Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on July 20, 2011 by CyberNet.

The interface for managing the default “open with” programs in Windows isn’t the best, and in the past we’ve recommended utilities that make managing the default apps a little easier. Coffee brings a refreshing spin on the task at hand by temporarily modifying the default programs for a given file extension, but leaving the OS settings in tact.

What Coffee does is it lets you set the default application for any file extension without modifying the Windows Registry. This is useful in a variety of scenarios, but given the fact that Coffee is a free and portable app means that this is a perfect compliment to your USB drive or Dropbox account.

How do I use Coffee? I store the app in my Dropbox account which is synced to all my machines. Since my Dropbox folder is in the same place on all my computers I can use Coffee to set the default apps for things such as TXT files to other portable programs such as Notepad++, which are also stored in my Dropbox account. Basically with my configuration I can sit down at any of my computers, start Coffee, and instantly have my favorite portable apps set to open the file extensions I use the most frequently.

There are a lot of other features that make Coffee great, such as the ability to set an alternative application. With that in place you can open a file in the secondary app by holding down the Alt key and double-clicking on the shortcut. Genius!

Coffee Homepage (Windows only; Freeware; Portable)

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on October 29, 2007 by CyberNet.

Want to know how to make free (and unlimited) national or international calls to friends and family? The answer is Talkster.  Of course you’re probably thinking that they have to pay for it somehow, so “what’s the catch?” There is a catch, but it’s a small one and one that won’t take away from the usefulness or attractiveness of the service. To pay for operations, users will be required to listen to a ten second ad at the beginning of each call — that’s it! Once you’ve listened to the ad, you’re able to talk ad free for however long you’d like. I should also note that the ad is interactive. After you listen to it, they explain that you can press star on your phone to get more details about the sponsor. This service works for calls between one person, all the way up to calls between five people.

Here’s how it works – for every person that you want to talk to, you’ll get a local Talkster number for them after providing your mobile or landline number. Then they’ll get a local Talkster number for you based upon their mobile or landline number. Either your friend can receive the number via SMS, or you can give it to them. Then follow these steps:

1. Call your friend using your Talkster number for them
2. When your friend answers, tell them to call the number in the SMS they were sent or look at the incoming CallerID on their phone.  You stay on the line, but tell them to hang up and call you back on that number
3. Your friend hangs up and dials back, using the Talkster number for you.
4. You are connected and begin talking for Free

I tried it, and it was very simple. Once I entered my phone number as well as the phone number for the person I wanted to call on their website, it sent both of us a text message with the number that we’d each need to call. Once we were connected, the quality was the same as any other call you’d receive.

While it’s simple and easy, there is a downside, and that is that there are currently only 26 supported countries like Australia, U.S., U.K., Mexico, Canada, Netherlands, and Germany. With nearly 200 countries globally, 26 really isn’t that much.  The good news though is that they say they add countries all the time so the list will continue to grow.

Overall I’d say Talkster is a great free solution for making calls worldwide.

Source: CyberNet Forum (Thanks Pieter!)

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on August 07, 2012 by CyberNet.

Whenever I’m using my Windows laptop I frequently adjust the level of the volume depending on what I’m doing at the time. The problem with Windows is that there is no indication of the volume level as you change it aside from the tiny System Tray icon that only has a few bars to indicate what it’s set at. As a result most computer manufacturers such as Dell and Lenovo will make their own on-screen volume indicators, but they are often bundled with other things you don’t need.

If you want an on-screen volume level indicator I highly recommend taking a look at the free 3RVX tool. You can customize the appearance of the on-screen display by choosing from one of several themes that are bundled with it including the Mac-like one that you see above. Most of the themes are very polished, and I’m sure you’ll find one that suits your system well.

The thing I love the most about this app is that it doesn’t matter whether you’re adjusting the volume using dedicated keys on your machine or you’re using some sort of software that changes the system volume… either way 3RVX will pick up the volume change. You don’t need some special OEM software to do this.

3RVX Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on March 08, 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–

Ubuntu 10.04 To Sport a New Theme
After six years the Ubuntu operating system will be going under the knife, and will come out with a fresh new makeover. They are dropping a lot of the brown that users had come to associate with Ubuntu, and the old design dubbed “Human” is taking a backseat to “Light.” Everything has been revamped from icons to the boot screen, and even the logo has been modernized a bit. Canonical expects the facelift to represent the operating system for years to come.

Picnik Gets Acquired by Google
Picnik is an online photo editor that was being managed by just 20 employees… until last week when they were acquired by Google. According to their team nothing will be changing immediately, and integration with third-party services such as Flickr will still remain available. It seems only natural that Picnik will become heavily integrated into Picasa, but that will likely take months (if not longer) for them to accomplish.

–News in Brief–

Google Open Sources reMail
Not that long ago Google acquired the makers of an iPhone app called reMail, and they are now open-sourcing the technology so that iPhone developers can have an excellent starting point for creating apps that need to access IMAP email accounts.

Office 2010 Upgrade Guarantee
If you buy a copy of Office 2007 between now and the release of Office 2010 (business launch is May 12th, consumer launch is in June) you will get a free upgrade to the latest version.

