FTP clients are a great tool for people who spend a lot of time uploading and downloading files from websites or online storage space, but they can be complicated to use if you are not familiar with them. There is an easier way to access this storage space.

Netdrive is a utility that will allow you to show this storage space as a mapped network drive on your computer. This means that you can drag and drop straight into it using the standard Windows File Explorer, bypassing the need for any fancy FTP programs.

Netdrive sits in the system tray, but should only need to be accessed if you would like to add a new site, or change settings.

NetDrive is easy to setup. Once it is installed, create a new site and add in your FTP server settings. You may want to enable load on startup as that will make Netdrive very hands-off in the future. Once the machine is on the storage space will be mapped automatically.

You can then proceed copying and pasting to and from it just like you would with any of your other files or folders.

I have recommended this to a couple of friends, and they have experienced their internet occasionally dropping out while this software is running in the background. Because of this, you may want to load up Netdrive as you require it, rather than loading it at startup.

NetDrive is available from Netdrive.net and is free for home use. Novell also offers a program called Netdrive that does exactly the same thing, with a few less bells and whistles. This is available from Peter’s Useful Crap.

There are a number of Magic Packet senders that will wake a computer up over a LAN connection, but these are usually stand alone programs that need to be opened up and have data entered into them before they work. I wanted a more customizable solution.

Mc-wol is a command line utility that enables you to wake up a machine on your local area network. Being a command line utility, it is easy to utilize in a shortcut on your desktop, place into a batch file, or use it in a scheduled task.

Don’t let the command line scare you. The syntax is really simple. To launch a computer, type mc-wol followed by the mac/ethernet address. i.e.:

mc-wol 91:34:eb:de:45:32

Wake on LAN software only works on computers which are in standby or hibernate modes.

Mc-wol is free and available from Matcode.com. You will also find a bunch of useful information on the page about simple settings you will need to check before WOL will work.

Windows Mobile already has remote desktop and VNC options, but Remote Touch offers some benefits over these. Remote Touch is quick, the screen will not shrink to an unusable size, and you can zoom in on the part of the screen you are interested in.

Another handy feature is that the computer screen doesn’t get locked. This allows the computer to remain active after you have disconnected, or you can use the software as a remote control.

Remote Touch works over IP, so after a little bit of port forwarding, your remote desktop is accessible from anywhere with a wireless network connection. There is a client which is installed on the device, and a tiny server that runs on the desktop.

Remote touch is still in Beta so you may come across the occasional bug. On the bright side, you can also expect improvements in stability and features over the coming months. It worked fine for me on my HTC Touch.

For a detailed video on Remote Touch, and the download, visit the authors website.

Chronobis is a utility that is a nice workaround to this problem. Chronobis accesses the Outlook Web Access data, and synchronises it with a Windows Mobile calendar client. The only requirement is that you are able to access Outlook Web Access from a public or home computer. This should be available to most people.

Chronobis is still in Beta development, so there are a lot of things lacking over a direct Exchange connection. The sync currently only works with calendar, and it only transfers data to your device. If you add new calendar entries on your device, these changes won’t be transferred back to your Exchange account. This problem can currently be solved with an ActiveSync connection when you are next at your computer. This makes it convenient enough to use.

I look forward to seeing Chronobis evolve. Of course mail, tasks and contacts are important features to sync. There are lots of hints in the software and the forums, that these features will be made available in the future, and that the sync will occur both ways. This will be a real gem if all these features become a reality.

This program is of no use to you if you are already able to connect directly to an Exchange server directly from your device.

Get your copy of Chronobis for free from Chronobis.com.

WebMon is a small utility that sits in your task tray, and alerts you if any of your predefined websites have been updated.

You can set it up to monitor any number of websites, and then define the frequency that each of your websites will be checked for updates.

WebMon stores a copy of a web page, and then after a predefined time, it will download another copy and compare the two. If there have been any changes, you will be alerted with a sound, or a pop-up.

WebMon is going to be great for me as I look at the same sites regularly doing research for this site, only to find no updates have been made. I will no longer need to visit each site individually or repetitively, thanks to this program. I read how someone else uses WebMon for alerts when the box office opens. Now he can buy tickets as soon as they are made available. 

WebMon couldn’t be any easier to use. It is also highly customisable. The only concern I have with WebMon, is that it is downloading pages regularly in the background. This could chew into your monthly bandwidth. You can specify how often the sites are checked for updates. Setting your update checks to happen every few days instead of every few minutes, will ensure your bandwidth is not wastefully consumed.

