Do You Want Multiple Wickr Accounts?

How to get another Wickr Account To Work

By Strictly-Software

If you are like me you might have an Android phone with Wickr the encrypted chat app installed on it.

However if you have been blocked by someone, locked out, forgotten your password or just want another Wickr account it's not easy as Wickr is tied to your Google account and device and if you try and install it from Google Play Store on a different device it will just say "Already Installed". 

You have to either remove the app from your phone and start again or use a different phone with a different Google Account linked to it as Google Play always knows what devices you have installed and which apps are on it.

I tried the obvious route first, use an Android Emulator such as NOX, and then created a new Google Account and Email address and then went to the PlayStore to download Wickr. The only thing was the link was broken and it kept sending me to an error page.

I tried downloading the APK file from a site I searched for Wickr Download APK, but even after installing it, it got to the 99% of "encrypting your device" e.g my NOX Emulator on Windows 8.1, and just hung forever.

Therefore I couldn't get the emulator to work. I could have installed another one but whats the point of slowing down a PC with multiple Android emulators just to watch free TV from Navisport etc?

Therefore I actually did a search for "Download Wickr For Windows 8.1" and all I got were help articles telling me to download further emulators and then install from Google Play. This was obviously a no go.

Therefore I actually tried the following which did work on Windows 8.1 from this link.

The Windows 10 link is the first one on the left. The rest are APK, Mac and IOS files.

To install on a Windows 8.1 machine do the following, without the need for an Android Emulator.

1. Create a new Google Account, username, password, add it to the 12 you already have.
2. Log out of any Google account you might be in e.g especially if you are using Chrome.
3. Go to this link https://pro-download.wickr.com/#/version/pro
4. Select "Windows - For use with Windows 10"  and download the application.
5. Install the MSI file called WickrMe-5.4.3.msi.
6. It may take a while but it should start to install, even on Windows 8.1.
7. Once installed, create a new Wickr account and username.
8. Find your old contacts and start chatting from your laptop or PC.

The direct download link can be found here if you click here.

It works for me, so it should work for you, don't spend hours trying to getting your emulator to install an APK file that just hangs. Try the Windows 10 Desktop MSI file first.

By Strictly-Software

Invalid File Handle - Movie Downloads Beware!

Invalid File Handle - Movie Downloads Beware!

By Strictly-Software

Recently I downloaded a film, Con Man (2018), however when I try to do anything with the file such as open, run, copy, move or delete it I get a Windows "Invalid File Handle" error message.

I did some research and found that on certain file systems such as NTFS, CDFS, exFAT, UDFS, FAT, and FAT32, there are some reserved file names that you should never use which causes this error. One of these is con. Others include: PRN, AUX, NUL, COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, COM5, COM6, COM7, COM8, COM9, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, LPT4, LPT5, LPT6, LPT7, LPT8, and LPT9.

I checked the filename of the movie and the person had only named it Con.Man.2018.1080p.mp4, meaning that Windows saw the filename as Con preventing me doing anything with this file.

At the moment it is permanently stuck on my file system as I cannot remove the files containing folder either.

I did have a copy of this file on a USB stick however which I could remove, obviously due to the different format of the USB disk drive. If I had used uTorrent to download the file directly to the USB drive instead of first to a folder on my Windows drive I wouldn't have had this issue.

I am basically looking for ways to remove this file as I cannot rename it to something else, either from Windows or the Command Prompt, to enable deletion.

I saw someone suggest renaming the file to \\.\Con.xxx but this does not work as I cannot get a file handle to rename it in the first place.

Therefore this is more of a warning write up than a "How To Guide", although you can be sure I will update this when I find a solution.

So if you are downloading files such as movies to your computer be careful and check the filename first and if you are using a tool such as a Torrent downloader ensure the downloaded file name is changed to something an NTFS or FAT type disk can handle, or download it straight to a USB drive with a different disk format which will allow file deletion.

For more information you can read this MSDN article, called "Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces".

It states: Do not use the following reserved names for the name of a file: CON, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, COM5, COM6, COM7, COM8, COM9, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, LPT4, LPT5, LPT6, LPT7, LPT8, and LPT9. Also avoid these names followed immediately by an extension; for example, NUL.txt is not recommended.

I will update this when I get a solution.

