Stream Videos and Music Over the Network With VLC

VLC includes a fairly easy-to-use streaming feature that can stream music and videos over a local network or the Internet. You can tune into the stream using VLC or other media players.

Use VLC’s web interface as a remote control to control the stream from elsewhere. Bear in mind that you may not have the bandwidth to stream high-definition videos over the Internet, though.

Broadcasting a Stream

To start broadcasting a network stream, click the Media menu in VLC and select Stream.

In the Open Media dialog, select the media you want to stream. You can select one or more files on the Files tab, select a CD or DVD on the Disc tab, or even capture video from a specific device on the Capture Device tab. For example, you could stream your desktop by selecting Desktop on the Capture Device tab.

Click the Stream button after selecting your media.

The Stream Output window will appear. The first pane just lists the media source you selected – click Next to continue.

On the Destination Setup pane, you’ll need to choose a destination for your stream. For example, you can select HTTP to listen for connections – other computers can connect to your computer and watch the stream. You can also select UDP to broadcast to a specific IP address or range of IP addresses.

After selecting your destination, click the Add button. You may also want to activate the Display locally check box – if you do, you’ll see and hear the media being streamed on your local computer, so you’ll know it’s playing correctly.

After adding a destination, you’ll be able to customize its settings. With the HTTP destination, you could specify a custom path – but the default one will work fine.

You can also tweak the transcoding settings – by transcoding to a lower quality, VLC can save network bandwidth.

Click Next to continue to the Option Setup pane – you probably don’t need to tweak any of the advanced options here. To start streaming, click the Stream button.

If you selected the Display locally option, the media will start playing locally on your computer.

If you have a firewall enabled, ensure that VLC is an allowed program or no computers will be able to connect. If you’re trying to stream over the Internet, you may also need toforward ports on your router.

Connecting to a Stream

To tune in to a stream, click the Media menu in VLC on another computer and select Open Network Stream.

Assuming you used HTTP, enter an address like http://IP.Address:8080. See this postif you need help finding the other system’s IP address.

(If you specified a custom path for your HTTP stream in the Path box, you’ll need to specify the custom path here. For example, if you specified /path as your custom path, you’d enter http://IP.Address:8080/path in the box here.)

After clicking Play, the stream should start playing. To control playback remotely, trysetting up VLC’s web interface. If you encounter an error, make sure VLC isn’t being blocked by a firewall on the streaming system.

Taken From: http://www.howtogeek.com/118075/how-to-stream-videos-and-music-over-the-network-using-vlc/

Forward Ports on Your Router From a Desktop (UPnP)

UPnP is a convenient way for programs to forward ports without you having to pull up your router’s web interface and forward ports manually. Unfortunately, some programs that require port forwarding don’t support UPnP – that’s where UPnP PortMapper comes in.

This application takes care of port forwarding for you, right from your desktop. If your IP address changes, you don’t need to log into your router and change your port forwarding rules – you can have the application update them for you.

If you visit a friend’s house and join their network, you don’t have to ask for their router’s password to forward ports – just fire up the application and activate your preset rules.

Installation

UPnP Port Mapper is written in Java, so you’ll need the free Java Runtime Environmentinstalled to run it. After installing Java, you can download UPnP Port Mapper from SourceForge. In addition to Windows, this application also works on Mac OS X and Linux.

UPnP Port Mapper communicates with your router with the UPnP protocol, so you’ll also need a router with UPnP enabled to use this application. If UPnP is disabled on your network’s router, this program can’t do anything.

After downloading UPnP Port Mapper, double-click the .jar file to launch it.

Forwarding Ports

To get started, click the Connect button in UPnP Port Mapper. If you see a Windows Firewall pop-up window, click the Unblock button. You may have to allow Java network access in the Windows firewall pop-up that appears.

If UPnP PortMapper informs you that it can’t find your router, click the Connect button again unblocking the application in the Windows firewall.

If it worked, you’ll see a list of UPnP port mappings in the top pane (this list will be empty by default), as well as your router’s external IP address on the Internet and its IP address on your local network.

To create a new port forwarding preset, click the Create button.

Enter a description for your port forwarding rule and provide a list of one or more ports to forward. You can specify port ranges or forward a list of ports using a single preset.

You can also specify a specific remote host. If you enter an IP address, only traffic from that IP address will be forwarded to your computer from your router. For example, you can use this feature to only allow connections from a friend’s IP address on the Internet.

