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Dec 01

Mozilla’s Trimming the Fat from the Add-ons Site

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

Mozilla has announced that they will be relaunching the Firefox Add-ons site on Monday with only a handful of the extensions that are currently available. In fact, they are said to be trimming down the list of available add-ons to just several hundred, which means they could be cutting 80% to 90% of the ones listed on the site. To see just how many there were I did a quick search for the letter “a” which pulled up 2359 results. That number seems to be accurate since searching for “e” comes up with the same answer.

I am really glad to see Mozilla stepping up and trying to make the Add-ons site even better. When doing my Firefox 200 Extension Test I installed many of the top extensions that can be found on Mozilla’s site. To my surprise a lot of the ones I came across were junk and the download numbers are probably being faked by spammers. This could definitely hinder the experience that new Firefox users receive so I see a change as being a great thing.

Mozilla also said that they wanted to remove extensions that were not being updated anymore, which is completely understandable. They want users to have a great experience and that is often found with well-updated extensions. Using the advanced search feature I was able to find out how often the extensions have been getting updated:

26 extensions have been updated today
90 extensions have been updated this week
306 extensions have been updated this month
1938 extensions have been updated this year

Now all of the numbers I have mentioned here are for all of the Mozilla add-ons and not for just Firefox, which does have more than 92% of the 2359 listed. I thought more of the extensions would actually be outdated, but a huge majority have been updated at least once this year.

The extensions that get pulled will be put in a “sandbox” for users to vote on. That means the add-ons will have to earn their way to the public site in what appears to be a Digg-like fashion. I’m not sure how that whole process will work but I have fears that it may not be much better off than their current system…if spammers want their extension to make the public site they will surely find a way.

This will definitely be a way for Mozilla to analyze the quality of submitted extensions and sounds like it is a scalable solution (meaning as their products grow the system will still be able to manage itself). Just to be on the safe side though, you might want to save some of your favorite extensions to your hard drive especially if they haven’t been updated in awhile. I would assume that they will make it easy to download the extensions which have been removed from the site, but you know what happens when you assume something. 😉

Mozilla Add-ons Site

Source: ComputerWorld [via CyberNet Forum]

Nov 30

CyberNotes: TrayDevil goes Beyond Minimizing to the System Tray

Posted in: Today's Chili

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

Time Saving Tuesday

TrayDevil Last week I wrote an article on freeware applications that let you arrange your windows in a more organized, and productive fashion. Then in the comments Everton mentioned an application that he found that lets you minimize windows to the System Tray. The only problem was that the link he posted vanished, and he didn’t mention what the name of the program was.

I’ve done a post before about minimizing applications to the System Tray and the popular one was 4t Tray Minimizer. There is both a paid and free version of that application. I also brought up other alternatives like Opera’s built-in Ctrl+H shortcut to minimize the browser to Tray…and you don’t have to install a thing to do that.

Then there is TrayDevil (download mirror): a freeware application that does more than just minimize windows to the System Tray. I’m not sure if this is the application that Everton was talking about in his comment, but when a friend of mine told me about it I couldn’t pass it up. Now that I have had some time to explore the program I thought I would share all of the things that it can do.

–Minimizing Windows–

The primary purpose of TrayDevil is to let you minimize applications to the System Tray that normally couldn’t be. There are all kinds of applications I find this useful for, like Web browsers and file explorers, but if you completely understand how TrayDevil works it will become an amazing tool.

To minimize a window you can do one of two things:

While holding Ctrl, Shift, or Alt just left-click on the titlebar of the window you want to minimize.
My favorite way is to simultaneously left-click and right-click on the titlebar which is a one-handed way of minimizing a window.

I would say the most unique thing happens when you have a window minimized to the System Tray. Unlike other tray applications that I have used, TrayDevil will keep the application’s icon in the System Tray even after clicking to maximize it. Of course, that’s only if you single-click because if you double-click it will remove the icon.

If you right-click on a minimized window you will receive the following options:

TrayDevil

The Min, Max, and Close button options will disable those buttons on a given window. I haven’t really found this to be too useful quite yet, but I guess it could be if you wanted to make sure you didn’t accidentally close a window.

Then there is the Restore button ( TrayDevil Restore ) which is equivalent to double-clicking on the icon…it restores the window and removes the icon from the tray.

