re-visit the site in future thus improving speed.

3. Sometimes the slow DNS server of your ISP can be a bottleneck so switch to OpenDNS as it can resolve website URLs into IP addresses more quickly. If you aren’t too happy about OpenDNS redirecting your Google queries, follow this simple hack.

4. Finch can serve a light-weight version of any website in real-time that is free of all bells and whistles. For instance, the New York Times homepage with all external resources can weigh more than a MB but Finch trims down the size by 90% so the site loads more quickly on a slow web connection.

5. Flinch (mentioned at #4) is good for reading regular websites but if you just need to check the latest articles published on your favorite blogs, use BareSite. This service will automatically detect the associated feed of a website and render content quickly inside a minimalist interface.

6. The Google Transcoder service at google.com/gwt/n can split large web pages into smaller chunks that will download more quickly on your computer (or mobile phone).

7. Monitor your Internet speed to determine hours when you get the maximum download speed from the ISP. Maybe you can then change your surfing schedule a bit and browse more during these "off peak" hours.

8. You can use a text browser like Lynx or Elinks for even faster browsing. It downloads only the HTML version of web pages thus reducing the overall bandwidth required to render websites.

9. When searching for web pages on Google, you can click the "Cache" link to view the text version of a web page stored in the Google Cache. Alternatively, install this GM script as it adds a "cached text only" link near every "Cached" link on Google Search pages.

10. Move your web activities offline as far as possible. You can send & receive emails, write blogs and even read feeds in an offline environment. Also see: Save Web Pages for offline reading.

11.  You can interact with websites like Flickr, Google Docs, Slideshare, etc. using simple email messages. Uploading a new document to Google Docs via email would require less bandwidth than doing it in the browser because you are avoiding a trip to the Google Docs website.

12. Applying the same logic, you may also consider using tools like Web In Mail or Email The Web as they help you browse websites via email. Just put the URL of a page (e.g., cnn.com) in the subject field of your email message and these services will send you the actual page in the reply.

13. Bookmarklets are like shortcuts to your favorite web services. You neither have to open the Gmail Inbox for composing a new email message nor do you have to visit Google Translate for translating a paragraph of text. Add relevant bookmarklets to your browser bar and reduce the number of steps required to accomplish a task.

14. Use the netstat command to determine processes, other than web browsers, that may be secretly connecting to Internet in the background. Some of these processes could be consuming precious bandwidth but you can block them using the Firewall.

15. Use URL Snooper to determine non-essential host names that a website is trying to connect while downloading a web page. You may block them in future via the hosts file or use Adblock Plus to filter out advertising banners on web pages.

16. If you don’t want to spoil your web surfing experience by stripping images and other graphic elements from  a web page, get Opera Turbo. It will first fetch the requested web page on to its own server and then send it to your machine in a compressed format. Opera Turbo won’t change the layout of a web site but can lower the image resolution so that they load faster on slow Internet.

17. Change the user agent of your desktop browser to that of a mobile phone like Apple’s iPhone or Windows Mobile. This will help you browse certain web sites like Google News, WSJ, etc. much faster because they’ll serve you a light-weight and less cluttered mobile version of their sites thinking you’re on a mobile phone.

Thankyou@dattu.

How to Print Wikipedia Articles on Paper

You can press the print shortcut Ctrl+P to send any Wikipedia article to the printer but there’s a small problem – most Wikipedia pages carry too much additional information (like images, reference links, etc.) that aren’t very useful in the print version and you’ll therefore end up wasting lot of paper as well as ink.

Print Wikipedia Pages Efficiently

So let’s look at some alternate printing methods for Wikipedia that aren’t just more eco-friendly but you also get to decide stuff that finally gets printed on the paper.

My first choice for printing Wikipedia articles is always Lexisum.com. This is a free online service that can generate a printer friendly summary of any Wikipedia story. You have also format the article to fit various paper sizes (like A4, A5, etc.) or use different fonts for more impressive and readable print-outs.

Format Wikipedia Articles for Print

Lexisum is great for quick summaries but if you want to print more than just a summary, try PrintWhatYouLike.com. This service lets you remove portions of a Wikipedia web page that you do not want in the print version. You can change fonts, remove images and even narrow down the paper margins so that more stuff gets printed on the same page.

Print PDF Books of Wikipedia

The above printing solutions are quite handy in situations where you have to print just a couple of pages from Wikipedia but in case you like to print more pages in one go, try PediaPress. It works like this – you collect a list of links on Wikipedia that you want to print and this service will create a PDF book that you may print on your local printer or order the article collection as a printed book.

Thankyou@dattu.

How to Clean Your Internet History in Firefox

Consider this – you are sharing a computer at home, there aren’t any separate user logins and all family members use the same Firefox browser to surf the web. How do you make sure that people don’t get to know about the websites you visited last night?
In other words, how can you selectively clear such tracks from the Firefox browser without deleting the entire web browsing history?

