Hasta La Gadget!

Microsoft adding new features to Hotmail over ‘the coming weeks,’ releases an Android app originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Oct 2011 17:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Irksome GPS interference issues now somewhat safely behind it, LightSquared’s plowing forward into OEM waters. The LTE wholesaler has just struck up an agreement with Sharp that’ll see the electronics company creating the first line of devices specifically tailored for the nascent 4G network. Of course, these smartphones and tablets won’t be sold by the Falcone-backed company, and will instead make their way to its carrier partners — like Sprint, C Spire and Best Buy. If the already inked collaboration means we’ll be seeing this beastie on North American air waves, then we predict the heavily beset wireless outfit’s rocky road to launch will give way to smooth sailing. Official presser after the break.

Continue reading LightSquared teams up with Sharp to begin production of LTE phones and tablets

LightSquared teams up with Sharp to begin production of LTE phones and tablets originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Oct 2011 16:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on April 16, 2007 by CyberNet.

It was almost a year ago when Microsoft and Adobe went head-to-head because of the built-in PDF functionality that Office 2007 was supposed to include. Adobe was obviously afraid that by Microsoft incorporating the ability to save a document as a PDF, that they could lose out on people needing their tools. In the end Microsoft had to provide the feature as an add-on that can be downloaded at no cost.

Now they are both at it again because Microsoft is launching a new technology called Silverlight and Adobe introduced a media player. Both of the offerings aim to make the user’s media experience on the Web more feature-rich while also making the media transfer more efficient.

Here are some snippets from Microsoft’s press release on Silverlight:

Microsoft Silverlight, previously called Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere (WPF/E), integrates with existing Web technologies and assets to provide higher-quality experiences with lower costs for media delivery. Delivered to end users through a seamless, fast installation, Silverlight offers consistent experiences to both Macintosh and Windows users on a variety of browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.
…
Leading media companies and solution providers have announced support for Silverlight including Akamai Technologies, Brightcove, Eyeblaster, Limelight Networks, Major League Baseball, NaviSite Inc., Netflix, Pinnacle Systems Inc., Rhozet Corp., Skinkers, Sonic Solutions, Tarari Inc., Telestream Inc. and Winnov. All have indicated plans to deliver Silverlight-based experiences for their viewers and customers.
…
“Netflix is leading the way for people to rent movies for instant viewing over the Internet,” said Netflix Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt. “With 6.3 million members now and millions more in the next few years, Netflix needs rapid and reliable scalability so all members can enjoy DVD-quality movies immediately on our instant-viewing feature. We depend on Microsoft Windows Media technologies, and we’re excited about Microsoft Silverlight as a platform to enable instant watching of great content for all our members, on multiple platforms.”

Adobe plans on doing just about the same thing with their media player, and they even plan on dipping their hands in some Flash DRM! As NewTeeVee points out this will essentially be a video RSS Reader that retrieves the video listings from feeds. Here is what Adobe has to say about the media player in their press release:

For viewers, Adobe Media Player enables higher quality Flash format playback, the ability to download and view videos offline, ways to discover interesting new shows, full screen playback, one-click viewer ratings, and a powerful Favorites feature that automatically downloads new episodes of favorite TV shows or video podcasts. The player is cross-platform, based on open standards – including RSS and SMIL – and brings viewers the highly desired ability to play the Web’s most popular video format outside of their browser.

For content publishers, Adobe Media Player enables better ways to deliver, monetize, brand, track and protect video content. It provides an array of video delivery options for high-quality online and offline playback, including on-demand streaming, live streaming, progressive download, and protected download-and-play. The Adobe Media Player enables a wider selection of monetization and branding options including viewer-centric dynamic advertising and the ability to customize the look and feel of the player on the fly to match the brand or theme of the currently playing content.

Unlike Microsoft, Adobe is yet to announce any partnerships that they have already setup. Either they don’t want to tip off Microsoft as to companies that are looking for a better online media solution, or they don’t have any big companies like Microsoft.

One thing is for sure and it’s that this will be one big cat fight. Normally when two companies compete like this, the consumer is always the winner because they are constantly updating and innovating their technology.

Source: GigaOm

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on February 26, 2007 by CyberNet.

