Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on October 10, 2006 by CyberNet.

Yahoo! has launched a unique Time Capsule service for the world to participate and share their words, photos, videos, sounds, or drawings. There are multiple categories that you can place your item in (seen in the image to the right) depending upon the feelings that you have for it.

Most of the categories are all positive except for Anger and Sorrow, which apparently have the least amount of submissions. So I thought that I would submit one under Anger of the thing that ruffles all of our feathers…the Blue Screen of Death on Windows.

The upload process was just a few steps and you had to do things like enter in tags for the items. They do require the submissions to be approved and they email you once it is with a direct link to view it (took about 30 seconds to receive my approval). Sometimes the direct link that they send works for me or sometimes it hangs while loading all of the pictures, but this is the direct link to my image in case you want to try it. Alternatively you can go to the Anger category and I’m currently the first one (they put the most recent submissions first). I also tagged the image with CyberNet so you can do a search for that and it will come up as well.

I really like this idea and hopefully it will spark a lot of people to participate in it. It is only available for the next 30 days so if you want to upload something you might want to make sure you don’t forget!

Thanks for the tip Radu!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on June 25, 2007 by CyberNet.

Microsoft Monday

When Microsoft released a DreamScene Preview for Vista Ultimate users, I couldn’t wait to try it out. Once I got it installed I was indeed impressed, but I still felt like I was missing out on the full capabilities of what DreamScene could really do.

Now being more than 4-months after the preview version was released, there is still no final version, but that’s a whole other story. Shortly after the Vista release, Stardock picked up some of Microsoft’s slack by extending the feature set that Dreamscene had. They made a free add-on called Deskscapes which once installed, lets you choose from their vast collection of user-uploaded “Dreams.”

Almost all of them are offered for free, and so I thought I would take a look at several that I have personally tested out. And since there are no videos of them available on the site I also felt the need to demonstrate to you what each of them looks like.

Note: None of the videos have sound because I was trying to keep the size of the video to a minimum, but its not like they would have sound on your desktop anyway. You can also look for the little white dots on the timeline to quickly skip to the next Dream demo:

–The City–

These three Dreamscapes are all based on cities, and one of them has a special place in my heart since it is of the Chicago skyline!

1. Bay Bridge
2. Detroit By Night
3. Stadt (Chicago Skyline)

–Waterfalls and Lakes–

Everyone loves water when it comes to desktop backgrounds, so I thought I would devote an entire section just to that! We’ve got waterfalls, lakes, and tropical paradise that will help prepare you for a vacation.

Note: Some of the effects that some of the Dreams have are more subtle than others, particularly the two Island ones. I threw these in because they look good, and some people don’t like too much motion on their desktop.

1. Berge
2. Future World
3. Heron
4. Island Oasis
5. Island Paradise
6. Small Waterfall
7. Sydney Opera House
8. Wassfall

–Other–

This is kind of a conglomeration of odds and ends that I found. A few of them put you in space, some are related to movies, and others just don’t belong anywhere.

The hot one in this group is no doubt the Shark Pit, which is what I have my current Vista desktop set to. When other people have seen me using it they think it is the coolest thing ever. Kudos to the Stardock team for developing it and not charging a dime!

Caution: The Rollercoaster might make you sick.

1. Apollo
2. Bliss (like the default XP background)
3. Evolution
4. Matrix
5. Rollercoaster
6. Shark Pit (this is my favorite)
7. Spiderman
8. The Moon
9. Vista

–Premium Dynamic Dreams–

Besides for producing free Dreams such as the Shark Pit, Stardock also works hard to create dynamic ones. Unlike other Dreams, the content that these show are not just a looping movie, and are instead created on-the-fly for your viewing pleasure.

Since these will cost you money, I decided to point out the features that each has a little bit more in detail so that you have a better idea of what you’ll receive. All of them, except the first one, also have options that you can configure to your liking and I made sure to demonstrate some of the different things you can do with those settings.

1. Blissful Dream ($8.95)
   This one is pretty cool because it adjusts with your computer’s clock. From what I gather, there are just a few transitions that it has (sun rise, afternoon, sunset, night) which I try to demonstrate in the video by manually adjusting the clock.
2. Desktop Earth ($8.95)
   I think the NASA-addicts out there will really get a kick out of this one. It is a rotating globe that shows where it is currently daytime and where it is nighttime. You can customize the speed of the rotation, or just make the globe stationary and have the light revolve around it as the day goes on.
3. Desktop Collage ($8.95)
   I really thought at first that this was going to be my favorite. I consider myself a photo guru and take pictures of almost anything, and looking through the options there was all kinds of stuff to love. At certain time intervals, it places a picture on your desktop (essentially forming a collage), and you can control the size of the pictures as well as the delay between adding photos. The downside is in choosing the location of the photos to use because it didn’t let me use a folder that only contained sub-folders. Instead I had to pick a folder that had pictures directly in it, which takes away a little bit from the beauty of this Dream.
4. Liquid Dream ($9.95)
   I think this ended up being my favorite out of the bunch because of how realistic it is. At first glance it doesn’t look like anything amazing, but the power lies in the configuration. You can adjust the rain drop frequency, the drop size, the background (rocks, sand, etc…) and the reflective image (night sky or clouds). If you sit there and play with the different options you are sure to find some cool settings, which I try to demonstrate in the video.

