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May 22

Palm Pre tasks, memos, browser on display, automatic backup confirmed

Posted in: palm, palm pre, PalmPre, pre, Sprint, Today's Chili, web browser, WebBrowser, webos

Just in time for your weekend perusal, Palm Goon (which we half suspect might be a viral site from Palm itself) has uploaded three tours and a FAQ chock-full of new Pre / webOS screens and details, chief among them being confirmation that the Pre does daily automatic backup. We’ve also got some pretty thorough glimpses of the web browser, Tasks, and Memo applications. Visually, it’s quite a beaut — a very elegant and classy UI that rivals anything we’ve seen from a certain Cupertino-based company. Of course, functionality remains to be seen, but if Palm and Sprint deliver half as good of a game as they talk, looks like we’re in for a real treat.

Update: Looks like the site’s experiencing intermittent server errors. Hang tight, we’ll keep you updated.

Read – Meet the Web Browser
Read – Meet the “Memos” app
Read – Meet the “Tasks” app
Read – Things You Might Not Know…

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Filed under: Cellphones

Palm Pre tasks, memos, browser on display, automatic backup confirmed originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 May 2009 18:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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May 22

Google Chrome celebrates version 2 release with autofill, fast-paced video

Posted in: Chrome, Google, Today's Chili, update

We know you’ve been avoiding Chrome because it puts your most visited sites on a display the size of the JumboTron in Times Square, and we don’t blame you. You don’t need the folks in Accounts Receivable knowing every detail of your life (including all the time you spend in the Cat Fancy online forums). Well, you’re in luck! Google’s infamous browser is now officially out of beta, and has been designated version two — and among the improvements is a feature that allows you to remove those pesky thumbnails from the browser home screen. Also in store for faithful users are such key features as Form Autofill and Full Screen Mode. Sadly, neither Linux or Mac users get to join the party just yet — but we’ll let you know as soon as that changes. Check out the video after the break.

Continue reading Google Chrome celebrates version 2 release with autofill, fast-paced video

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Google Chrome celebrates version 2 release with autofill, fast-paced video originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 May 2009 10:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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May 15

No, Firefox 3 Isn’t Ready for Prime-Time

Posted in: Firefox 3, Freeware, Pre-Release, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on March 21, 2008 by CyberNet.

firefox spotlight There is a lot of talking going around the Internet about Firefox 3 Beta being ready for mass usage. It’s because of an article by Reuters where the creators of Firefox supposedly told them that the Firefox 3 Beta is ready for everyone to use after months of being in development.

The problem is that Reuters is really making it sound like everyone should go out and download Firefox 3 Beta as if it was officially released. I’ve been using nightly builds of Firefox 3 for months, and I can say that it has come a long ways. However, I wouldn’t go putting it on my mom’s computer because there are still some things that need to be polished before the browser is pushed out the door.

What I noticed is that Reuters doesn’t explicitly quote someone from Mozilla as saying that it is ready for prime-time, but they do have Mozilla’s Vice President saying that it is “much more stable than anything else out there.” Sure it might be stable, but what about the dozens or even hundreds of extensions that aren’t going to work like they do in Firefox 2? The developers and power users who are already using the Beta know what they could be getting themselves into.

I have a feeling that Reuters took some things out of context and drew up their own conclusion as to whether Firefox 3 Beta is ready for the masses, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see an announcement by Mozilla saying that this isn’t meant for everyone quite yet. I mean really, if everyone should be using it then why hasn’t it been officially released?

If you do want to give the latest Firefox 3 Beta a whirl I highly recommend snagging it from PortableApps. That way you can see what it has to offer and determine whether it is ready for you without having to install a thing, and your previous Firefox profiles will remain untouched.

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May 13

iReader is Snap Alternative – Previews Pages in Words

Posted in: Firefox Extensions, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on February 21, 2007 by CyberNet.