Find Any WiFi Password on a Windows Computer

Find Any WiFi Password on a Windows computer

By Strictly-Software

The title is a little misleading as it doesn't bring you back to the early 2000's and let you go driving around estates with a laptop, breaking into password encrypted WiFi routers. Not that you used to need to as in most estates your computer could pick up an unlocked router or three without a problem.

This is slightly different in it allows you to find ANY password that belongs to a router your PC/Laptop has been connected to in the past.

You may not like writing things down and have had a memory slip or you haven't used the router for so long the password escapes any looks for it.

First - Find out what you can access

This bit allows us to find out all the WiFi routers such as friends routers and gadgets like Chromecast that you have forgotten the password to.

Open your command prompt in administrator mode otherwise this won't work.

Once you have your command prompt up lets find out what WiFi spots we have connected to in the past or have access to. If you were around a friends one time and connected but forgot the password then you may need to use this to re-gain it if his WiFi router is in the list.

Type the following into the prompt: netsh wlan show profiles

It should then list all the routers you have had connections to from the computer you are on.

C:\Windows\system32>netsh wlan show profiles 

User profiles
-------------
    All User Profile     : Chromecast1034
    All User Profile     : BTHub4-NX23
    All User Profile     : TALKTALK-3ERA24
    All User Profile     : virginmedia8817891
    All User Profile     : strictlywifi10x
    All User Profile     : strictly-ukhorse-air

Now we have a list of spots and we pick the one we need the password for. The command is pretty similar to the preceding one it just needs the routers name added to it and the term key=clear. If you don't add this to the end then you won't get to view the password in clear text.

netsh wlan show profile BTHub4-NX23 key=clear

This will give you detailed info on the router, whether it connects automatically, authentication mode e.g WPA2 and even details of your current cost and whether you are over the data limit set by your provider.

Lets try and find the password for the connection BTHub4-NX23

C:\Windows\system32>netsh wlan show profile BTHub4-NX23 key=clear

Profile BTHub4-NX23 on interface WiFi:
=======================================================================

Applied: All User Profile

Profile information
-------------------
    Version                : 1
    Type                   : Wireless LAN
    Name                   : BTHub4-NX23
    Control options        :
        Connection mode    : Connect automatically
        Network broadcast  : Connect only if this network is broadcasting
        AutoSwitch         : Do not switch to other networks

Connectivity settings
---------------------
    Number of SSIDs        : 1
    SSID name              : "BTHub4-NX23"
    Network type           : Infrastructure
    Radio type             : [ Any Radio Type ]
    Vendor extension          : Not present

Security settings
-----------------
    Authentication         : WPA2-Personal
    Cipher                 : CCMP
    Security key           : Present
    Key Content            : r85583569z

Cost settings
-------------
    Cost                   : Unrestricted
    Congested              : No
    Approaching Data Limit : No
    Over Data Limit        : No
    Roaming                : No
    Cost Source            : Default

As you can see from the Key Content section the password for this router is r85583569z.

Open the WiFi section on your desktop and connect by adding the key and it should connect. If not you have a problem.

So if you don't like writing passwords down or just want to use your mates WiFi without spending hours hunting down where he put his WiFi routers login details then this trick can come in handy.

By Strictly-Software


© 2017 Strictly-Software

Turning off Windows 10 Privacy Features

Turning off Windows 10 Privacy Features

By Strictly-Software 

If you are like me and on Windows 8.1 then you will probably be constantly bombarded by messages from Microsoft about how you can obtain a free upgrade to Windows 10.

However before you upgrade you should beware of all the security and privacy concerns people have about this operation system.

With a little research it is well known that Microsoft have a close relationship with the US security services such as the CIA / NSA.

They have even bought up businesses such as Skype to prevent having to hack in back doors when they can instead have a wide open front door for all your personnal traffic, calls and texts.

As the video states.

This is a quick guide to fixing privacy concerns in Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system. 

The default settings and applications with Windows 10 have numerous security flaws, privacy problems, keystroke monitors installed and turned on by default.

This guide will help you fix the problems in a simple way.

Be sure to read this article as it will explain all the security holes in detail if you want more information on what Microsoft are monitoring and why.

However this quick overview video should help you on the way.





