Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on October 25, 2007 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

One of the hot new ways for viewing photos is using a JavaScript technique called LightBox. I’m sure you’ve seen it before on sites where you click on a thumbnail, and a fullsize version of the image is superimposed on the page that your viewing. It then grays out the background so that it’s easy for the viewer to focus on the image. Here’s a working example of LightBox that demonstrates the feature.

Personally I’ve never been a big fan of LightBox, but there are a lot of people who swear by it. When I came across a free program called LightBox Web Gallery Generator, I knew it would be an extremely handy tool for many of you.

What’s so great about it? Not only is it open source, but you also don’t have a thing to install. Once you download the LightBox Gallery Generator you can start working with it immediately!

–Basic Settings–

When you launch the app for the first time, you’ll notice that it’s extremely simple, and there isn’t much you can configure. It’s important to know that the LightBox Gallery Generator will only work with JPG images, but that’s the format that most cameras use so you shouldn’t have any problems.

You’ll want to select the folder with the images, and the folder that you want to output the gallery to. The program will generate thumbnails for all of the images and align them to a grid with however many columns and rows you specify. If you have more photos than can fit on the page it will show next/previous buttons on the generated site as well as page numbers.

The “Image” section in the program is used to specify what the dimensions are of the photos that are shown when the thumbnails are clicked on. By having them resized it helps cut back on the bandwidth needed especially when the original image is gigantic! You can always provide a link to the original image by checking the “Add link to hi-res image” option.

–Advanced Settings–

At first I didn’t really realize that the program had any advanced settings because the text links at the bottom looked like they were hyperlinks for a website. When I clicked on one of them it actually expanded the program’s window to show more settings that you can change to truly customize the look and feel of the gallery that is generated.

The “CSS” option is used to specify your own custom styles to the site. This is where you can customize border, background colors, font types, and more:

At the top of the gallery is a breadcrumb trail that visitors can use to navigate to other pages on your site. This is where you can specify your own custom homepage link or turn it off all together:

The “Master Page” option is truly the heart and soul of the LightBox Gallery Generator. You can create your own custom HTML template to be used with the galleries that you generate. How’s that useful? It means you can put your own header, footer, and sidebars on the site with the gallery being placed in the center of it all.

–The Result–

**drum roll** The end result is what you’ve worked so hard for, well, I use the term “work” loosely. The screenshots below are from a gallery that I generated in under a minute after starting the program up for the first time. The one on the left shows what the thumbnail gallery looks like complete with navigation links, and the one on the right is the “fullsize” image that visitors are shown when a thumbnail is clicked.

If you chose to include a link to the high resolution images you’ll see that next to the title of each photo:

This program doesn’t quite stack up to the JAlbum software in terms of configuration options, but this is definitely the simplest gallery generator that I’ve ever used. If you need to quickly create a photo gallery with some pizzazz I don’t think there is a better option.

LightBox Web Gallery Generator

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on October 24, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

One of the new things in Ubuntu 7.10 is the ability to read and write to NTFS formatted drives, which is great for Windows XP and Vista users. What that means is that you can create a Firefox profile in Windows and set it up so that Ubuntu uses the exact same profile.

Why would that be nice to have? Any bookmarks, extensions, and options you configure in Windows will be used in Ubuntu as well. You won’t have to spend extra time trying to setup a Firefox profile just for Ubuntu, which for me makes this trick a must!

Here’s what you have to do:

1. Call up the terminal in Ubuntu, and type firefox -profilemanager at the prompt:
   
2. You should be presented with the Firefox Profile Manager which we’ll use to create a new profile. After you press the Create Profile button you’ll need to click Next on the following screen.
   
3. Here you’ll want to type in the name of the new profile, and once you’ve done that click the Choose Folder button:
   
4. This is where you need to hunt down the location of your Firefox profile on your Windows partition, which in my case was labeled by default in Ubuntu as “sda2″. The profiles are located at Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ on Windows XP/2000 or users\[User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ on Windows Vista. After you select your Firefox profile folder click the Open button.
   (Click to Enlarge)
   
5. Now you can finish up the profile creation process. When you’re taken back to the Profile Manager, select the new profile that you just made, and start Firefox. If you check the Don’t ask at startup option, Firefox will always use that profile as the default one.
   

See, I told you it was simple! The same type of thing can be done with Mozilla Thunderbird, but I thought Firefox was a good place to start. Enjoy having all of the same extensions, bookmarks, and settings in your Windows and Ubuntu versions of Firefox! 😉

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on October 23, 2007 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

Ever since we wrote about Mint, the free finance management site, we have received a few requests from those looking for good software to manage personal finances. Sure there are popular alternatives like Quicken and Microsoft Money, but with those you have to fork out the same money that you’re trying to save. I just knew that there had to be something out there worth using that you didn’t have to pay for.

