Oct 03

Samsung’s Media Hub Beta program for Galaxy S II owners adds some points to your Smart TV’s IQ

Posted in: galaxy s ii, GalaxySIi, hdpostcross, minipost, mobilepostcross, samsung, Today's Chili

Media Hub is nothing new to those toting Galaxy Tabs or Galaxy S phones. However, bigger screens are always better whether you’re watching 30 Rock or MacGruber, right? Good thing Sammy’s launched a beta program for its video service that lets those who are selected see all their favorite shows and movies on their Smart TVs. Just register at the source link below, and Samsung will send those it selects an email invitation to download the Media Hub Beta application. The catch (there’s always a catch) — it’s only available to Galaxy S II owners, and your Smart TV must be a 2011 model. But, if you do hit the Media Hub Beta lotto, the company’s handing out $25 voucher to use with the service. As if you needed another reason to go get Samsung’s superphone.

Samsung’s Media Hub Beta program for Galaxy S II owners adds some points to your Smart TV’s IQ originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Oct 2011 22:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 03

Double portion of prepaid LG Android handsets coming to Net10

Posted in: mobilepostmini, Today's Chili

The upcoming battle of the budget Androids just won two new recruits courtesy of Net10. The MVNO is offering up the LG Optimus Net prepaid with a 3.2-inch HVGA display, 800MHz processor, 3MP camera (though Net10’s site wrongly mentions 5MP), Bluetooth, WiFi, 3G and an included 4GB microSD card expandable to 32GB. There’s also a slider version called the Optimus Q, which we’re trying very hard not to confuse with last year’s Optimus Q and which actually looks like a variant of Virgin Mobile’s Optimus Slider. There’s no price tag in sight, but contrary to the saying you probably can afford it.

[Thanks, Dwayne]

Double portion of prepaid LG Android handsets coming to Net10 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Oct 2011 22:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 03

Get A Free Skin With Your Dell Notebook Computer

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on July 28, 2006 by CyberNet.

Dell
With back to school coming up, there will be herds of college students (most with parents in tow) out to buy laptops. Dell is offering a free notebook skin to try to entice people to purchase any Inspiron or XPS M1210 notebook. They’ve got a wide variety of skins to choose from with several college or university designs as well as patterned designs. Here you can find the list of available skins.

This is how you can get one: Purchase any Inspiron or XPS M1210 notebook between now and August 30th. If you’re eligible, the information will be listed in the ‘Description’ column when you receive your packing slip. Go to www.dell.com/skins and click ‘Redeem Your Reward’ and follow the instructions. It’s estimated it will take 2-3 weeks for your skin to ship after the computer has shipped. Right this is just a promotion. Those who want a skin but purchased prior to this promotion aren’t eligible.

Some of the skins do look pretty slick, although it reminds me of the mounds of cell phone covers from back in the day. If you want a personalized look, this will do the trick.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 03

Toshiba’s 4K, glasses-free 3DTV announced in Japan with more specs this time

Posted in: 3d tv, ceatec, hdpostcross, hdtv, Japan, LCD, Today's Chili, Toshiba

We first saw the retail edition of Toshiba’s 3840×2160 resolution autostereoscopic (no glasses) 3DTV when it was announced in Europe at IFA last month, and now it has debuted in Japan during CEATEC. This time the company dropped a few more details, revealing that in lenticular 3D mode it’s limited to an effective resolution of 1280×720, and showed off the face tracking that automatically optimizes the experience for up to nine simultaneous viewers depending on where they’re sitting. Also mentioned were an optional THD-MBA1 input adapter due in 2012 and that 4K-res streaming IPTV is currently being tested. The Regza 55X3 will be priced comparably to its $10K~ Euro-spec counterpart when it arrives in December, but there’s still no word on when it will ship in the US. Check out a few pictures of the presentation in the gallery below.

Gallery: Toshiba’s REGZA 55×3 announced as world’s first 4K2K TV with glasses-free 3D

Toshiba’s 4K, glasses-free 3DTV announced in Japan with more specs this time originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Oct 2011 21:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 03

Helpful Tip: Is it Illegal to Use Someone Else’s WiFi?

Posted in: Today's Chili, wifi

This article was written on June 17, 2007 by CyberNet.

