Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on November 15, 2007 by CyberNet.

Apple released a pretty big update to the Safari 3 Beta browser for Windows this morning. One of the most notable additions is the spelling and grammar checking, which can be done inline if you so desire. To have Safari check the spelling while you type just right-click in a text box, go to Spelling and Grammar, and then tick the Check Spelling While Typing option. As you can see above it underlines incorrect words with a dashed red line.

One of the other big features is the ability to perform a full history search. If you pull up the browser’s history and start to do a search it will scan all of the text for your visited websites, instead of just the titles and URL’s. This is almost like what Opera 9.5 offers, except that Safari’s isn’t searchable directly from the address bar.

There were also improvements to security, stability, compatibility, keyboard shortcuts, and several more features:

• Windows to be resized from any side – thank goodness! It was annoying have to grab the bottom-right corner each time I wanted to resize Safari.
• Includes an additional font smoothing option (“standard”)
• Supports listing FTP directories
• Links to proxy settings from Safari (Safari respects the proxy settings in the Windows Internet control panel)
• Adds cookie management
• Includes tooltips
• Allows printing of page numbers, titles, margins
• Improves bookmark collection interface
• Maintains original order of imported bookmarks
• Adds an interface for editing AutoFill information
• Adds a new preference to manually mark RSS articles as read
• Includes support for tilt wheels

If I didn’t know better I would almost say that Apple is trying hard to provide a decent version of Safari for Windows users. Who would have ever thought it would come to this?

Get Safari

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on January 14, 2011 by CyberNet.

How many times have you wanted to archive a webpage or save its current state for one reason or another? I know this has happened to me, and I’ve almost always turned to a scrolling screenshot to snap an image of the entire page or I’ve used a print-to-PDF app. These methods aren’t bad for most purposes, but I know very few people who try to save a webpage using the “save as” option that is built-in to most browsers. If you do go that route you’ll normally end up with a bunch of helper files (images, CSS, scripts, etc…) that also get saved in order to fully reproduce the site.

There is an awesome Google Chrome extension called SingleFile that will actually make modifications to a page so that everything (except videos/Flash) are stored in-line and can therefore be saved to just one HTML file. It encodes images and embeds CSS so that there are no helper files needed, and since it is a standard HTML file it can easily be shared with other people without worrying whether they’ll be able to open the file.

There are several different “SingleFile” extensions available for Chrome and I want to point out the differences:

• SingleFile – This is the stable version of the extension that is recommended for most users. There are some nice new options and features in the Beta version which is a little further down this list.
• Scrapbook for SingleFile – Creates a browsable archive of all the pages you save. It’s a great way to manage saved pages if you don’t feel like organizing them yourself on your hard drive.
• SingleFile Beta – Has some great new features including options to remove elements from a page before saving, background processing, and more. The options are all pictured in the screenshot above.
• SingleFile Core Beta – You’ll need this if you’re using the SingleFile Beta, and has been broken out into a separate extension so that other extension developers can take advantage of the work that has been put into this library.

After installing the extension a new button will be added to the toolbar, and what happens from there depends on the settings you have configured. If you enable the “save processed page” option it will automatically save the file in an obscure directory within your Google Chrome profile. You can create a shortcut to this folder (which is listed in the help section for the various operating systems), but I recommend just enabling the “display processed page” option. Then all you have to do is click the button, wait for it to finish processing the page, and then use Control+S (or Command+S on Mac) to save it to your hard drive.

I highly recommend checking out this extension if you’ve ever found yourself snapping a screenshot of a page or saving it as a PDF for later reference. At least this way you can still fully interact with the page and click on any of the links.

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on April 24, 2012 by CyberNet.

If you’re trying to treat your XBMC install like a settop box there is no doubt that you’ll want to get a remote control working with it. Unfortunately, in a lot of cases it’s not as simple as just plugging in a USB IR receiver and using a remote that was made for the computer. There is a rather extensive wiki page that lists many of the remotes that have been tested and found working, but I wanted to focus on the two that I use.