The bottom option that has the up arrow ( TrayDevil System Tray ) is equivalent to single-clicking on an icon…it restores the window but leaves the icon in the tray. After a window has been restored the right-click menu option changes to a down arrow ( TrayDevil Minimize ) which will minimize the window back to the System Tray.

–Shutdown, Restart, and More–

So what happens when you right-click on the TrayDevil icon? It provides you with all sorts of options like turning your monitor off or restarting your computer. It isn’t the end of the world if you accidentally click on one of those options while you were on your way to the settings…TrayDevil gives you 10-seconds (or more/less if you customize it) to cancel any of the operations.

TrayDevil Power Management

–Customization and Settings–

Options, options, options…TrayDevil has them! There are all sorts of things you can finetune with my favorite being the application’s tray icon. Instead of adding another worthless icon to the System Tray (I currently have 16), it lets you completely turn it off or display what day of the month it is. Thank goodness that there are some developers in the world who think outside the box. 😀

There are several other options that can be customized, so I thought I would take screenshots of all the things you can configure (many of which pertain to hotkeys):

–Overview–

As you can see this is one powerful freeware application that offers a wealth of customizability. It handles so smoothly that it is now one of my favorite programs, where I previously used 4t Tray Minimizer (free). The program is very light weight so you don’t have to worry about it taking up resources…go on now, it’s calling your name:

Download TrayDevil from their homepage
Download TrayDevil from our mirror

Nov 29

Print to PDF or Image on Windows

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on March 22, 2011 by CyberNet.

Print to pdf image

There are all kinds of PDF printers out there, but one I’ve been using for a while is Bullzip PDF Printer. It’s nice because of its simplicity, and at the same time offers various configuration options that will let you tweak it to meet your needs. My favorite feature is that this supports more than just PDF as a “save to” format, and the other types include BMP, EPS, JPEG, PCX, PNG, PS, and TIFF.

Bullzip also has printing profiles, called Option Sets, that can be created so that you can quickly switch between various print settings. As you can imagine the usefulness of this will vary from user to user, but I know a lot of people who like to put watermarks on some documents but not on others. This becomes a lot easier when you can switch between the profiles in a few clicks.

Here are some of the developer-specified features of Bullzip:

Runs on Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/XP x64/2003/2003 x64/Vista/Vista x64/2008/Windows 7.
Supports 64-bit operating systems.
Direct output to the same file each time or prompt for destination.
Control if the printer should ask if you want to see the resulting PDF document.
Control output and prompts programmatically.
Setup can run unattended.
Password protect PDF documents.
128/40 bit encryption.
Quality settings (screen, printer, ebook, prepress).
Set document properties.
Watermark text, size, rotation, and transparency.
Superimpose/background documents.
Appending/prepending documents.
User interface control.
Command line interface to all settings.
COM/ActiveX interface for programmatic control.
Support for Citrix MetaFrame
Support for Windows Terminal Server

This is a free app for both personal and commercial use as long as there are less than 10 users. Personally I’m using the Beta version of Bullzip that they have available for download on their site, which was just recently released.

Bullzip PDF Printer (Windows only; Freeware)

Nov 28

The 50 Free Apps We’re Most Thankful For

Posted in: Today's Chili

The 50 Free Apps We're Most Thankful For

It’s the time of year where we all give thanks, and among many other things, we here at Lifehacker are thankful for all the free apps out there that improve our lives (and the developers that make them!). Here are 50 of our favorites.

Bulk Convert Videos for Nearly Any Mobile Device

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on July 27, 2010 by CyberNet.

bulk convert videos.png

We recently wrote about Any Video Converter, which is one of the best tools I’ve come across for batch converting those videos you have laying around. Last week I found a new app called XMedia Recode (English translation) for Windows, which is both free and portable. What makes this app so unique is the extensive number of built-in profiles that are included.

What benefits do these profiles offer? They mean you can convert videos to use on your mobile device without having to think about the optimal screen resolution or supported video format. You can just select your device, optionally review/tweak the recommended settings, and kick off the encoding. Does this app have a profile for your device? Probably. It includes profiles for about 35 manufacturers including popular ones like Apple (~35 devices/profiles), Motorola (~25 devices/profiles), HTC (~35 devices/profiles), and many others.

Here’s how simple the process is:

Drag-and-drop videos from your computer into the file pane located underneath the toolbar.
Select the video(s) you want to convert in the list (you can use Ctrl/Shift+Click to select more than one)
On the Format tab select your profile.
Click the Add Job toolbar button to queue up the video(s).
Repeat steps 2-4 until you’ve finished queuing everything up.
Click the Encode button to kick off the processing.