WifiWhile many of you may see no harm in using someone else’s WiFi Internet over an unsecured network, it is in fact illegal! Even further, you could get arrested and fined for it! I’m sure you’re thinking, “but if they’re stupid enough not to secure their network, why shouldn’t I be able to use it?” I’m sure some of you have even snooped around your neighbor’s unsecured network before? You just happened to notice that their connection wasn’t secure so you decided to take a peak around?

With wireless broadband Internet a common thing these days, it’s not unusual to be able to pull up several different wireless networks from your home, depending on where you live.  This is why it’s important that you first and foremost secure your own network, but secondly, realize that it’s illegal to piggy-back off of your neighbor to get free Internet.

How’d you like to get arrested for stealing Wi-Fi? As odd as that sounds, it happens.  One perfect example of this came out of St. Petersburg Florida in July of 2005.  A man was arrested on charges of “unauthorized access to a computer network,” which is a third-degree felony. This guy actually made the act obvious though, after he pulled his SUV into a stranger’s driveway and sat there with his laptop visible. The homeowner noticed this and called the police.

If you’re in dire need of a connection, it’s not that difficult to find a legal, free alternative. Many restaurants, coffee shops, and cafe’s offer a free connection. Instead of “borrowing” from the nearest home with a WiFi connection, or your neighbor, just head on over to your local Panera Bread or even McDonald’s to get your connection. There’s no need to break the law! Oh, and did I mention to secure your own network?

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 03

OpenOffice with a Ribbon?

Posted in: Features, Freeware, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on August 11, 2009 by CyberNet.

openoffice ribbon-1.jpg

I was going back and forth whether I should write about this, but I wanted to see what everyone’s thoughts were on this. I posted on Twitter a week ago about news of OpenOffice.org working on a ribbon-like design for an upcoming version of their office suite. When I saw the news on an official Sun blog I was rather disappointed, which is why I wasn’t even going to mention it here on the site.

On Twitter people were responding to me with similar feelings, but for different reasons. A lot of what I heard from others was in regards to how people hate the ribbon design in Microsoft Office 2007. Obviously anytime you’re dealing with a new interface it will take some getting used to, but personally I love the ribbon in Office 2007. It’s exposed me to features I probably wouldn’t have found otherwise, and people I dealt with who had previously struggled with using Microsoft Office seemingly found their way around much better. So I think Microsoft is on the right track.

Why then am I disappointed that OpenOffice.org could be moving to a similar design? Lack of innovation. Anyone can copy the features, functionality, and design of another application. You have to think outside the box if you want to set yourself apart though. Think about Firefox. They didn’t get to where they are today by “playing catchup” to IE6… they innovated. They came up with a browser that could be slim and simple, or unbelievably powerful with the use of extensions. Mozilla looked at the direction the browser market was heading instead of watching the direction their competitor was heading. As a result they made the market leader trying to play catchup with them (in terms of functionality).

So what should OpenOffice.org do to innovate? Well, the first thing I think they need to address are the reasons users and companies are afraid to adopt their software. They need to make sure that their software is able to save the common file formats (DOC, XLS, etc…) exactly the same way that Microsoft does. I should be able to flip back and forth between the two office suites without ever having to worry whether something is going to get messed up in the transition. Right now, however, it’s like playing a game of “telephone”… you never know if what’s going to come out on the other end is what you actually said. That’s a risk people don’t want to take when it comes to sending stuff to friends, family, coworkers, and clients.

Once they’ve got all that ironed out I think that’s when they need to move on to innovative stuff. Things are moving to the cloud, and that’s something I think they need to start embracing. Integrate with online editors like Google Docs and Zoho, or let users save/open files on sites like Box.net or maybe even to a personal FTP account. Sure there are add-ons for OpenOffice.org that do stuff like this, but it should be so tightly integrated into the office suite that I forget I’m even dealing with the cloud. For example, if I try to save a file to Google Docs while I’m offline I don’t want it to give me the usual yada yada about not being connected to the Internet. All I should see is a little sliding window in the corner (requiring no interaction) notifying me that this happened, and that once I am connected to the Internet again it will just go ahead and automatically save it. Don’t make me remember to save it again when I already told you I wanted to do it.

