This post will be unusually short, since there really isn’t much to explain. Just type, click, and you’re ready to go.

WiFi HotSpot Creator is a small (374 KB) and free application that makes it all easy and fast.

What you see above in the screenshot is all. That’s all there is to it.

1. Type the name of WiFi connection that you want to create.
This name will appear to other devices when they search for a wireless hotspot. What you type in here is not really important. It can be anything you want it to be.

2. Type your desired password into the Passphrase field. Other devices will use this password to be able to use your shared internet connection via WiFi.

3. From the NIC drop-down choose the way your laptop is currently connected to internet. For example, if you are connected via WiFi, you choose “Wireless Network Connection”. If you get access to internet via LAN cable, then you choose that one.

Notice that you can share your “Wired” connection with other devices “Wirelessly”. Your laptop will transmit WiFi signal and therefore other devices will be able to connect to internet, even if your laptop is connected to internet via cable.

One bad thing

One thing that I didn’t like about this app, is that it installs a browser toolbar without even asking you.

If you use Google Chrome, you don’t need to worry, but in other browsers, you will notice additional toolbar has been installed. That’s not a big problem though, you can easily uninstall it from the browser options.

Download link below

Download WiFi Hotspot Creator here.

This, currently, is the fastest and simplest way to send large files online to your contacts’ email address. Or to even more than one of them at once.

To see how simple it is, here are the 3 steps to send your large files:

1. Go to web app, or open the desktop version of it.

2. Enter email address you want to send the file to.

3. Select, or drag & drop files, and send!

Now let’s see some details related to this immensely useful, and yet, free web app.
It is created by a newly-founded company, Kicksend.
Yes, you have to register to be able to send large files, but the process is surprisingly simple and fast, with only 3 things you need to write:
Your name, your email address, and your desired password.

That’s all. You’re registered. And no, you don’t even need to click on those confirmation links sent to your email. You can start sending files right away.
You can even login with your Facebook account, if you really don’t wish to register.

One of the most impressive things of this app

is that it’s ridiculously simple! Everybody can use it, no matter what their computer skills are, or if they even have them (Grandma included). See the screenshot below, and you’ll see why.

As you can see, the interface is pretty simple and it gets straight to the point. All in one page. In the upper right corner you can also see your free sending limit for the current month.

If you want slightly more

Every month, you are allowed to send 1GB large files. It depends on your needs, but for average user, that should be enough.
And if it isn’t, then there are couple of steps you can take to expand your limit from 1GB to 1550 mb. It’s easy, if you need the additional space, and it’s pretty fast to do. The things you can do are captured in the screenshot below.

If you want a LOT more

If 1.5 GB still isn’t sufficient for your needs, then… There’s one last step you can take.
Purchase one of their premium packages. Then you can have 10+ GBs. Since I don’t write posts to promote anyone, nor am I writing about apps that are not free, I won’t go into much detail here, but you can see the rest on their website. I covered the free part which I think will be useful to most of the average need users.

One downside of it all

The limit for sending files directly using web app is 150 mb. If you need to send files larger than 150 mb, you’ll have to use their desktop app. It’s still free, and fast to download, but still, it’s one additional step, which I didn’t like.

Finally, the link to their website is below

Go to KickSend and send huge files.

There is no direct way to do this, yet, but here’s a short and easy workaround that will add your Facebook friends to Google+ in no time.

You will need a Yahoo! account and (of course) Google (+) Plus account.

1. Go to your Yahoo! mail account and go to “Contacts” tab. Then click “Import Contacts”.

2. From the given options, choose “Facebook”. After that, you will be asked to grant permission to Yahoo to access your Facebook contacts, so you go ahead and click “Okay”.

Then you will see short message “Retrieving data from Facebook…” And just so you know, this process might take a while… It depends on number of your friends, if you have 1000+, you’ll need to be patient for a moment (however ironic that may sound)

3. Refresh page and go to your “Contacts” tab again. Check the button to select them all from the list. Now click “Actions” and from the drop-down menu choose “Export All…”

4. From the available options of exporting, choose Yahoo CSV format and click “Export Now”.

You will be asked to enter a Captcha anti-spam code here, so you do that. Then wait for about 5 seconds and you will see your contacts have been exported and downloaded into a Yahoo CSV file format. We will use that file now to upload the contacts to your Gmail account.

5. Go to your Gmail account. Click on “Contacts” button located below “Mail” button on the upper left side. Then click “More” and from the drop-down menu choose “Import”.

6. In the pop-up window, click the “Choose File” button and find the Yahoo CSV file that we downloaded before in the step 4. Then click on “Import”.

7. And now finally, you can see all your contacts there in Gmail, which means they will also be available in the Google+ Circles panel.
So now go to your Google plus page, go to Circles and click on “Find People”. There you will see all of your Facebook friends ready to be added to your Google plus circles.
Now just add them to corresponding circles of your liking and enjoy your Google+ experience.