While all of the cool dynamic Dreams currently cost money, in the near future that could be changing. Stardock told me that they are working on an SDK (Software Development Kit) for the dynamic Dreams so that anyone could create ones just like these. So keep your eyes open because there could be some cool things on the horizon!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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If there were a tornado headed your way, what would you think if you were able to receive a text message letting you know of it? In the next few years, it might be a possibility. Currently, the FCC has the Emergency Alert System put in place in which broadcasters (including Cable, radio, Satellite, etc.) provide the communication capability to the President to address the public during a National Emergency. It’s also used more commonly for Amber Alerts and weather alerts. The system works, but the FCC is looking into actually utilizing the new technology available to create text messaging emergency alert system. It would be used nationwide in the U.S. and those with mobile phone devices would receive a text message if there was an emergency.

BetaNews reports that the process of establishing such a system has just started and that participation by carriers would be optional. While participation is optional, they say, “AT&T, Verizon, Alltel, Sprint, Nextel, and T-Mobile have reportedly all contributed favorably to discussions toward the formation of a system similar to the US’ current Emergency Alert System for broadcasters, though which would relay national emergency warnings to cell phones users.”

This sounds like a great idea, especially if a text message in an emergency were sent free of any additional charges. Your wireless service could really serve a whole new purpose and play an important role in notifying people when an emergency occurs. Living in an area prone to tornadoes myself, it would be great to know if one was in the area by simply getting a text message.Whether it be a tornado, a hurricane, wild fires, flooding, or the report of a child missing, this could potentially be extremely beneficial. At this point they say the plan won’t take effect for another two years, so don’t expect text message alerts anytime soon.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Web Browser Wednesday

One thing that Microsoft did a good job of in Internet Explorer 7 was making it easy for users to read feeds. They provided a feed reader that was so simple, yet it does exactly what most casual users want, and that is to keep up on the latest news from around the Web.

Despite doing many things right, there are some things that it doesn’t do, but for those things, there are work-arounds which you might find useful. This includes adding a notifier so that you know when there are new items, and synchronizing with an online service so that your feeds are up-to-date both at work and at home. Here are some tips that you might find helpful if you use the feed reader in Internet Explorer…

–Synchronize with NewsGator Online (Homepage)–

This is one of my favorite add-ons for Internet Explorer because it focuses on the fact that not everyone sits in front of the same computer all day. Many of us go from being at home, to work, and then back home again which is where the NewsGator Desktop Sync comes in handy.

This small, lightweight program installs in a matter of seconds on your computer. Once setup, it will synchronize with an online NewsGator account to keep track of which feeds/posts that you have read. You can choose to have IE override all feed settings, have NewsGator’s online service override all settings, or have the application merge the feeds in the browser and what’s available online.

The System Tray icon gives you easy access to synchronization, and in just a few clicks you can sync up before you go to work or come home. Or, if that seems like too much of a hassle you can actually customize the duration between syncs so that you never even have to think about it.

–Feed Folder (Homepage)–

This add-on doesn’t do that much, but it does make your feeds a little more accessible outside of just Internet Explorer. By using the Feed Folder add-on all of your feeds will be placed in your Favorites bookmarks folder in addition to the normal feed location within Internet Explorer 7. This means that your feeds will quickly be accessible from Windows Explorer as well as the Start Menu (if configured to show Favorites in the Start Menu properties).

–MS Feed Icon (Homepage)–

This is simply a notification system and System Tray icon for the feed reader in IE7. Basically, it adds the most critical thing that Microsoft never put into their browser, but this one does a terrific job of going above and beyond the call of duty. Check out everything it can do:

• Icon in the system tray indicating status of you feed subscriptions
• Displays notifications when a feed contains new posts, and you can customize which feeds receive the notification.
• Can automatically marks a feed as read
• Force an update on all feeds
• Star a notification for later reading (essentially pinning it so that the notification doesn’t close)
• Mark as read without viewing the feed
• Unsubscribe from a feed within the notification window
• Search new posts for specific Tags so you can select which posts are interesting to you. Then any matching posts can be starred to ensure that the notification window does not close until you manually close it.
• Feed statistics
• Presentation mode aware (Windows Vista only)
• Customizable background color

–Feeds Plus (Homepage)–

Feeds Plus makes it possible to read all of your feeds on the same page. This is a really nice feature as long as you don’t have a large number of feeds, but you can always organize your feeds into folders. That way you can just read all of the items on a folder by folder basis.

It also has a built-in notifier that pops up near the System Tray when a feed has new posts, but it isn’t nearly as extensive as what the MS Feed Icon has to offer. Luckily you can disable this notifier so that it doesn’t conflict with MS Feed Icon.

–Summary–

As you can see, there are several tools available that all enhance IE7’s Feed Reader. None of them really make it a full-fledged application like FeedDemon or RSS Bandit, but they help make it a lot more useful.

If you have any other tools that you use with Internet Explorer 7’s feed reader be sure to let us know. We’ve also written two other posts, here and here, on other great add-ons for Internet Explorer 7.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Continue reading Scientists capture birth of new planet on camera, mother and child doing just fine

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