Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on May 15, 2008 by CyberNet.

Adobe has announced that the first Beta of Flash Player 10 is now available for everyone to download. It comes with al kinds of really nice features and improvements, but the best thing that we’ll probably see come out of this is the newly available 3D effects. One example that they gave of where this could be useful is taking 2D images and arranging them in a rotating 3D carousel similar to that seen to the right. Making your own Cover Flow clone wouldn’t take too long either then.

Concerned about performance? According to Adobe they are pushing some of the graphical processing onto the user’s video card so that the processor can be used for rendering special effects:

One of the best things about the creative features now available in Adobe Flash Player 10 beta is that they won’t slow down performance. With Flash Player 10 beta, developers can enable SWF content to render through the memory bandwidth and computational horsepower of the GPU hardware processor, freeing up the CPU to do more – such as render 3D content and intricate effects, and process complex business logic.

Here’s a list of some other notable new features in Flash Player 10 Beta:

• 3D Effects – Easily transform and animate any display object through 3D space while retaining full interactivity. Fast, lightweight, and native 3D effects make motion that was previously reserved for expert users available to everyone. Complex effects are simple with APIs that extend what you already know.
• Custom Filters and Effects – Create your own portable filters, blend modes, and fills using Adobe Pixel Bender, the same technology used for many After Effects CS3 filters. Shaders in Flash Player are about 1KB and can be scripted and animated at runtime.
• Advanced Text Layout – A new, highly flexible text layout engine, co-existing with TextField, enables innovation in creating new text controls by providing low-level access to text offering right-to-left and vertical text layout, plus support for typographic elements like ligatures.
• Enhanced Drawing API – Runtime drawing is easier and more powerful with re-styleable properties, 3D APIs, and a new way of drawing sophisticated shapes without having to code them line by line.
• Visual Performance Improvements – Applications and videos will run smoother and faster with expanded use of hardware acceleration. By moving several visual processing tasks to the video card, the CPU is free to do more.

It will probably be a little while before we start to see developers making use of the new technology offered in Flash Player 10, but once a majority of users have upgraded the developers will be all over this like a kid in a candy store. 😉

Get Adobe Flash Player 10
Adobe Flash Player 10 Release Notes

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This article was written on December 06, 2007 by CyberNet.

Microsoft has officially confirmed that a Release Candidate of Vista SP1 (build 6001.17052.071129-2315) will be made available to the public next week, but there was no word on exactly what day it’s going to drop. Presumably it will be on Tuesday, December 11th which coincides with Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday. Yesterday Microsoft Connect members had the pleasure of downloading the Release Candidate, and today MSDN and TechNet subscribers will be able download Vista SP1.

Since the Beta stage the Vista SP1 installer has seen a 30% reduction in size, and the amount of space that it occupies on the hard drive has also been significantly reduced. Inevitably Vista SP1 will be deployable over a network, but Microsoft will provide a “blocker patch” to prevent computers from updating to the Service Pack until administrators have had time to review it.

I do have a word of wisdom for all of you who are contemplating whether you are going to install this. If you download and install the Vista SP1 Release Candidate you’ll also have to uninstall it before installing a newer version that is released later on. For some of you it may not be worth the hassle, so make sure you take that into consideration.

Here’s a recap from one of our previous posts on the improvements Vista SP1 brings to the table:

Reliability improvements:

• Improved reliability and compatibility of Windows Vista when used with newer graphics cards in several specific scenarios and configurations.
• Improved reliability when working with external displays on a laptop.
• Improved Windows Vista reliability in networking configuration scenarios.
• Improved reliability of systems that were upgraded from Windows XP to Windows Vista.
• Increased compatibility with many printer drivers.
• Increased reliability and performance of Windows Vista when entering sleep and resuming from sleep.

Performance improvements:

• Improves the speed of copying and extracting files.
• Improves the time to become active from Hibernate and Resume modes.
• Improves the performance of domain-joined PCs when operating off the domain; in the current release version of Windows Vista, users would experience long delays when opening the File dialog box.
• Improves performance of Windows Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista, reducing CPU utilization and speeding JavaScript parsing.
• Improves battery life by reducing CPU utilization by not redrawing the screen as frequently, on certain computers.
• Improves the logon experience by removing the occasional 10-second delay between pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL and the password prompt displaying.
• Addresses an issue in the current version of Windows Vista that makes browsing network file shares consume significant bandwidth and not perform as fast as expected.