If you want you can dive through the additional tabs to configure advanced video and audio settings, or even specify a specific portion of the video to convert.

The only downside? Like most other video converters this one can take some time to process a file. In my experience it is about 1.5 times the length of the video, but that also depends on the starting/ending formats as well as how powerful your machine is. It’s a portable and free app… so there’s no harm in giving it a whirl for yourself.

XMedia Recode Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)

Supported video formats include: 3GP, 3GPP, 3GPP2, AAC, AC3, AMR, ASF, AVI, AVISynth, DVD, FLAC, FLV, H.261, H.263, H.264, M4A , M1V, M2V, M4V, Matroska (MKV), MMF, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, TS, TRP, MP2, MP3, MP4, MP4V, MOV, QT, OGG, PSP, (S) VCD , SWF, VOB, WAV, WMA and WMV.

Nov 26

How to Make VoIP Google Voice Calls on iPhone

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on December 07, 2010 by CyberNet.

I don’t make many phone calls, but lately I’ve been on the verge of migrating my contacts over to my Google Voice phone number. The big reason I want to to do this is to to completely eliminate my text messaging fees, and with the official Google Voice app for the iPhone I’m awfully close to making the complete transition. Wouldn’t it be cool, however, if you didn’t have to use any minutes for calls made with your Google Voice account on the iPhone?

Well, I’m here to tell you it’s possible with a free third-party app called Talkatone. The Google Voice VoIP calling is a feature that’s tucked away in the app a bit, but in my testing I didn’t notice a difference from a normal call when talking to someone that was on a landline. This isn’t just for Google Voice users though… it can also be used to make calls to your contacts who are logged into Google Talk (assuming they are using Gmail Chat and have the video chat plugin installed). You can also go old-school and use this as an instant messenger with your Google Talk friends.

With this article I’m just focusing on the ability to call a phone using Google Voice VoIP access on Talkatone. Just follow the three simple steps below to navigate your way to VoIP bliss.

Launch Talkatone, and login so that you get to your contacts screen. Double-tap the header labeled Contacts:
Select the Google Voice VoIP Call option:
Dial the number you want to call, or select the Address Book button in the upper-right corner to select someone from your iPhone contacts:

If you find that this isn’t working for you the developer says you may need to set up the Google Voice integration first:

Login to your GMail account on Mac or PC and sign in to chat there.
Make at least one phone call from there using the Call Phone button (you may need to accept the terms of service). If you don’t have Call Phone you may need to install Google Video chat plugin first.
Optionally: To receive your Google Voice calls in Talkatone as VoIP you may login to your Google Voice account and click Forward to Google Chat.

Here’s a more comprehensive list of Talkatone features:

Login using your GMail account directly to Google Servers over a secure connection.
Portrait and Landscape modes supported.
Voice Calls over 3G and WiFi (sorry, NO VIDEO yet, it’s on our list) with advanced codecs support, packet loss reconciliation, etc. for superior voice call quality.
Share your location in real time with your peers.
Unique “double-side coverflow” navigation with support of swipe gestures for quick switching between open windows.
Supports avatars from Google Talk server and from your iPhone’s address book.
Basic Bluetooth headset support.
Double-tap top status bar to show the “Quick Menu”: mute message sounds, clear unread counts and place a Google Voice VoIP call.
For U.S./Canada users: basic support for VoIP calling to/from regular phones using Google Voice account.

Not bad, and it’s all free. I did get a glimpse of some iAds in the app, but I only saw them after I had actually been connected with the person I was calling. I didn’t see any ads elsewhere in the app. Since it is free you don’t have much to lose by trying it out.

Talkatone iTunes Link
Thanks Jason!

Nov 25

Firefox Gets Its Television Debut

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on December 13, 2006 by CyberNet.

Firefox 2 TV

Congratulations to Firefox for having its television debut earlier this week. Their are four user-created commercials that Mozilla is airing in the San Francisco and Boston areas and Mozilla Links has a listing of the times that the commercials will air (which apparently ends tonight).

At the end of the commercial users are presented with a hyperlink, firefox.com/tv, to visit that offers a download link for the browser along with the opportunity to watch the four commercials. You might notice that the URL I hyperlinked on the firefox.com/tv is a little different because users visiting that URL are forwarded to another address, and that address is the one that I hyperlinked to. That way it will help Mozilla keep accurate stats as to who is really coming to the site from the commercial.