By Strictly-Software

© 2015 Strictly-Software

Windows 8 and Windows 8 RT - Issues and Workarounds to get Windows 8.1 behaviour

Getting around Window 8's issues

By Strictly-Software

I use Windows 8.1 (proper version - thank god) but if you are stuck on Windows 8 or the Windows 8 RT version you should upgrade to Windows 8.1 ASAP as the design of Windows 8 was so that they could use the same display format for both phones, tablets, PC's and laptops.

The problem was that the techies didn't want numptified hidden away features behind a design obviously meant for touch screens and not for coders.

So they introduced Windows 8 RT which was a sort of half way house between Win 8.1 and Win 8 as they realised they were going to have another Vista issue where people hated the OS and many skipped over it or stayed with the previous version anyway Windows XP (I know I did!).

So when they realised they had another Vista/XP issue on their hands they rolled out Win 8 RT which tried to get rid of the main tablet screen and have am option to get back to a normal desktop screen.

Windows 8.1 was a total reverse of Windows 8 with the desktop as the main screen and the horrible tablets accessible by the home button.

As the article says:

If your PC is currently running Windows 8 or Windows RT, it's free to update to Windows 8.1 or Windows RT 8.1. And unlike previous updates to Windows, you'll get this update from the Windows Store.

by following this Windows Knowledge Base article: upgrade from Windows 8.0 or 8.1 RT to Windows 8.1.

Making some changes

The first thing I hated about the OS was that the mouse would change the size of the screen without me asking it to. In Chrome or elsewhere I was constantly manually putting the screen size back to normal ratio 100%.

In fact the mouse was moving so fast I couldn't hardly see it and I needed to make some changes. The list below are those I made.

Increasing the size and changing the colour of the mouse

I changed the colour of the mouse using the "Pointers" tab where you can pick the group of pointers you want to use to "Windows Black (extra large)" in the top selection and in the bottom I chose "Normal Select".

     

Now I could see the cursor much easier due to the colour change as most programs have a white background so a white cursor with a black border is not very helpful.

Changing the auto drag that the mouse does

One of the annoying things about Windows 8+ is the auto drag ability of the mouse which enables you to highlight or drag features without using the CTRL key.

You can turn this off in the "Buttons" > "Click Lock" panel by de-selecting the "Turn on Click Lock" feature.

This was one of the major pains I had when I first used Windows 8.1 especially when I was remote desktopped into my work PC. Then I found a way to turn it off.

Changing the mouse controlling the size of the screen

This is one thing that really pissed me off. When I was surfing the net or just writing a swipe of the mouse would change the whole screen size.

Other Mouse Changes

I also did the following changes in the "Pointer Options" tab I changed the pointer speed to a slower one.

With a bigger black pointer it helps a lot. I also did the following.

• I chose to "Automatically move pointer to default selection in a dialogue box". No point hunting for CTRL keys is there! 
• I chose to "Show location of the pointer when the CTRL key is hit" 
• A nice circle appears helping you find the cursor. 
• I disabled the "Hide pointer when typing" option so that I can always see the cursor.

Other Windows 8.1 Programs

With all the numptyfictation going on with the Windows tablet format there are some actual applications that can help you without going command line.

Even though the start bar is pretty crap you can either use the "Search" function to find an app or just go into the app page and start typing. The words will just start to appear in a search box in the top right of the page e.g "Paint" to get the Paint application.

The Windows App Store is one of the great features that Windows 8 has introduced and there are lots of great programs you can download for free including "Live TV" to get TV from freeview channels as well as US and European TV shoes.

With WiFi and network connectivity you want to check that your broadband speed is fast and everything is okay. One of these programs is "Network Speed Test" which you can get from the App Store.

This application tests your broadband or WiFi speed and tells you whether you would have the capabilities of downloading high or low quality video, your internet status, network details and other ISP related information.

So now you know how to get Windows 8.1 features, change some annoying ones in the OS related to mouse usage and use the Windows App Store to download apps to test your WiFi for you.

You should now be on your way.

Testing Server Load Before Running Plugin Code On Wordpress

Testing Server Load Before Running Plugin Code On Wordpress

UPDATED - 10th Sep 2013

I have updated this function to handle issues on Windows machines in which the COM object might not be created due to security issues.

