Jul 12

Verizon Turned it’s Nose up at the iPhone

Posted in: Apple, General, iPhone, Microsoft, Screenshots, Today's Chili, verizon

This article was written on February 01, 2007 by CyberNet.

It’s been about a month since Apple unveiled the iPhone to an audience who generally responded with ooo’s and aaah’s. I’m sure everybody knows by now about Apple’s exclusive deal with Cingular to be the sole provider in the United States for iPhone service. They have five years to the iPhone, all to themselves. But, was Cingular the back-up plan?  According to USA Today, Verizon was actually offered the deal first. This happened over two years ago! Verizon declined the opportunity saying that they had nothing bad to say about Apple and the iPhone, just that they couldn’t come to a deal that was beneficial on both ends.

Here are a few reasons why Verizon may have said ‘no thanks’

  • Apple wanted sole control over customer service issues with the iPhone
  • Apple also wanted a portion of monthly fees
  • iPhones would have been limited to sell only in Verizon and Apple stores- no distribution partners like Wal-Mart of Best Buy would be able to sell them.

So far there has been no word on all of the details on the Cingular deal, other than the 5 year exclusivity. Both Apple and Cingular have talked up the great relationship that they have with each other, so they must have agreed somewhere along the line. Additionally, they haven’t disclosed the financial terms of the agreement with Apple.  I’d be really curious to know how much they paid to have exclusive rights to the iPhone for 5 years! That takes us all the way until 2012 when there will probably be plenty of other “copy-cat” iPhone-ish options available.

Source: USA Today

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Jul 12

Apple says: No More MySpace

Posted in: Apple, General, Microsoft, Screenshots, Today's Chili

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

ApplestoreIf you’ve been into an Apple store lately, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.  A few weeks ago I was in an Apple store, and I couldn’t help but notice I was in the minority. You’d think the Apple store would be filled with adults looking to purchase their next computer, or checking out an iPod. Instead I found myself surrounded by a plethora of teenagers who snatched up every open computer as they became available.

The reason? Free Internet! Apple Stores up until yesterday didn’t have any restrictions on Internet use. Teenagers have been piling into the stores to take advantage of it, and one site in particular, MySpace (no surprise here).

While I was there, it felt as though I was in an Internet Cafe, not a retail store.  This problem has been resolved though because most Apple Stores implemented a new block that will keep users from accessing MySpace.  This should help keep people flowing in and out at a faster pace compared to the time that some stayed there surfing the Internet for who knows how long.

I’m curious what the Apple store will be like the next time I decide to venture into one. Hopefully there will be a few more computers opened up, and the feel of an Apple retail store instead of a bustling Internet cafe.

Source: Secret Notes

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Jul 11

GIMP 2.4 Features

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

This article was written on August 16, 2007 by CyberNet.

GIMP 2.4Gimp 2.4 is on the verge of being released. Right now it is in the release candidate stage with all the new features being complete and the API is frozen. All that’s left is a few bugs and some minor changes and we’ll be seeing a whole new GIMP!

GIMP was in dire need of a makeover, and so is their current website. Don’t worry, there is a new site ready for the launch of GIMP 2.4! The release notes for version 2.4 is still being worked on, but here is an overview I put together of what’s new in the upcoming version:

  • Refreshed look with new default icons (pictured above). I must say that it looks a heck of a lot better!
  • Scalable brushes let you dynamically change the size of the brush.
  • Advanced selection tools let you select items even more precisely. You can now select using a rounded-corner rectangle and even have it be antialiased.
  • Improved color picker lets you choose colors from anywhere on your screen, and not just in the picture your viewing.
  • Fullscreen editing lets GIMP utilize the full size of your monitor.
  • Improved cropping tool makes cropping an image more natural.
  • Layer alignment tool makes it easier to specify the position of your layers.
  • Startup speed and applying filters is much faster.
  • and many more bug fixes and few other features!

