Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on March 06, 2008 by CyberNet.

(Click to Enlarge)

We’ve been receiving quite a few requests from our readers wanting to know what we think about Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1, and whether it is worth the upgrade. I downloaded and installed it shortly after it was released yesterday, and the total installation time on my Vista machine took around 4 or 5 minutes. There were absolutely no problems for me upgrading to IE 8 from IE 7.

–Performance–

Everything in Internet Explorer 8 seems a lot more responsive than in Internet Explorer 7: tabs open faster, pages render more quickly, and the “Quick Tabs” works almost instantaneously. Really, I’m not exaggerating the difference at all. Ashley and I have the exact same laptops, and we wanted to do a side-by-side comparison of how long it took to load our site. The difference was like night and day… Internet Explorer 8 loaded our site at least twice as fast.

I’ve gotten a handful of emails already that have been wanting me to run the SunSpider JavaScript test on Internet Explorer 8. Previously it failed miserably coming in a very distant last place. Here’s how it stacked up against the latest Firefox 3 nightly build (the lower amount of time is better):

1. Firefox 3 Nightly (03/05/2008 build): 6624.2ms
2. Internet Explorer 8 (Beta 1): 14302.0ms

That’s more than five times better than Internet Explorer 7 in our previous tests! So it looks as though there has been substantial changes under-the-hood in Internet Explorer 8 to make it perform better. The best thing is that the speediness doesn’t show just in the numbers. I can almost guarantee that as soon as you start using Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 you’ll see a noticeable difference.

–Features–

I’m not going to just list out the features here because I did that yesterday. Instead there are two things that I really wanted to comment on. The first is the new Activities that was introduced into Internet Explorer 8. I didn’t think that these were really anything special, but I’ve actually come to love them after just a few minutes of using the browser.

When you highlight some text a little green arrow will appear above your selection. If you click on that arrow you’ll see a list of all your installed Activities that you can choose from. This is a quick way for you to translate text, map an address, define a word, and much more:

Microsoft has a site setup where users can add more Activities, but given that the browser is so new there are only a handful of them available.

The one other thing that I really like is something Firefox 3 was (or maybe still is) supposed to have when it is released. It’s a domain highlighting feature that makes users more aware of the domain that they are viewing by graying out portions of the URL. Here’s what it looks like for one of our articles:

This will help users avoid phishing scams that are located at obscure domains disguised to look like a legitimate one, such as paypal.com.example.com.

–The Price of Standards–

Many of us applauded Microsoft for making the browser more standards compliant out-of-the-box, but I’m already starting to see the effects of the change. At first glance I have found that nearly every site I visit has some sort of rendering glitch in Internet Explorer 8. Our site, for example, had problems properly positioning the footer. We had to insert this code into the head section of the HTML on our site:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7" />

This forces Internet Explorer 8 to render the site the same way that Internet Explorer 7 does, and is a great temporary fix until you get the time to make the necessary changes. Our site is far from the only one that has problems. Here are some of the others that we’ve noticed:

• CNN.com has some video thumbnails that float off to the right side.
• Yahoo.com has a toolbar underneath the search box that is not aligned properly.
• News.com has a few issues in the upper part of their site around their search box.
• Yahoo Mail just pops up with error messages and is non responsive when you try to do just about anything.

You can quickly correct these issues by forcing IE 8 to emulate IE 7 using the “Emulate IE7″ button on the toolbar. You’ll need to restart the browser for the changes to become active, but it should solve most of the problems.

–Overview–

Overall I would have to say that this is a great update for Internet Explorer, but I don’t think Microsoft has done enough to pull users away from Firefox and Opera. There’s nothing that really leaves me in awe, but I do have to say that the performance improvements definitely deserve to be applauded.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on September 26, 2007 by CyberNet.

ZoneAlarm is a very well respected security company, and for the longest time it was my primary choice for firewall protection. They’ve remained pretty strong in that area, but lately I’ve seen people converting to other security apps, such as the free Comodo firewall.

ZoneAlarm is trying to recapture the focus by launching a new app that could very well be their most security-aware offering yet. It’s called ZoneAlarm ForceField and among other things it is used to place your browser in a sandbox. While in the Beta stage it is free for testers, but it will cost $29.95 when released.

What’s all this talk about virtual surfing? From the sounds of it there isn’t much of a difference between this and other free alternatives that we’ve previously mentioned: BufferZone, LivePC, and Sandboxie. It creates a virtual space on your hard drive where your downloads are stored and executed from. When run from that location programs have access to a virtual Registry and virtual system files, and therefore cannot access anything on your PC. Downloading a virus onto your computer would therefor have very limited consequences to your system, and could easily be removed.

Here are some of the other features it offers:

• Bank & Shop security – Multiple layers of protection safeguard the information you enter online.
• Private Browser – Surf anywhere and type anything without leaving a single trace on your computer.
• Dangerous download detector – Frisks every file you download so you don’t get anything nasty on your computer.
• Advanced anti-phishing, anti-keylogger and anti-screengrabber technology – Flags fraudulent Web sites and blocks spyware trying to steal your identity.

