Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on September 02, 2008 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

Windows; Mac
Finding a good alarm clock to help get you up in the wee hours of the morning can be tough. I have a tendency of placing the clock out of arms reach so that I have to get out of bed in order to turn it off. What I use as an alarm varies from things like my cellphone or TV all the way to my computer.

For some odd reason it seems as though free alarm clocks for computers are tough to come by these days. A few years ago we covered a decent alarm clock called Citrus that offered a lot of the functionality people would expect, and the best part was that it was free. Unfortunately the freeware stage didn’t last long, and it’s now a $13 program. Similarly Aurora for Mac used to be free, but it now bears a $22 price tag.

So today we’re showing our appreciation to the developers who’ve taken the time to build powerful alarm clock applications, and are currently offering them for free!

–College Alarm Clock (Homepage)–

Windows only
This alarm clock is particularly useful for people that have different schedules each day of the week, and as the name implies the target audience is college students. Using it is simple: download and run the program… there’s nothing to install. After that you can start tinkering around with the different configuration options.

You’ll quickly notice that there are 7 tabs spread out across the top for each day of the week. For each day you can designate a different time that coincides with your schedule, which for college students works out perfectly. It doesn’t exactly have a fancy interface, but it can be rather handy if your schedule varies throughout the week.

–Alarm Clock 2 (Homepage)–

Mac only
This is a powerful alarm application that is not only capable of handling alarms, but can also serve as a stopwatch or timer. I’d have to say that the best part is the fact that it’s able to wake your computer from sleep to sound your alarm. That’s great for anyone who doesn’t like to leave their computer running overnight.

Here are some of the other features that really make it stand out from the crowd:

• Set as many alarms as you want
• Set repeating alarms or one-time alarms
• Wake up to any song, playlist or podcast in your iTunes library
• Wake up peacefully with “easy wake” – a configurable option that slowly increases the volume of your alarm over time

–TinyAlarm (Homepage)–

Mac only
The name of this program gives the impression that this is a basic run-of-the-mill alarm clock, but that’s not the case at all. It doesn’t integrate with your iTunes library like the previous application does, but it’s capable of doing most things people would want from an alarm clock:

• Choose from System sounds or sounds in your personal library
• Choose how many chimes sound when the alarm goes off
• Add a text reminder to alarms that get displayed in a Growl notification
• Fuzzy timers: Timers that are “Exact” will simply add the minutes or hours to the current time. Timers that are “About” (for example, “About 15 minutes”), are rounded off.

–Overview–

If you use an alarm clock on your computer we’d love to hear which one. The selection of free solutions seems to be dwindling, but hopefully that won’t be a growing trend.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Check out the Top 10 Strangest Clocks!CyberWare: Citrus Alarm Clock Gently Wakes You UpCyberNotes: Tip – Hide the Drive Letters in Windows Vista and more…CyberNotes: Your Week in Review with Sunday’s SummaryCyberNotes: The First Thing You Install On Your Windows PC

This article was written on August 21, 2006 by CyberNet.

Million Dollar Monday

If you don’t consider yourself an “average Joe” rather you consider yourself living the life of luxery, Nokia’s luxery brand of phones called Vertu will be the perfect “communication instrument” (the average joe calls it “cell phone”) for you. From sapphires and crystal to rubys and diamonds, this phone is nothing but average. To top it off, it’s made piece by piece entirely by hand.

I went to their website to get the details and I was impressed.  They offer a variety of styles and colors to satisfy all of your needs. There are white and yellow gold options available with diamonds. Yes, diamonds on a cell phone. Vertu also offers an array of colors like red, blue, yellow, and the list goes on. For comparisons, Nokia will sell millions of phones in a years time while Vertu will sell only thousands. It’s a completely different ball game and quite the different consumer Vertu aims their product at.

How would you like a keypad made with ruby bearings? Along with the ruby keypad bearings, Vertu phones also have silicone moldings under the leather on each corner that protects the phone from wear and tear. The phones also have a strong sapphire crystal and titanium surface that gives the phone some extra protection.

A phone such as this will cost at the least, several thousand dollars (and the demand is on the rise).  For such a high cost, I’d expect it to last for more than the 2.5 to 4 hours of talk time that it currently has. While there’s not a whole lot of talk time, it does have an estimated 270 hours of standby time.  It also has a fairly large user memory capable of storing around 1000 entries.