I am really excited that Firefox is looking at other methods of advertising even though the word-of-mouth has brought them millions and millions of users. It will surely help in brand recognition so that when someone hears Firefox they may think “oh yeah, I saw that on a commercial once.” Not only that, but it is awesome that the commercials being aired are all created by fans of the browser and not by an outside company…making this even more memorable.

Congratulations to Mozilla and Firefox for this big milestone!

News Source: Mozilla Links

Nov 24

Lock Computer with USB Drive

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on January 27, 2008 by CyberNet.

(Click to Enlarge)

USB drives serve a lot of purposes, but few people know that you can turn an average USB drive into a security feature with very little work. Using a free piece of software called USB PC Lock Pro you can have your computer automatically lock itself the moment you step away, and all you have to do is remove the USB drive.

USB PC Lock Pro comes with almost 10 plug-ins for doing things like muting the audio on your computer or putting your Windows/MSN Messenger status to away. It can also pause anything playing in Windows Media Center, and upon your return the media will begin playing again.

You can pick and choose which of the features you want to enable, and from what I gather this should work with any USB drive. It can also be setup to recognize multiple USB drives.

USB PC Lock Pro is completely free and for Windows only. It needs to be installed on the computer that you want to use it on, and not on the USB drive itself.

Nov 23

Synchronicity Makes File/Folder Backups Simple

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on August 24, 2010 by CyberNet.

We’ve covered all kinds of backup utilities on the site, but the one covered in this article is hands-down one of my favorites. Synchronicity is free, open source, and available in a portable format. After you fire it up the first time you’ll probably be shocked that something laid out this nicely only uses 215KB on your hard drive… I know I was.

Setting up your first profile consists of filling out the information in the screenshot above, and after that you can go on to schedule the task if it’s something you want to run on a regular basis. Here are all the different things Synchronicity is capable of:

Fully customizable synchronization and backup, including:
- Limited synchronization: synchronize some folders only, or synchronize folders contents without synchronizing subfolders.
- Full regexp support for files inclusion/exclusion
- 3 synchronization methods:
  - Mirror
  - One-way incremental
  - Two-ways incremental
- File hashing
Full scheduling support (daily, weekly, monthly, at a particular time, etc.)
Support for multiple profiles
Fully portable: settings are stored in a single config file
By-volume-label paths: Create Synchronicity can backup directly to “My Usb”\Documents for example, by automagically locating the “My Usb” drive.
Advanced features:
- File hashing, various comparison options
- Time offsets, to compensate for wrong DST settings
- Loose timing: allow file time to differ by a few seconds
- Multiple file systems support (all the ones supported by Windows)
- Native support for UCN (network) and relative paths
- Proxy support for updates check.
- For command line addicts: support for command-line arguments, allowing you to queue profiles, run silently, with optional preview display.

If you haven’t tried out Synchronicity then I highly recommend that you do. It’s not as full-featured as something like SyncBack (e.g. this doesn’t include FTP support), but it includes a lot of the features most people will need… plus some.

Synchronicity Homepage (Freeware/Portable; Windows only)

Nov 22

WYSIWYG in Firefox for ANY Text Field

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on April 04, 2008 by CyberNet.

Some of you might have heard of Xinha before because it is an open source online HTML editor. It has a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) interface so that you don’t have to understand how to code HTML in order to insert inline hyperlinks, or apply advanced formatting options.

There is actually an extension for Firefox called Xinha Here that will let you use this WYSIWYG editor in any field that you wish. A good example of this is our comment box where users can, if they know HTML, hyperlink text or place emphasis (bold, italics, etc…) on certain words. With this extension you just right-click in a text field and choose Open Xinha Here option. By default it will open along the lower half of the screen:

(Click to Enlarge)

You can edit the text using the WYSIWYG editor, and when you’re done click the Apply button to have the HTML code inserted back into the original text field. Pretty cool, huh? Just remember that this will only work for fields that support HTML code, such as our comments.

Compatibility: The extension is officially compatible with Firefox 2, but I didn’t have any problems with it in Firefox 3 Beta 5. If you’re using Firefox 3 and want to install the extension it’s recommended that you grab it from here. Firefox 3 users will also need to force Firefox to ignore the version compatibility information.

Xinha Here Firefox Extension

Hasta La Gadget!

Mozilla’s Trimming the Fat from the Add-ons Site