Below is a screenshot of the new GIMP running on Vista, and in the left-most window you will see the new selection tools:

GIMP 2.4 Preview
Click to Enlarge

If you’re wanting to try out GIMP 2.4 RC1 you’ll need to compile the source code. Windows users can always download GIMP 2.3.19 if they want to get a taste of what it’s like, and this was the last preview version released before the number was rolled over to 2.4. As seen in the release notes there were only a few bug fixes in 2.3.19 before they jumped to 2.4, so you won’t be missing too much.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Jul 10

Office 2008 for Mac Reaches Testing Phase

Posted in: Apple, Mac, Microsoft, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on April 02, 2007 by CyberNet.

Office 2008 for Macs is now in the private testing phase, and unfortunately it is still not known whether or not Microsoft will offer a public beta in the future.  The plan as it stands, is that the Mac version will be released in the 2nd half of 2007 which would make it the newest addition since 2004.

Several big changes from the previous version: First, it will be a universal binary.  This means that it will be able to run on both Intel and Power PC based Macs.  It will also support the XML file just as with Office 2007.

There’s also a new program called “My Day” which will give users quick access to their calendar info like appointments, without needing to open up Entourage first. It’s a stand alone application and users will be able to color-code everything. They’ve also improved the layout in Word and Excel templates, and the Ledger Sheets will make it easier to integrate formulas for balancing your checkbook and other financial management tasks.

As far as looks go, the user interface will look quite a bit different.  While it doesn’t look like Office 2007 with the ribbon, it does use what they’re calling an elements gallery.  This gallery will provide context sensitive toolbars, and appears to make use of tabbing.You’ll also notice their Publishing layout which will allow users to create layout-rich documents.

The images below come from Apple Insider, and they got them from a projector screen. While they’re not the greatest quality, it will still give you an idea (click to enlarge):

Officemac Officemac2 Officemac3 Officemac4 Officemac5

 

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Jul 09

Get in on Windows Home Server Beta 2

Posted in: Apple, Microsoft, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili, Windows

This article was written on February 19, 2007 by CyberNet.

WHSBack in January when CES was underway, we mentioned Windows Home Server, but haven’t really had much else to say about it since then. To refresh your memory, Windows Home Server works without interaction to simplify tasks among the computers in your home. Units are headless and embedded only.  This means that interaction with it is entirely client software based, or done over SMB. It would manage backups, and supports full disk images and versions. 

It’s set to get released to the manufacturer on June 22nd, and would come as a hardware/software package, or just a software package to system builders. WHS has three main purposes:

  1. Automated Computer Backups – Home Server will sit in the middle of your house and completely backup the entire hard drives of every computer connected to it, automatically.  Lose anything, even an entire computer, and you will be able to restore it.  You will even be able to restore older versions of files, taking advantage of a valuable feature in Windows Vista.
  2. Access everything from anywhere – With a Home Server, you will be able to access all of your files from any computer, inside or outside your home, as well as accessing your home computers from outside the home.  You will centrally store your files to make them easier to access at all times.
  3. Grows with you – Home Server will be designed to make it easier for users to expand its capabilities, especially making it easy to add more hard drives.

Here’s your chance to get in on the beta. Last Monday, they announced that you could take a survey  which will put your name it so that when they’re ready to expand the beta, you could possibly get invited. The Beta program started with 1000 Microsoft employees, and is now moving on to Beta 2. This is a software only Beta which means that you would need to have a system capable of being a dedicated machine for testing purposes.

As of Wednesday, they already have 20,000 people that have registered. To get involved, there are a few requirements.  First, you need to have two or more PCs.  Secondly, you need a broadband connection and router.  Third, you’ll need a spare PC or server that can be dedicated to Windows Home Server Software.

If you meet all of those requirements, you can find the survey here. After filling it out, you’ll have to sit tight and wait to see if you’re one of the lucky chosen ones that gets to be a Beta tester. Until then, here are a few screenshots of WHS from Neowin. From left to right: Welcome Screen, New User Permissions, Shared Folders, Server Health. (Click to enlarge)

 

Windows Home Server     WHS Permissions     WHS Shared Folders     WHS Health

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Jul 07

App Store hits 15 billion downloads, $2.5 billion paid by Apple to developers

Posted in: app, Apple, apps, AppStore, developers, download, ios, ipad, iPhone, itunes, Today's Chili

It’s hard to believe that the App Store has only been around for three years, but it’s easy to believe that its successes are many. Very, very many. Apple has just announced that it has rolled over the 15 billion mark for downloads, that from a selection of 425,000 apps. Apple’s proud of paying $2.5 billion to app developers and we’re pretty sure those developers are proud to be a part of that figure — even if they grumble about the 30 percent they’re losing for the privilege.

