Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on April 04, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

I subscribe to feeds all the time, but many of the browsers are different in the way they handle feeds. Firefox has a pretty nice interface for choosing an external application as the default subscription handler while Internet Explorer (IE) and Opera are both a little more tricky. IE and Opera are setup to handle feeds from within the browser itself so they don’t offer many options for subscribing to feeds using external applications.

When you install an external application to handle your feeds on your computer, such as FeedDemon or RSS Bandit, it registers the “feed://” protocol with the operating system much the same way that your browser registers the “http://” protocol. This means that anytime a URL begins with feed:// it will actually try to launch your external feed program.

This bookmarklet doesn’t work for Firefox (at least I don’t think it does), but that doesn’t really matter because in the options you can choose a default program to handle the feeds. So if your using Internet Explorer or Opera the first thing you need to do is drag this bookmarklet into your bookmarks:

• Opera (if you’re in Opera just click on this link): Subscribe2RSS
• Internet Explorer: Subscribe2RSS

Now anytime you click on the bookmarklet it will take you directly to your external RSS feed application so that you can add the feed in there, instead of in the browser. The first time you will probably see some sort of warning like this one giving you a heads up that the browser is trying to pass a URL onto your default feed program, but you can just check the box to permanently allow this action:

Don’t worry, if a site has more than one feed available the bookmarklet is designed to ask you which one you want to use before sending it to your feed program:

All you have to do is enter in the corresponding number of the feed you want to subscribe to and press OK.

Then I thought to myself that there had to be a better way to subscribe to the feeds…and I remembered Chris R. telling me about AddThis. It is a service that I could setup much the same way I setup the bookmarklet above, but for some people it is a little nicer. It will display a website that lists all of the feed URL’s associated with a specific site instead of having to use a popup window to select which one you want. With the way I had the bookmarklet setup it was easy to modify it to work with AddThis.

Internet Explorer and Firefox users just drag this link into your bookmarks:

AddThis

Opera users can click on this link if they want to create an orange RSS button to add to any toolbar:

Subscribe2RSS

I tested it in Firefox, IE, and Opera and it works in all of them from what I can tell. If you create an account with AddThis.com you can set it up so that you’re never asked for your feed subscriber preference again, although it can be changed later on should you decide to switch what program/service you’re using.

One quick thing that I wanted to mention is that in Firefox if you use the “Google Reader” option for subscribing to feeds you’ll be presented with an option to add the feed to your Google Personalized Homepage or to Google Reader. Most of you probably use one or the other and you can configure Firefox to automatically bypass that screen and go to your favorite service by following these instructions that Chad posted in our forum.

So that’s it…the first of the bookmarklets that I actually made myself and they came because I had received a few questions about changing how Opera handles feeds by default. If you have any ideas on how I can make it better or another service you would like it to work with just let me know, and I’ll do my best to fulfill your requests!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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

Perhaps Microsoft was hoping to take a little bit of the spotlight away from Apple (their iPod announcement is coming tomorrow) by confirming the new Zune line-up today? Yes, new Zune’s are on the way. Consumers can expect some extra storage space for both the hard drive and flash models.

Pricing and storage info (for those of you who haven’t heard):

• 120GB Zune– $250
• 16 GB Flash Zune – $199
• 8 GB Flash Zune – $149

Another big change is something that a lot of users have been wanting — the ability to use the built-in Wi-Fi to download songs. For those Zune users who like music recommended to them, they can get recommendations based upon what they are already listening to. There are also some pre-programmed channels available.

While the Zune may not be a market leader, they certainly have a pretty loyal group of fans who enjoy the features that the device offers. The few people I personally know who own a Zune never have anything but good things to say.

Image: Apparently one of the new Zune’s made it to the shelf a little early at a Fry’s electronics store. Shown above is what the 8GB blue/silver model looks like.

Source

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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No matter what country you’re in, you’ll find at least one body-painted sports nut willing to act a fool in the name of fandom. To figure out what makes these hooligans tick, Sharp’s setting up trucks outside EuroCup 2012 matches to measure fans’ brainwaves using biometric technology. Once inside these mobile FanLabs, volunteers will watch the game while wearing the company’s NeuroSky headsets — a super sensitive EEG that uses dry electrodes to measure cerebral activity. By looking at brainwaves, along with heart rate and vocal excitement, scientists hope to reveal what levels of attention, stress, relaxation and excitement a fan goes through while supporting a specific team. Even if you’re not lending your melon to science, you can still join in the fun online, and see how you stack up against fans from around the world. So, bust out the body paint, grab your foam fingers and check out the video after the break.

Continue reading Sharp FanLabs goes inside soccer fans’ minds, measures loyalty with brainwaves (video)

Sharp FanLabs goes inside soccer fans’ minds, measures loyalty with brainwaves (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 22 Oct 2011 22:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Humans Invent  |  Sharp FanLabs  | Email this | Comments

Now that Ice Cream Sandwich is real, the inevitable next step is a parade of announcement that certain devices will / won’t experience the latest and greatest flavor of Android. Xoom owners can breathe easy however, as a support forum mod (totally reliable source) confirms Moto will issue an update for its family-friendly tablet, but can’t say when we’ll see it. Feel free to check out our emulator-powered Android 4.0 tablet demo until then, but considering how long it took to slide LTE into those slabs, you should probably grab a Snickers.

Motorola Xoom will get updated with Ice Cream Sandwich, but when? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 22 Oct 2011 20:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Techno Buffalo, Phandroid  |  Motorola support forums  | Email this | Comments

This article was written on December 31, 2007 by CyberNet.

There has been a lot of buzz around the next iPhone firmware upgrade that is expected to be released as early as this week. At first there was some speculation that this is just a hoax, but if that was the case there has been way too much work put into it. A video has been provided, which we’ve embedded below, that demonstrates the various new features.

First lets take a look at the two big areas that are the most revamped:

–Customizable Homepage–

Apple is showing us the first signs of how things will work when users are allowed to install native applications on the iPhone in the future. With the new firmware users will be able to rearrange any of the icons (including the ones along the bottom dock), and they will also be able to add their favorite bookmarks to the homepage. The video below demonstrates how this works, but here are a few screenshots:

–Google Maps–

Since the iPhone doesn’t have a built-in GPS Apple is giving the Google Maps app the next best thing. It will have Google’s new My Location feature integrated, which uses the proximity to nearby cellphone towers to calculate an estimate of the user’s position.

Aside from that the Google Maps app will also include a hybrid map view (satellite + street labels) which it has definitely been lacking. Naturally all of these new features to Google Maps means more buttons, but Apple has decided to keep the interface clean by putting some of the buttons on a “new page”:

–The Video Demonstration–

If you’re wondering exactly how it works here is a video that GearLive put together demonstrating all of the new features:

GearLive [via Gizmodo]

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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