Hasta La Gadget!

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

I’ve never been a big fan of splitting and joining files because the entire process is normally tedious. A lot of times it requires the receiver of the split files to have a specialized application installed in order to join them back into one single file. It’s an almost impossible chore for anyone that isn’t tech savvy.

One of our readers, "s", tipped us off on a free Windows application called GSplit. As expected, it splits and joins files together, but the receiver doesn’t have to worry about installing an application to unite the files. GSplit automatically includes a standalone combiner when the files are split, and it is extremely lightweight (about 70KB). For example, I split a 1.32MB file into 15-pieces, and the resulting files totaled 1.40MB which included the built-in combiner.

Note: GSplit does require installation in order to split files.

Here are some of the features GSplit has to offer:

• Generates a Self-Uniting program to restore your split files professionally. GSplit is then not required in order to restore the split file.
• Store file properties and restore them: file’s date, attributes are not lost contrary to batch files.
• Detect file corruption using size, offset, CRC32. When a piece is corrupted, you are notified about it, so you just need to get a new copy of that piece, not the whole set.
• Split very large files (bigger than 4 GB).
• Customize piece files according to your needs (size, filenames, title, author…), leave additional space on disks, create pieces without headers (useful for text-based files like large server log files).
• Split multiple files back-to-back in one time, include batch (automating) and command line options.
• Show you elapsed and estimated times during the splitting & uniting operations. You can also pause/resume the splitting operation.
• Store settings into profiles and let you use these settings for different files, remember MRU files and folders, automatically try to find out the best splitting settings…
• Integrate into Windows Explorer to let you split your files directly from the context menu.

Here is a screenshot of the standalone file joiner:

GSplit Homepage
Kudos to "s" for the tip!

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

Microsoft Monday

Using a Media Center PC to manage media like TV shows, music, and photos is becoming more and more popular these days. If you’re using either XP or Vista Media Center, wouldn’t it be nice if you could remotely view and schedule programs from any browser? There’s actually a very simple way to do that and it’s called WebGuide. Today I’ll walk you through What WebGuide is, and some of its great features.

–What is WebGuide–

WebGuide is software that’s available for both Vista and Media Center 2005 that allows you to schedule and stream shows from your Media Center PC to any web browser. The streaming feature allows you to watch both live and recorded TV remotely.  You can also remotely schedule and manage your recorded TV shows, and manage pictures, videos, and music.

–Download/Set-up–

Downloading and setting up WebGuide really couldn’t get any easier.  As mentioned, it works with both Vista and Media Center 2005, and you can find both of those downloads here. Ever since Microsoft hired on the developer of the software last month, it’s been offered for free!

Once you download WebGuide and install it, it will connect to your router (if you have one) and configure everything for you so that you won’t have to worry about port-forwarding. Downloading and setting up WebGuide is something that anybody can do.

–Interface–

One of WebGuide’s best features is that it has a great interface.  Below is a screenshot which shows what the interface looks like.  Notice to the right that it displays shows that I recently recorded, as well as shows that are scheduled to record. To the left is where I can access the TV guide, search for a show, view recordings, or manage pictures, music, and videos. (Click to enlarge)

–Stream–

Another great feature is the ability to stream shows that you’ve already recorded, or live TV to any browser (Or Windows Media Player). For example, one of my recently recorded shows shown above is MythBusters. All I have to do to stream it from my media center PC to the browser I’m using is click it. A window will appear with the following options:

1. Play Program
2. Stream Program
3. Download Program
4. Delete Program
5. Other Showings

Just click “Stream Program” and then another box appears asking if my screen is normal or widescreen, and then I choose the speed that I want to stream the program at.  It will tell you up at the top how much bandwidth you have available.  I’m on a local network, so my available bandwidth is pretty high.

All that’s left is to click “Start Stream” and you’ll be able to start viewing the program that you selected.

–Features–

WebGuide has many other great features besides the two I mentioned above, they include:

• Search by show, date or time
• PocketPC and Smartphone enabled
• Available in multiple languages like Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish, and English
• Access to recent and upcoming recordings

–Sidebar Gadget–

An extra added bonus is the Vista Sidebar Gadget that’s available for WebGuide. I have it in my sidebar, and from there I can view the TV Guide, search for a show, view which shows that have recorded, or view shows scheduled to record. It also displays a red dot if there is something currently recording.

Download the Vista Sidebar Gadget here.

–Wrapping it Up–

 WebGuide is a must-have add-on for anybody using Media Center in either Vista or XP. And the fact that the software is available at no cost makes it even sweeter!

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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

Folding@Home usage by location

Guinness World Records is recognizing Stanford’s Folding@Home project as the largest distributed computing effort in the world. Distributed computing is becoming a popular method for scientists to get research done without purchasing time on a supercomputer. With distributed computing data is divided up between several computers, or in the case of the Folding@Home project hundreds of thousands of computers, via the Internet.

Using distributed computing the project has been able to acquire over one petaFLOPS of processing power. A lot of the credit for that goes to the Playstation 3 owners out there because over 670,000 consoles are currently contributing some of their processing power to the project (only when the owner isn’t playing a game). The PS3 accounts for roughtly 60% of all contributions to the project. You probably don’t realize what a huge number that is, so let’s put it into perspective. It’s estimated that 10,000 PS3’s working together has the same computational power as IBM’s BlueGene/L System, which is the fastest supercomputer in the world. Yeah, I think you get the idea now.