Continue reading App Store hits 15 billion downloads, $2.5 billion paid by Apple to developers

App Store hits 15 billion downloads, $2.5 billion paid by Apple to developers originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Jul 2011 09:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jul 05

Ubuntu Studio 7.04 Download…Multimedia Pro’s Rejoice!

Posted in: Apple, Features, Freeware, Linux, Microsoft, Newly Released, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili, ubuntu

This article was written on May 11, 2007 by CyberNet.

For the audio, graphics, and video lovers out there…Ubuntu Studio 7.04 is here! One of the developers, “joejaxx,” posted about the new release to give some insight as to what you can expect after getting Ubuntu Studio up and running:

The Ubuntu Studio team is proud to announce its first release: 7.04 for Intel i386-compatible processors. With this release, which you can download for DVD in little over 860 MiB, we offer a feature that is somewhat reminiscent of Ubuntu Server: on installation, you can choose between the Audio, Graphics or Video tasks; and choose also to install a number of plugins, which for this release is mainly aimed at audio production.

To test out Ubuntu Studio you have to install it on your PC because there is no LiveCD/DVD to use. After you get it up and running you’ll find some of these great applications there for you to use:

  • Video:
    • PiTiVi – Video editor
    • dvgrab – Grab digital video data via IEEE1394 links
  • Graphics:
    • Blender – A very fast and versatile 3D suite for modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback.
    • Gimp – Powerful photo editing application often compared to Adobe Photoshop.
    • Inkscape – A vector-based drawing program similar to Adobe Illustrator.
  • Audio:
    • Audacity – Swiss army audio editor
    • Ardour – Digital audio workstation
  • And much much more…

Ubuntu Studio also brings a sexy black theme to your computer, but I think it might be a little too dark for my own liking. Here are three screenshots to give you an overview of what it looks like:

Ubuntu Studio
Click to Enlarge

Ubuntu Studio
Click to Enlarge

Ubuntu Studio
Click to Enlarge

The demand for this release is so great that the site seems to be suffering from the same troubles that Ubuntu had when they released 7.04 a few weeks ago. Their site is currently unavailable so we have taken the liberty of posting links to several mirrors that are hosting Ubuntu Studio 7.04, and I put them in the order of the fastest first. I was receiving 500KBps+ on the first mirror which nearly maxed out my download speed.

http://aehunter.net/Files/UbuntuStudio/
http://proyectos.pixelamigo.com/software/Ubuntu/ubuntustudio/7.04/
http://intelligentdancemusic.com/ubuntustudio
http://mirror.imbrandon.com/ubuntustudio/7.04
http://download.linuxaudio.org/ubuntustudio
http://mir.zyrianes.net/ubuntustudio/7.04

Note: The ISO image is 860MB which is just slightly larger than what a CD can hold, so you’ll have to burn this to a DVD.

Source: Download Squad

Thanks for the tip Mohan!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Jun 29

Make XP Look Like Vista For FREE

Posted in: Microsoft, mod, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili, Windows, Windows Vista, Windows XP

This article was written on May 20, 2006 by CyberNet.

How To Make Your XP Machine Look Like Vista For FREE

Vista Transformation Pack 4.0 was just released and it does a great job of giving your XP machine the Vista look. In December last year Windows Blinds released a new version of their software that was designed to provide Windows XP with transparent effects, however, it wasn’t free. That is where the Vista Transformation Pack comes into play. It is free and does a great job of giving my machine a look similar to Vista. It doesn’t have the powerful transparency effects for every window (as seen on the window to the right in the screenshot above) but does have enough transparency to make me happy. The greatest thing is that it is free!