Tip: Don’t Test Over Remote Desktop

One thing I wanted to point out right away is that you don’t want to test whether a remote control is working through a Remote Desktop (RDP) session. That may be tempting if you are trying to remotely configure a box, but the output of the remote won’t be reflected on the screen when using RDP.

This makes sense if you think about it. With RDP, any locally attached input devices (keyboard, mouse, etc…) are all rendered useless. A remote control is just considered another input device, and trying to troubleshoot through RDP may leave you frustrated and wondering why it’s not working.

IR Receiver:

I’m not going to go too in-depth about the receiver since I already covered it in my hardware guide, but the important thing is for you to have an RC6-compatible IR receiver to have the best chance of getting a remote control working in Windows. You can take a look at the HP IR Receiver I chose back in my hardware guide.

Quickly Get Remotes Working in XBMC:

Generally getting your remote to work can take quite a bit of time, but one developer has really tried to streamline the whole process. Jump on over to the XBMCCustomregis page to see what I’m talking about. From there you can grab the setup file which will make a specific change to the Registry, and will then copy over a lengthy pre-configured Keyboard.xml file to your XBMC profile.

If you don’t trust what the script is doing you can go ahead and run through the settings manually as well. It’s not that hard, but the setup utility is just there to try and eliminate any potential errors.

After you’ve run through the setup you’ll have to switch to XBMC and go to Settings -> System -> Input Devices and turn on the Remote Control Sends Keyboard Presses option.

Xbox 360 Universal Media Remote:

Since I previously used my Xbox 360 as a Windows Media Center Extender I already had one of the Xbox 360 Universal Media Remotes. It is a pretty nice remote, and since I was trying to save some money I wanted to get by with that. There is just a couple of minor Registry changes that need to be made that aren’t covered by running the XBMCCustomregis mentioned above.

In the Windows Registry navigate to the following section:

> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
>> SYSTEM
>>> CurrentControlSet
>>>> Services
>>>>> HidIr
>>>>>> Remotes
>>>>>>> 745a17a0-74d3-11d0-b6fe-00a0c90f57da

And then make these changes:

1. Change the value of CodeSetNum0 to 8
2. Delete the CodeSetNum1, CodeSetNum2, and CodeSetNum3 values.

Just reboot your computer and you should be ready to go. Everything should work on the remote now, but the volume button will still be tied to the TV due to the way Microsoft designed the remote. Lucky for me that’s what I wanted anyway.

Logitech Harmony Remote:

Thanks to the XBMCCustomregis script, getting your Logitech Harmony Remote working with XBMC is pretty painless. All you have to do is add a new device from the Harmony Remote Software and select Computer for the type of device, Microsoft for the manufacturer, and type Media Center SE for the model.

From there you should be able to set this up and configure your activities to control the XBMC. You’ll be able to control all aspects of XBMC as well as sleeping/waking the PC.

Advanced Configuration:

Want to dig a little deeper? You can customize what happens when any keyboard shortcut is executed. The file you need to edit is the Keyboard.xml which is located in %appdata%\XBMC\userdata\keymaps\. If the file doesn’t exist you’ll want to create it, but if you ran through the XBMCCustomregis script that should have already added a very extensive keyboard configuration file.

CyberNet’s XBMC Guides:

