Hasta La Gadget!

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This article was written on February 29, 2012 by CyberNet.

I spend quite a bit of time living in the terminal on my Mac, and so I was rightfully excited when I came across the free app called iTerm 2 that squashes some of the things I wanted the built-in app to offer. One of the things I really needed was a search feature to quickly find things from past commands I’ve run, and iTerm 2 does that very well.

Here is an overview of other features in iTerm 2:

• Split Panes
  Divide a tab up into multiple panes, each one of which shows a different session. You can slice vertically and horizontally and create any number of panes in any imaginable arrangement.
• Search
  iTerm2 comes with a robust find-on-page feature. The UI stays out of the way. All matches are immediately highlighted. Even regular expression support is offered!
• Autocomplete
  Just type the start of any word that has ever appeared in your window and then Cmd-; will pop open a window with suggestions. The word you’re looking for is usually on top of the list!
• Paste History
  Paste history lets you revisit recently copied or pasted text. You can even opt to have the history saved to disk so it will never be lost.
• Instant Replay
  Instant replay lets you travel back in time. It’s like TiVo for your terminal!
• Full Screen
  Work distraction-free with absolutely nothing on the screen but your terminal. The tab bar can be opened by holding down cmd.
• Growl Support
• Exposé Tabs
  Like OS X’s Exposé feature, iTerm2 shows all your tabs on one screen. Better yet, you can search through them all at once. Go ahead and open as many tabs as you want–you can always find what you’re looking for.

When you stack those features on top of all the configuration options it has this becomes a must-have app for any geek living in a terminal window.

iTerm 2 Homepage (Mac only; Freeware)

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on December 12, 2007 by CyberNet.

Earlier today I posted instructions on how to download and install Vista SP1 RC, and now that I’ve kicked it around a bit I thought I had enough thoughts to constitute an article. The reason why I didn’t include this information in the earlier post was that my installation had not completed, and in the end it took about 45 minutes to finish installing. A bulk of that time was spent after the computer restarted the first time, so don’t think that your done after the first restart.

–The Good–

Microsoft focused the first Service Pack for Vista purely on performance, stability, and reliability. After running it for just a few hours I’ve noticed that they went for the updates that offered the “biggest bang for the buck.” By that I mean they really hit home on some critical areas where performance wasn’t the greatest, and where users would really notice a big difference.

To be more specific here are some of the things that have really stood out to me in Vista SP1:

• They fixed one of the issues that has irked me the most! Previously when I would start up my laptop Vista would pause for about 15 seconds while it was connecting to the network. During that time no programs or Windows services would load, but things like the Start Menu were still usable. After a lot of research I determined that the delay was caused by Vista looking for other computers on the network, and if I disabled file sharing the problem disappeared. I’m happy to say that there are no startup delays for me in Vista SP1!
• Searching indexed files and folders is way more instant than before. I have Vista index all of the files on my entire computer, and sometimes when performing a search for files it would still take several seconds to bring up any matching results. Now it is able to pull in results almost instantaneously when I begin typing. For the curious minds out there I have 150,000+ files in my index that Vista is searching.
• Big file transfer speed improvements! Transferring files from one machine to another is amazingly faster. Before installing Vista SP1 on my computers I transferred a 500MB file over my local network. It took 3 minutes and 25 seconds to complete, but after installing Vista SP1 on both machines it only took 2 minutes and 22 seconds. That’s a 30% difference!
• Remaining time for file transfers is calculated faster, and seems to be a bit more accurate. When I transferred the 500MB file mentioned in the previous bullet the remaining time was calculated immediately upon initiating the transfer. Sometimes it would take 10 or 15 seconds for it to calculate, so it’s a lot nicer now.
• I have yet to see firsthand the advantages of the hotpatching we discussed yesterday, but the less frequent reboots will surely be a nice touch.

–The Bad–

• One thing that really bugs me with Vista SP1 RC is that Microsoft felt the need to brand my desktop as an “evaluation copy.” Sure I’m not running the final release, and Vista SP1 RC will expire in June 2008, but did they still have to do this? If you’re annoyed by the “Evaluation copy. Build 6001″ message here are some instructions on how to remove it, but I’ll probably just leave it alone.
  
• There hasn’t really been any improvements to the User Account Control (UAC) in Vista. I guess this is something that would be included in Service Pack 2 since it is more aligned with new features, but some minor tweaks could have made it less frustrating for new users. A “remember my choice” checkbox on each of the prompts would make it 1,000 times better!
• I would have liked to see a few improvements to the Vista Gadgets, such as an autohide option for the sidebar. There should also be an easier one-key shortcut to show/hide the gadgets in the sidebar and on the desktop. The WinKey+Space Bar just doesn’t cut it for me.

So those are my initial impressions of Vista SP1, along with what I was hoping to see included. Vista SP1 should be in final form the early part of next year, and I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that two years won’t go by before we see SP2 (there was a two year gap between SP1 and SP2 for XP).

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on April 10, 2008 by CyberNet.

Compiz Fusion is quickly becoming an important part of many Linux distributions, and I don’t think that anyone would argue that the cube effect for switching between desktops is one of the most hyped features. Well, the cube could very well be on its way to retirement thanks to the cylinder effect that was just added.

As seen in the screenshot above the cylinder effect provides a pretty sweet looking way to switch between each of your virtual desktops. The thing that I’m left wondering is whether Compiz Fusion is becoming a little overwhelming? There’s just so much that you can do, and so many different effects that I fear it could be verging on bloated. Maybe I’m wrong, but the last time I actually used Compiz Fusion there were so many features and settings that it was intimidating. But I guess power users want the ability to control every aspect of features like this.

What do you think of Compiz Fusion? For those of you running Linux: is Compiz Fusion something you use often, or do you only have it to show off to your friends? Personally I fall into that latter category, which is disappointing since it took some extra work for me to get it functional in Ubuntu.

I’ve embedded a video below of the new cylinder effect in action. The video starts out demonstrating the cube, and then moves into the cylinder after about 1 minute and 45 seconds:

Compiz Fusion [via Digg]

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This week SlashGear has one Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro and one Lenovo Miix2 8-inch Tablet to send your way, bringing the newest in new notebook and tablet technology straight from … Continue reading