According to LuxuryLaunches.com, Vertu is expected to release another phone within the next month which is expected to sell well. You can find retailers of the Vertu phones all over the world in the United States, Canada, UK, France, and some countries in Asia. 

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on June 04, 2008 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

With the Firefox 3 release right around the corner I thought this would be a good time to look over the extensions available, and see which ones haven’t been updated. There’s actually a descent amount that still need to be updated before they will work with the final release, but if you look around many have pre-release versions that they are getting ready to roll out.

So what we’ve got for you today are instructions on downloading/installing extensions that aren’t officially compatible, a list of extensions that currently have Beta versions that work with Firefox 3, and finally a few extensions that already appear to be extinct. The lists are by no means comprehensive, but I also figured that everyone can chime in below with your own findings.

–Forcing Compatibility–

Using the trick we’re about to show you it’s possible to bypass any compatibility checking, which means you’ll be able to install (not necessarily run) any extension. This is obviously not recommended for everyone, and you should only use this as a last-ditch effort.

1. In the Address Bar type about:config followed by the Enter key. Continue through the warning message if it’s shown.
2. Right-click in the main area, and select New -> Boolean
   
3. Enter extensions.checkCompatibility into the box that appears, and click the OK button.
   
4. Then choose false in the next window.
5. Now you can install any extension, but remember that they are not guaranteed to work. I’ve seemed to have pretty good results with this though.

One problem that you might notice is that when you go to install an extension that’s not compatible with your version of Firefox the “Add to Firefox” button will be grayed out. This is quickly remedied by going to the “All Versions” page, and you’ll find a link to that following the description of the add-on:

Once on that page you can download the most recent version of the add-on without the site checking what version of Firefox you’re running, but you’ll need to follow the steps outlined above before being able to actually install it.

–Currently in Development–

I know that some of you are waiting for certain extensions to get upgraded before you’ll make the jump to Firefox 3, and so I’ve assembled a list of eight rather popular ones that will definitely have new versions coming out. Each of these already have a pre-release version publicly available, which may persuade you to make the switch a little early.

• Sage [Homepage]
  This is the much beloved RSS feed reader, but it hasn’t been updated since January 2007. Someone else has begun reworking it to make it play nice with Firefox 3, and the new version can be downloaded here.
• FEBE [Homepage]
  You can use this to backup your extensions, and for some people it’s a rather critical extension to have. They are currently working on the next milestone release, and the Beta version is available which works with Firefox 3.
• FireFTP [Homepage]
  Ever want to have an FTP client in your browser? With FireFTP you can, but you’ll need to download the preview release if you want Firefox 3 compatibility.
• FoxyTunes [Homepage]
  Controlling your media player has never been so easy, but Firefox 3 users were starting to get worried that this add-on wasn’t going to be updated. Despite not having released a new version in almost a year they do have FoxyTunes 3 Beta publicly available, which includes Firefox 3 support.
• Firebug [Homepage]
  Most web developers absolutely love this extension, and the good news is that a version for Firefox 3 is right around the corner. If you’re a bit anxious you can hop on over and download Firebug 1.2 Beta.
• ColorfulTabs [Homepage]
  Make your tabs more identifiable with this extension, and Firefox 3 users will find a Beta version here.
• Tab Mix Plus [Homepage]
  It’s safe to say that this is the all-in-one solution for anything you want to do with tabs. And work for a Firefox 3 version is always going on.
• Smart Bookmarks Bar [Homepage]
  Save some room on the Bookmarks toolbar by only showing icons. The latest release, available from here, is compatible with Firefox 3.

–All Good Things Must Come to an End–

There are a handful of extensions that I have come across which you shouldn’t hold out too much hope for. These three look like they will become extinct:

• VideoDownloader [Homepage]
  With this extension you can download videos from 60+ movie sites, but it has been kicked back into the “experimental” stage (meaning you’ll need a Mozilla account to download it) even though it has an astounding 13 million downloads. It would likely be one of the most downloaded extensions right now, but it hasn’t seen an update in nearly 2 years. So don’t get your hopes up for this one.
• MinimizeToTray [Homepage]
  A lot of people are going to be disappointed to hear that the MinimizeToTray extension doesn’t work with Firefox 3, and it doesn’t look like there are any plans to fix it. The last update was in October 2006 just in time for Firefox 2, and there’s been no mention of a new version being worked on. Yikes!
• Tab Groups [Homepage]
  This project didn’t last very long, and that’s disappointing because it’s an extension that I really enjoyed. It’s only had one release, and there’s no sign that the developer is still working on it.

