Just when you thought there were plenty of free web services that allow you to easily share your desktop with others, new webapp Screenleap simplifies screen sharing even further. Screenleap allows you to share your desktop with as many people as you choose, without signing up for an account, downloading and installing anything, and does it all for free.

In fact, the only software you'll need on your system to use Screenleap is the Java Runtime Environment, which most people already have. The first time you use Screenleap, you'll have to grant the service permission to run in your browser, but aside from that, the service is completely hassle and setup-free. Just visit the website, click to share your screen, and go. Once your screen is shared, you'll get a link to send to as many people as you want to see what you're working on. The URL is only active while your screen sharing session is live, and while you don't get advanced tools like annotations, zooming, or chat, once it's running, you do get a ridiculously simple way to share what you're working on with others.

Granted, there's no shortage of options for screen-sharing and collaboration. Google+ has it, and we've examined other options in the past, like TeamViewer, LogMeIn, Join.me, and GoToMyPC. Even if you prefer one of those other options, Screenleap may be worth keeping in the arsenal when you don't have the time or energy to fire up one of the others.

Screenleap | via The Next Web

So you're out of the house for the weekend, and you've brought your trusty laptop with you, but you need something from your home machine. Here are a ton of different ways you can get to your home computer from anywhere, whether you just need a few files or full, unfettered access.

Access Your Computer's Screen with Remote Desktop Tools

No matter what you need from your home computer, you can get it by sharing your computer's screen with a remote desktop tool. We've shown you how to do this with TightVNC (and even secure it with Hamachi), though there are a ton of great tools out there, from the dead simple TeamViewer to Windows' built-in Remote Desktop tool. If you want access from your phone or tablet, you can use one of our favorite mobile VNC clients as well, like PocketCloud for Android or Screens for iOS. It isn't always the most efficient way to access your computer from afar (say, if you just need to grab one file), but it's easily the most versatile.

Access Your Home Network with a VPN

If you don't need direct access to your computer, but want to act as if your laptop is still connected to your home network, you can do so by creating a VPN with LogMeIn Hamachi. This will let you listen to shared iTunes libraries, access shared folders, or do anything else you could do from inside your network. If you add the free Privoxy application to the mix, you can even use that VPN to secure and encrypt all your web browsing, so no one on that sketchy coffee shop Wi-Fi can see what you're doing. LogMeIn Hamachi is our personal favorite VPN, but there are some other great ones out there, including your guys' favorite, OpenVPN. Of course, Windows has a built-in VPN tool too, for you Windows-only folks.

Stream Media to All Your Devices From Home

If all you're looking for is access to your music and videos, VPNs and VNC can seem like overkill. Instead, you could just use an app like Air Video (for iPhone users), StreamToMe (for Mac and iPhone users), or Plex (for all users) to live convert and stream your videos to your computers and mobile devices. If it's music you want, Audiogalaxy and Subsonic both provide pretty neat services that let you access your tunes from the web or from your phone—no need to deal with a long, arduous upload process like you would with Google Music (though we do still love Google Music).

Access Your Important Files On-The-Go

If it's just regular old files you need, there are a ton of ways to do that. While you could, of course, just sync your important files to Dropbox (even if they're outside your Dropbox folder), setting up a file sharing server can give you access to all the files you want, without dealing with Dropbox's size limitations. We're currently fans of the Pogoplug software, which makes sharing your files super easy—though with a bit of work, you can roll your own awesome, drag-and-drop enabled web sharing service, too.

Print, Torrent, and More Using Simple Remote Tools

You can get a remote access app designed for nearly any task these days. Apart from the basics above, you can also shut down your Windows computer from anywhere with a simple app, or print documents at home with Google Cloud Print, or, if you're anti-Google, this Dropbox trick for both Windows and Mac.

If it's torrenting you're into, both of our favorite BitTorrent clients for Windows and OS X have remote UIs built-in. With just a bit of setup, you can monitor your torrents, add new ones, and even download the resulting files to your laptop or smartphone. You can also add new torrents with Dropbox, though you won't be able to monitor them (if that matters to you).

These are just a few of the things you can do from afar, but they should get you almost anything you need with minimal setup. If you prefer to have your home computer go to sleep while you're away, you can even set up wake-on-LAN to turn it back on from afar. Got any other remote access tricks we didn't mention? Share them with us in the comments below.

Windows: The built-in Remote Desktop (RDP) feature in Windows is a convenient way to access your computer remotely, but it's limited to only one user accessing the PC at a time. TechSpot shares this patch to get around that limitation.

Typically, if you were logged in with RDP on a computer, if someone else tried to remote into that computer at the same time, you'd be bumped off. There are a couple of cases where you might want or need simultaneous RDP sessions. You and your partner could both access a home computer's programs and files while at work, for example. Or, as TechSpot suggests, you could have a dedicated Media Center PC in the living room and remotely access all the files on the computer without interrupting someone watching TV.

A Universal Termsrv.dll Patch, provided by a developer who goes by the handle DeepXW, enables this for you. Run the executable as an administrator to install. The patch will backup your original termsrv.dll file in the Windows system directory, but if you want to be cautious, back up the file yourself first.

Enable Concurrent Desktop Sessions in Windows | TechSpot

The team behind Screencast-o-Matic, one of your top five screen recording services, also have a new side project: Quick Screen Share, a webapp that uses Java to connect you and a friend's computers together so you can share desktops, collaborate, or troubleshoot problems and issues.

Quick Screen Share doesn't require that you download a client or sign up for an account. Since it uses Java, it works in Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. Just visit the site, type in your name, and tell the service whether you want to share your screen or have your friend share theirs. Then provide your friend's email address, and they'll get a link to click that will bring them into the screen-sharing session.

The developers behind Quick Screen Share point out that the service is in beta right now, and that it establishes a peer-to-peer connection between the two computers in the session, so users on networks that are particularly locked down may not be able to use it. Regardless, when it does work, it's a free, easy, and hassle-free way to share your screen with someone else, without forcing them to download a plug-in (assuming they have Java installed) or sign up for a new service to do it.

Quick Screen Share