So those are my thoughts. When I saw this blog post by Sun I felt like I lost a little respect for them, and it’s not often that I feel that way with an open source project. It also solidified in my mind why it’s going to be so hard for them to get any kind of mass adoption.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 03

CyberNotes: How to Test your Website in nearly all Browsers

Posted in: CyberNotes, Freeware, Software, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on December 21, 2006 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Tutorial Thursday

The biggest hassle with Web development is that different browsers have a tendency to display sites a little differently. Our site is typically verified in the latest two versions of Firefox, Flock, Opera, and Internet Explorer. I have machines that run two versions of each of those browsers, but if you didn’t, notice Safari isn’t on that list. First I’m going to walk you through where I find old versions of all the different browsers (standalone and installable versions) and then I’ll cover a couple websites that do the dirty work for you.

–Firefox–

Firefox is the Web browser that is beginning to capture a large percentage of the market share from Internet Explorer. Developers typically rejoice at this because there are normally far less problems designing websites that work with Firefox than with Internet Explorer. The best part is that it is a piece of cake to get your hands on any version of Firefox, even all the way back to Firefox (Phoenix) 0.1!

 

–Flock–

 Flock is a branch off of Firefox and is currently based on Firefox 1.5. Technically speaking if your site works in Firefox 1.5 then it shouldn’t have any problems in Flock, but it is always better to be safe by testing it in Flock as well.

 

–Internet Explorer–

The most popular browser used on the Internet is indisputably Internet Explorer, but other alternatives are starting to creep up and take over its’ market share. To make things a little more difficult, Microsoft does not allow more than one instance of IE to be installed at the same time. Therefore you will find the standalone versions below to be extremely useful. Note: Internet Explorer is much more standards compliant than previous versions and coding a website to work with it is much easier, but it isn’t quite as nice as other browsers yet.

 

–Opera–

Opera is often referred to as the most standards compliant browser that is available and when they started to offer their desktop browser at no cost, it attracted a lot of new users. At that time, standalone and portable versions started to emerge which makes it even easier for Web developers to test their sites against Opera.

  

–Safari–

Safari is Apple’s claim-to-fame browser that is based off of Konquerer for Linux. To the surprise of many people this is probably the most standards compliant browser, but Windows users are left out in the dark when it comes to testing a site using it. The Swift browser is supposed to render sites similarly to Safari except you can use it in Windows, but my experience with Swift is that it does not render things the same way as Safari.

 

–Websites–

Alright, so we went through where you can find the most popular browsers so that you can install them, but what if you want to keep your computer clutter free and just want to do a quick check? The most popular website that will do many of the browsers you want is called BrowserShots. They recently trimmed down their selection of browsers eliminating Safari and Internet Explorer editions, but they still offer multiple versions of Dillo, Epiphany, Firebird, Firefox, Flock, Galeon, Konqueror, Mozilla, Navigator, Opera, Phoenix, and SeaMonkey. One thing that always eliminated the usefulness of the site, however, was that the screenshots can take up to 4 hours to be generated based upon how many people are waiting for their own websites to get processed.

Okay… drum roll please! Total Validator is my favorite website because it snaps screenshots of your site within minutes, and if you don’t feel like waiting around you can have it email you the results. Besides for checking screenshots it can also validate your HTML, look for broken links, and a bunch of other stuff, too. Oh yeah, and I almost forgot to mention that the browsers they do have available are also available on multiple operating systems, for example, Firefox 2 can be tested on Windows, Linux, and OS/X! Where else are you going to find a service that is able to do all of these:

  • Windows XP
    • Internet Explorer 7
    • Internet Explorer 6
    • Internet Explorer 5.5
    • Internet Explorer 5
    • Internet Explorer 4
    • Netscape 6.2
  • Windows 2000
    • Lynx 2.8
    • Firefox 2.0
    • Firefox 1.5
    • Firefox 1.0
    • Mozilla 1.7
    • Netscape 4.8
    • Netscape 3.0
    • Opera 9
    • Opera 8
    • Opera 7
  • Linux
    • Lynx 2.8
    • Firefox 2.0
    • Firefox 1.5
    • Firefox 1.0
    • Mozilla 1.7
    • Konqueror 3
    • Epiphany/Gnome 2
  • Apple Mac (OS/X)
    • Safari 2.0
    • Firefox 2.0
    • Mozilla 1.7
    • Opera 9

 I would recommend that you install at least one version of each primary browser mentioned above, and then you can use an online solution to test the rest. From the images you should be able to see if the HTML code is being displayed properly, and whether there were any serious errors by a malfunctioning script that you might be using. If you have a better solution for testing a website in another browser feel free to let us know in the comments below!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 03

Flash 11 and AIR 3 landing tonight and delivering 7.1 surround sound to connected home theaters