I spent a countless amount of time trying out feature-limited versions of software only to find that their restrictions rendered the software virtually useless for most people. Then I found exactly what I was looking for: Money Manager Ex. Not only is it free, but it is open source and available for both Windows and Linux!

–Setup/Importing–

I was able to get Money Manager up and running in no time at all. There’s a version available that requires no installation, and that’s what I chose to run. This is also great for throwing it on your USB drive and doing your finances wherever you are!

One of the first things that you’re going to do is create a database for Money Manager to store all of your information in. Don’t worry, you don’t have to be familiar with the workings of a database because it does it all for you. Just specify what default currency you want to use, and an optional username:

Then you’ll have to create an account that falls under one of two different types: checking/savings or investment. The checking/savings account can also be used for credit cards, or for that matter anything that you deposit and withdrawal money from. The investment accounts are for stocks which you’ll want updated daily.

Many of you probably already have some software that you use to manage your finances, but that’s okay. You can switch to Money Manager by exporting your current data in a variety of formats:

• Import information from Excel (Comma Separated Value -.CSV) format
• Import information from QIF format (Microsoft Money & Quicken)

–Homepage & Register View–

Money Manager has a homepage that gives you a quick account overview so that you can see financially where you stand. It tells you the balance of each account, and graphs the current month’s expenses against the income:

After you have created an account you’ll be able to manage the transactions in the register view. You can sort the transaction according to any of the columns, but you cannot reorder or remove ones that you don’t use:

Another interesting thing is that each of your accounts can have different currencies associated with them. That makes it a bit easier to manage accounts that are held in different countries.

–Adding Transactions–

As with most personal finance managers, adding new transactions is pretty cut and dry. When you go to add a new transaction you’ll have to pick from a list of payees, which are added by you, as well as categories. Money Manager comes with a pre-built list of categories that should suffice for most of your needs – there weren’t any categories that I had to add.

–Stock Portfolio–

I think the stock portfolio is one of Money Manager’s shining points. You can have it “Refresh” the price of stocks automatically each day, which are fetched from Yahoo! Finance. It will update the price of every stock in your list, and tell you what the respective gain/loss is according to the price you purchased it at. You can also specify an automatic refresh interval if you want it updating the prices, let’s say, every 30 minutes.

–Budgets–

With the budgets you’re able to keep track of your spending in each of the various categories, and you can provide estimated values for each one. That way you can see which categories you have spent more in than you had originally anticipated.

–Reports–

It’s always nice to know where your money goes so that you can try to find areas where you can cut back. Money Manager has several different types of reports that will tell you just that:

• Summary of Accounts
• Where the Money Goes
• Where the Money Comes From
• Categories
• To Whom the Money Goes
• Income vs. Expenses
• Transaction Report
• Budget Performance
• Cash Flow
• Transaction Statistics

If one of those reports doesn’t satisfy your needs you can always create your own, given that you have some knowledge of the SQL syntax. 🙂

–Making it Better–

I realize that this is a completely free program and therefore shouldn’t complain, but there are some things that I think would really make this an exceptional program:

• It seems like the program is popping up with too many windows to enter in information. I should be able to enter in a transaction from within the register view without a popup window being needed. Similarly, payees and categories should be autocompleted as you type instead of opening in a popup window.
• Even though you can use the checking/savings account type for credit cards there should actually be a separate account type for those. That way the columns can read “charge” and “credit” instead of “withdrawal” and “deposit”.
• If you want to accurately track the gain/loss of your stocks you’ll need to to create a new entry for each share purchase. There’s no way to enter in multiple purchase prices (nor dividends) into the stock portfolio. This would be a nice feature to have though.

Money Manager Ex Homepage

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on December 02, 2006 by CyberNet.

The holidays are coming up which means you could possibly be traveling, buying gifts, or doing a little bit (or a lot!) of both. Here’s a list of some of the popular portable travel accessories that you or someone you know may be interested in this season.

inMotion IM500 Portable Audio System

First on the list is the rather affordable portable audio system.  Everybody seems to have an iPod these days which means a portable audio system would be a practical accessory to have.  Size wise, it’s small measuring 5 inches high, 8.5 inches wide, and about 0.65 inches thick.  It is designed for an iPod nano and will also charge the nano at the same time. While it isn’t the best of sound quality, it does the trick when you’re not wanting to listen to your tunes through headphones.

Price: $129.00-199.00

SuperTooth II BlueAnt Wireless

The SuperTooth II BlueAnt Wireless is a hands-free wireless speakerphone that will work with any Bluetooth enabled phone.  This is a great alternative to using the Bluetooth ear piece.  It mounts to your sun visor, and can switch between your cars really easily.  With 20 hours of talk time, and 800 hours of standby time, it will last you quite a while. It uses a rechargeable lithium ion battery.