If you don’t have Google+ account and would like to create one, but you need an Invite, then just ask for it in the comments, and I will send you one.
Enjoy!

Removing duplicate files from your PC will boost your system performance and speed it up immensely. Whether it be photos, mp3 files, text documents… Removing those files will enable you to have more disk space, reduce antivirus scan time, reduce the time it takes to defragment your hard drive and help you easily organize your files.

DuplicateFinder is a freeware program that will detect all the cloned files that you might have on your computer.

DuplicateFinder uses optimized detection algorithms and file filters so the scanning time is greatly minimized. The detected files can be removed in no time with the help of the automatic file selector and the predefined set of actions (copying, moving or deleting).

I must say it was pretty fast and efficient. Now I have additional 39 Gigabytes of space available when I cleaned up the unnecessary files in just 3 minutes. Of course, if you don’t want to delete them right away, you can always group them into a folder using “Move” option, and there you can see whether you want to keep some of them.

It works on Windows NT 4.0, 2K, XP, Vista, and Windows 7.

You can download Duplicate Finder here. (scroll down the page for download links)

I said two accounts, but no it’s not limited to two accounts only. You can open as many accounts as you want, on the same site, all at once.

The same applies to all membership websites. You can access multiple accounts at the same time, on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Hotmail… whatever.

I bet you knew how to do this by using different browsers (Firefox, Chrome, IE…), and keeping them running all at once. But that just eats up your RAM memory, and makes your desktop look clogged. So no, we’re not going to use that method.

There are three ways to accomplish this. It all depends on which browser you want to use. You will see all three covered here, step by step, as always.

Use Firefox To Login With Multiple Accounts On Same Site

Firefox is famous for its extensions and add-ons, so you guessed it. You need to install a Firefox add-on which will help you do this.

Click to Install CookiePie Firefox Extension (Firefox users only)

It’s fairly easy to use. After you’ve installed it and restarted Firefox, just login to Twitter (for example). Then open a new tab and right click on it. Then find the “Toggle On/Off CookiePie” option and click on it to start the extension.

You can see that a cookie appeared on the right side of the tab, which means you can type-in Twitter url, and then Twitter will ask you to login again. But this time you can do it with different account. The image below explains it all.

If you want to see all of this put to action, check out this video below.

Couple of things to consider when using CookiePie Firefox extension:

- Gmail has recently implemented tougher security to its service, so it is aware about other connections in other tabs or windows. Which means this extension, unfortunately, won’t work when using Gmail. Huge disappointment, I know. But developers of the CookiePie are trying to fix this.

- It also runs on Flock/GNU IceWeasel.

Use Google Chrome To Login With Multiple Accounts On Same Site

This one is a well known feature of Google Chrome, but in case you did not know about it…

Google Chrome comes with the “Incognito mode”, also known as “Private mode”, which allows you to login to two different instances of the same website.

1. Login to desired website in Google Chrome.

2. Click on the Tools icon (top right corner) and in the menu, select “New Incognito Window“. Or even easier method is to use a keyboard shortcut. Press Ctrl+Shift+N to open a new Incognito Window.

3. Go to the same website and you should now be able to login with another user account.

Use Internet Explorer 8 To Login With Multiple Accounts On Same Website

This is also one of the features that is only available in Internet Explorer 8.

IE 8 is packed with a “New Session” mode that allows you to start a new window with a brand new session.

1. Open IE8, go to desired website and login with your first account.

2. Then Go to File –> New Session. This will open a new window. Navigate to the same site and you should be able to login with your other account.

I wouldn’t go for this method, since it’s almost same as if you opened two different browsers and logged in to your accounts. Because IE 8 will also open a new window…

And that should be all!

If you know some additional methods for any of these browsers, share them with us in the comments.

RC will stop functioning on June, 1st. That does not mean that you can use it properly to that date, because Microsoft will start shutting down your computer every two hours, starting from March.

That’s why it is time to make a decision to either buy the final version of Windows 7, or go back to your old OS, like XP or Vista (not my recommendation).

If you decided to go for Windows 7 final version, then you need to know that you can’t just upgrade to final version. Microsoft demands that you install a new copy of Windows 7, which means deleting all software that was once installed and maybe even losing some data.

To skip all those problems, here is a workaround that will enable you to simply upgrade your Windows 7 RC to the final version, without need to install a clean copy and delete any software or data on your PC.

This is the error message you will see if you try to upgrade:

Just a quick note before we begin:
The Windows 7 beta and RC versions were Ultimate edition, so you’ll only be able to upgrade to Final version if you are installing Ultimate Edition.

Follow these steps to enable the upgrade:

You will need to edit a file inside the Windows 7 installation DVD. And to be able to edit files, you need to extract all files of the DVD to your hard drive.