Posted in: adobe, flash, hdpostcross, mobilepostcross, Today's Chili
Adobe Flash Platform

Later tonight Adobe Flash 11 and AIR 3 will hit the tubes delivering with it a host of new features, including hardware acceleration for 2D and 3D graphics — at least for desktops. Stage 3D support will be added to the mobile variants for Android, iOS and BlackBerry at a later date. AIR 3 will also be sprucing up connected entertainment devices, like Samsung SmartTVs, with the ability to deliver Flash-based games and content to your home theater system. What’s more, Adobe has baked in support for both Dolby Digital and DTS surround sound. That means both 5.1 and 7.1 sound can be built into an AIR app, whether it be a game or streaming video, and pumped out at up to 512Kbps though your Blu-ray player or other connected theater component. For more, including a demo of a Flash app on a phone and a TV communicating, check out the trio of press releases and video after the break.

Continue reading Flash 11 and AIR 3 landing tonight and delivering 7.1 surround sound to connected home theaters

Flash 11 and AIR 3 landing tonight and delivering 7.1 surround sound to connected home theaters originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Oct 2011 20:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 03

Microsoft: Goodbye OneCare, Hello Resource-Friendly Free Antivirus

Posted in: General, Today's Chili

This article was written on November 19, 2008 by CyberNet.

onecareMicrosoft announced via a press release that they will be discontinuing OneCare, their current antivirus product, on June 30th, 2009. I don’t think this is very surprising considering how much criticism OneCare has received in the past. After all, I expected more out of OneCare than any other antivirus since Microsoft knows the ins and outs of Windows, and they should therefore be able to protect users better than any other product.

To make things a little more interesting Microsoft says that they will have a free product ready (code-named Morro) somewhere around the time that OneCare is discontinued. Here’s what they have to say about it:

Code-named “Morro,” this streamlined solution will be available in the second half of 2009 and will provide comprehensive protection from malware including viruses, spyware, rootkits and trojans. This new solution, to be offered at no charge to consumers, will be architected for a smaller footprint that will use fewer computing resources, making it ideal for low-bandwidth scenarios or less powerful PCs. As part of Microsoft’s move to focus on this simplified offering, the company also announced today that it will discontinue retail sales of its Windows Live OneCare subscription service effective June 30, 2009.

The timing of all this is very interesting. Windows 7 is expected to be available around the middle of next year, which is when Microsoft will cutoff OneCare. My guess is that they didn’t want to spend the resources making OneCare compatible with Windows 7, but Morro will work it in addition to Vista and XP.

Honestly this is a really smart move by Microsoft. I have previously pondered whether it is really necessary for me to have an antivirus application running on my Vista machine, but for some reason it makes me feel a little bit safer. Using Microsoft’s resource-friendly Morro antivirus might be just the solution for me, because I know that with the UAC I already have enabled a lot of things won’t be able to slip by undetected.

Now if only they could bundle it with the operating system, but we know what kind of anti-trust issues would arise from that. ;)

P.S. It looks like they are killing off the Office 2007 subscription model called Equipt, which also comes packaged with OneCare.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 03

Amazon Deal Finder

Posted in: amazon, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on December 17, 2007 by CyberNet.

Deal Locker As you witnessed earlier today with the iPod Touch, Amazon is a great source of deals. The real question is how do you find all of the deals that you’re looking for without spending hours browsing through their products each day. Deal Locker has setup a great search tool for Amazon that will help you hunt down some of the cheapest stuff being sold.

Deal Locker isn’t using any search features that aren’t already offered directly from Amazon, but the interface is a bit better. First off you can choose which Amazon site that you want to search: United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, or France. If you’d like you can enter a keyword that you want to search for, but more importantly you can choose a category and discount range to view. For example, you can have it show cheap Xbox games and accessories by entering in the following:

  • Keyword or Brand: Xbox
  • Category: Computer & Video Games
  • Discounted from: 90% – 99%

Your results will look something like this. Now you may look at some of the items and say “hey, that’s not at least 90% off.” What I noticed rather quickly is that it also takes a look at the used and new prices, which are often much cheaper than what Amazon is selling the items for.

I did do some searching around for DVD’s, and I was quite surprised at some of the new releases that it came up with at a rather reasonable price. I definitely recommend checking into the service.

Amazon Deal Finder [via Donation Coder & Lifehacker]

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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