Get your copy of WebMon for free from Colin Markwells website. 

Thanks for the tip Matthew. This will be program I wondered how I ever did without.

There are a number of ways that you can restart or shutdown remote computers. You could use a remote desktop connection, but there are quicker ways and we will look at them today.

This article will show you various methods you can use to shutdown or restart computers on your network. We will look at:

• Command Line/Shortcuts
• Windows Tools
• 3^rd Party Applications

As well as looking after the environment and your pocket by saving electricity, it is surprisingly easy to achieve. This article is very much aimed at a home user. Most server operating systems have much more powerful tools available.

I have learnt a thing or two researching for this article.

What you need:

All of the methods below require you to have an administrator account on the computer you want to shut down. This was a relief for me as I could see all sorts of ways this could be abused without such security.

All the methods below will require you to have either the IP address or machine name of the computer or computers you want to shutdown remotely.

All of the methods below were created using Windows XP. Vista offers the same commands and a few extras, while Windows 2000 has similar commands. If you use 2000, change the “-“ to a “/”.

Method 1: Command line

Microsoft has included a tool that comes with Windows that will be the focus of most of this article. I always like to use inbuilt utilities when they are available. In this case the command is “shutdown”.

If you open up a command prompt (Start > Run > Cmd) and type “shutdown”, you will see that there are a bundle of arguments you can use with the shutdown command. The -m argument followed by the machine name, and a -r(restart trigger) will shutdown your computer. The best way for me to explain it is through examples.

In the command prompt, try the following:

shutdown -m \\computername -s

Lets break it down:

1. The shutdown command gets the ball rolling
2. -m \\computername should be the name of the computer you want to shutdown.
3. -s tells the remote computer to Shutdown.

There are a number of other arguments you can use.

1. -r tells the remote computer to Restart
2. -l tells the remote computer to logoff

So that is all you need to know to do it from the command line. I find it a bit tricky to remember all the switches, so the methods below are more ideal for me.

Method 2: Shortcuts

This method uses the same “shutdown” command as above. The only difference is that we put the command into a shortcut so that we can launch it quickly.

Right click on your desktop
Select “New”
Select “Shortcut”
In the path put in:

shutdown -m \\computername -s

Call it whatever you want and change the icon if you would like. 

Now you have a shortcut that when it is launched will shutdown the remote computer. How easy is that!  

Method 3: Windows Tools

The “shutdown” command we have been looking at above has a graphical front end with a few nice features in it. If you have multiple computers you want to shut down, this may be a good option for you.

To get into it, open a command prompt and type “shutdown -i”

The graphical front-end will open up.

In here, you will see the same options available to you as the manual methods above, but this time you can list or browse multiple computers on your network and do bulk shutdowns or restarts.

It is fairly self explanatory, so I won’t go into it much more. It isn’t all that powerful. Check out another utility below.

This method requires you to put in a reason as to why you are restarting/shutting down. It’s a real pain. 

Method 4: External utilities

RCL– Remote Computer Log On is a program I came across while scouring through SourceForge. It doesn’t look like much, but it is much more powerful and user friendly than the options above.

RCL was originally designed by a school teacher to control the computers in a computer lab. RCL offers no annoying fonts or popups. It makes up for them in features.

You can login/out, shutdown or restart multiple computers. There is even a feature to enable or disable Internet access.

The computer list uses text files making it easy to list groups of computers; i.e. one file for each lab.

It may be more than you want, but I am definitely going to be using this gem. If only I had it 3 years ago. Download it from SourceForge.

Another program of note is XP remote Timer. It runs much the same as the shutdown command but it offers a timer feature. It might be a good way to control how much time the kids use their computer.

Which method is right for me?

When this article was suggested to me, shortcuts seemed like the most practical way to control 1 or 2 remote computers. As the amount of computers increased, the graphical utilities won out.

Note:

Windows has inbuilt power management features which you might choose to use to shutdown a machine automatically when it is not in use for a certain period of time. This would achieve the same thing, but it removes the control you can have.

Conclusion:

I hope this article has been useful to you and saved you some time and manual labour (walking). Please stick around and check out some other articles at Inspect My Gadget – for lazy people.

There are a number of free web server packages available, but I have not found any which are as easy to use as SimpleServer:WWW. Once you download the tiny 187k installation file, you can launch the installer. You can have a fully working web server up and running in less than 2 minutes. I wouldn’t suggest to my grandmother to try and install Apache, but I reckon she could handle this one.