So what’s Folding@Home all about? The project’s focus is on protein folding and misfolding, which is a known cause for serious illnesses:

Proteins are biology’s workhorses — its “nanomachines.” Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or “fold.”
…
Moreover, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. “misfold”), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.

So go ahead and donate some of your processing power to the Folding@Home project, whether you only have a computer or a PS3. The software download for both can be found here, and by doing so you could be contributing to the next medical miracle.

[via CNet]

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

Web Browser Wednesday

We’ve written a lot about protecting your computer while browsing the Internet, and now we thought it was a good time to cover an application that quite a few of you have recommended. Sandboxie is a free (for the most part) application that can wrap itself around your browser to provide a more secure session when downloading applications or trying out new extensions.

Sandboxie serves as a middle man between an application, which for our purposes today is a Web browser, and the hard drive. When you want to protect the browser you simply run it in a “sanboxed” mode through the Sandboxie menu:

Then anything that you do from within the browser is stored in a sandbox that can be deleted at anytime. Don’t quite understand? I’ll walk you through a common scenario that explains it a little better. The first thing I did after installing Sandboxie was start Internet Explorer by using the menu option seen in the screenshot above, but you can use your default browser by choosing the respective option.

One thing that you’ll notice in the screenshot is that the window title for Internet Explorer has a “[#]” on each end. This represents that I’m running that program in a sandbox.

Now lets say I came across a program that I want to try out, but I’m not too sure whether I’ll like it or I’m not sure if it is going to try and install a virus on my system! With Sandboxie you just download and run the installation as you normally would, and if you watch the Sandboxie process explorer you’ll notice that even the installer runs in a sandbox:

Don’t worry about doing anything special…Sandboxie takes care of it all! After the program is done installing you can go ahead and run it. The program will work just like you expect it to, but underneath lies a secret that is keeping you secure! When the program installed everything it did was placed in a special location on your hard drive (registry settings, files, Start Menu links, etc…).

If you want to get to the location where the files are stored just go to Function -> Contents of Sandbox -> Explorer Contents and you will instantly be presented with the area where all the files are being stored. After installing Taskbar Shuffle into the default sandbox that I made, here is what the file structure looked like in Vista:

It replicated everything in my Vista folder structure perfectly, and as you can see, it will create a different folder for each sandbox that you make. That way you can switch between sandboxes depending on what you are doing, and if you ever want to get rid of a program you don’t have to worry about uninstalling it…just delete the corresponding sandbox!

If you’re looking for the ultimate privacy control in your Web browser then Sandboxie also has a setting for you. You can designate a sandbox to automatically be emptied after each use. If you run your browser in a sandbox, as soon as you finish everything will instantly be wiped clean…talk about covering your tracks!

Some of these features are compliments of the new Sandboxie version 3 that was just released yesterday. Features such as automatic sandboxing of a Windows Installer as well as sandboxing Windows Explorer is all new, and I have thoroughly been enjoying the work that has been put into this new version.

Sandboxie doesn’t cost a thing and you can use it as long as you would like, except for one small catch. After 30-days it will periodically pop-up asking for you to enter in a registration code. You can continue to use the program for as long as you would like, but you will have to get a valid registration code for $25 if you don’t want to get nagged.

Sandboxie supports 32-bit versions of Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista and 64-bit versions of Windows XP/2003. The installer is just 245KB, so the whole thing is a small and efficient application.

Sandboxie Homepage

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This article was written on June 03, 2008 by CyberNet.

Mozilla is hard at work getting ready for the launch of Firefox 3, and another Release Candidate is scheduled to be available tomorrow. They are still planning for a June launch of the next major milestone, and there is a lot of hype and anticipation surrounding the release. One thing you don’t want to forget about is the Flock browser that is based upon Firefox!

The Flock team is working equally as hard to make sure that they update their browser with all of the Firefox 3 goodness as soon as possible. As you might recall it took them quite awhile to update their browser to Firefox 2 after its release, but it appears that they won’t be making that same mistake again. Here’s a snippet that I took from a post on the Flock blog yesterday:

Within the coming weeks Flock will release it’s first beta of Flock 2.0, which incorporates the Mozilla technology that powers Firefox 3. So get ready to have all of the latest performance (memory management), security and feature enhancements found in the latest Firefox 3 release along with the unique user experience innovations only delivered by the Flock browser.

The first thought that popped into my head was that the nightly builds of Flock must already have the Firefox 3 integration if a Beta will be available in the coming weeks. Sure enough! I downloaded the nightly build (targeted towards developers only), and as you can see from the screenshot it is definitely based on Firefox 3:

Note the oversized location bar new to Firefox 3:

(Click to Enlarge)

The about screen verifies my findings, and a little snooping around will reveal some other new features that have only been introduced in Firefox 3. The most significant enhancement that I noticed would have to be the performance though. Immediately after starting up Flock it was using 66MB of memory which is a little on the high side, but it barely crawled above 100MB even after opening a dozen different tabs. Closing all of the tabs brought the memory usage back down to 82MB. This is like half the amount that the current version of Flock uses for me!

Kudos to the Flock team for jumping on the Firefox 3 bandwagon so quickly because it’s really going to pay off in the long run. I am very much anticipating the release of Flock 2.0 Beta in the coming weeks after they’ve had some time to polish-up the nightly builds, but if you’re feeling ambitious go ahead and try the latest nightly build of Flock 2.0.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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