It does have uninstallation options in case you decide you want to get rid of it, so there really isn’t anything to lose. However, when you install the software it has to overwrite some system files (it modifies things like the boot screen) so Windows will prompt you stating that your system files have been changed. It will ask whether you want to change them back or leave them, so just leave them if you want the system to function properly.

The software is also nice because it allows you to choose what you want it to change. If you don’t want it to alter the boot screen then you just have to uncheck the “Boot Screen” box during installation (the boot screen is kinda ugly, see the screenshots link below). This is a very nice piece of software.

Update: Here are the steps you need to take to adjust the transparency of the windows:

  1. Right-click on the Glass2K icon in your system tray and select “Settings”. Now check to see what your keyboard shortcut is (I changed mine to be Ctrl + Shift).
  2. Open the window that you want to adjust the transparency of, like Windows Explorer or Notepad for example.
  3. Use the shortcut above in conjunction with a 0-9 number key. 0 means you want no transparency where 9 means you want the most transparency. If I wanted a window with no transparency I would press Ctrl+Shift+0.
  4. That’s all! I don’t believe there is a way you can do this for every application at one time so you will have to perform this for each application individually.

Download The Vista Transformation Pack (14.61MB via RapidShare)
Nice Screenshots
Forum Discussion

Update:
There is a newer version of the Vista Transformation Pack available here.
Update 2:
The newest WindowBlinds, version 6, will be making XP look eve more like Vista. While it does cost a little money the big benefit is that it supports blurring much like Vista’s Aero.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Jun 25

Active Virus Shield “Update Failed: Incorrect Signature” Fix

Posted in: Freeware, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on September 10, 2007 by CyberNet.

Active Virus Shield - Update Failed: Incorrect Signature AOL’s decision to dump Kaspersky for McAfee was not accepted very well by the tech community. There was no official Vista-compatible version of Active Virus Shield (AVS) released before the switch had been made, but I had assumed that they would continue to provide support for at least the next few months for the XP version.

That turned out to not be the case as several readers have reported to me that as of last week they were receiving an "Update failed: Incorrect signature" error (the corresponding error codes were 0x8000005C and 0x8000005A). Netster007x was the first to notify me of the issue, and after looking around I began to think that the issue lied in the update server.

I managed to find a Google Group that had several other people complaining about the same error message in Active Virus Shield. One eagle-eyed commenter noticed that you could bypass the problem by removing the two AOL entries from the list of update servers. Here’s the quick how-to on doing that:

  1. Right-click on the Active Virus Shield System Tray icon and close the program. Alternatively you could boot your computer into Safe Mode.
  2. Open this file:
    C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\AOL\AVP6\Data\aol-updcfg.xml
  3. Remove the top two lines from the file:
    <site2 url="ftp://download.newaol.com/avs/update/mirror/" diff_url="diffs" weight="10000001" region="*" />
    <site2 url="http://download.newaol.com/avs/update/mirror/" diff_url="diffs" weight="10000000" region="*" />
  4. Save the changes and restart Active Virus Shield (or restart your computer).

Now your Active Virus Shield should be back to normal, and updating regularly. Of course support for this application is extremely limited now that AOL isn’t using it anymore, but the last version is still available for download on sites like Softpedia, MajorGeeks, and CNet.

So it looks like there is a workaround for the time being, and for some of you it will be worth it since Kaspersky (which powers Active Virus Shield) is ranked as one of the best antivirus solutions. Although I prefer to just use the always free Avast! or AVG.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Jun 20

CyberNotes: Free Alarm Clocks for Windows & Mac

Posted in: CyberNotes, Features, Freeware, Mac, Software, Today's Chili, Windows

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

CyberNotes
Time Saving Tuesday

arrow Windows Windows; Mac Mac arrow
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)–

arrow Windows Windows only arrow
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.

college alarm clock.png

–Alarm Clock 2 (Homepage)–

arrow Mac Mac only arrow
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

alarmclock.png

–TinyAlarm (Homepage)–

arrow Mac Mac only arrow
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.

tinyalarm.png

–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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