Hasta La Gadget!

Love Windows Phone, sweating and tracking personal statistics? Good news! Sports Tracker is celebrating Nokia week by announcing the upcoming availability of its exercise-logging app for Microsoft’s mobile OS. The app, which spent its early days on Symbian, is now available on iOS and Android, and will be hitting Windows Phone next month. It lets sporty smartphone owners track their distance, speed, calories and more, and upload that information to Sports Tracker’s site and the requisite social networks to generally irritate out of shape followers.

Sports Tracker racing toward Windows Phone for November release originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 08:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Flight crews will finally be able to join the mile-high club in peace with this Crew Rest Module

You know those battered aluminum cargo containers you see stacked up at the airport? Well, those might soon contain people, and not just stuff.

TIMCO, manufacturer of all kinds of airplane interiors, built these Crew Rest Modules units for Austrian Airlines. They’re the same size and shape as cargo containers, and can be loaded and hooked up to power in half an hour. The idea is that on long-haul flights lasting more than 11 hours, the crew can take a break and sleep in the six-bed, soundproofed chamber.

It seems like a great idea, allowing flight attendants to escape the constant demands of over-entitled business-class passengers, or the moronic bleatings of the cattle class out back.

I have a question for any flight crew out there. How do you get into the hold when the plane is in flight? The product specs say that there is a ladder assembly, so I assume that there is some kind of secret hatch somewhere on the 767s they’re built for.

Crew Rest Module [TIMCO via Andrew Liszewski]

See Also:

• World's Most Cramped Airline Seat to Launch Next Week
• Delta Airlines To Install Non-Painful Economy Seating
• Planes To Get Airbags, But Only in First Class

This article was written on February 10, 2010 by CyberNet.

Welcome to the WrapUp by CyberNet. This is a collection of news stories, downloads, and tips that we have collected over the last few days, but never got around to writing about. Don’t forget to send in your own tips, or just leave a comment on this page if you think you’ve got something we should include.

–News–

Mozilla Confirms 2 Infected Add-ons Slip Through Approvals
Users should be on the lookout for two Firefox add-ons, Sothink Web Video Downloader 4.0 and all versions of Master Filer, that Mozilla has confirmed as being infected with viruses. It’s possible that up to 4,600 users have been affected by these malicious extensions, but they were only able to execute on Windows PCs.

Google Buzz: Twitter, in Your Email
Google Buzz is a new service that was just released by the search giant yesterday, and brings a bit of Twitter/FriendFeed to your Inbox. Google boasts the ability to instantly connect with the people that are already in your address book. There is also some simple integration with sites like Twitter, Flickr, and Picasa where it is able to automatically post the items that you upload/tweet about on the respective sites. Unfortunately you can’t use this to actually post to third-party sites.

–News in Brief–

Multitouch Coming to Droid
The Nexus One already received the firmware update that includes multitouch capabilities, and the Motorola Droid should be getting it soon as well.

Story of What Happened in Your Birth Year
The person behind the popular Google Blogoscoped site has started a new venture that covers some of the things that happened the year you were born. It might take a little while to get through it, because it’s in a storybook-like layout where words are printed to the screen as you go.

Revisit the Super Bowl Commercials
Most of the commercials from the Super Bowl have been *officially* posted to YouTube for your viewing pleasure.

Google Chrome Integrates Translation Bar
When visiting a foreign site Google Chrome 5 will display a nice little bar asking if you’d like to translate the page.

uTorrent 2.0 Released
uTorrent 2.0 is now available, and has a strong focus on better network performance.

Amazon is Said to Buy a Touchscreen Company
Rumor is that Amazon bought Touchco, a company that makes flexible touchscreen interfaces, so that they can integrate the technology into the Kindle.

Google Chrome 4 Natively Supports Greasemonkey Scripts
When Google Chrome 4 launched there was a lot of talk about extensions, and so you may have overlooked the native ability to convert Greasemonkey scripts into extensions.

VLC Media Player 1.1 Supports Extensions
A pre-release version of VLC 1.1 has support for third-party extensions, which currently include Last.fm and IMDB integration.

–Tips, Tutorials, and Reviews–

TVGorge: Stream Your Favorite Shows
Watching TV shows online is nothing new, but sites like Hulu restrict viewing to the U.S. only. That’s where TVGorge.com comes in. Not only is it available around the world, but it has a library of television shows that is truly impressive. For many of them you’ll find all of their past season available, and new episodes are posted very quickly after they air.

All Glass Skin for Opera
I love trying out new themes as much as the next guy, but most aren’t worth writing home about. I have to admit that this all-glass skin for Opera 10.5 sure is a head-turner though. The way it uses the Aero interface on Vista and Windows 7 makes it feel like you’re peeking into the future. The cool factor is definitely earns a 10, but I still have to see how this plays out in heavy usage for me. I don’t know if all the transparent-goodness will start to eat away at my eyes.

