Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on August 27, 2009 by CyberNet.

UPDATE: As some commenters have pointed out certain antivirus applications are flagging this application as containing a trojan. My antivirus, NOD32, did not find any virus though. So it’s up to you whether you want to proceed.

We’ve seen all kinds of Aero glass emulators for XP cross our path. The problem is that the moment they start to show any potential the developers fall off the map and updates are pretty much non-existent. A few weeks ago when I saw one called Border Skin over at Lifehacker I put off trying it because, frankly, I was sick of being disappointed.

Man, I have to say that I’m sorry I didn’t try this sooner. First off, it’s portable so there’s no installation involved. Just download, extract, and run. The settings are self-contained in the directory you run it from so there’s not a bunch of random files you need to worry about finding should you decide to delete it.

Second, it looks remarkable. You can turn the blur effect on or off, there are about 15 different colored themes you can choose from (the one pictured above is the Windows 7 style), and overall it just feels like it’s part of the operating system. Over the last few days I’ve been using this full-time on one of my XP machines, and there have been very few times that it even crossed my mind that this wasn’t an integrated part of the operating system. It’s that fluid.

Lastly, performance. This thing performed so well on my XP laptop that it got me wondering what it would be like on a low-end piece of hardware. I don’t have any old computers lying around, but then I realized that throwing it in a virtual machine would be a really good test considering that Aero glass on Vista or Windows 7 isn’t available in any virtual environment due to graphics restrictions. So I put it on an XP virtual machine with 512MB of RAM, enabled all the effects including blurring, and then took the screenshot you see above. It all worked amazingly well even on a virtual machine with limited resources. The only issues I saw was some slight jumping if I’d drag the windows around really fast, and when closing a window the border would remain visible for about a half a second after the app closed. Definitely not a deal breaker, and these results were much less noticeable on my dedicated machine.

It also got me wondering what it does with “borderless” windows such as Google Chrome. Good news… it does nothing! I was worried that it may add a border around those applications regardless of whether they need one or not, but it doesn’t. This is because it has an “exclude list” file that can be used to specify windows that shouldn’t be skinned. Common apps like Chrome and Windows Live Messenger are already in this list for you.

So a big thanks to the developer for coming up with an awesome solution, and I can’t wait to see what else will be added in future versions! This is already the most complete Aero glass emulator for Windows XP that I’ve used, and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Border Skin Homepage (Windows only; 32-bit only; freeware)

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on January 04, 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–

Google Chrome Nabs #3 Browser Spot
Internet Explorer has been on a rather fast decline, and that point is driven home by the fact that it has lost nearly 1% of its market share in each of the last 6-months. Chrome keeps on pushing forward as it squeezes into 3rd place past Safari, but still lags far behind IE and Firefox. All browsers seem to be making progress with the exception of IE, and with some luck we may see Firefox cross the 25% threshold next month.

BaconBits: BitTorrent Tracker for “Good” Reddit Users
I have to say that I was rather surprised to see a BitTorrent Tracker that is geared solely towards the Reddit community. In order to be a member of this site you must have signed up at Reddit over 3-months ago, have at least 100 comment karma, and have at least 1 link karma. As long as you meet those requirements there is nothing else you have to worry about… meaning there is no certain ratio you have to hit to remain an active member.

Firefox 4.0 Pushed Back to Late 2010/Early 2011
Mozilla is letting the deadlines slip once again. The Firefox 3.6 release is now expected sometime in the 1st quarter of 2010, which kicks back Firefox 4.0 to the late 2010/early 2011 timeframe. I understand that issues arise and release dates have to be adjusted accordingly, but I hope Mozilla realizes how competitive the browser market is becoming now that Google has joined the race to dethrone IE. Maybe Mozilla needs to hire on some more people so that they can hopefully meet their initial targets.

–News in Brief–

Most Pirated Movie of 2009 Makes Heaps of Money
Star Trek is said to be the most pirated movie of the year, and according to estimates the movie still profited over $100 million.

Verizon Forces Subscribers to Use Bing
Microsoft struck a $500 million deal that has forced Verizon Blackberry users to use the Bing search engine.

Google Android Event Tomorrow
Google temporarily posted the support page for the Nexus One, which is expected to officially be announced tomorrow.

–Tips, Tutorials, and Reviews–

How to Temporarily Change the Default Program for Filetypes
Coffee is a pretty cool portable app that will let you define a custom set of default applications to use when the program is running. For example, you could use Coffee to make a portable version of Firefox your default browser. All you’d have to do is plug in your USB drive, fire up Coffee, and it will kick in and make the portable Firefox the default app for your web surfing needs.

Enable Windows Aero in Vista/Windows 7 Home Basic
If you’re running Vista or Windows 7 Home Basic I’m sure you’re aware that you can’t take advantage of everything the OS has to offer since you don’t get Aero support. Well, this app will remove that limitation. Assuming your graphics card can handle Aero this app will make the necessary changes so that the additional functionality will be made available to you, and it will disable future hardware checks that could cause Windows to disable it.

–Tips in Brief–

SPlayer – A Lightweight Media Player
This portable media player is compact, free, has a clean UI, and is easy on system resources. A killer combination.

Check Unread Counts for Gmail, Wave, Reader, and More in Chrome
This Google Chrome extension will monitor most of your Google services for unread items.

Upload Files to Dropbox by Email
If you leave this app running on a PC you’ll be able to upload files to your Dropbox account simply by attaching files to an email.

Thumbnail Database Files (thumbs.db) Cleaner
You could simply just search your computer for these files, but this provides a slightly different approach for deleting those pesky thumbnail files from your machine.

Manage Your Windows 7 Library Settings
Get complete control over your Windows 7 libraries: add/remove them, change icons, change default saving location, and more.

–Downloads–

• Defraggler 1.16.165 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Dropbox 0.7.97 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• FileZilla 3.3.1 RC1 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Foobar2000 1.0 Beta 6 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• ICQ 6.5.2024 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Notepad++ 5.6.4 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Paint.NET 3.5.2 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• TeraCopy 2.1 [Homepage] [Mirror]

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on September 17, 2009 by CyberNet.

There have been a few themes that have been developed using the mockups Mozilla made for Firefox 4.0. What’s funny is that while Firefox 4.0 is over a year away you can already get the same beautiful design without having to wait.

As you can see in the screenshot above the theme is extremely close to this particular mockup from Mozilla. Unfortunately, however, there are a few things that you have to install other than just a theme in order to get the full affect. The good news is that the theme developer outlines all of the different things you’ll want depending on exactly how far you want to go:

• Strata40 – This is pretty essential… because it’s the theme itself.
• StrataGlass – Needed for Aero glass effects on Windows 7/Vista.
• Personal Menu – Needed for tools and bookmarks toolbar buttons. I noticed that if you hide the Menu bar that you’ll want to disable the ability to press the Alt key to quickly display the toolbar. If you don’t there is a small group of text that isn’t properly hidden by the theme.
• Omnibar – Not essential but great for using the address bar for searching instead of the search box. You’ll probably want this because the theme seems to have a little bit of troubles if you have the search box displayed. Our CyberSearch add-on may also be handy in this respect.
• Fission – Needed for “progress line” feature. Shows the page’s loading progress as a small line below the address bar.
• The mockups also include a tabs on top version. If you would like a tabs on top version install an addon called Stylish, and then install this style.

It may sound like a lot of work, but I was actually able to get it all setup in less than 5-minutes. And there’s no need to say that I’ve had several people ask what browser I’m using when they’ve seen me running this.

Strata40 Firefox Theme [via ghacks]

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com