Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on April 01, 2008 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

It’s not often that I come across a single widget/gadget that is good enough to constitute it’s own article, and I never expected to find one that would be good enough for its own CyberNotes article. When I tried out Informer, a Yahoo Widget, I was absolutely blown away at everything it could do. It’s almost an entire application in itself!

What could this possibly do that makes it so impressive. It rolls about ten or fifteen different widgets up into one. It can monitor your network/CPU usage, check your IMAP/POP3 mailboxes, show your battery life, fetch RSS feeds, and provide quick access to files/folders that you use often. To keep it all organized Informer shows everything in a single toolbar located on your desktop:

(Click to Enlarge)

Before we proceed with the different features that Informer has you should know that each thing you add to the toolbar is called a “sensor.” They are kind of like mini-widgets in some sense, and as seen in the screenshot above there is quite a lengthy list of different sensors that can be added.

Heads up: I’ve found that this widget alone will consume between 10MB and 40MB of memory depending on what and how much you add to it. With all the different things it’s capable of doing this might be worth it, but I know some of you covet your memory as if your life depended on it.

–Email Checker–

Informer is capable of checking email from a variety of different email accounts. It has special options for Gmail (both regular Gmail users and Gmail for Domains) and Yahoo Mail accounts, but it can be configured to work with any IMAP or POP3 email account. When you receive new mail you’ll be alerted with a slick little notification window that pops out of the side of the screen.

You can add as many mail accounts as you would like, and then pick how many messages it displays as well as the retrieval interval. Heck, you can even specify a custom icon to be used with each different mailbox you add.

–System Stats–

I know that a lot of you are stats addicts, and find enjoyment in knowing how hard your computer is working. Informer has a variety of different sensors that can be added for monitoring different areas of your machine: CPU, network, system uptime, battery, memory, disk, and swap.

–RSS Feeds–

Is it ever possible to have too many ways to read your RSS feeds? Apparently not because Informer is also able to retrieve and display RSS feeds for your favorite sites. With every feed that you have the widget monitor you can specify the update interval, and you can provide a custom icon.

–Shortcuts–

To make this widget even more useful you can use it as a place to hold shortcuts to your favorite files, folders, and websites. If you want to add a shortcut just drag and drop a file, folder, or URL onto the toolbar. If it’s a folder that you’ve added you’ll be able to open it right there and view the contents. What’s really nice is that the window that appears is completely resizable:

–And More–

Is that it? Not quite. There are several more sensors that we haven’t covered in this article including:

• A power button to turn off, reboot, or lock your computer
• Recycle Bin
• WiFi signal strength
• Internet Radio
• Date/Time (with a pop-out calendar)
• Images
• Text

–Preferences–

Not only can you customize each of the sensors that you add to Informer, but you can also customize the toolbar itself. You can do things like specify an external RSS reader and mail client, change the appearance of the toolbar, enable multiple monitor support, and much more. Here’s a glimpse of the different areas that can be customized:

If Informer sounds like something that would be useful to you head on over to Yahoo Widgets to get the Informer widget. It’s completely free, and I think you’ll be pretty shocked with everything it is capable of.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Continue reading Fractal Design’s Define Mini custom PC case ditches LEDs for style

Fractal Design’s Define Mini custom PC case ditches LEDs for style originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 02 Jan 2011 00:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So if the HTC Incredible was coded as the ADR6300 in Verizon’s internal systems, just what do you think an ADR6400 could signify? A pair of screenshots from a VZW employee living out a Julian Assange daydream have seemingly confirmed the common expectation that Verizon will very soon deliver its Incredible successor — better known to you and us as the LTE-equipped HTC Thunderbolt. Aiding and abetting the HTC handset in getting the red team’s LTE network started will be Samsung’s SCH-i520, an Android 2.2 device equipped with that most critical of accessories, a front-facing camera. Both are now standing on the precipice of showing up for sale, those zeroes in the stock column shouldn’t remain so round for much longer.

[Thanks, Andrew]

HTC Thunderbolt and Samsung i520 bring LTE gravitas to Verizon’s stock-keeping systems originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 01 Jan 2011 22:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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New year means a new price for the Verizon-branded Galaxy Tab. Droid-Life has received word from a couple of VZW store employees that the big red network intends to chop a nice $100 chunk off its price for the 7-inch Android tablet. Though this move hasn’t yet been made official, the Galaxy Tab should soon be available to buy for $500, without any contractual obligations and plus a $60 movie rental voucher that can be redeemed in Samsung’s Media Hub or the preloaded Blockbuster Mobile app. You shouldn’t freak out if you’ve just bought a Tab either, as Verizon’s also said to be offering a benevolent refund for the difference in price to buyers of the Samsung slate who happen to have receipts dating from the last 14 days.

Verizon cutting Galaxy Tab price to $500, will refund any purchases from last two weeks originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 01 Jan 2011 21:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on October 02, 2008 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

The other day I had someone who ran into a big problem that many of us hope to never come across. What happened was the user had forgotten the administrator password for their Windows Vista machine, and had no idea how they could log on. I’ve had people ask how to do this kind of thing in the past, but had never actually looked for a viable solution myself.

I was determined to find a workaround this time, and it had to be one that didn’t involve reinstalling Windows. That’s when I came across the free Trinity Rescue Kit, which turned out to be exactly what the doctor ordered. As you might expect this is a Linux-based password reset tool, and it takes no time at all to put it to work. In fact this works so well that it will make you think twice about the security of your own system!

Here’s what you have to do:

1. Download and burn the Trinity Rescue Kit (TRK) ISO image to a CD or DVD.
2. Restart your computer, and make sure it boots from the TRK CD/DVD.
3. When presented with the TRK menu be sure to select the first option that reads Run Trinity Rescue Kit 3.3 (default):
   
4. TRK will take a minute or so to finish loading, and when it’s done you should be left with a prompt where you can type your commands. Note that Steps 5 and 6 are not needed to change a password, but can be helpful.
5. The main command we’ll be working with is winpass, and for getting started you should type winpass -l to see a list of users on the machine. When you type that command it will ask you which drive you want the user list retrieved from, and in most cases you’ll want to type the number 1 followed by the Enter key (this selects the primary partition):
   
6. After you’ve selected the partition you’ll be presented with a list of users on the machine along with what accounts have been disabled or locked:
   
7. You should once again be at a prompt, and this time we’re actually going to change or reset a password for one of the accounts on the machine. At the prompt type:
   winpass -u Administrator
   In this example “Administrator” is the username you want to reset the password for. Replace it with the username you’re working with.
8. You’ll now be asked which partition you’d like to have analyzed/mounted just like in Step 5, and you’ll likely want to select the first one. After that you can look under the Account Bits section which lets you know whether the user’s password ever expires, if the account is disabled, and more. What you’ll want to focus on, however, is the User Edit Menu that lists the type of operations you can perform on the account. The easiest thing for you would probably be to choose the first option, which will just clear the password on the account:
   
9. That’s all there is to it. After that you should receive a message stating that a backup of the account has been made, and all you have to do now is restart the computer. If you’ve chosen to clear the password the next time you boot up you want to be sure to leave the password blank.

If you look at the options available in Step 8 you’ll also notice that there are other things you can do to accounts on the machine. This includes changing a password, promoting a non-admin user to an administrator, or enabling a disabled account. Once you get the hang of this tool you’ll pretty much be able to give yourself full access to any Windows machine that you can physically get your hands on. Crazy, huh?

Get Trinity Rescue Kit

Copyright © 2011 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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