The Use local host box is checked by default, making it easy to forward ports without having to double-check your computer’s local IP address. However, you could also use this application to forward ports to multiple different computers on your network.

Port forwarding presets you specify will appear  in the Port mapping presets box. Select a preset and click the Use button to activate it.

Clicking this button forwards the ports on your router – they’ll appear in the Port mappings box at the top of the window. You can remove port mappings by selecting them and clicking the Remove button.

The port mappings will be saved on your router until its UPnP data is cleared – depending on your router, this may happen when your router is restarted. If you open UPnP Port Mapper later and click the Connect button, you’ll see your active port mappings.

You will also need to reapply port mapping settings if your computer’s local IP address changes.

With your presets, you can quickly and easily apply these port mapping settings on any network with a router that supports UPnP – this can be convenient if you move around and need to forward ports for gaming, servers, or other purposes.

Taken From: http://www.howtogeek.com/122227/how-to-quickly-forward-ports-on-your-router-from-a-desktop-application/

Sync Gmail Calendar with Outlook

There are many tutorials out there but they are all too complicated or/and give you paid, complicated tools to do the job.

The tool on this post is free, and will sit on your tray and won’t bother you, while maintaining your calendar synced. I’m gonna show you the easiest way to do it.

Google Calendar Sync

Download page: http://www.google.com/support/cal..wer=89955
(Direct link to download)

Installation

1. Read through the Google Calendar Sync Terms of Service, and click I Agree.

2. Follow through the Installation Options and click Install to finish the set-up process.

3. Once Google Calendar Sync is installed on your computer, the Google Calendar Sync Settings window will appear:

Just enter your email/password and click Save. If you don’t want to sync back to Google Calendar choose “1 way: Google Calendar to Microsoft Outlook”

You are now syncing Google Calendar with Outlook!

This is very helpfull, specialy if you have an android phone, since it automatically syncs with gmail calendar. Now I have my Outlook calendar on my phone.

Based On: http://knokio.com/guide/sync-gmail-contacts-and-google-calendar-with-outlook/#.UC1YSt1lSbN

Windows 8 Portable USB Drive (No Extra Tools)

For a long time Linux users have been able to install their OS onto a portable USB drive, but Windows just caught up. Read on to find out how you can install Windows 8 onto a USB drive so you can take it wherever you go.

Note: This was written on the RTM version of Windows 8 Enterprise and you will need to have an RTM build of the Enterprise edition to complete the steps in this article.

Using Windows To Go to Create a Portable Workspace

Press the Win + X keyboard combination and select Control Panel from the context menu.

You will need to change your Control Panel view to the Small Icons view.

You should now see Windows To Go near the bottom of the Control Panel, click on it.

You will now need to select the USB drive you would like to turn into a portable workspace, then click next.

The wizard will automatically scan your CD\DVD and Removable drives for valid Windows installation files, once you have selected a version of Windows click next.

Note: If you store your installation files elsewhere you will need to add it as a search location.

You can optionally set a BitLocker password, but we’ll pass on this option for now.

Once you have reached the end of the wizard, you will be warned that your USB drive will be formatted. You can then click on create to kick of the creation process.

That’s all there is to it, you now have a bootable USB with Windows on it.

Note: Your portable USB will not show up in Explorer, this leaves us with a problem later on when you don’t need to use it as a Portable Workspace anymore.

How To Reformat Your Windows To Go USB Drive

If you’re done using Windows on a drive, you can reformat the drive, but you’ll need to open a command prompt and type diskpart, then press enter.

Once you enter Diskpart you will need to find out which drive is the one you need to format, the list disk command will show you all the drive currently connected to your system. Take note of your drive number because we will need it in the next step.

We now need to select the disk, you can simply use the select disk command along with your drive number from the previous step.

Now that the disk is selected we can go ahead and wipe it.

Note: Clean is a ruthless command that will wipe all the file systems off your drive without any warnings, if you have selected the wrong drive previously this will result is a loss of data so make sure you have the right drive selected.

We can now use the Win + R keyboard combination to bring up the run box  and open Disk Management.

As soon as the Management console opens you will need to initialize the disk.

Then you can go ahead and create your drives partition.

That’s all there is to it.

Taken From: http://www.howtogeek.com/121322/how-to-create-a-portable-version-of-windows-8-without-extra-software/