We’ve said enough about Snap Previews already, but it’s going to be mentioned once more. This time around, there’s another option to getting previews that’s similar to Snap, but yet very different. It’s called iReader, and instead of the pop-up screenshot previews of linked sites, it gives you a preview in words.

iReader is made by Syntactica who previously had a run with a search engine which, according to Read/Write Web, got shut-down by Google. The linguistics behind that search engine have been put to use again with iReader. You can read in detail how it works here, but in a nutshell, it weighs parts of speech differently, and analyzes the concept in the context of the sentence structure. From that it determines what’s important, and turns it into a bulleted summary.

Ireader

As far as previews go, I’d say it’s better than Snap for a few reasons. First, the Snap Previews are so small that you really can’t see what you’d actually be getting into by clicking. But more importantly, iReader is an extension for your browser which means you, the reader is in control. It’s your choice if you’d like to use the tool or not, which is not the case with Snap where control lies in the hands of the publisher.

I installed it in my Firefox browser, but it’s also available for Internet Explorer and can be used on both a PC or a Mac. Now, would I actually use it? Probably not. When I hovered over a link, it took about three seconds for the preview to appear. In that time, I probably could have actually clicked on the link which would be more useful than reading a summary.

Another issue that I ran into was that it started pulling information from sidebars. For example, I tried it on CyberNet, and after hovering over a link, the first two bullets told me about CyberMarks which came from the left side column and had nothing to do with what I would have been clicking through to.

This browser extension is still in Beta which means it should only get better over time. If I had to pick between Snap Previews and iReader, it would definitely be the latter, but yet I still am not overly impressed. You can find the download for iReader here.

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Apr 30

Helpful Tip: Get Gmail 2 in Opera 9.5

Posted in: Features, Freeware, Gmail, Google, Opera, Today's Chili

This article was written on May 29, 2008 by CyberNet.

opera gmail-1.png One thing that Google is quite adamant on is making sure that you’re using a browser they officially support, and more times than not Opera users are left in the dark. The new Gmail interface is no exception. If you try visiting the email service in Opera you’ll be forced to use the old-school version of Gmail that doesn’t have color-coded labels, among other things.

If you’re using Opera 9.5 Beta you’ll be happy to know that the new Gmail works pretty well… if you know how to get to it. We’ve previously talked about how you can bypass browser detection in Gmail, and it’s as simple as pointing Opera to:

mail.google.com/gmail?nocheckbrowser

You’ll also want to bookmark that URL so that you have quick access to it in the future, but by using that you should be able to gain access to what’s commonly called Gmail 2. If you don’t see the new stuff right away you’ll want to click the “Newer Version” link in the upper-right corner.

I’m sure many of you are wondering why the heck Google is blocking Opera from using the new interface if it works so well. First off the current stable build of Opera (version 9.27) has some serious issues with Gmail 2. I couldn’t even compose a message using it. Opera 9.5 is a heck of a lot better, but that’s still in Beta, and so Google isn’t going to officially support that yet. Although even in Opera 9.5 Beta the contact manager doesn’t work quite right.

Unfortunately fixing the remaining Gmail 2 problems lies in the hands of the Opera developers, because Google obviously doesn’t see enough value in making their services fully compatible with Opera. The main functionality works fine in Opera 9.5 Beta, but you’ll have to remember to use the special URL above if you want to get the latest and greatest Gmail 2 features.

Thanks for the tip Cody!

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Apr 17

Intel Embraces Mobile Linux

Posted in: Gadgets, Linux, Software, Today's Chili, ubuntu

This article was written on July 17, 2007 by CyberNet.

Moblin Device Intel sees a bright future in using Linux as a mobile platform because of the small memory and disk footprint it leaves behind. The project initiated by Intel is called Moblin, and some of the sub-projects will be working with the Ubuntu Mobile & Embedded Edition which should be available in October 2007.