1. If you have a DVD, then just copy all files to a new folder on your PC.

If you use ISO image to install Windows 7, you can extract the files from ISO by using 7-Zip archiving software, which is free, and you can download it here.

2. After you’ve extracted the files, Find the “sources” folder and open it.

3. Inside that folder, find the file named “cversion.ini“, and double click to open it.

4. You need to change the “MinClient” value to some number less than the current number of the build you are using (e.g. build number of RC version  is 7100). So for the RC release, you need to change it to “7000″.

Don’t forget to leave that zero, near the value edited, as it is. (it should look just like on the image above)

5. Now just launch the setup.exe right from there (hard drive) and upgrade the system. Or if you prefer, you can burn these files to a DVD and then install it… That’s up to you.

When you launch the setup, you should see the welcome screen, like on the image below. Go ahead and click Install Now.

When you get to the point where it asks you about the type of installation, choose the “Upgrade” option.

When, or if, you reach the Compatibility Report screen like in the image below (if it doesn’t show up at all, you should be happy), you’ll see the list of applications that might not work once you have finished the upgrade.

To be honest, this is not 100% accurate, because, from my experience, many of them will work without any problems. But just in case, uninstall them, and then install them again, after the setup finishes.

After you finish all those steps, you should see that Windows 7 started installing.

Now go get a cup of coffee and find something to do in the meantime, because this will take a while to finish.

You may think that this window pops up with a reason, so you shouldn’t disable it, right? Well, if you are not so familiar with Windows, and don’t know much about computers at all, then you should probably leave it enabled.

But if you know that the software you installed, actually IS working, and Windows 7 still gives you this message, then I’m sure it gets pretty annoying. That’s why you should definitely disable it.

Here’s another reason to consider. Windows 7 displays this message even if program is installed correctly and it works 100%. This is why the sentence “This Program Might Not Have Installed Correctly” has a word “might” in it.

This is how it looks:

Now let’s see how to disable it and finally stop the annoyance.

This message pops out because “Program Compatibility Assistant” process runs in the background. In fact, this service starts right at the system startup, so it’s even slowing down the System’s startup time a little bit.

Follow these steps to disable it:

1. Click the Start button on your taskbar.

2. In the search box, type “services.msc” (no quotations) and hit Enter.

3. When new window opens, find “Program Compatibility Assistance Service” in the list (see image below).

4. Right click on it, and then click “Stop” (image above)

Now we have finished the first part. We stopped it from running in the background. But if we restart computer, it will automatically run with startup again (remember?) and will continue to show you that message. To stop it from running with the system startup, we will do just a couple of additional steps.

5. Once the service is stopped, right-click on it again. Now go to “Properties”. In a new window, find the option “Startup Type“, and on drop-down menu of it, select “Disabled” and click OK. (image below)

Now you just need to restart your computer.

To confirm that you did everything right, open Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc) and look for “PcaSvc” in Services tab. If you don’t find it… Congratulations the service has been disabled!

There are so many online and desktop applications, tools and services that help you send tweets from almost everywhere. So why is this one so different?

I like this one because it is pretty simple and yet it saves you plenty of time when it comes to regular updating your Twitter status.

First of all, this is not a Twitter app or a web service. It’s a simple Firefox Add-on called TwitterBar.

TwitterBar allows you to post to Twitter from Mozilla Firefox’s address bar. A small Twitter icon will be located on the right of your address bar. You post your tweet by clicking on it. If you want to see how many characters you have left, just hover your mouse over it.

Clicking the Twitter icon when visiting a webpage will send a tweet containing the URL of the webpage you are currently viewing. You can adjust if you want some pre-text to show up in your tweets sent this way.

For example, if you are on Google homepage and you click the Twitter icon, it will send a tweet like: “Currently Browsing: [link to google homepage]“. Of course, the pre-text can be disabled and you can write whatever you like instead.

There is automatic URL shortening service included so when you post link it will shrink it via is.gd or tinyurl (whichever you choose).

After you install TwitterBar, it will ask you if you want to install OneRiot along with it. OneRiot is a social search engine that allows users to find the hottest news, videos, blog posts, and microblogging and social networking buzz. I did not install it, because it’s not required and I don’t need it… Anyway, it’s up to you to decide that.

Here’s a screenshot of TwitterBar options so you can see what you can customize and adjust:

That’s it! This Firefox add-on really saved me some valuable time and I hope it will do the same for you. Enjoy!

I can not say exactly how much faster, since it all depends on your computer specifications (processor, RAM, hard-drive and stuff like that…), but from my experience, this tweak decreased the time to boot-up for about 9-10 seconds.

Now you see how great this registry tweak is and it will get even better when you see how simple it is to apply. I will do my best to show you step-by-step and make it plain simple and of course with screenshots included.