–Overview–

And now we turn the keyboard over to you, our trusty readers. Let us know in the comments below which extensions you’re holding out for, and which ones have pre-release versions that you’ve been tinkering with.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on January 26, 2008 by CyberNet.

Weekend Website

A few days ago we wrote about Last.fm’s new service and how nice it is that users can listen to music for free. There are a few limitations though, and one of them is that you can only listen to a song three times for free before being required to subscribe. Epiac1216 commented that he has been using a service called Songza, and what was so great about it was that there were no strings attached. Epiac said that he could “prepare my own playlist with the selected songs and they will be played in the order I chose.” This got me thinking about how there are all kinds of music services out there that some of you may not be aware of.  Today we’ll be taking a look at Songza, but we’re also asking you to fill us and everybody else in on the music service you use, and why you use it. This way everybody will have multiple options to choose from when they’re trying to find a way to listen to the music that they love online.

What is Songza?

On the Songza website, they describe themselves as “the music search engine & Internet jukebox” where you can listen. Now. It’s got a unique design and a color that makes it stand out. At first glance, it may appear that there’s not much to the service, however, looks are deceiving in this case.  It’s got an extremely clean interface and a clutter free design and so while it may look like nothing, there’s actually quite a bit of functionality there.

Where does it come from?

The site was designed and brought to life by Aza Raskin who happens to be the son of Jeff Raskin, the Apple Macintosh co-founder. On the Songza about page, they say that “Like all good ideas, both the concept and design came to Aza while he was in the shower.”

Searching for music

Did I mention that they make awesome use of Ajax? Well, they do. Performing a search is so quick and easy, thanks in part to the Ajax.  On the homepage there is a nice big search box where you can enter a specific song or an artist that you’re wanting to hear. I did a search for “Daughtry” and it pulled up a whole list of songs pretty quickly. And because of the Ajax, the page didn’t have to completely re-load.

Clicking on one of the results will pull up a menu so that you can play a song, share it, rate it, or add it to a playlist. Once you click to play a song, you’ll get links to “watch video” (it’ll be a YouTube video for the song) or buy the song via Amazon.

Sharing with others

If you find a song that you’d like to share with others, you have a few ways to do this.  That menu I mentioned above will give you all of your options for sharing.  They include embedding it into your blog, a Facebook or MySpace account, or other web sites.  You can also get a direct link to the song, or email it to a friend. Embedding a player into your own site is simple. It’s a Flash player too, which is nice.

Another social aspect to this site is that you can vote a song up or down. In the pop-up menu that you’ll see when clicking on a song, there’s an option that says “rate.” It asks “is this a good recording” and then you can click a simple yes or no.

What it’s not

If you’re looking for a music discovery service, this isn’t it.  It’s not going to tell you what you might like, instead it simply plays the songs that you search for that you want to hear.  Additionally, this is NOT a music download service. You go to Songza simply to listen. Songza is simply about  helping you find and then playing the music that you want to listen to.

Which music service do you use?

Songza has quickly moved to the top on my list of favorite online music services out there. There are so many different services out there though, so we’re wondering, which service do you use online? Pandora? Last.fm? XM Radio or Sirius Radio?

Source: Thanks Omar for mentioning this in the comments!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on August 04, 2008 by CyberNet.

Microsoft/Mac Monday

Today we’re taking a look at our Top 10 applications for the iPhone followed by a list of some of our other favorites. For those of you who have your own favorite apps, let us know what they are in the comments…

NetNewsWire (link)

NetNewsWire is an RSS reader for your iPhone and it’s a favorite because we have found it to be the fastest way to read feeds on the iPhone. You can synchronize it with FeedDemon on Windows and NetNewsWire on a Mac, or any other NewsGator product. It’s actively being developed so it’s only going to get better.

Twinkle (link)

There are a few different Twitter applications available for the iPhone but Twinkle seems to bring the best of all of them together, plus it’s free. Twinkle allows you to find other people who are twittering nearby and you can also attach images and update your location. Appearance-wise it has a fantastic interface that is easy on the eyes.

