Jan 29

WrapUp: HTML5 vs. Flash Performance, A Web-Centric Music Manager, and More

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on March 15, 2010 by CyberNet.

Welcome to the WrapUp by CyberNet. This is a collection of news stories, downloads, and tips that we have collected over the last few days, but never got around to writing about. Don’t forget to send in your own tips, or just leave a comment on this page if you think you’ve got something we should include.

–News–

opera mini android.jpgOpera Mini 5 Beta Available for Android
The Opera team released a Beta for version 5 of their Android Mini browser last week. The new version supports Speed Dial for your favorite sites, includes a password manager, and can sync your bookmarks/Speed Dial with the desktop version of Opera. The main benefit to Opera Mini, however, is the the fact that all your requests go through Opera’s servers to compress and optimize the page you want to view.


html5.jpgHTML5 vs. Flash Performance
There are many proponents for HTML5 video playback in browsers, but Windows users in particular may find that Flash is actually more efficient due to hardware acceleration. Flash 10.1 is able to use the GPU on some computers to decode video, and therefore beat out the straight HTML5 implementations in most scenarios.


–News in Brief–

firefox upgrade.jpgUpgrades Issues to Firefox 3 and Firefox 3.5 Users
Mozilla will be pushing out update notifications to Firefox users that have not yet upgraded to Firefox 3.6.


reader play.jpgA New Way to View Google Reader
 Google introduced a more visual way to browse through interesting photos and videos in Google Reader.


google biking.jpgBiking Directions Added to Google Maps
Google added biking directions to the already included transit, walking, and driving directions in Maps.


msn homepage.jpgNew MSN Homepage Rolling Out
As expected Microsoft is rolling out a completely redesigned MSN Homepage over the next few weeks.  


apps marketplace.jpgGoogle Apps Marketplace Open
 Third-party companies can now make “add-ons” to Google Apps that integrate with services like Gmail and Google Calendar.


refresh pop.jpgManually Refresh POP Accounts in Gmail
 A Gmail Labs feature now lets you manually fetch emails from POP accounts that you’ve set up.


steam mac.jpgValve Confirms Steam for Mac
Valve announced that Steam will indeed be coming to Mac users sometime in April.


chromium css.jpgChromium Adds Support for Custom Stylesheets
The latest nightly release of Chromium lets users specify custom stylesheets that can be used to modify the appearance of sites.


popsci.jpgComplete Popular Science Archive Available
With the help of Google, Popular Science now lets you view previously published magazines.


newegg counterfeit.jpgNewegg Sells Counterfeit i7 CPUs
Newegg has admitted to selling 300 counterfeit Intel i7 CPUs, and is working with the customers to replace them.


ad block.jpgWhy Ad Blocking is Devastating to the Sites You Love
Ars Technica explains how blocking ads on your favorite sites can have a negative affect.


–Tips, Tutorials, and Reviews–

musicbee.jpgMusicBee – A Web-Centric Music Manager
This desktop music manager is unique in the sense that it utilizes the power of the web to simplify music tasks. You can do things like update tags, missing album art, lyrics, and much more. It can also create playlists from similar artists (according to Last.FM), and you can fetch online info for the song you’re currently listening to.


windows 7 taskbar.jpgWindows 7 Taskbar Customizer
We’ve seen apps that let you customize the size of the thumbnail previews in Vista, and now a similar (but better) tool is available for Windows 7 users. The thumbnail customizer lets you specify the size, spacing, margin, and delay associated with every preview popup you see when hovering over a Taskbar icon.


–Tips in Brief–

hulu.jpgDownload Hulu TV Shows
This desktop app makes it easy for you to download your favorite Hulu TV shows.


weatherbar.jpgWeatherBar Puts the Weather in Your Windows 7 Taskbar
This Windows 7 app puts the your local weather in a jumplist item.


batch convert images.jpgBatch Convert Images Using Drag and Drop
Photo Magician lets you perform advanced image conversions, or a faster method that is initiated simply by dropping images onto an icon.


ie tab 2.jpgIE Tab 2 Continues the IE Tab Project
The IE Tab project lives on with a new name, and supports versions of Firefox up to the latest nightly builds.


dummy images.jpgCreate Dummy Placeholder Images
This website lets you specify the dimensions and colors for an image, and have it generated on-the-fly. Definitely great for web designers.


secondbar.jpgAdd an Additional Menu Bar to Each Mac Monitor
SecondBar will throw a menu bar on the top of each additional monitor that you have hooked up to your Mac.


synergy.jpgSynergy+ Continues Development of the Open Source Project
This is a continuation of the open source Synergy project that lets you use one mouse/keyboard across all your operating systems.


office tabs.jpgAdd Tabs to Office Programs
If you’re constantly working with multiple Office documents this add-on will incorporate a tabbed interface for managing all open files.


–Downloads–

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Dec 09

Google Email Uploader Launches for Google Apps

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on April 07, 2008 by CyberNet.