There really isn’t much to this program – looking at it from a users point of view. SimpleServer sits in the tasktray. There is a start/stop button to enable or disable the server. The only other control it has is a browse button so you can select which folder the server will host. SimpleServer can be launched with Windows by placing it in your startup folder.

SimpleServer is a great web server. The only thing it lacks is security. The website will be open to anyone in world who knows the address. This shouldn’t be a huge issue, but if it is running and you are serving up a lot of music or movies, be aware that they might end up in the wrong hands. Unlikely, but worth mentioning.

If you have a home network, you will probably need to set up port forwarding in your router. For more information on this, check out this article. If you want to access this site from a computer out of your home network, I suggest you sign up with DynDNS so that you don’t need to remember your IP address everywhere you go.

Get your copy of SimpleServer:WWW for free from AnalogX

AnalogX has made a number of useful utilities which are all available for free. I have used a number of these utilities over the years and they have all worked flawlessly for me. It is a shame that the site doesn’t appear to be updated anymore.

Network Folder Plugin allows you to map your network folders and access them easily from your Windows Mobile Device. The interface is simple, and the program is quite snappy.

Generally, mapping to folders from the Windows Mobile platform is not very practical, as you need to be near your computer for it to work, (so you may as well use your computer anyway). But, if mapping is something you think will be useful for your setup, check this out.

I figure that transferring photos and music might be quicker on Wifi rather than on Bluetooth. Mapping network folders is an important step in accessing these files and to get the better results.

Windows Mobile devices let you connect to network folders. The default software which is built in to these devices is very clumsy and primitive to use.

Once you have installed it, you can access it from Settings/Connections. You then see a blank list which will eventually stock all your selected shares. Click new and either type in the share name or browse. Find the share you want, hold down and select “map drive”. Enter in your password and username, and you’re done!

Once you have mapped network folders, they will show up in file explorer, under a new folder called network. The files can then be copied to your device, played in a media player or you can copy files to and from your device. A feature I like in this program is that you can save passwords so you don’t have to re-enter it each time you want to connect.

To install the file, copy the cab to your device and then run it. Network Folder Plugin is available for free from FreewarePocketPC.net.

Some network programs require that you configure port forwarding in your router, so that they will work properly. This is confusing to many people, causing many newcomers to give up. For those who know what they are doing, it is time consuming. There is a quicker and easier way.

Fortunately, most routers support a standard called Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), meaning that you can use the BaUPnP tool to update your port forwarding settings, without going through all the menus in your router.

BaUPnP is a free command line utility that automates the process of forwarding your ports.

For use: On the computer you want the ports to be forwarded to, open up your command prompt and navigate through to the folder you have saved BaUPnP.

The tool, by default, configures port mapping for the two ports used by web-servers – that is port 80 (HTTP) and port 443 (HTTPS). You are able to use your own arguments for any service you want.

The following example configures port mapping for FTP (port 21) and Telnet (port 23):

BaUPnP.exe 21 23

It doesn’t get much easier than that!

As this program changes the port forwarding settings to your router, this program only needs to be run once. This is not a program that will clog up valuable resources after you have used it.

You are able to run it from multiple machines, each offering various services. Just keep in mind that you can’t use the same port from two computers. You will also need to ensure that UPnP is turned on in your router settings.

For more information and download instructions please visit barracudaserver.com.

Last week I posted an article about a handful of network clipboards that are available for free on Windows PCs. I was not able to get any of them to communicate to each other between Windows XP and Vista.

Over the week, I came across the open-source utility BeyondCopy 1.24, which is yet another network clipboard. I expected the same sort of luck as I had with the other programs I had tested, but I was pleasantly surprised when BeyondCopy worked for me first time without any fuss.

I installed the utility on each computer and added the other computers hostname to the list of acceptable computers. I opened up Notepad and typed in some text and copied it to the clipboard. I switched to the other computer and pressed paste, and clipboard followed me.

BeyondCopy runs in the task tray on both computers and can be started up with Windows. You are able to have more than two computers sharing the same clipboard. It is fairly secure as you have to put in the computer hostnames of all the computers you want to share the clipboard of, into the client on each computer. If you only do it on one, BeyondCopy will not connect. You are even able to change which port BeyondCopy uses for added security.

The documentation claims that the software will copy files but I had no luck with this. The help documentation isn’t too clear for this. I was able to copy text flawlessly, which is what I initially set out to do.

Now I have to get used to this new feature on my network. The impossible has become possible. I am already reaping the benefits as I have used it in writing this article. This one is a keeper!

BeyondCopy is free and available from their Website.