Jan 29

WrapUp: HTML5 vs. Flash Performance, A Web-Centric Music Manager, and More

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on March 15, 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–

opera mini android.jpgOpera Mini 5 Beta Available for Android
The Opera team released a Beta for version 5 of their Android Mini browser last week. The new version supports Speed Dial for your favorite sites, includes a password manager, and can sync your bookmarks/Speed Dial with the desktop version of Opera. The main benefit to Opera Mini, however, is the the fact that all your requests go through Opera’s servers to compress and optimize the page you want to view.


html5.jpgHTML5 vs. Flash Performance
There are many proponents for HTML5 video playback in browsers, but Windows users in particular may find that Flash is actually more efficient due to hardware acceleration. Flash 10.1 is able to use the GPU on some computers to decode video, and therefore beat out the straight HTML5 implementations in most scenarios.


–News in Brief–

firefox upgrade.jpgUpgrades Issues to Firefox 3 and Firefox 3.5 Users
Mozilla will be pushing out update notifications to Firefox users that have not yet upgraded to Firefox 3.6.


reader play.jpgA New Way to View Google Reader
 Google introduced a more visual way to browse through interesting photos and videos in Google Reader.


google biking.jpgBiking Directions Added to Google Maps
Google added biking directions to the already included transit, walking, and driving directions in Maps.


msn homepage.jpgNew MSN Homepage Rolling Out
As expected Microsoft is rolling out a completely redesigned MSN Homepage over the next few weeks.  


apps marketplace.jpgGoogle Apps Marketplace Open
 Third-party companies can now make “add-ons” to Google Apps that integrate with services like Gmail and Google Calendar.


refresh pop.jpgManually Refresh POP Accounts in Gmail
 A Gmail Labs feature now lets you manually fetch emails from POP accounts that you’ve set up.


steam mac.jpgValve Confirms Steam for Mac
Valve announced that Steam will indeed be coming to Mac users sometime in April.


chromium css.jpgChromium Adds Support for Custom Stylesheets
The latest nightly release of Chromium lets users specify custom stylesheets that can be used to modify the appearance of sites.


popsci.jpgComplete Popular Science Archive Available
With the help of Google, Popular Science now lets you view previously published magazines.


newegg counterfeit.jpgNewegg Sells Counterfeit i7 CPUs
Newegg has admitted to selling 300 counterfeit Intel i7 CPUs, and is working with the customers to replace them.


ad block.jpgWhy Ad Blocking is Devastating to the Sites You Love
Ars Technica explains how blocking ads on your favorite sites can have a negative affect.


–Tips, Tutorials, and Reviews–

musicbee.jpgMusicBee – A Web-Centric Music Manager
This desktop music manager is unique in the sense that it utilizes the power of the web to simplify music tasks. You can do things like update tags, missing album art, lyrics, and much more. It can also create playlists from similar artists (according to Last.FM), and you can fetch online info for the song you’re currently listening to.


windows 7 taskbar.jpgWindows 7 Taskbar Customizer
We’ve seen apps that let you customize the size of the thumbnail previews in Vista, and now a similar (but better) tool is available for Windows 7 users. The thumbnail customizer lets you specify the size, spacing, margin, and delay associated with every preview popup you see when hovering over a Taskbar icon.


–Tips in Brief–

hulu.jpgDownload Hulu TV Shows
This desktop app makes it easy for you to download your favorite Hulu TV shows.


weatherbar.jpgWeatherBar Puts the Weather in Your Windows 7 Taskbar
This Windows 7 app puts the your local weather in a jumplist item.


batch convert images.jpgBatch Convert Images Using Drag and Drop
Photo Magician lets you perform advanced image conversions, or a faster method that is initiated simply by dropping images onto an icon.


ie tab 2.jpgIE Tab 2 Continues the IE Tab Project
The IE Tab project lives on with a new name, and supports versions of Firefox up to the latest nightly builds.


dummy images.jpgCreate Dummy Placeholder Images
This website lets you specify the dimensions and colors for an image, and have it generated on-the-fly. Definitely great for web designers.


secondbar.jpgAdd an Additional Menu Bar to Each Mac Monitor
SecondBar will throw a menu bar on the top of each additional monitor that you have hooked up to your Mac.


synergy.jpgSynergy+ Continues Development of the Open Source Project
This is a continuation of the open source Synergy project that lets you use one mouse/keyboard across all your operating systems.


office tabs.jpgAdd Tabs to Office Programs
If you’re constantly working with multiple Office documents this add-on will incorporate a tabbed interface for managing all open files.