Here are a few of the sub-projects that are already underway:

Network Profile Manager – Let users connect to WLAN and Bluetooth networks.
Browser – Screen dimensions for these devices range from 800×480 to 1024×600 pixels, so the opportunity for desktop-like web browsing is a big plus. The browser will be based on Firefox, but it will feature a redesigned interface to make it more acceptable for touchscreen devices. Don’t worry…it will still support the installation of extensions!
Image Capture – Capture, manage, and share pictures and videos using a built-in camera.
Chat – It will be built using the Telepathy framework, which supports most popular messaging protocols.
User Interface – The interface looks pretty sweet. Plug-ins can be created to add things like a quick-launch, calendar, application notifiers, and more. Oh, and there will be themes as well!
Multimedia – You’ll be able to play back your songs and videos, as well as flip through photos. It even has a feature kind of like Cover Flow on iTunes where you can flip through the album covers for your CD’s.

The projects are led by the community, but Intel supplies the hardware to the developers. The hardware comes in the form of Mobile Internet Devices (small mobile devices for consumers) and Ultra Mobile PC’s (slightly larger, but offer a full PC experience).

I’m excited to see what the Moblin project can lead to, and after seeing the Eee PC yesterday I believe that Linux has a strong future in the mobile arena.

Mobile Linux Internet Project Homepage [via Linux Devices]
Thanks for the tip Mohan!

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Apr 08

Firefox 3 Download Manager, Resizable Toolbar Items, and More

Posted in: Features, Firefox 3, Freeware, Mozilla, Pre-Release, search, Software, Today's Chili

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

Pretty soon Firefox 3 is going to be feature complete, and all that will be left for them to do is fine-tune the things they have implemented. As we build up to that big moment there are some new features that are coming out of the shop for testers. This includes a spruced up download manager, resizable toolbar items, a plugin manager, and better looking menus.

So let’s go ahead and take a look at all the enhancements that have come about since Alpha 7 was released:

–Download Manager–

The download manager has gotten a lot more useful with the features they’ve added. First off it sorts your downloads with the ones currently in progress up top, and those that are completed down below:

Firefox 3 Download Manager

For any of the completed downloads you can click on the blue "i" for more information, such as the location it was downloaded from.

Then there is also the search box located in the bottom-left corner. That does a live search of all your completed items, and the results are then immediately displayed:

Firefox 3 Download Manager

At first I thought this might be really really nice, except I always setup Firefox to clear my completed downloads after they are finished. The reason why I do that is because it’s supposed to improve the startup time of the browser, and this feature is therefore rendered useless for me. So if you have Firefox setup to clear completed items in the Downloads window, the new layout and features won’t really do much for you.

–Resizable Toolbar Items–

This is a super sweet feature that I’m glad Mozilla got implemented. There is now a "Resizer" item in the Customization screen that can be added to the toolbars. It is the most useful for placing between the search box and address box, where you will then be able to drag it back and forth to resize the two boxes.

Firefox 3 Toolbar Resizer

It also works when placed between toolbar buttons, but the results may not be what you expect. I noticed that the buttons scrunch together when trying to resize them, and if space gets really tight they are just hidden. It would be a lot better if Mozilla worked on a way to scale the buttons to a size that would allow all of them to remain visible, but that might be something they are working on.

–Plugin Manager–

Plugin management has been taken from about:plugins to the same place where you manage extensions and themes. One of the most notable things that I saw when opening the plugin management was that it easily lets you disable certain items. For example, if you don’t want Flash enabled you can disable it right from the plugin management screen.

Firefox 3 Plugin Manager

The only problem, which can’t be seen in my screenshot, is that plugins with more than one file associated with them show up repeatedly. For me the issue was with Java, which had about 10 entries all given the same title.

–Menu Appearance–

The menus have also gotten a slight overhaul. Now Firefox 3 supports a Vista-like menu appearance. Some things take advantage of this, such as the History menu which shows the site’s icon next to the entries:

Firefox 3 Menus

–Overall–

Still to come in Firefox 3 is integration with Vista’s parental control system, a visual refresh/new default theme, Places enhancements, as well as a few other things that are pretty high priority. The next milestone, which is due September 18th, could be either an Alpha or a Beta build. Mozilla appears to be picking up the pace and getting some much-needed features implemented, so it wouldn’t be a surprise to me if they are able to move on to the Beta releases.

Sources: The Burning Edge, Ars Technica, Mozilla Links, Firefox Extension Guru & Kyle’s Cove
Thanks for the tip Mohan!