If you have a underpowered Linux server and run the bag of shite that is the WordPress CMS system on it then you will have spent ages trying to squeeze every bit of power and performance out of your machine.

You've probably already installed caching plugins at every level from WordPress to the Server and maybe even beyond....into the cloud....all stuff normal websites shouldn't have to do but it seems WordPress / Apache / PHP programmers love doing.

A fast optimised database, queries that return data in sets (not record by record) and some static pages for content that doesn't change constantly should be all you need but it seems that this is not the case in the world of WordPress!

Therefore if you have your own server or virtual server and the right permissions you might want to consider implementing some code in important plugins that prevents the job you intend running causing more performance problems if the server is already over loaded.

You can do this by testing for the current server load, setting a threshold limit and then only running the code you want if the server load is below that limit.

Of course security is key so lock down permissions to your apps and only let admin or the system itself run the code - never a user and never by a querystring that could be hacked!

The code is pretty simple.

It does a split for Windows and non Windows machines and then it checks for a way to test the server load in each branch.

For Windows it has two methods, one for old PHP code and one for PHP 5+.

In the Linux branch it tests for access to the /proc/loadavg file which contains the current load average on LINUX machines.

If it's not there it tries to access the shell_exec function (which may or may not be locked down due to permissions - up to you whether you allow access or not) and if it can run shell commands it calls the "uptime" function to get the current server load from that.

You can then call this function in whatever plugin or function you want and make sure your server isn't already overloaded before running a big job.

I already use it in all my own plugins, the Strictly Google Sitemap and my own version of the WP-O-Matic plugin.

/**
 * Checks the current server load
 *
 * @param boolean $win
 * @return string 
 *
 */
function GetServerLoad(){

 $os = strtolower(PHP_OS); 
 
 // handle non windows machines
 if(substr(PHP_OS, 0, 3) !== 'WIN'){
  if(file_exists("/proc/loadavg")) {    
   $load = file_get_contents("/proc/loadavg"); 
   $load = explode(' ', $load);     
   return $load[0]; 
  }elseif(function_exists("shell_exec")) {     
   $load = @shell_exec("uptime");
   $load = explode(' ', $load);        
   return $load[count($load)-3]; 
  }else { 
   return false; 
  } 
 // handle windows servers
 }else{ 
  if(class_exists("COM")) {     
   $wmi  = new COM("WinMgmts:\\\\."); 
   if(is_object($wmi)){
    $cpus  = $wmi->InstancesOf("Win32_Processor"); 
    $cpuload = 0; 
    $i   = 0;   
    // Old PHP
    if(version_compare('4.50.0', PHP_VERSION) == 1) { 
     // PHP 4      
     while ($cpu = $cpus->Next()) { 
      $cpuload += $cpu->LoadPercentage; 
      $i++; 
     } 
    } else { 
     // PHP 5      
     foreach($cpus as $cpu) { 
      $cpuload += $cpu->LoadPercentage; 
      $i++; 
     } 
    } 
    $cpuload = round($cpuload / $i, 2); 
    return "$cpuload%"; 
   }
  } 
  return false;     
 } 
}

A simple server load testing function that should work across Windows and Linux machines for load testing.

Accessing your computers external IP address from your computer without using a browser

Access your computers external IP address from your desktop without using a browser

Following on from yesterdays blog post about what can happen if you get given a new IP address and don't realise it, you might want a quick way to check your external IP address from your computer without having to open an Internet browser.

There are many "What is my IP address" sites about that show you your IP address plus other request headers such as the user-agent but you might want a quick way of seeing your external IP without having to open a browser first.

If you are using a LINUX computer it's pretty easy to use CURL or WGET to write a small script to scrape an IP checker page and return the HTML contents.

For instance in a command prompt this will return you the IP address using CURL by scraping the contents of icanhazip.com.

This site is good because it outputs the computers IP address that's accessing the URL in plain text so it means you don't have to do any reformatting at all.

curl icanhazip.com

However if you are on a Windows computer there is no simple way of getting your external IP address (the IP address your computer is seen on the outside world) without either installing Windows versions of CURL or WGET first or writing a script to do it for you using Microsoft objects.

Of course it would be nice if you could just use ipconfig from the command prompt to show your external address as well as your internal network details but unfortunately you can't do that.

As you're connected to the Internet through your router your PC isn't directly connected to the Internet.