ZoneAlarm ForceField will install a toolbar in your browser so that it can actively notify you of the current site’s security. One of my favorite features, however, are the detailed notifications that you receive (pictured above, click to enlarge them). They provide information such as when the site was registered, where it is located, and whether it is a known phishing or spyware distributor. The registration date can serve a vital purpose when identifying a phishing site, because a bank that’s been around for dozens of years will probably have a website that was created more than a few months ago.

Right now ZoneAlarm ForceField works on 32-bit Windows XP SP2 or Vista, and is only compatible with IE 6/7 and Firefox 2. There are currently several known bugs and third-party software compatibility issues that you should be aware of before installing the free ZoneAlarm ForceField Beta.

Head over to PC World if you want to see more than a dozen screenshots of ZoneAlarm ForceField.

Thanks for the heads up “s”!

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on November 23, 2009 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 OS
This was a pretty big week for Google, and in the middle of it was their announcement that they were open sourcing the Chrome OS already. They are doing this so that they can start working with partners, the open source community, and developers prior to the launch late next year. Running the new OS isn’t exactly a point-and-click operation, but some sites have already posted instructions as to how you can have it up and running in a virtual machine with very little work.

Gmail Creator Thinks Email Will Last Forever
The creator of Gmail, Paul Buchheit, was interviewed by TechCrunch with the topic of whether email was ready to die. They talked about whether something like Google Wave would be enough to kill it. In a nutshell he said that email is not going to fall off the face of the Earth… well, at least not “until robots kill us all.”  

Adobe Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0 Beta’s Available
Both Beta versions of Adobe’s flagship frameworks sport multi-touch gestures, which will be an important addition as Windows 7 touch-screen machines increase in popularity. They are also both significantly better in performance, or they are at least in the quick checks that I’ve performed.

–News in Brief–

Google Calendar Testing “Sneak Preview”
Google Calendar users will be able to enjoy a Labs feature (being rolled out) letting you preview whether an appointment you’re creating conflicts with something else on your schedule.

Windows 8 Expected in 2012
Looking at Microsoft’s roadmap it appears as though they will try to stick to a three-year release cycle for Windows 8.

Office 2010 Mobile Beta Available
Microsoft has posted the mobile version of Office 2010 Beta for anyone running Windows Mobile 6.5.

eBay Completes Skype Sale at $2.75 Billion Valuation
eBay has sold off a majority (70%) of their ownership of the Skype software company.

Automatic Captions in YouTube
Google has employed an automatic speech recognition system on YouTube videos so that users can get closed captioning on nearly all uploads.

Remember the Milk Gadget for Google Calendar
Remember the Milk (RTM) users can enable a sidebar gadget in Google Calendar for easy task management.

Internet Explorer 9 Announced
At PDC Microsoft unveiled some of the things that should be expected from IE9, including hardware acceleration.

Mininova Breaks 10 Billion Torrent Downloads
The popular BitTorrent search engine hits the huge 10 billion download milestone.

Silverlight 4 Beta Released
The new version of Silverlight includes huge performance gains as well as support for the Chrome browser.

Explore Images with Google Image Swirl
Google showed off a new way to search for images this week called Google Image Swirl. It tries to group images according to the subject of the photo.

Ubuntu One Music Store
Canonical is working on a music store for their Ubuntu operating system that could compete with iTunes.

Templates Available in Google Sites
Anyone looking to create a quick website can find refuge in the new templates offered by Google Sites.

A New Look for Google Translate
Google Translate can now translate your text as-you-type, and provides phonetic pronunciations for people who can speak languages like Chinese but don’t know how to read/write them.

–Tips, Tutorials, and Reviews–

Use Aruna to Share Files  
Finding a good way to share files with friends can be difficult because of limitations many of them impose, but GoAruna knocks off most of those barriers. You can upload an unlimited number of files as long as each one is under 100MB in size. They can then be shared with anyone that you want through a simple URL. You can even manage the files you’ve uploaded through a convenient interface.  

Listen to Entire Music Albums with Lala
There aren’t many sites out there that will let you legally listen to entire songs or albums, but Lala is one of them. The catch? You can only listen to each song once. That is a pretty big limitation, but what’s nice is that this gives you the chance to preview entire albums before you decide whether there’s just a few songs you want to pickup.

Office 2010 “Quick Steps” Feature
One of the new features in Office 2010 Beta is the ability to add “Quick Steps” in Outlook. These are essentially easy-to-create macros that make managing your emails that much better. They can be used to forward/send email, archive emails to a certain folder, and a lot more.

–Tips in Brief–

How to Run Google Chrome OS from a USB Drive
This is a guide showing you how you can run Chrome OS on your PC using a USB drive.

Grep on Windows
Search multiple files on Windows using the same popular format found in Unix/Linux.

iTunes in your Mac Menubar
Mac users can control most aspects of iTunes right from the Menubar with this free app.

Foobar2000 v1.0 Beta Available
It’s been over 7 years in development, but version 1.0 of Foobar2000 is on the horizon with features like Windows Media streaming support.

Add 50 Pidgin Plugins with One Download
Grab all of the most popular Pidgin plugins without having to hunt them down one-by-one.