Thanks to Storytellerofsci-fi for the tip!

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

Ready to escape the usual crowd at the movie theater and host your own premieres at home? Prima Cinema has an answer, with the minor requirement of $35,000 (and a few other details) to get your home theater ready for first-run movies. Just as we’d heard when it first popped up a couple of years ago, that large setup fee buys the Cinema Player, a rack-mountable box loaded with a 2TB hard drive and enough DRM to keep the studios happy, plus a wired fingerprint reader used to ensure the owner’s identity. Movies download automatically to its hard drive in the background so they’re already there when the owner chooses to unlock them for viewing. That privilege costs $500 ($600 for 3D), good for one showing within 24 hours. Check after the break for more of our impressions after a quick preview at Prima’s CEDIA 2013 booth, then prep your black card for the pricey purchase.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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Source: Prima Cinema

As a part of delivering its newest lineup of Kindle Fire HDX tablets with Fire OS 3.0, Amazon also added a new feature to its Prime Instant Video subscription plan that Netflix, Hulu and the rest don’t have: downloads. The company told AllThingsD that this ability applies to “tens of thousands” of items from NBC, Viacom, Sony, Warner Bros. and CBS, with downloads ready for up to 30 days, and viewable for up to 48 hours after users start watching. Amazon hasn’t announced any plans to bring the feature to its older slates or other platforms, nor has it shared other details about how it works. We’ll have to wait and see if the competition negotiates / implements similar features soon — that we can’t even watch some OITNB or House of Cards stored on a tablet during a plane ride without going to some third party tech like PlayOn seems absolutely silly.

Update: As a point of clarification, Amazon’s product description reveals that offline playback for Amazon Prime videos is also possible on the newly released Kindle Fire HD. [Thanks, Quinn]

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Tablets, HD, Amazon

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Source: Amazon

This article was written on September 27, 2007 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

What was going on this week at CyberNet News and Learn Firefox? Here’s your chance to catch-up if you missed something!

I periodically receive inquiries from friends asking for the easiest way to access files and folders on a FTP server. They normally have their own FTP server setup at home, and they want to ensure fast access to their files without having to mess with third-party applications. Is it possible to quickly map a FTP to a drive? You bet!

The solution I’m about to show you doesn’t exactly assign a drive letter to the FTP server, but it will essentially serve the same purpose as a drive. Through Windows Explorer you’ll have one-click access to your files, and they will even be accessible through the standard Open/Save dialog boxes in apps such as Microsoft Word.

Here’s how you can set it up:

1. Open Windows Explorer and choose the “Map Network Drive” option.
   Vista location: Along the top toolbar
   XP location: Tools Menu
   
2. Choose the option at the bottom that reads:
   Vista: “Connect to a Web site that you can use to store your documents and pictures”
   XP: “Sign up for online storage or connect to a network server”
   
3. Click “Choose a custom network location”:
   
4. Enter in the FTP address for the site:
   
5. Enter the username for the FTP server (you will be prompted for the password when you connect):
   
6. Enter a name:
   
7. Finish up the wizard, and then you’ll be ready to connect! You’ll be prompted for the password the first time that you try and connect, but you can have the password saved after that if you wish.
   

That process will take less than 30-seconds to complete after you become familiar with doing it. There is a way to assign a drive letter to a FTP server, but it does take some addition work. I’ve found three sources that try to make it a little easier:

1. Tutorial – This is a relatively quick process and would be my first choice out of the three mentioned here. It requires no third-party apps to make it work, and it truly lets you map a FTP server to a drive. It does require using the command line.
2. NetDrive – This is a free program offered by Novell that has a GUI interface for setting up FTP servers as drives on your computer.
3. FTP Drive – This is a small free program that also brings a GUI interface to the configuration, but the program always has to be running if you want the mapped drive to work.

While those solutions make it possible to assign a drive letter to the FTP, I don’t see an added advantage by doing so. The steps that I walked you through in this article will give nearly every program access to your FTP, and it is super easy to setup. I’m sure there is some reason that you would want a drive letter though…I just haven’t found them. 🙂

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