Google Apps users who have years (or just a few months worth) of emails stored in Outlook, Outlook Express or Thunderbird, now have a very simple way to upload those messages to a Google Apps mailbox (Gmail). Google just launched an open source desktop utility called Google Email Uploader that gets the job done. The best part is that the sent dates from all of your messages are kept in-tact and folders that you may have are converted to Gmail Labels. Not only is this utility for old email messages, it is also an uploader for all of your contacts.

Google describes the Email Uploader as:

The Google Email Uploader is a open source desktop utility for Microsoft Windows. It uploads email and contacts from desktop email programs (like Microsoft Outlook® ) into your Google Apps mailbox. It preserves information such as sent dates and sender/recipient data, as well as the folder structure used by email programs.

At this point there are a few downsides. The first is that it’s available only for Windows XP and Windows Vista.  The second is that this is something that isn’t available for the regular Gmail users. Google says that you must have a Google Apps Premier, Education, or Partner version of Google Apps in order to use this, however some people are reporting that this only works for Google Apps Premier subscribers. Google Operating System writes that you’ll receive an error message if you’re not a Premier subscriber (this is the paid version of Google Apps) which says, “you are not authorized to use this feature.”

google email uploader

Above is a screenshot of what you’d see if you downloaded the utility and started the process of uploading old messages. If you have Google Apps either the Education or Partner version and you try this out, be sure to let us know if you received the error message. It’s supposed to work for all Google Apps users but it may not work out that way and Google may have some tweaking they need to do.

Download the Google Email Uploader Here

Thanks for the tip Trip!

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

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Nov 25

Google Docs Opening Up Sharing Options

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on June 08, 2007 by CyberNet.

The new fad these days is collaboration via video conferencing, instant messengers, or just by sharing files over the Internet. Google Docs has been known to embrace that by offering a collaboration feature on both their document or spreadsheet service, where sharing the information is as simple as entering in the user’s email address.

When sharing a document with people, you can choose whether they are a collaborator who can make changes to the document, or they can be just a viewer that can not edit anything. Up until now the people being invited would need to have a Google account just to view the document, but Google is doing away with that.

Google Docs Invitation

Now when sharing a document you’ll see a new option allowing invitations to be used by anyone (pictured above). A URL is then sent to the individual that you’re inviting via an email, and even if they don’t have a Google account they will still be able to view the document that you’re sharing:

Google Docs Invitation

As you can see you’ll still need to login if you want to edit the document, which might be wise for security purposes. Otherwise anyone could share the necessary URL with someone else who could make changes that you’re not aware of. Well, it might not be that bad since you could just go back to a previous revision since Google keeps track of them all.

I’m finally starting to see myself warming up to the Google Docs service, although I would like to see synchronization capabilities between Microsoft Office and Google Docs.

Source: Webware

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

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Nov 04

Jotspot Resurfaces as Google Sites

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on February 28, 2008 by CyberNet.

Shortly after Google acquired YouTube back in 2006, they acquired Jotspot. Jotspot offered their users a place where they could create a structured Wiki that was easily updatable. Once they were acquired, we knew eventually Google would launch something that used Jotspot’s technology. The day has come, and a new service from Google has launched called Google Sites which incorporates elements we saw in Jotspot.

The first thing that you’ll need to know is that this is part of Google Apps which means you need to have a Google Apps account to get started.  An example of where this service will be useful is for those in the education field like teachers to update parents. Of course that’s just one example, and given how easy it is to create a site, it could be useful for just about anyone. Additional examples Google gives include: Company Intranet page, Team Project homepage, Employee Profile, Student Club.

Here are a few additional things you should know about the service:

  • At this point, there are five templates to choose from but more will be available in the future
  • Create pages in just one click
  • Sharing of documents, presentations, videos, photos, calendars and attachments is easy
  • Permission settings are available so you can determine who you want to be viewing the site – it can be private and available to a select group of people, or public and available to the World
  • File cabinet feature gives you the option to upload files. Each file can be up to 10MB in size (in all, you’ll have 10GB of storage space)
  • Google Search built-in so you can search across Google Sites pages
  • Each wiki page has an RSS feed associated to it for easy tracking of changes

Because Google Sites is a free service, it could cut into Microsoft’s earnings on their Sharepoint application. Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch spoke to Google’s director of Enterprise Matthew Glotzbach who even called this product a “Microsoft Sharepoint Killer.” Clearly one of Google’s biggest competitors is Microsoft and it appears as though they’ll do everything they can to cut into Microsoft’s revenue by offering comparable free services.

Below are two example pages that have been created. One thing I did notice is that they used a fluid design so that the window adjusts to your browser, but this causes issues in the formatting if your browser gets too small. They could set a minimum width on the design to prevent the formatting issues from happening, but at this point they haven’t.

google sites 1

google sites 2

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Sep 30

GDrive Coming to Google Apps?

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on September 05, 2007 by CyberNet.