Therefore there is no easy way you can get the IP address your ISP has assigned to your computer without seeing it from another computer on the Internet.

Therefore you can either use one of the many IP checker tools like whatismyip.com or icanhazip.com to get the details. Or you can even just click this link to search for "what is my IP address" and get Google to show you your IP address above the results.

However if you do want to do it without a browser you can write a simple VBS script to do it for you and then you can access your external IP from your desktop with a simple double click of the mouse.

How to make a VBS Script to get your computers external IP address.

1. Open notepad.
2. Copy and paste the following VBS code into a new notepad window. 
3. Save the file as "whatismyip.vbs" on to your desktop.
4. To view your IP address just double click the file icon and a Windows message box will open and show you the IP address.

The script is very simple and all it does is scrape the plain text contents of the webpage at icanhazip.com and output it in a pop-up - simples!

Option Explicit
Dim objHTTP : Set objHTTP = WScript.CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXmlHttp")
objHTTP.Open "GET", "http://icanhazip.com", False
objHTTP.Send
Wscript.Echo objHTTP.ResponseText
Set objHTTP  = Nothing

If you really want to use this from the command line you can do it by following these steps.

1. Open a command prompt.
2. Type "cscript " leaving a space afterwards (and without the quotes!).
3. Drag the whatismyip.vbs file to the command prompt so that you have a space between cscript and the path of the file e.g C:\Documents and Settings\myname>cscript "C:\Documents and Settings\myname\Desktop\whatismyip.vbs"
4. Hit Enter.
5. The IP address will appear after some guff about the Windows Script Host Version.

The output should look something like this:

C:\Documents and Settings\
myname >cscript "C:\Documents and Settings\myname\Desktop\whatismyip.vbs"
Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.7
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
89.42.212.239

So there you go, a LINUX and WINDOWS way of accessing your external IP address from your desktop without having to open Chrome or FireFox.

CTRL + ALT + DEL on Remote Desktop

Accessing the Task Manager through Remote Desktop - CTRL + ALT + DEL

Today I tried to access my work PC from home through Remote Desktop over a VPN.

However when I logged in the page was totally black.

No menus, no taskbar, nothing to press nothing to see.

Was the PC out of memory and couldn't show me anything or just bust. I needed the task manager on that PC to see what was going on.

To send CTRL - ALT - DEL over a remote desktop connection to get to your task manager, see running processes and open or close programs then you need to be able to send that command over the connection. And if you don't know the keystrokes it's not simple if you don't know it.

There are two ways to access this.

1. If you can see the task bar in the footer of your remote screen just right click on it and hit taskbar to open it up.

2. If you cannot see anything use the following combination of keys: CTRL + ALT + END. This will bring up the same screen as if you had hit CTRL + ALT + DEL on the computer.

You can choose to shut down, reboot or show the task manager.

Why it's those keystrokes I don't know as it's not intuitive but it works and it's good to remember and write down if you forget.

Re-Starting Windows Explorer Remotley

If your windows explorer has crashed or killing your remote computers memory or CPU you can kill the process in the task manager and restart it without rebooting.

Just follow this.

Kill the run away windows process.
Wait a few seconds.
In task manager go to the "Applications" tab.
In the bottom right corner select the "New Task" button.
In the dialogue that opens up type "explorer" in the "open" text box. This will open a new instance of Windows Explorer.

Remember killing processes is not advisable as killing a process means the normal shut down functions of that application have not run and this could mean that files are left on your disk, keys in your registry and so on - so only do it if you really need to.

A clean up of your registry with a tool like CCleaner afterwards and regular de-fragmentation of your disk is advisable if you regularly use this method as it will keep your PC clean and fast.

Running Whois commands from a Windows PC

How to run Whois commands from Windows Computers

Unlike LINUX this is a little more complicated and you will need to use a 3rd party tool like WhoisCL which you can download from here: http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/WhoisCL-Download-44833.html

Be careful to click the "External Mirror link" and not the bright flashing "Download Now link" which is just there to trick you into downloading some kind of crapware.

Once downloaded, extract and then open the folder.

Copy the file WhoisCL.exe into your /windows/system32 folder OR make sure you edit your System Environment path so that it knows where the WhoisCl.exe file is located. This prevents you having to put the full path into the command prompt.