Forget about this Site

This option is recommended if you want to erase only a couple of websites from your browser’s history.

Press Ctrl+H to access your web history in the Firefox sidebar, type some characters in the search box to find the website(s) that you want to remove, right click and select the "Forget About This Site" option as shown in the screenshot.
This option lets you delete either entire domains (like google.com) or even sub-domains (like images.google.com) from your browser history.
*If you like to selectively delete only a couple of web pages from the history (and not the entire website), just right click the web page title in the History box and select Delete This Page or hit the Del key on your keyboard.

Clear History from the Last Hour

Your family members have gone shopping and you therefore spent the last two hours browsing the 18+ web. Fine but how you do make sure that all the tracks are erased before the door bell rings.

Simple. Press Ctrl+Shift+Del in Firefox to open the "Clear Recent History" dialog and select "the last two hours" or "my history for today" option. This will delete only your recent Internet history while leaving the old data untouched so your wife will still quickly access all her previously visited sites from the address bar.

Browse Privately in Firefox

Now in situations where you don’t want to take the risk of deleting history, activate the private browsing mode in Firefox by typing about:privatebrowsing in the address bar (or choose Private Browser from the Tools menu).
This is the safest option because none of your web activities will be recorded anywhere. The private mode is turned off automatically as soon you close the browser window.

Use Any Internet Browser on your Computer Without Installation

Do you want to:

a. Carry a portable version of your favorite web browser on the USB drive? It could be Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari or even Opera.

b. Simultaneously run multiple versions of Internet Explorer or Firefox on the same computer side-by-side without any hacks.

c. Test the new design of your website in all popular browsers without having to rely on an online service like Browser Shots?

d. You don’t have permissions to install new software on the office computer? How do you then use Safari or Google Chrome instead of Internet Explorer?

e. You have heard lot of good things about Internet Explorer 8 but since that browser is still in beta, you don’t want to override your existing installation of IE 7. How do you then try IE 8 without uninstalling IE 7?

f. You love Browser A but some of your favorite websites only open in Browser B. How can you access these websites without installing B?

Now if you said yes to any of the above questions, all you need is Xenocode – it’s an awesome platform that helps you run any web browser on your computer without installation. Simply download an executable from the Xenocode website and double-click to run that web browser.

Xenocode provides ready-to-use packages for Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer 6-8 and Firefox 2-3. Xenocode WebApps also let you run multiple application versions side-by-side on any version of Windows.

If you were using virtual machines with VMWare or Microsoft Virtual PC just for testing browser compatibility, it may be a good idea to switch to Xenocode browser as they are fast and you don’t have to wait for the virtual machine to boot up.

Note: Xencode provides a slightly older version of Chrome but you download Chrome 2 (portable) here.

Thankyou@dattu.

Running out of space on Gmail? Get It Back in 5 minutes

While Google does offer around 7.5 GB of free storage space on Gmail, you can quickly exhaust that limit if you are not regular about deleting email messages that include large attachments.

Why Clear Space in your Gmail Account

When you exhaust the allocated storage limit on your Gmail account, you won’t be able to compose and send new emails from Gmail unless you clear out some space by deleting old mails. Going forward, all incoming messages will also get returned to the sender thus breaking your contact with the outside world. (Read more on Gmail Limits)

Never Exceed your Mail Quota Again

Once you run out of storage space on Gmail, there are two options – either purchase storage (at around $20 per 10 GB) or reclaim space on the Gmail hard drive by deleting large (and useless) emails. Let’s go with the latter approach since it’s both free and easy.

Step 1: Enable IMAP in your Gmail account (from Settings – > Forwarding and POP/IMAP) and then configure Outlook (or any mail client like Thunderbird, Live Mail, etc.) to download only your Gmail message headers. There’s no need to download the full message body as it may take days (if not weeks) to download 7 GB of mails on a slow web connection.

Step 2: Press Alt+Ctrl+S in Outlook to access your Send-Receive settings page. Subscribe to the "All Mail" folder of Gmail and choose “Download Headers” only. Make sure no other Gmail folder label is selected in Outlook.

Step 3: Now sync your Microsoft Outlook folder with that of Gmail by hitting F9 or the Send/Receive button in your email client. I had about 5,000 messages in my Gmail account and it took only a couple of minutes to download them all  locally (headers only).

Step 4: Expand the All Mail folder under Gmail in Outlook and sort the email messages by size. Select the messages you want to delete (use the control key to select non-consecutive mail) and drag them in the Trash sub-folder of Gmail under Outlook. Press F9 to re-sync Gmail and Outlook.

Now login to your Gmail (or Google Apps for Gmail) account via the web browser and just empty the trash.