–Downloads–

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Nov 28

Bulk Convert Videos for Nearly Any Mobile Device

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on July 27, 2010 by CyberNet.

bulk convert videos.png

We recently wrote about Any Video Converter, which is one of the best tools I’ve come across for batch converting those videos you have laying around. Last week I found a new app called XMedia Recode (English translation) for Windows, which is both free and portable. What makes this app so unique is the extensive number of built-in profiles that are included.

What benefits do these profiles offer? They mean you can convert videos to use on your mobile device without having to think about the optimal screen resolution or supported video format. You can just select your device, optionally review/tweak the recommended settings, and kick off the encoding. Does this app have a profile for your device? Probably. It includes profiles for about 35 manufacturers including popular ones like Apple (~35 devices/profiles), Motorola (~25 devices/profiles), HTC (~35 devices/profiles), and many others.

Here’s how simple the process is:

  1. Drag-and-drop videos from your computer into the file pane located underneath the toolbar.
  2. Select the video(s) you want to convert in the list (you can use Ctrl/Shift+Click to select more than one)
  3. On the Format tab select your profile.
  4. Click the Add Job toolbar button to queue up the video(s).
  5. Repeat steps 2-4 until you’ve finished queuing everything up.
  6. Click the Encode button to kick off the processing.

If you want you can dive through the additional tabs to configure advanced video and audio settings, or even specify a specific portion of the video to convert.

The only downside? Like most other video converters this one can take some time to process a file. In my experience it is about 1.5 times the length of the video, but that also depends on the starting/ending formats as well as how powerful your machine is. It’s a portable and free app… so there’s no harm in giving it a whirl for yourself.

XMedia Recode Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)

Supported video formats include: 3GP, 3GPP, 3GPP2, AAC, AC3, AMR, ASF, AVI, AVISynth, DVD, FLAC, FLV, H.261, H.263, H.264, M4A , M1V, M2V, M4V, Matroska (MKV), MMF, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, TS, TRP, MP2, MP3, MP4, MP4V, MOV, QT, OGG, PSP, (S) VCD , SWF, VOB, WAV, WMA and WMV.

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 05

How to Bulk Email, Copy, Print and Delete Photos on Your iPhone and iPad

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on May 20, 2011 by CyberNet.

A few weeks ago I was talking to someone who had said what a pain it was to manage their iPhone and iPad photos in bulk. They told me that there were about 20 pictures they took that didn’t turn out well, and in order to remove them from their phone they had to go through and delete them one-by-one. Ouch! I could see how that would be frustrating, but there is a much simpler way that not many people seem to know about. Here’s what you need to do:

  1. Open the Photos app on your iPhone or iPad.
  2. Tap the arrow in the upper-right corner of the screen.
    Bulk edit photos button
  3. Most people I’ve talked to realize you can select multiple photos by tapping on them individually from this screen, but the cool thing is that you can tap and hold on the first photo you want to select and then slide your fingers across all of the photos you want to share/copy/delete. Unfortunately the screen won’t scroll as your finger reaches an edge, but this trick should still ease the process of selecting a lot of photos.
    Bulk delete photos
  4. Tap the Share, Copy, or Delete button depending on which operation you want to do.

Note: You can repeat Step 3 to deselect items you didn’t mean to select.

So the key things you need to remember once you enter the selection screen is to tap, hold, and slide. From there you can send the photos through Email or MMS (limited to 5 photos at a time), copy them to the clipboard, print them, or delete them from your iOS device.

 

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

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