Also beware that many viruses often pretend to be commonly downloaded utilities like WhoisCL.exe so if you find a file with the name WhoisCL.exe in a place that you didn't install it then it "may" be a virus.

Make sure you always virus check every file you download and if you think you have a trojan use SDFix.exe in safe mode to hunt and destroy them. I have found that when virus checkers like McAfee or Kaspersky have run a full scan they still haven't found viruses that SDFix.exe has. Bewared though, because of the way the program works other Anti-Virus tools may falsely identify it as a virus.

To run Whois on a windows machine XP, Vista, Win7 (and above) then do the following.

Open up a command prompt and type:

C:\users\me\>whoiscl microsoft.com

You will get back a full Whois report for the domain you are looking at.

Add the flag -r to prevent the top line of the report from coming back e.g

C:\users\me\>whoiscl -r microsoft.com

C:\Users\me>whoiscl -r microsoft.com

WHOIS Server: whois.markmonitor.com

Registrant:
        Domain Administrator
        Microsoft Corporation
        One Microsoft Way
         Redmond WA 98052
        US
        domains@microsoft.com +1.4258828080 Fax: +1.4259367329

    Domain Name: microsoft.com

        Registrar Name: Markmonitor.com
        Registrar Whois: whois.markmonitor.com
        Registrar Homepage: http://www.markmonitor.com

    Administrative Contact:
        Domain Administrator
        Microsoft Corporation
        One Microsoft Way
         Redmond WA 98052
        US
        domains@microsoft.com +1.4258828080 Fax: +1.4259367329
    Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
        MSN Hostmaster
        Microsoft Corporation
        One Microsoft Way
         Redmond WA 98052
        US
        msnhst@microsoft.com +1.4258828080 Fax: +1.4259367329

    Created on..............: 1991-05-01.
    Expires on..............: 2021-05-02.
    Record last updated on..: 2011-08-14.

    Domain servers in listed order:

    ns3.msft.net
    ns2.msft.net
    ns1.msft.net
    ns5.msft.net
    ns4.msft.net




MarkMonitor is the Global Leader in Enterprise Brand Protection.

Domain Management
MarkMonitor Brand ProtectionÔäó
AntiFraud Solutions
Corporate Consulting Services

Visit MarkMonitor at www.markmonitor.com
Contact us at 1 800 745 9229
In Europe, at +44 (0) 20 7840 1300

Twitter Hash Tag Scanner SEO Application

Introducing the first version of my Twitter Hash Tag Scanner Application

The Strictly HashTag Hunter is a Windows form application that allows you to find the most relevant HashTags and Twitter accounts for a variety of specified search terms and keywords.

This application is ideal for people who have just created a Twitter account and want to analyse their own site specific keywords to find #HashTags they should be following or using themselves.

For instance you might have a blog or site that uses an AutoBlogging tool like my Strictly TweetBot Wordpress Plugin and you might want to set up various AutoTweets with relevant HashTags that are related to certain keywords and content snippets.

This tool also helps you find the most important Twitter accounts that you should be following as it analyses those people that are using the keywords or sentences that you enter on Twitter at that point in time to find the most popular HashTags related to those words as well as the accounts that are using them the most.

Obviously the time of day you run your scan will affect the results as different people Tweet at different times of the day but you will see from the results which Twitter accounts have the most followers and therefore worth following for your own account.

The primary aim of this tool is to help you save time trying to work out which #HashTags to use for your own Tweets as well as working out which @accounts to follow for your own Twitter account.

The Strictly Twitter Hash Tag Hunter is built as a windows application that runs on your own desktop and it hooks into Twitters API to obtain the results. It is perfect for SEO and Social Media analysts as well as people with a new Twitter account who don't know which hash tags and accounts they should be following to make an impact on the social scene.

Screen 1 shows how you enter one or more search terms that you want to find information for. These terms can be anything but if you are looking to utilise this tool with my Strictly TweetBot Wordpress Plugin then you should be looking to find the #HashTags and @Accounts to follow on Twitter related to the key terms your website is based on.

For example if you were running a site about Horse Racing and wanted to find out which Twitter @Accounts to follow and which #HashTags to use in your Tweets you would enter a number of search terms like so:

Horse Racing
Kempton Park
fromthestables.com
Free Racing Tips 

Enter each keyword or search term on it's own line.