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Apr 01

Pause Animated GIFS in Firefox and IE

Posted in: Freeware, Internet Explorer, Opera, Software, Tips and Tricks, Today's Chili

This article was written on October 29, 2007 by CyberNet.

Have you ever been on a page with a ton of animated GIF’s, and all you’re trying to do is read the content? It can get quite distracting, but if you’re using Firefox or Internet Explorer just hit the ESC key. Doing so will immediately pause all of the animated GIF images on the page. Go ahead, try it with this image:

Stick Figure Animated GIF

The only bad part about pausing the images using the ESC key is that there’s no way to have them resume without refreshing the page.

One thing that I’ve never understood about browsers is why they don’t have a play, pause, and restart options on the right-click menu for GIF animations. That would be a really nice feature to have, but Firefox and Opera users do have a few advanced settings for GIF animations:

–Firefox Users Only–

In Firefox you can also completely disable GIF animations, or only allow them to play through one time. Here’s what you have to do:

In the Location Bar type about:config and hit Enter
Type “animation” in the Filter field (to quickly find the needed preference)
Double-click the image.animation_mode line and edit it to one of the following:

none — will prevent image animation
once — will let the image animate once
normal (default) — will allow it to play over and over

–Opera Users Only–

If you want to completely disable GIF animations in Opera here’s what you have to do:

In the Location Bar type opera:config#Multimedia|ShowAnimation and hit Enter
Uncheck the box next to Show Animation, and then save the settings

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Mar 27

SocialHistory JavaScript Determines What Sites You’ve Visited

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on July 30, 2008 by CyberNet.

browser history.png One piece of information a lot of places are clamoring to get their hands on is what other websites their visitors are viewing. By having access to this information they would be able to determine what social networks you use, what search engine you prefer, and more. As it turns out any site can grab this information from your browser, but there’s one little catch.

SocialHistory is a simple JavaScript file that has developed a way for website developers to obtain this information, but they’re trying to use it for good. By default it will look to see which, if any, of the popular social sites a particular user visits so that relevant buttons/links can be displayed. For example, if a user has never visited the Del.icio.us bookmarking website it’s probably safe to not display the “add to Del.icio.us” button.

Eerie, huh? How can it get this information from your browser’s history? What it does is display a list of pre-defined links in an iframe which point to user-supplied sites. Using JavaScript it then analyzes the color of the link, and if it’s purple it will know that you’ve already visited that site. If it’s blue it knows you haven’t visited it.

This is making use of a standard web browser feature that makes it possible for the user to distinguish which links/sites they’ve visited, and so it really isn’t a vulnerability. Luckily this doesn’t spit out information like how many times a user has visited a particular site, but I’m sure that won’t provide too much comfort to you.

The catch? As you might have realized by now this will only work using a pre-defined list of sites, and it can’t actually crawl through your browser’s history. That’s not stopping people from implementing it though. Using SocialHistory this site has already put together a system that will guess whether you’re male or female based upon the sites you visit. It says that they’re not storing any of the data, but I’m sure other sites who are trying to sneakily gather the stats won’t be so forthcoming about their intentions.

[via Webware]

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Mar 12

CyberNotes: Best Firefox Extensions for Bookmarking

Posted in: CyberNotes, Features, Firefox Extensions, Freeware, search, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on September 12, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

Could you imagine having a browser without a bookmarking system? To me that would be like using a computer that doesn’t let you copy and paste…it’s almost impossible to fathom what that would be like! So I think it is safe to say that bookmarks are important for productivity, but the real question is, what can we do to make it better?

I crawled my way through all of the 218 bookmark-related Firefox extensions on the Mozilla add-ons site, and I quickly realized how poorly some of the extensions were categorized since many of them didn’t have much to do with bookmarking at all. I was able to find a pretty good amount of extensions though that I thought were pretty interesting.

–Synchronizing Bookmarks–

Circle Arrows One of the most common things people want to do with their bookmarks is synchronize them with some online service. That way they can be accessed whether they are at work, home, or on the go.