Price $89.99-129.99

Media Buddy Portable Digital Picture Storage

I usually travel with my laptop which makes it easy to transfer my pictures to my computer to clear up room on my camera.  If you don’t have a laptop, an alternative is the Digital Foci Media Buddy Portable Digital Picture Storage.  There are all different storage amounts available such as 40GB and 80GB.  It’s a simple process that involves inserting the memory card from your camera into the Media Buddy which will then download the images to its’ hard drive.  When you get home, you just connect the MediaBuddy to your computer to get your saved pictures. It also doubles as an external hard drive.

Price $189.00 (80GB)

The Inka Pen

Also known as the “write anywhere pen, or an “all-weather” pen, the Inka pen is designed to work in any type of environment you can think of.  This includes extreme heat as well as underwater, although I don’t know what you’d be writing on underwater! Water-proof paper? Planning on taking a trip to space? It will also work in zero gravity. It easily converts from a compact size small pen, to a full-sized pen which has replaceable pressurized ink cartridges available for purchase in case you run out!  It’s made from an aerospace-grade titanium as well as carbon fiber.

Price $29.00-89.95

M500 Portable Projector

If you travel for business and frequently give presentations, the M500 Portable Projector is an awesome thing to travel with.  It weighs only 2.5 pounds which would allow you to take it just about anywhere! The lamp life is also pretty amazing at 4,000 to 5,000 hours.  I could think of lots of uses whether it’s for business, in the classroom, or even at home. While it’s not extremely affordable, if you’re giving a lot of presentations, it would be worth it!  This is one thing I’d love to put on my list!

Price $1,500.00

Source: Network World Road Warrior Gear

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on April 12, 2008 by CyberNet.

Weekend Website

These days, many of us have multiple places where we store contact information. For myself, I have a list of contacts in my personal email account, my work email account, contacts within some of the social networks I belong to, and then a master list on my computer. With all of the different places where we have lists of contacts, it can get a bit confusing and hard to manage. To help manage all of your contacts online is a service called Keepm. It simplifies the process of managing your contacts and places them all in one place. Today we’ll be taking a look at some of what Keepm offers.

Getting Started

The first thing you’ll want to do to get started is sign-up for an account. If you don’t have an account, you can’t use the service. All you’ll need is your name and a valid email address and you’ll be ready to go.

Adding/Importing Contacts

There are a couple of options for adding contacts.  The first is to simply click on the “Add New Contact” tab and manually enter a contact.  If you decide to go this route, you’ll enter in a first and last name and submit it. It’ll add that person as a contact and then you can go in and add all of the vital information like email address and website.  Below is an image of what a contact sheet looks like:

You can also import your contacts which is one of the most import aspects of the whole service. You do this by clicking the “Import Contacts” tab and then you’ll be guided through the process. Import methods are as follows:

• Import Address book
• Import VCards (.vcf)
• Import from Outlook

If you decide to import an address book, you can choose from the following services:

• Gmail
• Yahoo
• Hotmail
• AOL
• Linked In
• rediff.com
• Orkut

My Experience

After I signed-up for an account, I decided that I would import my contacts from my Gmail account. All I had to do was enter in my user login and password (rest assured, that they do not store your login information). Then Keepm very quickly pulled up a list of all of the contacts I had within my Gmail account. I was able to select or deselect the contacts that I wanted to be imported. Once I chose all of the contacts I wanted, I clicked “import” and it imported all of the information I had for each contact. The process was started and finished within minutes.

Export contacts…

Just as you can import your contacts, you can also export them as well.  You’ll just click the “Export” tab and then choose which contacts you want to export. You’ll also be able to choose your export method.  If you want it as a V-card, you can do that.  If you want it as a .CSV file, you can do that as well. Once you’ve selected your contacts and the method you want to use, you’ll be all set to export them.

Features

Keepm does have some nice features.  One of the best features is that you can add up to 3 tags for each contact. I ended up using the tags “family” and “friends” quite frequently. If I quickly wanted to view my family members, I could just search using the family tag and it would pull everybody up that I had tagged.

Additional features include:

1. It’s free!
2. Share your contacts with anyone via email address
3. It’s quick – there’s nothing worse than a sluggish site but Keepm is far from sluggish
4. It’s simple – this is a very simple contact manager and may be too simple for some of you
5. Search for your contacts by name/company, email address, phone number, instant messenger, city, zip code, or tags

What we’d like to see…

The one thing that I noticed that was missing was additional tracking tools like being able to see birthdays or anniversaries that are coming up.   They also don’t provide any type of demo before signing up which would be nice to have as well. All in all though, if you’re looking for a simple contact management solution, Keepm is great. Any other ideas for managing your contacts?

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com