Turn a Windows 7 Laptop into a Wi-Fi Hotspot

Here’s some new software for Windows 7 called Connectify which allows you to turn your Windows 7 laptop into a wireless hotspot. Basically, it converts your laptop into a wireless router of sorts, acting as a wireless access point for computers and wireless devices.  It’s essentially like creating your own wifi hotspot like the ones at Starbucks and other retailers.

It was developed by a military consulting firm called Nomadio and it allows other wireless devices to ‘tether’’ themselves to a single Internet connection. It’s secure too as the software encrypts traffic in both directions using WPA2-Personal encryption. Check out the demo video below:

This would be especially useful at airports to share the expensive Wi-Fi with friends or simply for extending your home WiFi without paying through the nose for a wireless router.

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How to: Connect Rock Band Drums to Windows

Ever wondered whether your Rock Band drums could work with Windows? Yes, indeed they can! We’ve covered a similar subject in a previous post, Rock Band Drums for your PC, but now here are two more great reasons to connect your drums:

• If you’re feeling adventurous, you can turn your kit into a fully-fledged midi-controller.
• Use in PC music apps such as Garageband.

Check out some of our best Rock Band projects below:

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Access your Files on the Go with FileZilla Home Server

With FileZilla’s free FTP solution, it is super simple to setup a home “FTP” server. Why would you want to setup a FTP home server in the first place? If you are mobile, you can use a home server to remain connected to your home PC from anywhere. Yes, it’s sort of like VNC or DropBox.  The FileZilla client-server application is Open Source and currently Windows only, but the FTP client itself can be installed on any platform.

The step by step installation shows how easy it is to configure the home server. Installation is like any Windows software. Initial options set how the server starts up as a Windows service. Next, the default settings for the server address and port is good enough.

User permissions and selecting the ‘shared folders’ for access is one thing you have to customize. You can configure the level of access for each user individually and even create user groups. A user group makes server access easier to manage.

With the server address, user name and password, any FTP client can be used to exchange files with the home server. It also is neat backup solution. With a home server, the only requirement is to always keep the PC on. But…one could argue that’s a small price to pay for reaching your online home from any location.

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