• XBMC: Introduction to Our Upcoming Guides
  Our introduction provides some of the deciding factors for switching from Windows Media Center to XBMC.
• XBMC: Build Your Own HTPC
  Our extensive guide on the hardware we chose for our home theater PCs (HTPCs), the cost, and some tips on choosing the hardware for your own HTPC.
• XBMC: Prepare and Optimize Windows 7
  A helpful list of tips to optimize the performance of Windows 7 so that the system is able to offer as many resources to XBMC as it can.
• XBMC: IR Receiver and Remote (Harmony, Xbox 360, and More)
  If you want your HTPC to operate like a set-top box you’ll definitely want to get a remote control configured, and for me this was a critical step so that I wouldn’t have to be concerned about less tech-savvy users trying to use my TV.
• XBMC: Share and Sync Media/Settings Between Multiple XBMC Installs
  Configuring XBMC to share settings between multiple instances means you’ll be able to stop a show in one room, and seamlessly pick up where you left off in another room.
• XBMC: Fit the Picture to Your TV with Overscan
  If XBMC doesn’t fit your TV screen perfectly there are a couple of steps you can take to get it just right.
• XBMC: Installing Skins
  How to tweak the appearance of XBMC so that it looks the way you want it to.
• XBMC: Custom Home Screen Menu Backgrounds
  Make the backgrounds of your chosen skin/theme a little more interesting by having it flip through artwork from your favorite TV shows and movies.
• XBMC: Dynamic Weather Backgrounds
  If you’re using the Aeon MQ 3 theme you can have it use dynamic wallpapers that change based on the time of day and current weather conditions.
• XBMC: SMB on Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)
  I use a Mac to serve up files to my XBMC instances running on Windows, and so my preferred protocol for sharing files is SMB. This guide explains how you can get a XBMC-compatible version of SMB running on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.
• XBMC: Adding Media Sources
  Learn how to add your media to XBMC and turn on the appropriate content scrapers.
• XBMC: Troubleshoot Buffering Issues
  Trying to troubleshoot buffer issues in XBMC can be quite a pain, and so I lay out some of the most common culprits.
• XBMC: Test Your HTPC with High Bitrate Sample Videos
  Want to see how well your HTPC performs? Throw some of these high bitrate 1080p sample videos at it.
• XBMC: More Advanced Settings
  Configure some of the settings that you won’t find anywhere in the GUI.
• XBMC: Stream Hulu, Food Network, and More
  Thanks to add-ons you can stream videos from some of your favorite sources including Hulu, Food Network, HGTV, TWiT, and more.
• XBMC: AirPlay on Windows
  Send videos from your iOS device to any XBMC instance with very little configuration.
• XBMC: Web Interface and Chrome Extension
  As long as you are on the same network as your XBMC box you can control it from any browser using the built-in web interface, or you can install a Chrome extension to make it even easier.
• XBMC: iPhone and iPad Remote
  If you own an iPhone or iPad you can enjoy one of the best XBMC remote control experiences I’ve seen, and it will only cost you a few bucks.
• XBMC: A List of Our Guides, Plus Helpful Wiki and Forum Posts
  A recap of all the guides we’ve written as well as useful wiki and forum post from the official XBMC.org site.
• XBMC: Free and Official iOS Remote for XBMC Released
  This is the free and official XBMC remote control iOS app (optimized for both the iPhone and iPad). It will let you easily control all of the XBMC instances in your house as long as they are all on the same network.
• XBMC: Running XBMC on Startup in Windows 8
  Learn how you can make XBMC start automatically when Windows 8 boots.
• XBMC: Send YouTube Videos From Chrome to XBMC
  Send YouTube videos from your PC to any XBMC instance in a single click.
• XBMC: Aeon MQ 4 Skin
  If you’re looking for one of the best and most popular XBMC skins the Aeon MQ 4 is a great choice.
• XBMC: Android Widget Remote Control
  Control multiple instances of XBMC without ever having to open an app on your Android device!

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on May 25, 2011 by CyberNet.

I’ve talked about some features of the DD-WRT router before, and one of the things I’ve been playing around with lately is DNSMasq. There’s a good chance you haven’t noticed this setting in DD-WRT because it’s not something most people would ever think to use. Plus DNSMasq can be found in two different areas within DD-WRT since it can be used for both DHCP assignments as well as internal/local DNS management. What I will be focusing on is the local DNS aspect.