Pandora/AOL Radio (link)(link)

Pandora and AOL Radio are our two favorite music streaming applications. It’s tough to pick which one is better because they serve two different purposes. Pandora sits there and analyzes the music that you like and tries to provide more of the same, while AOL Radio is more your typical radio station providing playlists not customized to the user. Both are great!

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YP Mobile/Yelp (link)(link)

We decided to combine the YellowPages.com Mobile and Yelp together because when we were on vacation, both helped us find restaurants and attractions. Yelp was nice because you could read the reviews right from the iPhone of what people thought of the service listed. It would be great if people could add reviews right from the app, but they don’t at this point. Overall, both are helpful for when you are in unfamiliar areas and you are looking for restaurants or places to go.

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Super Monkey Ball (link)

Super Monkey Ball is one of the apps that you have to pay for to enjoy. The cost is $9.99 and it’s definitely one of the most talked about and most popular games for the iPhone. They have included 110 different stages which makes it worth the money. It’s not something you’ll beat in just a couple of hours, that’s for sure.

It took us a little while to get used to keeping our hand steady so that the monkey wouldn’t go falling off the edge. It’s extremely sensitive, but if it weren’t, it would make the game too easy and less fun to play.

Sudoku Unlimited (link)

The cost for Sudoku Unlimited is $2.99. It includes three different skins to choose from so that you have a variety of appearances to choose from, including a hand written one that really makes it look like you are writing your answers out on a piece of paper.

Sudoku Unlimited allows you to put notes in any of the cells which is really nice. I don’t know about you, but we tend to make notes all of the time on a Sudoku puzzle, especially the tricky ones, so this is a must-have feature.

With five difficulty settings, Sudoku Unlimited appeals to a wide-array of players. It automatically generates the puzzles so that you never run out, which is nice as well. Both Ryan and I really like Sudoku, so for $2.99, we couldn’t pass up Sudoku Unlimited!

Zenbe Lists (link)

Using Zenbe lists, you can create all of your lists (like grocery) online and then sync them to your iPhone. You can also share lists with others which is helpful. For example, I can share a list with Ryan and he can share one with me. The interface for both the online and iPhone portions are really intuitive. This is one of those applications that can help you become more productive and save you time.

WeatherBug (link)

The iPhone comes with a weather application, but the WeatherBug application is able to provide many more details like wind speed, severe weather alerts, detailed forecasts, and more. The radar makes use of the built-in Google maps so that you can really zoom in and get to your local area to see if a storm is close to you or not.

Exposure (link)

Exposure has both a free and paid version available, with the paid version costing $9.99. The free version pays for itself with unobtrusive advertisements, and this is the version we use. Exposure makes it really easy to show photos to people from Flickr and view images posted by your contacts. You can search for nearby geo-tagged photos and general searching of all photos on Flickr is available as well.

eBay Mobile (link)

eBay Mobile makes it easy to search and manage items from your eBay account. Users can view auctions they are watching, view items they are selling, and more. You can also bid on items right from the app.

We’ve found this app to be the most handy when we were out at a store and wanted to see if something was a good deal or not. All it took was a quick search using this app to get eBay results. You really get a full eBay experience using this application.

Other Apps we like:

These are free unless otherwise noted.

• AccuFuel ($0.99)- helps you monitor your vehicle’s fuel efficiency
• Box Office – read reviews of movies, locate theaters and show times, and purchase tickets
• Carrie’s Dots – (free version is 2 player only) – this is the classic game of filling in the squares by drawing a line
• Cube Runner – a good free example of using the iPhone’s accelerometer in a game
• Facebook – Facebook fans will love Facebook on their iPhone!
• iChoose – indecisive? This app provides with with a random yes/no, coin toss, dice roll and card choice to make decisions for you
• Mobile News Network – this app is brought to you by the Associated Press and helps you keep up with the latest news around the globe.
• Morocco – the classic game of Othello
• myLite – flashlight app (free, and one of the best)
• PegJump – the classic wooden peg game
• Remote – by Apple, for remotely controlling iTunes
• Scribble – draw a design and then shake to erase
• Shazam – helps you identify a song when you don’t know what it is
• SportsTap – gets all of your sports scores
• WordPress – create and edit content on your WordPress blog

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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