Hasta La Gadget!

As if it weren’t hard enough keeping your house safe from debt collectors these days, now you have something else to worry about: a falling German satellite called ROSAT. The German Aerospace Center has estimated that the hunk of decommissioned, extra-orbital metal will enter the atmosphere sometime between 7:30pm ET tonight and 1:30am ET tomorrow. It’s unknown whether any of the thing will survive re-entry, but the 1.7 ton telescope mirror onboard very well may, striking the surface at a hasty 17,398MPH. The agency doesn’t know where it will fall, but did reassuringly say that it won’t hit Europe — German scientists basically telling the rest of the world to spend all night worrying while they doze away, peacefully. At least it won’t be taking any of its orbital brethren with it…

Update: Looks like it landed in the Indian Ocean on Saturday night.

Achtung: German satellite to crash down tonight, won’t land in Germany originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 22 Oct 2011 18:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Space.com  | Email this | Comments

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

Windows only
Most of the time I use my computer’s desktop as a temporary holding place for things that I need to organize later on. It’s normally filled with attachments that have been downloaded from emails, apps I’ve downloaded to try out, and more. My goal is to always have a clear desktop because that means I’ve filed everything away, but that rarely happens.

Stardock has released a free program called Fences that focuses on de-cluttering your desktop. Basically what it does is make it possible to group the icons on your desktop into self-contained areas. You can then hide all of the groupings simply by double-clicking on your desktop. If you’ve got certain icons you always want visible (like the Recycle Bin) you can specify them within the settings, and those will never be hidden when double-clicking on the desktop.

To top it off the application will also let you take snapshots of how all your icons are organized at any given moment. These will serve as backups in case you ever want to revert back to a previous state of organization.

Stardock Fences is completely free, but they do have a professional version in the works that will add more features if you’re willing to pay for them. The free version, however, will always remain available.

This has become a must-have app for me, and I highly recommend it for anyone that has troubles managing their desktop.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

Real Desktop… Remember BumpTop?Automatically Organize Files with DropItNew Poll: How Clean is Your Desktop?Windows Live Mail Desktop Gets AdvertisementsDownload Windows Live Mail Desktop Beta

This article was written on April 10, 2009 by CyberNet.

Windows only
We’ve shown you some tools in the past that lets you automatically rotate your desktop backgrounds (like this one), but the sheer simplicity of Wallpaper Juggler is what makes it so great. Basically what it does is download wallpapers from InterfaceLIFT and WallpaperStock, and you can choose to have it grab only the most popular wallpapers. Then you can setup an interval so that it automatically rotates through the downloaded wallpapers. Once setup the whole process happens transparently in the background without any interaction needed from you.

Here are the features the free Wallpaper Juggler app has to offer:

• Controllable from the System Tray (enabled/disable, juggle now, switch back to last wallpaper, etc…)
• Can be configured to…
  • start with Windows
  • look for wallpapers in multiple folders including/excluding subfolders. Best results when used with matching resolution wallpapers
  • change wallpaper once every preferred duration between 1 min and 500 hrs. It will understand “000 Hrs/Mins 000 Min” format. It can interpret M/Min/Mins/Minutes and H/Hr/Hrs/Hour as Minutes and Hours respectively
  • confirm before changing wallpaper
  • adjust image positioning for odd size wallpapers
• Change wallpaper manually by clicking ‘Juggle Now’ menu or double clicking the icon
• Displays the last updated wallpaper and the time stamp when the next change will occur

If you hate having the same wallpaper on your computer this might be just the thing you need. Give it a whirl and let us know what you think.

Wallpaper Juggler Homepage (for Windows only)
Thanks Raj for the tip!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

Get Your Widescreen Wallpapers For Your ComputerShow Your Love: Firefox 2 WallpapersHunt Down Great Desktop Wallpapers From FlickrGet The Windows Vista Wallpapers For Your ComputerYour Week In Review with Sunday’s Summary

Jersey girls and boys can now tap and pay their way around, but for the Garden State’s myriad of malls, cash’ll still have to do. Not so for the Ozzies Down Under who may soon never have to leave the comfort of food court chairs — if they’re packing a Nexus S, that is. Designed as a concept by University of Sydney start-up SDigital, special coaster-like “brand stickers” affixed to eatery “brand tables” would relay fast-food menus to mobile phones via NFC. Hungry, hungry humans would then make their selections, order up and receive a vibrating notification when the food’s ready. It’s a contactless payment solution not unlike the QkR platform MasterCard demoed for us last month. And given our ever-increasing crawl towards the bleak adult baby form factor of our potential Wall-E futures, we’d say this tech’s right around the public release corner. Head on past the break for a video demo of the tukkis-numbing, Foodcourtia tech.

Continue reading Brand Table concept revolutionizes fast food, NFC still won’t make it good for you (video)

Brand Table concept revolutionizes fast food, NFC still won’t make it good for you (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 22 Oct 2011 13:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink TechCrunch  |  SDigital  | Email this | Comments

This week was packed with news on the mobile front, so it was easy to miss a few stories here and there. Here’s some of the other stuff that happened in the wide world of wireless for the week of October 17, 2011:

• The HTC Rezound (codenamed the Vigor) started showing up in Cellebrite systems, just another indicator of its impending arrival — and likely name. [Droid-Life]
• AT&T’s current lineup of Windows Phones, such as the Samsung Focus, LG Quantum and HTC Surround, are now showing up as EOL — End-of-life — likely in preparation for the trio of incoming devices we saw earlier this week. [WMPowerUser]
• Cricket added another ZTE feature phone to its lineup this week, called the Memo (shown above). It’s got a full QWERTY keyboard and is available for $100. [Cnet]
• Google Maps for Android was the beneficiary of yet another update. This time, version 5.11 makes one critical feature change: it offers different-sized maps for phones with different screen resolutions. Thus, if you have a 3.5-inch HVGA screen, you’re not forced to download a map designed for a 4.3-inch qHD display, saving space on your phone in the process. [MobileBurn]
• Vodafone 360, launched in 2009 as a LiMo-based cloud synchronization and backup service, will be officially closed by the end of the year. The carrier stopped developing handsets that took advantage of the plan last year, so it really was a matter of time before this happened. [Wall Street Journal]
• Toshiba Mobile Display announced this week that it’s working on a new type of mobile display optimized for wide-angle viewing. Dubbed the “Soludina,” it’ll be shown off at next week’s FPD International in Japan. [Nikkei]
• Sprint announced a new plan called Wireless CapTel that’s designed for those who are hard of hearing. The service, which can be used on Android devices, allows the caller to view conversations in real time as word-for-word captions on their phone’s screen. [BusinessWire]
• Telus will officially launch the 4G Samsung Galaxy S II X on October 28th, according to its website. [Unwired View]

Mobile Miscellany: week of October 17, 2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 22 Oct 2011 11:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments