The legality of online sports betting exists in a sort of shrouded grey fog of possibly questionable behavior. However, there are still plenty of quality offshore operations that are willing to take your bets and pay out your winnings. If you want to know how to bet on sports online—like, say, for the Super Bowl—we’ll tell you.
This article was written on February 16, 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.
Windows Phone 7 Series Hands-On
At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Microsoft unveiled the next generation of their mobile operating system called Windows Phone 7 Series. They have essentially scrapped everything you knew about Windows Mobile, and started from scratch to make an interface that is much more like the Zune. It’s clean, fast, and all first impressions from reviewers are extremely positive. You should expect to see Windows Phone 7 Series devices in time for the holiday season later this year.
Office 2011 for Mac Getting a Ribbon UI
Microsoft has released some information regarding Office 2011 for the Mac, and in the mix is a slightly revamped UI that will match more closely what Windows users see when they fire-up Office. This already looks much better than Office 2008 in my opinion, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it. Not to mention the fact that this will actually include Outlook for handling emails instead of the frowned upon Entourage app.
Google Buzz Adapts to User Feedback
Google has received a lot of complaints about Buzz (mostly in regards to security), and they have quickly rolled out changes to help address the high-priority issues.
Google Maps Gets Labs
Labs has found it’s way into another Google product… Maps. Some examples of what you can do are things like find the latitude/longitude of your cursor’s position or draw a box around an area you want to zoom into.
Windows Patch Cripples XP with Blue Screen
One of the Windows Updates pushed out by Microsoft incapacitated some machines and threw them into an endless cycle of reboots.
Opera 10.5 Beta Released
Opera posted the first Beta release of version 10.5, and it boasts private browsing, a faster JavaScript engine, and a redesigned interface.
Google Announces Experimental Fiber Optic Network for Consumers
Google will be pushing out a fiber optic Internet connection to upwards of 500,000 consumers, and are taking nominations for areas in the U.S. that are interested.
Opera Mini for the iPhone
Opera showed off the “mini” version of their browser at Mobile World Congress that is designed specifically for the iPhone.
Automatically Organize Your TV Shows
Downloading TV Shows from the Internet via BitTorrent or other sources can be annoying for those filename neat-freaks out there. Often times the files are named in obscure manners that can make the files difficult to identify, or at the very least not easy to read. The free app called TVRename assists with that issue by renaming the files into a more friendly format automatically for you.
Sign Into Multiple Gmail Accounts in Firefox
The MultiFox Firefox extension lets you create multiple cookie sessions in the browser so that you can sign into more than one online account at a time. This is particularly useful for me because I have multiple Gmail accounts, and with this I don’t have to sign out of one before switching over to another.
6 Best Tools for Scheduling Twitter Updates
Use these various services and tools to automatically schedule your tweets to post at a certain time/day.
Automate File Management with Belvedere
This free Windows utility will let you automatically manage files (delete, move, etc…) based on extension, date created, and more as they get added to a folder that you choose to monitor.
Emailing Photos to Windows Live SkyDrive
This guide explains how you can quickly add images to your free 25GB SkyDrive account via email.
Google Picasa Album Download Tools
Bulk download your images using one of these free tools… including one that is a Firefox extension.
Smart Note Taker & Clipboard Manager
OrangeNote is a free note taking application for Windows that is one of the best-looking sticky note apps I’ve seen.
iPhone Explorer for the iPhone & iPod Touch
This free Windows/Mac app will let you navigate the files on your iPhone without having to jailbreak.
Wedding Planning with Google Docs
Google announced some free templates and tips for people who want to use Google Docs for planning a wedding.
Keep Background Tabs from Loading in Firefox
This Firefox extension will keep background tabs from loading until you actually switch to them.
Turn Chrome’s New Tab Page into a Google Tasks Page
View your Google task list each time you open a new tab in Google Chrome.
Spruce Up Windows Find-as-You-Type
Listary adds a visual reference to the find-as-you-type functionality in Windows Explorer.
Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com
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This article was written on December 03, 2010 by CyberNet.
Windows only 
Notepad++ has been a long time favorite app of mine when it comes to text editors. It seems to have the right mix of features, and if you use it enough you’ll start coming across some gems that can really save time. One of the features I want to focus on here is the “Find in Files” functionality that is extremely easy to overlook.