Once you have entered each term on it's own line you click the "Search" button and the Scanner gets to work analysing your keywords and finding related Twitter information.

For each search term and keyword it will scan the Twitter API for those words looking for the most popular #hashtags that are related to those keywords.

It will also find the Twitter accounts that make the most use of these terms before ordering the accounts by the number of followers each account has and the hash tags by the number of times they are referenced by those accounts.

On completing the Scan

Screen 2 shows the most popular hash tags found for the search terms that were entered.

The most popular hash tags found for the entered search terms and keywords.

Screen 3 shows the most followed Twitter accounts that used the terms you searched for.

The most followed Twitter accounts for the entered search terms and keywords.

Following Accounts or Hash Tags

Once the Twitter Scan has completed and you have looked at the results you can simply click on the Account or Twitter Link column value to open up the desired URL in your default browser.

Screen 4 shows you selecting the desired Account you want to examine on Twitter.

Selecting an account to examine


Screen 5 shows the http://twitter.com page opening in your browser where you can decide whether or not the account or hash tag is worth following.

Viewing the account in Twitter and following them


If you are already logged into Twitter at the time then it's just a simple matter of clicking the "Follow" button in the top right of the screen and your own Twitter account will now be following the account you opened.


About the Twitter Hash Tag Scanner Application

The application is a multi-threaded standalone executable Windows application and it has been built with users and Twitter in mind so that the Twitter API is not overloaded and abused and that you can continue to get all the information you need from their service.

A progress bar keeps you updated with the amount of scans it has carried out as well as the number of accounts and hashtags it has already found matching your search terms.

If for whatever reason Twitter blocks your requests (for example if you were hammering their API with dozens of search terms in one scan) then the application will slow down the amount of the requests it makes and increase the delays between requests. It also has some built in methods for bypassing certain blocking methods as well as the ability to access the information from other sources.

I am hoping to expand this tool over the years and I have had great feedback from both novice users who have found it very useful in deciding who to follow when they first start to use Twitter as well as SEO experts who utilise social media and Twitter all the time for marketing purposes.

As an introductory offer I am offering this application for the same price as a small donation of only £10.00 and you can buy this application from my application order page.

Remotely Reboot Windows PC

How to remotely restart a Windows PC

I have been experiencing lots of problems with my work PC latley.

Usually these problems happen at the weekend and they turn my PC which usually performs like a bag of shit into a much larger and more non responsive bag of shit that makes any kind of work on it virtually impossible to carry out.

This means that not only does Sods Law come into effect which make me lose lots of money from my Betfair Bot not being able to place bets (why can it never fail during periods that I would have placed bad bets!). But it also means that if I manage to terminal service into the machine that it cannot connect to any other server on the network, access the internet, receive updates or send and recieve email.

I haven'nt got to the bottom of the problem yet but one thing I managed to find out today which might be useful for others to know is how to reboot a remote machine remotely from the command line.

If you can connect to the VPN that the remote PC is on and can PING the machine then you can try restarting your problematic PC. As we all know from any first line technical support a reboot is always the first port of call in any technical emergency and for Windows machines it seems to solve around 99% of all problems.

So this is the command I used from the command prompt.

shutdown -m \\pieceofshitPC -r -f

The -r flag tells it to restart rather than just shut down and the -f flag tells it to forcably shut down any running applications.

The other option is to just run

shutdown -i

from the RUN prompt and the Shutdown.exe application will open which will give you a graphical interface to manage the shut down.

This offers features such as being able to log a reason for the shutdown and specifying a time period for the system to wait before trying the reboot or restart command.

This GUI interface is just a wrapper to save those who are loath to open command prompts but if you want to use the command prompt the following flags are possible.

-i : Display GUI interface, must be the first option
-l : Log off (cannot be used with -m option)
-s : Shutdown the computer
-r : Shutdown and restart the computer
-a : Abort a system shutdown
-m \\computername : Remote computer to shutdown/restart/abort
-t xx : Set timeout for shutdown to xx seconds
-c “comment” : Shutdown comment (maximum of 127 characters)
-f : Forces running applications to close without warning
-d [u][p]:xx:yy : The reason code for the shutdown

Happy rebooting!