Backup Attachments before Moving to Trash

*If you like to backup Gmail messages before deleting them permanently, just right click the corresponding messages in Outlook and select "Mark to Download Messages" – Outlook will download the full message body along with file attachments during the next sync and you may drag them out on the desktop or just move to another local folder in Outlook.

*For Gmail users who like to reclaim space without using a desktop mail client, check this previous guide – Control your GMail Inbox size

Thankyou@dattu.

How to Watch YouTube Videos While Working on other Tasks

You plan to watch a lengthy video clip on YouTube but the problem is that you have lot of other stuff to do and therefore can’t focus all the attention on just one video. You need to browse web pages, check emails in Outlook and maybe complete that presentation while the video plays on your screen.

Fortunately, this is possible with a simple hack – just decide where that video should be placed.

You can either watch the YouTube video from the Firefox sidebar or, if you are working with other application or don’t use Firefox, create a standalone YouTube player window and move it anywhere on the desktop in Always on Top mode. See screenshots.

Case 1. YouTube Player inside the Firefox Sidebar

Case 2. YouTube Player on top of other Windows

Here are the steps involved for either of the methods discussed above.

1. Get the full screen mode address of the YouTube video clip. It is something like www.youtube.com/v/ABC where ABC is the YouTube video ID.

For instance, if the YouTube video is located at www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bZ9z6BBMVY, the full screen player will be available at www.youtube.com/v/8bZ9z6BBMVY

2a. To watch the video in Firefox sidebar, bookmark that new YouTube address and check the "Load in Sidebar" property of the bookmark as shown in the screenshot.

2b: To watch the video in a standalone player, open a new browser window and copy-paste the YouTube address THAT you generated in step 1. Now resize the browser window to fit the player, activate the Always on Top program (download link) and press Ctrl + Spacebar to make sure that YouTube player stays in the foreground. That’s it.

Notes: While you may also use the regular YouTube video URL in either of these cases, the experience won’t be so great.

Open docx Files in Firefox without Office 2007

If you like to open .docx files without Office Word 2007, there’s a new Firefox extension from Microsoft that should help. Available for Windows as well as Linux machines.

 

Open DOCX files as an HTML document in any web browser

Called OpenXML viewer, this plug-in (download link) lets you read docx files inside the Firefox browser just like any other HTML web page while retaining all the text formatting and layout.

There’s a command-line version of OpenXML viewer (download link) available as well for converting docx documents into HTML files that you may then open in any other web browser.

Thankyou@dattu.

Online Polls: Find the best Web Polling Software for your needs

Online Polls: Find the best Web Polling Software for your needs

Most Web Polling software are free, intuitive and require no technical knowledge but the only problem is that there are just too many polling services available and picking the one that best fits your requirement may not be that easy. The following guide therefore highlights the unique features of all the popular web polling software around and this should help you make the right choice quickly.

1. Toluna – Toluna is an online polling software that also lets you add videos and pictures to poll answers to make them look more descriptive. The service is integrated with Plaxo so it should be easy to invite existing contacts to take your poll.

When you create a new poll inside Toluna, it will automatically suggest a list of existing polls that could be related to the poll you have in mind. This is a big time saver for general interest polls like "Which is your favorite email?" because you can just copy an existing poll rather than doing everything from scratch.

2. Micropoll – This web poll service doesn’t require registration and you can create a quick poll by simply typing all the possible choices in a text box separated by new lines. Micropoll provides a variety of colored themes and you can embed polls in websites either as JavaScript or a Flash movie. You get to see poll responses on a world map and the paid version also supports SMS polls.

3. Google Docs – You create a new form in Google Docs and include either "Multiple Choice" or "Choose from a list" type of questions to compose a poll.

This is very practical for large polls / surveys as all the data is directly captured inside a spreadsheet and that makes for easy analysis. However the poll embedding options in Google Docs aren’t very convenient and users can’t see the results after voting.

4. PollDaddy is the most popular online polling software that was recently acquired by Automattic, the same company that also develops WordPress blogging software.

PollDaddy also lets you insert pictures and YouTube clips in your polls though there’s no integrated search as in Toluna. You can choose a styles from the available skins or create something unique via CSS. Polls can be embedded in web pages either as JavaScript or Flash widgets. You can subscribe to poll results via RSS feeds or export them as XML / CSV for analysis in programs like Microsoft Excel.

5. StrawPoll – This is an interesting service that lets you run live polls on Twitter. You post a question one your Twitter page directly via StrawPoll and your Twitter friends / followers can vote by simply replying to your Tweet.

StrawPoll allows only two choices per question (like Do you like Coffee? Yes or No) but still great for getting feedback from the Twitter community as it very convenient. (also see: Twitter Guide)

6. Poll Everywhere – The drawback with either of the poll services discussed above is that they all require web access for people to participate and are therefore not very useful in situations where you want the offline audience to vote (like a conference room without Internet).