To get to the Find in Files section all you have to do is open up the find/replace dialog and switch to the respective tab (pictured in the screenshot above). Most people I talk to about this feature say that they’ve never even navigated to that tab because the Find and Replace tabs generally conquer all of their bulk editing needs. It’s true that those tabs have a lot of functionality, but Find in Files definitely deserves the space it occupies.
When switching to the Find in Files tab you may not immediately notice how this is different than the Find tab. The Filters and Directory fields (along with a few of the checkboxes) are the notable differences. This is where you can specify a directory you want Notepad++ to crawl and bulk edit files without having to first open them in Notepad++. Using the filters you can have it restrict results to certain file extensions, and the checkboxes off to the side will control its ability to crawl into hidden folders and sub-folders.
I’d like to present you with a small warning though. Before doing a bulk replace you should perform a Find All so that you can see a list of matching files along with the line numbers that will be modified:
Why? Once you choose the Replace in Files option you’ll see a brief warning confirming that this is what you want to do, and then it will go on its merry way updating all matching files. No backups are made, and it won’t tell you which files were changed. Personally I think it should also return a list of all the files it modified along with a glance of the text before/after the change, but that’s just me.
Generally I just use this for the finding capabilities, which also has one other nifty aspect I haven’t mentioned yet. You can actually double-click on any line number in the result list to instantly have Notepad++ open that file and take you to that line number. Alternatively you can right-click in the result pane and select the Open All option to have all of the matching files opened in different tabs.
I have some other Notepad++ tips that I’ll be sharing later on… so be on the lookout if you enjoyed this article.
Notepad++ Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)
Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com
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This article was written on August 24, 2009 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.
English Wikipedia Surpasses 3 Million Articles
In eight years the English Wikipedia site has managed to amass a whopping 3 million articles. It’s amazing that they’ve been able to pick the collective minds of millions of contributors, and gather the results in one central location. There are apparently 10 million registered users and more than 326 million edits have been made. That is pretty crazy.
Xbox 360 Elite Dropping to $299
Sony unveiled the PS3 Slim at a $299 price point, and Microsoft is following right behind them by lowering the price on their high-end console. According to a Walmart ad the Xbox 360 Elite, which comes with a built-in 120GB hard drive, will also be sold at $299 soon. The console market is getting awfully competitive these days, and in the end it looks like consumers will be the ones who win from it.
Canon Focuses Less on Megapixels, More on Quality
Last week Canon unveiled some new cameras, and the most perplexing thing for a lot of people was that the cameras actually offered a lower number of megapixels than their predecessors. The reasoning? They are trying not to overload the camera sensors as much, and are thereby increasing the quality of the photos. Consumers often look at megapixels as a sole means of measurement for the quality of photos a camera takes, and hopefully this kind of thinking will start to shift.
Google Voice Offers Free Calls to Canada from the U.S.
I found it rather interesting last week when Google announced that their Google Voice service would once again have free calling to Canada. They had offered this before when the service was still known as GrandCentral, but I’m a bit surprised they brought it back. Why? Because Google Voice is a service that’s only available to U.S. residents. So basically people in the U.S. can call Canada for free with Google Voice, but not visa versa. Huh.
Possible Google Chrome OS Screenshots
Mashable has what appears to be some screenshots of the Google Chrome OS… which could also turn out to be fake. I’m sure this is going to be just the beginning of “screenshot” leaks, and if there’s any truth to these Google is heading towards what appears to be a Mac-inspired interface. If these are indeed real I can’t help but feel like we’re stepping back 5-years when it comes to interface design.
Lenova & Samsung Holding Back New PC’s for Windows 7 Launch
Some computer manufacturers are waiting until Windows 7 ships before they release a few select products.
Apple & AT&T Respond to FCC Concerns
Apple and AT&T have addressed concerns that the FCC had regarding the Google Voice apps being pulled from the App Store.
Bing Strikes Licensing Deal with Wolfram Alpha
The “smart” search engine known as Wolfram Alpha will be licensing some of its data to Microsoft.
Mint.com Gets Some New Features
Mint, the free personal finance manager, has received some welcomed new features including better budget management and improved reporting.
Microsoft Looking for “Retail Technical Advisors” for Retail Stores
In the next few months Microsoft will be opening up two retail stores, and they are looking for some people who don’t mind helping users troubleshoot problems with their PC’s.
Avast Doesn’t Look Like Crap Anymore
I’ve been a huge fan of Avast Antivirus over the last few years, but one thing I was never fond of was the interface. It was free though, and so I just dealt with it. Avast 5 (currently in Beta) is changing all of that. The design of the application is like night and day compared to the old version. As of right now all of the features aren’t baked-in, but they will be by the time this thing ships. And when that happens I’ll be telling all the people I’ve set up with Avast about the new version… because it will be a worthwhile upgrade (as long as it’s still free of course). Final version is due out in October.
Run Windows 7 for 120 Days without Activation
We had written about this little “hack” back when Vista launched, and it’s still available in Windows 7. If you’re looking for a way to extend the 30-day “trial period” all you’ll need to do is run slmgr -rearm from the command line at the end of each 30-day period. Doing so will give you another 30-days, and this can be repeated up to 3 times. So if you format your machine every 4-months you may never have to buy Windows 7… um, I didn’t say that though. 
Google Chrome (Dev Build) Syncs Bookmarks
There were some indications that this was coming soon, and it’s here. With the help of a command-line switch you can be syncing your Chrome bookmarks with PC’s you have located half-way across the world. Is this groundbreaking? No. It will get interesting though once Google starts expanding this beyond syncing only bookmarks. Since your bookmarks sync with your Google Docs account it seems only natural that they will use the browser to also sync files on your machine.
Pidgin 2.6 Supports Google Talk Voice & Video Chat
Pidgin users have been asking for Google Talk voice support for a long time, and not only did the developers deliver that but they also came through on video support. That is impressive on many levels… the main one being that even the official Google Talk client doesn’t support video chatting (pathetic, I know). Now what would really make me a happy camper is if they could get file transfer support in there.
Turn Photos into Artwork
If you’re a Photoshop user there’s no doubt that you’re already familiar with the artistic filters that are available. For those of you who can’t afford Photoshop or don’t want to take the time learning it… there’s still an easy way for you to turn your photos into masterpieces. The free FotoSketcher app will let you choose from a variety of different styles (water color, oil painting, etc…) and apply them to any image. To top it off there’s even a portable version available so that you can try it out without installing a thing.
24 Killer Apps for Your USB Drive
This is a great list of programs that can (and probably will) come in handy at some point.
Windows 7 vs. Vista: CPU & Memory Usage Comparison
There’s been a lot of talk about Windows 7 being significantly faster than Vista, but the numbers seem to indicate that it may be closer than we thought.
Xmarks has Alpha Add-on that’s Compatible with Chrome
There is now an Alpha version of Xmarks available that also syncs with Google Chrome. That means it can keep your bookmarks in sync across IE, Firefox, Safari, and now Chrome. Impressive.
5 Sites with Free Strategy Guides for Gamers
These are some sites for you to take into consideration the next time you get stuck when trying to save the princess.
Modify New Tab Behavior in Firefox
This Firefox extension will let you choose what you want to happen when you open a new tab, which includes automatically opening a URL you may have copied to the clipboard.
Google Labs Podcast App for Android
Google appears to be stepping into the podcast market with a new app they’re offering for Android devices.
Adobe Keyboard Shortcut Program
This is a free app made with Adobe Air that provides a unified and searchable interface for finding keyboard shortcuts for all your Adobe applications.
Google Chrome Session Saver
There aren’t many Chrome add-ons, but this is a simple one that will let you save your open tabs so that they can be re-opened later on.
Customize Smooth Scrolling in Firefox
This Firefox extension will let you adjust various aspects of scrolling including the speed and step size.
Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com
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This article was written on August 11, 2010 by CyberNet.
Windows only
The book type setting is something I haven’t had to worry about much, but that is largely because I don’t burn DVD’s very much anymore. The last time I did have to burn one, however, it was a DVD+R DL (dual layer) that didn’t want to work in the particular DVD player that I was trying it in. After some searching around I found out that not all DVD players recognize the DVD+R DL book type/bitsetting, and that it may be necessary to change it to DVD-ROM when burning.
Nero reportedly has an option that will let you do this, but I wanted to use something free. To my surprise I didn’t even realize that I had an app on my computer that was able to change the book type of the DVD… the program I’m talking about is ImgBurn.
Once you fire up ImgBurn you can go ahead and select one of the options related to burning a disc (e.g. “Write image file to disc”). Then right-click on the Destination drop-down menu (I know, it doesn’t seem like you should be able to right-click on a drop-down menu). That’s where you’ll see the option to change the book type:
Now you should be presented with a bunch of tabs that represent the different drive manufacturers. As long as you have one of the supported manufacturers (BenQ, LG, LITE-ON, NEC, Nu Tech, Plextor, RICOH, and Samsung) you should be able to change the book type:
The settings available depend on the manufacturer. For example, with LITE-ON you can change the book type setting so that it only takes affect on the next DVD that you burn, whereas with LG you have to make the setting default for the entire drive (although you can always change it back).
Once I burned the DVD using the DVD-ROM book type I was able to play the dual-layer DVD in my player without any troubles. I recommend giving ImgBurn a try if you’ve had similar compatibility troubles with your DVD+R or DVD+R DL media.
ImgBurn Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)
Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com
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This article was written on May 17, 2007 by CyberNet.
Tutorial Thursday
There was a topic in our forum started a few months back regarding the User Account Control (UAC) in Windows Vista. The question asked whether there was a way to prevent the UAC prompt on applications you know are safe, and at the time the question was specifically directed towards Joost.
Unfortunately there is no way to tell the UAC to “remember my decision,” but there really should be. The UAC should be smart enough to watch for changes in the file, and if something does get modified it should notify the user.
One of my own peeves is in regards to modifying items in the Start Menu. The Start Menu Programs folder is where a lot of applications install their shortcuts. After I install something I like to cleanup the Start Menu so that there aren’t a ton of folders, and also delete shortcuts that I’ll never need. Vista already lets me modify my own Start Menu items, but modifying items that were installed for all users forces a UAC prompt each time.
The method that I’m about to demonstrate is a workaround I found, and works great for disabling the UAC on specific files or folders. It is important to know that the UAC will be completely disabled for the files or folders you choose to apply this to, so be careful how you use it.
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs
That’s all there is to it! Now in that example I won’t receive a UAC prompt every time I move or delete an item in my Start Menu, which I do quite often. Being able to do this has saved me a lot of headaches, but I just wish I thought to try it sooner.
This can also be done for applications that you’re having problems with running in Vista. You can just go into the corresponding folder for your program (which is normally located in the Program Files) and add your username to the permissions. That way you’ll never need to run an application as an administrator because it already has full access to its own folder.
You do want to be careful for with what you choose to do this with, because it is essentially disabling the UAC for that specific file or directory. That means a virus or spyware would be able to access those files as easy as if you disabled UAC system-wide, so think twice about what you apply this technique to.
This solution isn’t the type of fix that I would have liked to do, and as stated earlier I would like to see Microsoft address an easier way to prevent files, folders, and applications from constantly displaying a UAC prompt. I’ll cross my fingers and hope that Vista Service Pack 1 brings some welcomed updates to the User Account Control!
Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com
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This article was written on March 03, 2011 by CyberNet.
Windows only
I rely on my Gmail account for just about all of my email communication, and I’d be pretty sad if I lost some of my emails. After all I have emails dating back to the middle of 2004 in my Gmail account, and so it has almost 7-years worth of my email history. Over the years I’ve put a lot of trust into Gmail, but so much of the service is out of my control that I still feel like I need to make backups just in case my Gmail account mysteriously disappears one day.
A free program called IMAPSize is nice because it lets you view a breakdown of all your labels and the space used by each one, but it is also capable of doing incremental backups for specific labels or the entire account. By doing incremental backups only new emails that haven’t already been backed up will be retrieved, and so it should only be the initial run that takes awhile. Each email is downloaded as an individual EML file, which is a standard format used by many email clients. The EML files will keep all the header information intact so that you can still see the original dates and whatnot.
IMAPSize will work with any email service that provides an IMAP interface, but I’m going to focus on Gmail here. After you download IMAPSize you’ll be prompted to add an account, and these are the things you’ll need to enter in the fields:
After that’s done you can proceed with the various configuration options. You’ll find most of the options you’ll need in the Account menu, which includes calculating sizes and performing backups.
Curious what all IMAPSize is capable of? Here’s a rundown of features provided by the developer:
IMAPSize Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)
Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com
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This article was written on August 19, 2008 by CyberNet.
Time Saving Tuesday
Windows only
Searching for files on your computer was something that was once a tedious process, but in the last few years it has been one of the most talked about features in new operating systems. Sure you could always search for files on your computer, but do you remember when you’d have to sit there for several minutes while the computer scavenged everything on the hard drive looking for files and folders matching your search.
The benefit that search applications have these days is that they can index files on your computer so that search results are retrieved nearly instantaneously. Mac OS X 10.4 started doing this back in 2005 when Tiger it was released, and Vista followed it up with its own indexed search capabilities. Making search a strong focus of the operating system is a smart thing to do as it becomes harder and harder for users to find the files they are looking for. Without being able to search it can almost be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
What about the other operating systems like XP? Many of you have probably turned to Google Desktop or Copernic to do your searching, but I believe both of those programs use more resources than they need to. They’re constantly monitoring and indexing results on your computer, and Google Desktop even comes bundled with their own gadget/widget system.
Today we’re going to take a look at two excellent applications that focus on quickly searching for files on your computer without the unnecessary bloat. Both of them are free, use very little memory, and aren’t constantly indexing files on your computer… although they do use an index/database for retrieving results. Sound nice?
This is one of my favorite search applications for Windows XP, and it is always getting better. Locate32 is capable of indexing all of the files on your computer in no time at all, and after it’s done you can use the intuitive interface for searching and viewing results. It’s not the most snazzy-looking application, but functionality is more important than appearance when it comes to searching.
What does Locate32 have to offer? Take a look at some of my favorite features:
The developers of Locate32 are currently on the homestretch to releasing version 3.1, and with it comes a lot of bug fixes and features. Things like find-as-you-type are automatically enabled making searches even faster and more natural.
Interface (Click to Enlarge):
Options (Click to Enlarge):
Finder, not to be confused with Mac OS X’s Finder, is a program that accomplishes the same goal as Locate32, but with a different interface. It will index your files and put search results on your screen in the blink of an eye.
There are some things that I like better about Finder, such as the wider interface, but generally speaking it’s not as powerful as Locate32. The more unique aspect of the program would be the things you can do with the search results:
A new version of Finder is in the works, but the developer is shooting for a November 2008 release. I can’t wait to see what good stuff is in store for Finder 3.
Interface:
Options (Click to Enlarge):
There’s one thing that I didn’t cover yet, and that is the performance of the two applications. Both of them are nearly identical coming in under 6MB of memory usage when they are active. That is significantly lower than most desktop search applications, and a large part of that is thanks to the on-demand indexing rather than trying to monitor your computer for new files. Both offer an option to only index the files that have changed since the last time the database was updated, which means the first indexing operation will be significantly longer than the others.
Let us know in the comments how you go about searching for files and folders on your computer. We are always interested in trying out new software!
Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com
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This article was written on November 06, 2007 by CyberNet.
When I’m listening to music it is nice to have the lyrics available within the media player so that you don’t have to venture off onto the Internet to hunt them down. So many of the online services bombard you with advertisements and popups, and it becomes more of a chore to find what you’re looking for.
I came across a free plugin today that does exactly what I wanted. It automatically retrieves and displays lyrics in Winamp or Windows Media Player (WMP) for the songs as they are played. I downloaded and installed the plugin for Windows Media Player, and it managed to get the lyrics for a large number of my songs. And I can’t forget to mention the simplified interface that makes reading the lyrics easy.
If you’re a lyric buff I highly recommend you give this a shot!
Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com
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This article was written on August 29, 2008 by CyberNet.
Yesterday word started getting around that come October 1st Comcast would be enforcing a 250GB bandwidth cap for all their users. This is obviously their way to get back at the whole BitTorrent rigmarole that started last year, and this way people are more apt to know what they consider to be “acceptable use.”
The new policy won’t go into affect until October 1st, and if you’re a heavy user you’ll likely be contacted by Comcast:
If a customer uses more than 250 GB and is one of the top users of our service, he or she may be contacted by Comcast to notify them of excessive use. At that time, we’ll tell them exactly how much data per month they had used. We know from experience the vast majority of customers we ask to curb usage do so voluntarily.
Hitting the 250GB limit would take a lot of Internet usage, but it’s definitely possible if you’re streaming videos all day long or are active on the BitTorrent network. They’ve also not said what will happen once you hit that limit (pay extra, get cutoff, etc…)
Scott, the individual who sent us the tip on the Comcast news, was wondering if there was a good free program to use for monitoring your bandwidth usage. After looking around a little bit I found that the AnalogX NetStat Live (for Windows) was a highly recommended program. With it you can track both the current month and last month’s bandwidth usage, set it to start with Windows, and it can be minimized to the System Tray.
If you’ve got a tool you use to monitor bandwidth usage let us know in the comments. We’re particularly looking for apps that keep track of monthly usage, and not just real-time data.
Get NetStat Live for Windows
Thanks Scott!
Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com
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