Much like the Google Phone, the rumors of a Google file backup/storage service called GDrive have been around for a while now (here and here).  Originally it was thought to be just a service for Google employees to store and share files, but now we have further indication that it might be released to the public. Tony Ruscoe has been amazing at digging up dirt on Google services and features, and this is a perfect example of that. Yesterday he managed to disable GDrive on his Google Apps account, even though it’s not a service he had or could enable.

How did he come across this discovery? Ruscoe says, “Anyone familiar with my previous Google-digging will know that I try to keep track of Google service names used by both Google Accounts and Google Apps. By changing query string parameters on various pages, it’s possible to get a glimpse into what Google might be working on.” In this situation, he changed the “service” parameter which then allowed him to disable GDrive as the image shows below:

gdrive1

What a great find, huh? Of course this is no guarantee that GDrive will be released to the public, especially because we know that Google employees use Google Apps, and this feature could be something only for their use. I’d like to think though, that Google would have interest in providing a file backup/storage service to their users, but you never know!

If you have a Google Apps domain, you can give it a try:

https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/example.com/DisableService?service=www10

Just be sure to replace the “example.com” with your own domain. I tried it, and I got the same thing. Hopefully this means GDrive is finally coming soon?

Source: Google Blogoscoped

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Mar 18

Google Drive Experiencing Ongoing Service Disruption

Posted in: Today's Chili

Google Drive Experiencing Ongoing Service Disruption

We’re not sure what’s been up with tech companies and their inability to allow users who rely on their suite of cloud-based services to get any work done to continually function properly as just a few weeks ago, Apple’s iCloud experienced issues for hours, and today Google’s Drive has been reportedly having issues.

Fortunately, it seems the outages are intermittent and won’t affect all Google Drive users at this time, but a number of users are reporting being unable to access particular folders, while at the same time, being able to access other folders without experiencing any issues at all. Some other users are having completely no issues with their Google Drive, but instead are having issues signing in with their Google Apps account. The last of the users aren’t even able to access Google Drive entirely as they get a “502 error” for an extended period of time. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Facebook Testing Silent Updates For Its Android App, Pinterest Rolling Out New Look For All Users,

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Dec 14

Google’s Retiring Sync and Other Services In This Year’s Winter Cleaning

Posted in: Today's Chili

It’s that time of year again; Google’s leading its ostensibly lonely and unloved services out to pasture. This time Google Sync, and some more obscure calender options are headed for that big cloud storage unit in the sky. More »

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Dec 07

Google Apps discontinues basic package, asks new customers to pony up $50 per user for premium

Posted in: Today's Chili

Google Apps discontinues basic package, asks all new customers to pony up $50 per user for premium

Looking towards Mountain View to provide a suite of digital tools for your new business? Make sure to pen per-user costs into your ledger — Google Apps isn’t free anymore. According to Google’s enterprise blog, the basic Google Apps package is being abandoned to streamline the service, offering businesses a single, $50 per user option that promises 24/7 phone support, 25GB inboxes and a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Pre-existing free customers can still hum along unmolested, of course, and the standard pricing doesn’t apply to schools or universities, either. Personal Google accounts are still free too, doling out gratis Gmail and Drive access to anyone with a unique user name. The team hopes that streamlining the Apps will allow it to provide better service, possibly offering enterprise users new features on a faster timetable.

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Source: Google

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Dec 06

Google Stops Offering Free Version Of Google Apps For Businesses

Posted in: Today's Chili

Yesterday, it was an “unsubstantiated rumor.” But today, it’s becoming a reality. Google has announced new changes to its Google Apps for businesses. And our fears were finally confirmed, as Google will no longer offer a free version of its Google Apps for businesses, at least for new users. This means that Google is now offering a single option for businesses, and that is the premium version, which costs $50 per year for every user. The package includes 24/7 phone support, a 25 GB inbox, and a 99.9% uptime guarantee with no scheduled downtime.

On the other hand, new users who are planning to use Gmail and the services of the Google Drive app – for free – can create a personal Google account to enjoy Google’s services. Do note that the changes will only apply to new users and that existing Google Apps for business users can still enjoy the free version. “When we launched the premium business version we kept our free, basic version as well. Both businesses and individuals signed up for this version, but time has shown that in practice, the experience isn’t quite right for either group,” says Clay Bavor, the Director of Product Management for Google Apps.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Amazon Appstore Hits 500% More Downloads, Enjoy A Moon Holiday By 2020,

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Oct 30

Google offers Enterprise Partner Search to help businesses find local tech support

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Image

Business-types! Fancy moving your enterprise onto Google’s web-apps, but want some local tech support? Well, Mountain View won’t be offering you any official hand-holding, its Enterprise Partner Search will point you in the direction of someone who can. The new service will find your location and offer up the listings of your nearest qualified reseller, leaving your employees more time to make papier-mâché statues of you to line the office.

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Google offers Enterprise Partner Search to help businesses find local tech support originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Oct 2012 10:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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