We have done several posts when it comes to testing websites in other browsers, and this post pretty much sums up our findings. One of my favorite services mentioned in that article is the one called Total Validator. With it you can validate a site or take a screenshot from many different browsers, and if you’re looking for convenience then you’ll find it with their free desktop software or Firefox extension.

Sometimes the screenshots can take a few minutes though, and while that doesn’t seem like that long it really can be. Typically what happens in web development is that a site will be tested in a browser, and if an error is found the developer will try to fix it and then retest it. If you are constantly re-testing a site it can take forever if you have to wait a few minutes to see a screenshot each time (if you’re using BrowserShots it could take hours depending on how long the queue is).

That’s where IE NetRenderer comes into play. It will let you see what your site looks like in IE 7, IE 6, and IE 5.5 within a matter of seconds. Just enter in the URL and it should popup in no time at all, depending of course on how fast the entire page loads. For example, I had a screenshot of Google.com up in under 2 seconds but our site took between 10 and 17 seconds since there is more content displayed.

There is one small catch about this service though. It only takes a screenshot of what’s visible without needing to scroll on a 1024 x 768 resolution browser window. Other screenshot services will normally scroll the page so that you can see what the entire page looks like. That’s a little bit of a bummer, but the “instant” results make the tradeoff worth it.

IE NetRenderer Homepage

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on July 08, 2008 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

Windows; Mac
I’m one of those stat geeks that love to know everything I can about what my computer is doing. It’s not that I use the information to do much, but a quick glance at the CPU or memory usage has, at times, helped me figure out why my computer is going so darn slow. For example, a spike in memory usage is typically the result of an app that likely needs to be restarted.

There are dozens of different applications and widgets out there that will monitor these things for you, and today we’re going to show you some of our favorites. We’ve got a mixture of programs and widgets for both Windows and Mac, and hopefully one of them will do exactly what you’re looking for.

–Performance Monitor (Homepage)–

Windows only
Performance Monitor is a compact application that can show disk, memory, CPU, and network usage in a couple different ways. It’s not only a free program, but there is also a portable version available that you can carry along on a USB drive.

The most appealing way to monitor the various sensors on your computer is through the live graphs that will appear on your desktop after you run the application. There are four graphs by default, and you can customize their positioning simply by dragging and dropping them. If you hover over one of the graphs with your mouse it will give you the actual numbers that correspond to it:

You can enable a “click-through” option for the graphs so that you are able to click any buttons or menus that might appear behind them. That way you can leave them on top of other window and still have access to anything appearing underneath.

If the graphs occupy too much space you can always turn to a System Tray icon for each of the sensors. Although the icons are a little small in the System Tray they are still able to show live graphs for the various stats, and you can hover over the icons to see the current state of the sensor.

Worried about wasting system resources on a monitoring tool like this? When I was using Performance Monitor it consumed just 7MB of memory, which is less than most other tools that serve the same purpose.

–iStat (Homepage)–

Windows; Mac
Most Mac owners are probably aware of iStat because it comes in two powerful forms: an application and a widget. What you might not know is that there are also iStat widgets available for the Vista gadget system, and also for the Yahoo! Widget Engine. They aren’t quite as powerful as the Mac alternatives, but they are still useful.

For Mac:

On the Mac side there are three notable iStat offerings. The iStat Menu is an application that is constantly monitoring the data on your computer, and it displays the results in the Menu bar. The layout can be completely customized, and clicking on any of the results will expand a menu with more details.

When it comes to Dashboard widgets there are two different solutions: iStat Pro and iStat Nano. The names of the two pretty much giveaway the differences, and they are that iStat Pro offers a more complete set of statistics while iStat Nano shows only the basic information. Here’s what iStat Pro looks like:

(Click to Enlarge)

For Windows:

What’s interesting with iStat for Windows is that there really isn’t an all-in-one package available like there is for the Mac. Instead there are different widgets for monitoring CPU, memory, battery, and wireless information. If you’re a Vista user these things are available as Vista Sidebar Gadgets, otherwise you can use the Yahoo! Widget Engine.

An example of what the widgets look like are pictured to the right, and all of them come in two different forms. You can get the classic “bar graph” design, or a more stylish gauge. If you grab the Yahoo! widgets both designs are included in one package.

–Overview–

There are so many different ways to monitor your memory usage, disk space, and CPU utilization that there’s no way they could all be covered here. That’s what we have the comments for though! Let us know in the comments what you use to keep track of your precious resources on your computer.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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