There are several different services that can be used to store your bookmarks, and here’s a listing of what I believe are the best synchronizing extensions:

GMarks (for Google Bookmarks) – This is my favorite Firefox extension for synchronizing bookmarks. It makes use of the Google Bookmarks system so that everything you bookmark is kept private, and it is packed with features. You can have your bookmarks in a toolbar or in the sidebar, and it’s capable of importing your existing Firefox bookmarks.
Smarky (for Simpy) – This is based off of the GMarks extension mentioned above, except this one works with the Simpy bookmarking system.
Del.icio.us (for Del.icio.us, duh) – This is a simple Firefox extension that’s used for managing your bookmarks on Del.icio.us. You can add a description, notes, and tags to each bookmark you save.
Foxmarks (for Foxmarks or custom) – I really like this extension because it integrates right into your existing Firefox bookmarks. You can hardly notice that the extension is synchronizing your bookmarks, but it is. Lifehacker also has a great tutorial on how to setup Foxmarks to work with your own FTP.
Clipmarks (for Clipmarks) – Clip certain sections of websites so that only the content you want is saved.

–Making Bookmarks More Productive–

Now on to more of the gems. Some of these extensions I had heard of, or even written about prior to this, but there are still several that I hadn’t seen. You may not need to use some of them now, but there are certain times when each would serve a useful purpose.

Flat Bookmark Editor – This adds several fields to the bottom of the Bookmarks Manager so that you can edit the contents of a bookmark without having to pull up the properties. This is extremely useful if you’re trying to edit a bunch of bookmarks simultaneously.
Speed Dial – The idea for this type of feature was originally from the Opera browser, but as expected, a version with slightly less features has also been turned into a Firefox extension. Using it, you can set some of your favorite sites to be displayed on a Speed Dial page.
Visual Bookmarks – Have a hard time finding a site or image in your bookmarks? This could be just the solution since you can view all of the sites as thumbnails. Unfortunately this doesn’t integrate into the Firefox bookmark system so you’ll have to bookmark sites separately with this extension, but you can highlight certain portions of the screen that you want captured for the thumbnail.
Bookmarks Duplicate Detector – When you reach a few hundred bookmarks, sometimes it is difficult to remember whether you’ve already bookmarked a site or not. Have no fear…Book Duplicate Detector will scour through your bookmarks looking for ones that point to the same address.
Smart Bookmarks Bar – Sometimes you may want to put a lot of bookmarks on your toolbar, but the problem is that there just isn’t enough room. This extension will collapse all of your bookmarks down to just their icon, and when you hover over them with your mouse it will reveal their names.
Bookmarks LInkChecker – You can check your bookmarks to see if the links have been broken. This should become part of your regularly scheduled maintenance.
Enhanced Bookmark Search – This is a much more powerful search mechanism for finding bookmarks. You can even save searches into dynamically updating folders…it kind of reminds me of how the dynamic playlists in iTunes work.
Dog Ears – This lets you bookmark your place on a page so that you can quickly jump to the important portions using the Shift+Spacebar hotkey.
AddThis – Using this extension you can quickly bookmark a site on any number of different services.
Bookmark Permissions – This lets you enable or disable certain options, such JavaScript, on a per bookmark basis. That way you can disable JavaScript system-wide, but enable it for the sites that you trust. Of course you’ll have to open the site using the bookmark in order for the settings to be applied.

–Overview–

I think I’ve covered almost all of the interesting bookmark-related extensions, but I would love to hear of any others you can come up with. Don’t forget to checkout our URL-related extensions as well, but even more importantly, make sure that your Firefox extensions don’t have memory leaks.

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Hasta La Gadget!

Palm Pre tasks, memos, browser on display, automatic backup confirmed

Google Chrome celebrates version 2 release with autofill, fast-paced video

No, Firefox 3 Isn’t Ready for Prime-Time

iReader is Snap Alternative – Previews Pages in Words

Helpful Tip: Get Gmail 2 in Opera 9.5

Intel Embraces Mobile Linux

Firefox 3 Download Manager, Resizable Toolbar Items, and More