MinimizeToTray for Firefox
The new version of this popular extension now supports Firefox 3.0 and beyond.

FastStone Image Viewer 4.0
The update to this image viewer includes performance improvements, Windows 7 compatibility, and more.

Find “Secret” Messages in Website Headers
This isn’t all that useful, but can definitely be fun!

Extensive Ubuntu 9.10 Review
Ars Technica provides an in-depth review of the latest Ubuntu 9.10 operating system.

Convert FLV Video to AVI
Convert your favorite Flash videos to a format that is more device-friendly.

Seesmic Desktop for Windows
This is one of the first Twitter clients for Windows that doesn’t use Adobe AIR, and the interface fits in better with other aspects of the operating system.

mmKeys.dll Makes iTunes Work with Multimedia Keyboards
This DLL will address compatibility issues between iTunes and multimedia keyboards.

Sumatra PDF Reader 1.0
Sumatra still keeps things lean in terms of it’s PDF capabilities despite hitting the big 1.0 milestone.

Monitor a Website for Changes
Get notified when the content on a website changes.

MyPorts Gives You Detailed Info on Open Ports
See what ports are currently being used on your computer, and which applications have them open.

–Downloads–

• Adobe Air 2.0.0.10760 ^Beta [Mirror]
• Digsby Build 73 ^Beta [Mirror]
• FastStone Image Viewer 4.0 [Mirror]
• FeedDemon 3.0.0.45 [Mirror]
• Firefox 3.6 ^{Beta 3} [Mirror]
• Flash Player 10.1.51.45 ^Beta [Mirror]
• Google Chrome 4.0.249.4 ^Beta [Mirror]
• Google Desktop 5.9.911.3589 [Mirror]
• Google Earth 5.1.3509 ^Beta [Mirror]
• Google SketchUp 7.1.6087 [Mirror]
• Growl 2.0 [Mirror]
• MediaMonkey 3.2.0.1294 [Mirror]
• Miranda 0.8.10 [Mirror]
• Mozilla Camino 2.0 [Mirror]
• Opera 10.10 [Mirror]
• Paint.NET 3.5.1 [Mirror]
• PDF-XChange Viewer 2.0.42.9 [Mirror]
• PeaZip 2.8.0 [Mirror]
• RSS Bandit 1.9.0.972 [Mirror]
• Screenshot Captor 2.76.01 [Mirror]
• Silverlight 4.0.41108 ^Beta [Mirror]
• Sumatra PDF 1.0 [Mirror]
• VirtualBox 3.0.12.54655 [Mirror]
• WindowBlinds 7.0 [Mirror]
• uTorrent 2.1.17350 ^Beta [Mirror]

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on May 09, 2008 by CyberNet.

Win; Mac; Linux
Opera is obviously not content with sitting on the sidelines when it comes to being the fastest browser out there. Back in February Mozilla decided that it was time to optimize it’s JavaScript performance, and used a technique called Profile-Guided Optimization (PGO) that gave it a nice boost. Opera decided to jump on the PGO bandwagon as well with this week’s release of Opera 9.5, and here is their explanation of how it works:

With this technique, Opera is compiled twice. The first compilation creates a specially instrumented build that gathers statistics about which code is called and which variables are used most often. The instrumented build loads sites automatically using “URL player”, a testing feature available in every Opera build (more information about that in a later blog post). This information is dumped into files and used to produce the final build that’s optimized based on the gathered statistics.

Did it help? Unfortunately there are some bugs in Opera 9.5 that prevent it from finishing the Sunspider test, but in the areas it does complete the result is normally better than Firefox 3 Beta 5. It does, however, consistently beat Firefox 3 in the MooTools SlickSpeed test in addition to this JavaScript benchmarking tool.

Congrats Opera! It looks as though you might be recapturing the JavaScript performance crown, but we’ll have to wait and see what the final version of each browser is like before we make any conclusions along those lines.

Be sure to checkout our more complete article where we compare the performance of more browsers.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Credit to Affectiva — for a medical bracelet, the Q Sensor looks delightful. The item you’re peering at here has been developed by the aforesaid Massachusetts-based startup in order to give a voice to those who may not have one, and in theory, it can provide vital information to caregivers long before a breakdown takes place. Particularly with autistic children, who often cannot communicate their stress levels effectively, the Q Sensor is able to “detect and record physiological signs of stress and excitement by measuring slight electrical changes in the skin.” From there, it can send signals to doctors, parents or caregivers, and those folks can react accordingly to information that they would otherwise not be privy to. Put simply, the band works by detecting subtle moisture changes under the skin when the “flight or fight” mode is initiated, and while even the creators admit that such a response isn’t absolutely indicative of stress, it’s generally a signal worth paying attention to for one reason or another. Purportedly, a beta version is set to go on sale to researchers and educators later this month for $2,000, and there’s a video just after the break if you’re still struggling to grok the purpose.

Continue reading Affectiva’s Q Sensor wristband monitors and logs stress levels, might bring back the snap bracelet

Affectiva’s Q Sensor wristband monitors and logs stress levels, might bring back the snap bracelet originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Nov 2010 10:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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