Google Docs Welcomes DocVerse
The acquisition of DocVerse means that Google officially supports integration with the widely popular Microsoft Office desktop applications.

iPad Available on April 3rd
Apple announced that pre-orders for the iPad will begin on May 12th, and will be available at stores on April 3rd.

10 Billion Tweets
Twitter boldly passes the 10-billion tweet mark, and to celebrate the event tweeters around the world… tweeted some more.

Roger Ebert Regains Voice with Mac Software
Thanks to a heavily customized text-to-speech Mac application Roger Ebert can now speak in his old voice.

TiVo Unveils Series4 DVRs
This week TiVo held a media event to show off the new Series4 DVRs that include a revamped user interface and some new online video integration.

More than 90 Million Copies of Windows 7 Sold
In less than 5-months Microsoft has sold more than 90 million copies of Windows 7.

Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Windows Live Messenger Service
Interested in what goes on to keep one of the most popular messenger services running? Microsoft divulges some details on what it takes to make a few thousand servers work together to provide 300 million users the joy of instant communication.

Opera 10.5 Released, and Speedier than Ever
The newest milestone of the Opera web browser boasts significant performance and functionality enhancements.

Winners of the Street View Trike Contest
Google talks about what areas (such as college campuses) will be added to Street View via a man-powered trike.

–Tips, Tutorials, and Reviews–

Firefox Developer Preview Isolates Plugins
Mozilla has posted a preview release of the Gecko platform that forms the basis for apps like Firefox. The preview can isolate plugins like Flash and Silverlight from the rest of the browser. If one of those plugins happens to crash the rest of the browser will be fine. They offer a version of Firefox that can expose this feature, but keep in mind that it is currently not available for Mac users… it will be by the time they are done though.

Geosense for Windows
Some young pioneers decided to whip up a sensor for Windows 7 that will determine your approximate location using your WiFi and IP address info. This information can then be relayed on to apps, such as the weather widget, that can use that data to add relevancy. There aren’t many things that take advantage of it at this point, but I can see apps incorporating this functionality in later releases. It’s definitely worth keeping an eye on.

–Tips in Brief–

Get Google Wave Email Notifications
You can finally get notified via email when a response is posted to one of your waves.

Quickly Create Personal Websites
Flavors.me is a free service that lets you easily create a personal website without using any desktop software.

Increase Live TV Pause Buffer in Windows 7 Media Center
This will let you pause the television stream in Windows 7 for more than the default 40-minutes.

Setup Your Own Proxy Server
A quick set of instructions on how to set up your own free proxy server in just a few minutes.

Monitor for Experimental Firefox Extension Updates
This add-on will let you update your Firefox extensions whenever an experimental release is posted. That means you won’t have to wait for Mozilla’s stamp of approval.

Make Windows 7 Remember Explorer Windows’ Size and Position
This free app should resolve the issue where Windows 7 doesn’t always remember the last size and position of a Windows Explorer window.

Visually Browse Open Chrome Tabs
Get a coverflow-like interface for viewing all of your open tabs in Google Chrome.

Utilize Drop.io for 100MB Attachments in Outlook
Attach files up to 100MB in size to your emails without leaving Outlook by using the free Drop.io service.

Analyze Hard Drive Usage with Disk Space Fan
A fast and beautiful hard drive analyzer that can help you determine what’s eating up all your space.

–Downloads–

• AIM 7.2 ^{Beta 2} [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Audacity 1.3.12 ^RC1 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Cobian 10.0.0.394 ^Beta [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Eudora 8.0.0 ^{Beta 9} [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Evernote 3.5.2.1663 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• FeedDemon 3.1.0.20 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Firefox 3.7 ^{Alpha 2} [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Foobar2000 1.0.1 ^{Beta 2} [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Google Chrome 5.0.342.2 ^Beta [Homepage] [Mirror]
• K-Meleon 1.5.4 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Miranda 0.8.16 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Notepad++ 5.6.8 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Notepad2 4.1.24 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Opera 10.50 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Recuva 1.36.479 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• SetPoint 6.0 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• uTorrent 2.1.18304 ^Alpha [Homepage] [Mirror]
• WinSCP 4.2.7 [Homepage] [Mirror]

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on October 06, 2008 by CyberNet.

With rising gas prices it’s becoming more and more important to determine how much gas it will take to complete an upcoming trip. With that information at hand you might be able to determine whether you should look for other forms of transportation to save some money, like taking the train or a bus.

A website called Cost To Drive is here to help with that. With it you put in your starting point, destination, and vehicle make/model… in return you’ll get details as to how much a one way trip would cost in your particular vehicle. If you won’t be able to complete the trip on one tank of gas it will estimate approximately where each of your stops will be, and approximately how much it will cost to fill up based upon the average gas prices in that area.

This is a really nice site that I will definitely be using in the future. One thing that I do want to point out is that their mileage ratings won’t be accurate for every vehicle, and so you may want to manually enter in the tank size and MPG. To do this select the Can’t find your car link on the homepage. It’d be nice if they let you adjust the mileage in other places, and also change the fuel type for people who don’t use Regular grade.

Visit Cost to Drive [via Download Squad]

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com