Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on September 13, 2007 by CyberNet.

As the saying goes "imitation is the best form of flattery." If there’s any truth to that I would have to say that Opera’s ego has got to be growing quickly. Why’s that? Back in April Opera 9.2 introduced a new feature called Speed Dial. It gives users 9 shortcuts that are aligned in a grid-like fashion for quick access. As it turns out there were a lot of people who found it to be useful…even those who were using other browsers.

Weeks after the launch of Opera 9.2 came a Firefox extension designed with Speed Dial in mind, but without some of the functionality Opera’s creation offered. Then came along Exalead which was a web-based search engine that also offered a Speed Dial-like feature for the homepage. What about Internet Explorer users? Well, IE7Pro made sure they weren’t left out and created their own copycat called "Easy Homepage."

And now the time comes for a dedicated personal homepage to appear, and it’s called HYPERiGO. After registering with the site you can create your own customize page with all the sites you want on it. You can have it show small thumbnails of each site or large ones, and you can sort them in various ways including by the most visited.

By default your tab(s) are all public so you may want to be careful what you put in there (here’s my homepage). The privacy setting is one of the few things you can change, and there are a handful of different themes available for you to choose from.

I can’t honestly say that I’m all that impressed with the service though. I added our site to the bookmarks, and then I had to play the waiting game as the screenshot got queued. This also makes me wonder what the update period is on the existing screenshots?

As far as the interface goes I would say that it is nicely laid out. However, the site is painfully slow to load even when doing a simple thing such as adding a bookmark or switching a tab. Reordering the entries also needs some work, because I would expect it to use some AJAXy drag-and-drop effects which it doesn’t. Not only that but every reorder operation you do causes the entire page to refresh. Ouch!

So before you go taking the time to signup like me I suggest you at least browse around to see if you’ll be able to withstand the loading times. So Opera can once again be flattered by this Speed Dial-like service…you just can’t beat the speed of having the feature integrated into the browser when compared to a web-based version.

HYPERiGO [via Download Squad]
Thanks for the tip "s"!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on January 18, 2008 by CyberNet.

One of the things that set Facebook apart from MySpace in the “early days” was the simplicity factor.  Every Facebook page contained nearly the same categories of content and in the same order. It was clean and simple unlike MySpace pages which are notoriously known to be full of clutter and have a bad design. Once all of the Facebook applications started to become popular though, Facebook lost its “clean” look as people added application after application to their page. Now you can find yourself scrolling through endless apps on your friend’s pages just to find what you’re looking for.  Even the users themselves have a hard time keeping track of their own applications!

To help with this issue, Facebook has launched their tool which will help users “de-cluterize” their profile.  It essentially allows the user to move some of their application boxes to an “extended portion” of their profile that can be accessed with a simple click.  This means that pages will load faster, and will look better. Hallelujah!

So how do you create your extended profile? Just go to Facebook and scroll to the bottom of your profile.  There you’ll see the link for “edit extended profile.” Just click on that, and then a box will appear that tells you how many boxes you have on your profile, and then each application box is  listed out. You can check the boxes that you want to appear in your extended profile, and then click “move boxes.” Then when your friends come to your page, they can click “Show More Profile Boxes” to see all of your content.

Ahh… at last Facebook is simplified again!

Source: Thanks for the tip Andrew Min!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on May 17, 2008 by CyberNet.

Often times, the Internet is used for answering questions. A user goes to their search engine of choice, types in a question, and receives links that may direct them to the answer. Using this method doesn’t always work though, and so where is someone to go when they need an answer to a question? It doesn’t always take a professional expert to get an answer that you’re looking for, and so turning to a dedicated “answers” site is a often times a good solution. There are several answers sites out there, and most of them work by users submitting their questions and other users answering them. Today we’re taking a look at five different places you can go to find answers to your questions.

Yahoo Answers (link)

The first answer site that came to mind is Yahoo, because it’s actually my answer site of choice. I’ve never been one to ask or answer a question there, but I do browse through the topics that have been submitted and the answers that users have offered. You’d be amazed by how much you can learn. They originally started in 2005 and now they currently have over 500 million different answers available on the site. There’s a wealth of information that can be learned there!

Askville (link)

Before writing this, I hadn’t heard of Askville which was started by Amazon.com and opened to the public in late 2006. Just like Yahoo, it’s a place where the public can go to ask questions, answer, or discover. To help out with credibility, users can either gain or lose “experience points.” People are able to rate the answers that have been given, and eventually one answer is officially rated as “the best” based upon a five-star system.

Google Answers (link)

If Yahoo has an answers service, of course Google has to have one, right? Actually, Google came out with theirs first and Yahoo followed, but Yahoo’s has been much more successful. Google answers originally launched in 2002, but by November of 2006, Google had decided to permanently shut it down. It was quite a bit different from Yahoo in that whoever was asking the question would pay someone to get the answer or perform a search. The person asking the question would offer a price to get the job done and Google Answers Researchers found answers. While new questions can’t be submitted, they still make the archive of questions that had been asked and answered available to the public. Rumor has it that Google is even planning on bringing it back, but perhaps with a different business model.

Answers.com (link)

While I wouldn’t say Answers.com is the easiest site to navigate, they do have millions of topics available. Yahoo is the most popular answer service out there, but Answers.com comes in a close second. What’s nice with Answers.com is that if you go to ask a question, you will be directed to WikiAnswers (owned by Answers.com). If the question you submit has been asked before, you will be directed to the page that has a list of questions that have been asked previously that are related and you can see if there’s one that answers your question. Overall, Answers.com tends to be for the more practical questions.

WikiAnswers (link)

WikiAnswers is owned by Answers.com and provides a place where you can enter in your own question and have people respond. Those who respond aren’t experts, per say, they’re just people who want to contribute. As their logo says, it’s Q&A the Wiki way! Did you know that WikiAnswers used to be FAQ Farm until it was acquired in 2006? The mission of the site is “to enable anyone, anywhere, to ask a question on any topic in their own words and get a cooperatively written human answer.”

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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