When is using DNSMasq useful for controlling DNS? Here are some examples as to why you may want to use it:

• You have DNS pointing to something that is hosted on your home network and it is also accessible from outside your network. For example, you may have a security camera that has a domain attached to it (e.g. camera.example.com), and it’s accessed from both on and off your network. Using DNSMasq on your router you can make the domain, camera.example.com, point to the internal IP of the camera so that anyone who accesses that camera from within your network won’t have to rely on external DNS getting resolved. You should see at least a slight performance boost that way.
• You want to override public DNS entries, such as google.com. You can obviously pull off some great pranks by directing traffic to sites like google.com or facebook.com to some custom site you create, but there are other reasons this is legitimately useful. Maybe you are testing a new version of your own website, but want to make sure it will work fine with the live domain. DNSMasq can help you accomplish that.
• You want to create DNS for a site that is accessible using only a single word, such as intranet. Companies do this kind of thing all the time where an internal-only website can be reached without needing or wanting a publicly-accessible URL.

I know what you may be thinking… why wouldn’t you just update the HOSTS file on your local machine? Well, you could, but not all devices support that feature. By using DNSMasq the DNS change will work for anything connecting to your router, including mobile devices such as phones and tablets.

So what do you have to change in DD-WRT? Here’s what you need to do:

1. Go to the Services tab once you’ve logged into the administration interface.
2. Find the section labeled DNSMasq, and make sure the DNSMasq option is enabled.
3. This is the fun part. In the Additional DNSMasq Options box type out your local DNS configurations in the format of one entry per line:
   • address=/machine_or_domain_name/ip_address – where machine_or_domain_name is what you want to create/change DNS for (e.g. camera.example.com, google.com, intranet) and ip_address is the new IP address you want it to point to.
4. Apply the settings to DD-WRT, and you should be all set.

This is an example of what your DNSMasq settings may look like:

If your devices don’t see the changes after they’ve been made you may need to try restarting them since that is often the simplest way to clear the DNS cache.

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on May 03, 2012 by CyberNet.

When setting up my XBMC instances, I wanted to have a central machine in my house serve up all my media, and for that I chose to use my Mac OS X Lion machine. Since my XBMC machines are being powered by Windows 7 I ran into a bit of a predicament. In Mac OS X Lion, Apple started using the SMB2 protocol that Microsoft introduced in Vista back in 2006. Naturally this would be a welcomed change since the original protocol has been around since the Windows 3.1 days, but XBMC doesn’t include support for SMB2.

There are some alternative protocols you can try using, such as AFP or FTP, but even those have their drawbacks. XBMC 11 added built-in support for AFP shares which is file sharing protocol that Apple prefers. In my case AFP isn’t even an option since Windows doesn’t natively support AFP, which means my XBMC machines don’t see the AFP shares. As far as the FTP goes Apple removed that functionality in Lion, but it can easily be restored. I didn’t want to go that route though because FTP connections limit some of what you can do with the media in XBMC, such as not being able to delete videos directly from the XBMC interface. So for me Samba/SMB was still my best option.

After some searching I came across a free app called SMBUp that restores the old-school SMB protocol compatibility in all its glory on your Mac OS X Lion install. You just have to download the app, open it up, and it will install a version of Samba that works beautifully with XBMC. As you can see in the screenshot above you’ll be provided a full interface for managing all of your shares, and you can even enable guest access to shares making it even easier to hook XBMC up to them.

A lot of geeky people will argue that using the older protocol will drastically limit your transfer speeds compared to other methods, but I have not found that to be the case. In fact before installing SMBUp I was able to transfer files at 92MB/s to a Windows machine, which was being done with the newer SMB2 protocol. After installing SMBUp I saw speeds to the same machine reach 98MB/s, and that was with the older protocol. Not bad, and that shows that my gigabit network is on par to my expectations.

Tip: Most people treat the Samba and SMB terms as one-in-the-same, but in reality they are not. SMB/CIFS is pretty much only found in Microsoft Windows, whereas Samba is the free and open source version that you’ll find in the Mac and Linux OS. Samba was originally developed by reverse engineering SMB.