A good alternative to web polls are SMS Polls where people can vote though text messaging on mobile phones just like polls conducted on TV or radio. The Poll Everywhere service is now available in almost every country and the basic plan is free though it only allows 30 votes per poll.

7. Notifu – Another unique service that lets you conduct polls via Email or IM. You create a poll on the Notifu website, type in the possible responses and then invite contacts who can vote through email, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger and all other popular IM clients.

Other than email or IM, your friends / colleagues can also vote via SMS messages though that is a charged option.

8. Vizu Polls – If you are looking to expand the reach of your web polls beyond the limited audience of your blog or website, Vizu Web Polls are an option worth looking at.

With Vizu you can create a regular poll and embed it on your own site – it will also show the voter locations on a Google Map. Next is the Vizu ad network where you can have that poll published on external websites for a fee.

Which polling software is right for me?

All the services discussed above offer some unique options. For instance, Notifu allows polling via email while Micropoll lets you create polls even without asking for your email address. So here’s my take:

If you are doing a poll with a small group of friends some of who may be on email or IM, go with Notifu.

If you are a doing a presentation in a conference room and need opinions of participants over a certain topic, try Poll Everywhere as not everywhere may be carrying a web enable smartphone.

If you need polls for embedding in web pages, stick with Poll Daddy. The free version of PollDaddy offers unlimited polls and unlimited number of votes though you’ll have to upgrade to the Pro version for detailed visitor analysis like the ability the see voter location and also to prevent fraudulent multiple votes from the same IP address.

If you are creating a general poll from scratch but need ideas for possible responses / answers, give Toluna a shot.  And finally, if you to need to run your poll on external websites, your only choice is Vizu.

Thankyou@dattu.

Selecting a Safe Password Manager for Storing your Secret Passwords

With almost every web application requiring a password and adoption of universal login services like OpenID or Google Accounts still a distant dream, it is ultimately your memory that acts as the safest password manager for storing all those complex and secret passwords.

Too Many Passwords to Remember?

The memory, though a safe hideout, is not a very scalable solution especially when you have accounts across dozen different websites and you don’t use the same password everywhere. That’s where Password Managers enter the scene – these tools (often free) store your passwords in encrypted form and you just have to remember a single password for retrieving any other password.

There are three kinds of Password Managers – desktop based (offline), web based (your passwords remain accessible from all computers) or portable (carry your passwords on a USB stick).

Desktop based Password Manager

KeePass is a popular desktop based password manager that’s available for all operating systems and even some mobile devices. It stores all your logins and passwords in a single database that is protected by a one master password.

The password database of KeePass consists of just one file so can easily transfer stored passwords from one computer to another very easily. If you forget the master password, all your other passwords in the database are lost forever and there is no way of recovering passwords.

Online Password Manager

Online password managers work the same as their desktop counterparts except that all your passwords get stored on an external web server and can therefore be accessed from any other computer that’s connected to the Internet.

PassPack is a good choice for an online password manager since they provide a desktop client in case you want to access passwords in an offline environment. The desktop client is available for both Adobe AIR or Google Gears.

Build Your Own Password Manager

Most web based password managers have strict privacy policies and even the company employees do not have access to your password information.

However some people might still not feel very comfortable with the idea of storing all their sensitive data on another service. If you too fall in the same category, consider using Clipperz Community – this service lets you create a personal online password manager hosted on your own web server.

Clipperz Community Edition is open source and can be easily installed on any PHP enabled web server that has MySQL. Since the passwords are stored on your own server, you get all the benefits of an online password manager but the data is stored on your own server just like any desktop password manager.

Password Manager for USB Flash drive

Portable password managers are recommended when you neither want to save passwords on the web nor on the computer’s hard drive as there’s fear that someone else may get access to those passwords in your absence.

KeePass, the tool that I discussed in the desktop category, is also available in a portable avatar that can be safely carried on a USB flash drive, CD or even your iPod. KeePass runs without installation and won’t leave any traces once the USB stick is plugged out of the computer.

Find Programs Connecting to the Internet

If you like to know out about all software programs on your computer that are connecting to the Internet, here’s a simple tip.
Type “perfmon” in the Windows search box to run the “Reliability and Performance Monitor” utility. Next click the Network tab in the right pane to expand it.



 

Monitor and block computer programs from connecting to the Internet
This will have a list of processes that are currently connecting to the Internet. If you see a web address or process name that looks suspicious, it may be a good idea to terminate the corresponding process via the Task Manager.
This method is Windows Vista and Windows 7 specific but if your computer is on XP, try the netstat trick which is essentially the same thing sans the GUI.