–Tips in Brief–

5 Sites to Learn About Using GIMP
These sites will get you going on using the GIMP photo editor, which is especially helpful if you’ve grown accustomed to using other image editors over the years.

Google Chrome’s Incognito Mode Doubles as a “Safe Mode”
The Incognito mode in Google Chrome not only prevents the browser from saving your Internet history, but it also keeps themes and extensions from loading.

5 Best Podcast Managers
These are a few different ways to manage your podcasts on various platforms.

Using CamStudio (Open Source) for Screencasts
This is a way you can make some great screencasts without dropping a dime.

Reboot and then Hibernate Your Computer
Boot Snooze is a simple program that lets you restart and then hibernate or sleep your machine. That way you don’t go months without restarting your computer, and the next time you return it will be ready to roar.

Memorize Long Pieces of Text
Memorize Now is a free online service that takes a body of text, and replaces random words with blanks so that your mind has to fill them in. As you progress more and more of the words are removed to aid in the memorization.

maComfort Brings Mac Features to Windows
This app brings some of the most notable Mac features to the Windows platform, such as hot corners, quicklook, and virtual desktops.

Automatically Refresh & Cycle Through Chrome Tabs
Revolver Tabs is a Chrome add-on that will reload and switch between browser tabs at a specified interval.

How to Delete Online Accounts
A service called Delete Your Account provides quick links for you to disable/remove your account from numerous online services.

–Downloads–

• Avant Browser 11.7.45 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• FeedDemon 3.1.0.12 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Google Chrome 5.0.317.2 ^Beta [Homepage] [Mirror]
• iTunes 9.0.3 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Mozilla Prism 1.0 ^{Beta 3} [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Mozilla Thunderbird 3.1 ^{Alpha 1} [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Notepad2 4.1.24 ^RC3 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• OpenOffice.org 3.2.0 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Opera 10.5.3236 ^Pre-Alpha [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Paint.NET 3.5.3 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Recuva 1.35.472 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Sandboxie 3.44 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• VirtualBox 3.1.4 ^{Beta 2} [Homepage] [Mirror]
• VLC Media Player 1.0.5 [Homepage] [Mirror]

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

Mozilla Firefox Add-ons Page Gets A Nice FaceliftConvert Your Favorite Firefox Extensions to Work with FlockHalf of Firefox Extensions Not Compatible with 3.1Mozilla Puts New Add-on Site Back Up?Mozilla’s Trimming the Fat from the Add-ons Site

It’s round. It’s a flash. It’s RoundFlash!

The RoundFlash is — not surprisingly — a round flash. To be more specific, it’s a tent-like collapsible ring-flash adapter that also works somewhat like a softbox. The trouble is, the results aren’t really what you’d expect from either.

A ring flash is a donut of light that sits around the camera’s lens. Because the light comes from all directions, the shadows cancel each other out. Almost: One of the signs of a ring flash is a dark halo of shadow around the edge of the subject.

A softbox works by making the light much bigger, thus softening the shadows it casts and flattering the subject.

The RoundFlash kind of does both, but ends up looking a lot like a regular on-camera flash with a diffuser. A few of the sample shots are impressive, though, and if you regard this as whole new kind of light modifier then you’re likely to have some fun.

The unit weighs just 227 grams, or 8 ounces, and folds out from a pocket-sized pouch into a 44cm (17-inch) diameter cylinder. It’s held taught by removable rods, like a tent, and is light enough to just slip over the lens and flash and hang there via its pentagram-shaped web of shock cords.

I’d certainly play around with one. Or rather, I’d certainly consider making my own, as the RoundFlash costs $160. Available now.

RoundFlash product page [RoundFlash via PetaPixel]

See Also:

• Hands-On With The Orbis Ring Flash Adapter
• Frio Coldshoe Is a Hot, Handy Holder for Strobists
• $40 Ring-Flash Adapter Cheaper Than Home-Made

For a consumption-only device, the iPad sure is good at making things

The iPad is just a device for consumption, right? And — according to a screed by sci-fi author Cory Doctorow — it signals the end of computer programming, at least for the tinkerers like you and me.

This is, of course, complete nonsense, as is made clear by Codify, a new iPad app for writing software. Not only does it let you code games, music software or pretty much anything you like, it uses multitouch to make the experience better than many desktop coding apps. The video shows it best:

Codify uses the Lua programming language. You tap out the code and then press play to run it. Want to specify a color? Instead of looking it up the internet, you just tap the code itself and a color-picker pops up, filling out the numbers automatically. The same is true for game sprites and other elements.

My programming skills go back to the days of the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and have remained at that BASIC level ever since. But now I’m tempted to play around again with this $8 app. It’s kind of like the Garage Band of coding.

And maybe now Doctorow can come in from the cold and trade up from Android to a proper tablet.

Codify for iPad [Two Lives Left]

See Also:

• Android Chief: We're Still Open, Dammit
• Indie Musicians Record Entire Album With GarageBand for iPad …