SMBUp Homepage (Mac only; Freeware)

CyberNet’s XBMC Guides:

• XBMC: Introduction to Our Upcoming Guides
  Our introduction provides some of the deciding factors for switching from Windows Media Center to XBMC.
• XBMC: Build Your Own HTPC
  Our extensive guide on the hardware we chose for our home theater PCs (HTPCs), the cost, and some tips on choosing the hardware for your own HTPC.
• XBMC: Prepare and Optimize Windows 7
  A helpful list of tips to optimize the performance of Windows 7 so that the system is able to offer as many resources to XBMC as it can.
• XBMC: IR Receiver and Remote (Harmony, Xbox 360, and More)
  If you want your HTPC to operate like a set-top box you’ll definitely want to get a remote control configured, and for me this was a critical step so that I wouldn’t have to be concerned about less tech-savvy users trying to use my TV.
• XBMC: Share and Sync Media/Settings Between Multiple XBMC Installs
  Configuring XBMC to share settings between multiple instances means you’ll be able to stop a show in one room, and seamlessly pick up where you left off in another room.
• XBMC: Fit the Picture to Your TV with Overscan
  If XBMC doesn’t fit your TV screen perfectly there are a couple of steps you can take to get it just right.
• XBMC: Installing Skins
  How to tweak the appearance of XBMC so that it looks the way you want it to.
• XBMC: Custom Home Screen Menu Backgrounds
  Make the backgrounds of your chosen skin/theme a little more interesting by having it flip through artwork from your favorite TV shows and movies.
• XBMC: Dynamic Weather Backgrounds
  If you’re using the Aeon MQ 3 theme you can have it use dynamic wallpapers that change based on the time of day and current weather conditions.
• XBMC: SMB on Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)
  I use a Mac to serve up files to my XBMC instances running on Windows, and so my preferred protocol for sharing files is SMB. This guide explains how you can get a XBMC-compatible version of SMB running on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.
• XBMC: Adding Media Sources
  Learn how to add your media to XBMC and turn on the appropriate content scrapers.
• XBMC: Troubleshoot Buffering Issues
  Trying to troubleshoot buffer issues in XBMC can be quite a pain, and so I lay out some of the most common culprits.
• XBMC: Test Your HTPC with High Bitrate Sample Videos
  Want to see how well your HTPC performs? Throw some of these high bitrate 1080p sample videos at it.
• XBMC: More Advanced Settings
  Configure some of the settings that you won’t find anywhere in the GUI.
• XBMC: Stream Hulu, Food Network, and More
  Thanks to add-ons you can stream videos from some of your favorite sources including Hulu, Food Network, HGTV, TWiT, and more.
• XBMC: AirPlay on Windows
  Send videos from your iOS device to any XBMC instance with very little configuration.
• XBMC: Web Interface and Chrome Extension
  As long as you are on the same network as your XBMC box you can control it from any browser using the built-in web interface, or you can install a Chrome extension to make it even easier.
• XBMC: iPhone and iPad Remote
  If you own an iPhone or iPad you can enjoy one of the best XBMC remote control experiences I’ve seen, and it will only cost you a few bucks.
• XBMC: A List of Our Guides, Plus Helpful Wiki and Forum Posts
  A recap of all the guides we’ve written as well as useful wiki and forum post from the official XBMC.org site.
• XBMC: Free and Official iOS Remote for XBMC Released
  This is the free and official XBMC remote control iOS app (optimized for both the iPhone and iPad). It will let you easily control all of the XBMC instances in your house as long as they are all on the same network.
• XBMC: Running XBMC on Startup in Windows 8
  Learn how you can make XBMC start automatically when Windows 8 boots.
• XBMC: Send YouTube Videos From Chrome to XBMC
  Send YouTube videos from your PC to any XBMC instance in a single click.
• XBMC: Aeon MQ 4 Skin
  If you’re looking for one of the best and most popular XBMC skins the Aeon MQ 4 is a great choice.
• XBMC: Android Widget Remote Control
  Control multiple instances of XBMC without ever having to open an app on your Android device!

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com