How to make Windows XP start faster:

1. Click on “Start” on the taskbar.

2. Click “Run” located in the start menu.

3. Then in the “Run” panel, type: “regedit” without the quotation marks. (that will open up the Windows registry editor)

4. Then click on “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE” and expand it.

5. Then click on “SYSTEM” and expand it.

6. Then scroll down, and expand “CurrentControlSet”.

7. Under that, expand “Control”.

8. Then, under that one, locate and click on “ContentIndex”. (so when you click on it, it needs to be highlighted and it’s options need to show up in the right panel of Windows XP Registry Editor)

So to sum up, here’s where you need to navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ ContentIndex

Let’s continue… You have just 6 more steps until the finish line!

9. When you have clicked on “ContentIndex” and it is highlighted and you see the options and parameters on the right side of the panel… Among those, you need to scroll all the way to the bottom and find the Registry key named “StartupDelay”.

10. Double-click on it and a new window panel will pop-up.

12. The new window has a field to enter value (and a default value entered already). But before you change the value, you need to change the base from Hexadecimal to Decimal. Take a look at the screenshot below to see what I am talking about:

Now when you change it to Decimal, it displays a different value (480000 instead of 75300).

13. So now, all you need to do is change the value from “480000” to “40000” (forty thousand)

Many people ask me if they can change it to an even smaller value than 40000, but I would not recommend doing that. I tested it and it doesn’t work. I did not feel any difference in boot-up time when I change it to value less than 40000 (and no, you can’t put 0 either).

14. After you’ve completed all the steps above, click “OK” and close the Registry Editor.

And one just one little thing you need to do to finish all this registry tweaking…

15. Restart your computer.

Now you can notice big difference in time that your system takes to boot-up. Mine was faster for 10 seconds than usual. How much faster does your Windows XP boot now? Share in the comments below!

So how did it happen? Well I was stuck with loads of work and deadlines offline so I didn’t have time to write so much during past 2 months. And I will use this opportunity to say that I’m really sorry about that. (won’t happen again) But I had to work on a project that demanded my whole day of dedication to it, plus it had strict deadline.

After I came back to managing this blog and logged in to Wordpress admin area, first thing that I saw was that huge pile of pending comments. When I think about how much time Iwould need to waste going through all those comments… It just doesn’t feel really good.

I just wanted it all gone. Even if there is some legitimate comment in there, it’s not worth anybody’s time to sort through that mess to find them.

So my question was: How do I delete all pending comments in an efficient way? I knew I could delete 20 at a time using the bulk action “mark as spam”, but still, that was a lot of time wasting.

Then I looked around those comment moderation options and looked for better way to do this. Preferably, to be able to erase all pending comments in one stroke, in one click.

What I found was pretty surprisingly easy way! Actually there are three ways to do this. One is much more efficient than the others in my opinion, but little more work involved. Anyway, I will show you all the ways you can do it, so you decide which one to use. (the second one is recommended)

1. Delete all pending comments with plugin:

1. Download and install the “Delete Pending Comments” plugin here on official WordPress plugin directory.

2. Click on the link for “Delete Pending Comments” on the sidebar in your dashboard under “Comments”.  It will then ask you to type in a sentence to verify that you want to delete all pending comments. (screenshot below)

3. Done! All your pending comments are deleted with one click. (even those that were not spam)

Note that this plugin is compatible with WordPress versions from 2.7 to the latest.

And now, here’s the second, more efficient way to do this. This way is much better (recommended) because you can still keep and publish natural, genuine comments, while still deleting all spam comments.

2. The “Akismet Way” to delete all pending (spam) comments:

If you have installed Akismet (I think I don’t need to elaborate here what’s Akismet and what does it do, because it’s pretty much the famous plugin for WordPress spam protection…), it has an option to scan the whole queue for spam and automatically handle it. That would be the quickest and most efficient way: one button press.

But in order to do this, you MUST have Akismet installed first and WordPress API key configured. (learn more about WordPress API key)

Now if you have everything set and ready, here’s how it goes:

1. Click on the comments link on your admin area sidebar

2. Click the “Check for Spam” link located at “Edit Comments” page. (this is the “one click” we are talking about)

3. Akismet will move all spammy comments to spam category and leave you only with genuine comments from real readers so you can approve them, and not waste your time on spambots.

And the third way…

3. The “phpMyAdmin” way:

This one is for those that are little more tech savvy. It involves little messing with your SQL database. Actually, the point is to log in to your phpMyAdmin and manually delete added entries in the SQL database.

I will not write about this way of doing this, because Kian Ann of Blogopreneur already wrote a nice post with detailed instructions on how to do it.

There you go! Now you have three ways to delete all pending comments. I hope this was easy to understand and apply, and I hope you enjoyed reading the post as much as I did writing it. If you know any other way, share it in comments.

So what do you think, which way was the best and the easiest?