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Sep 29

Moom Provides Quick Window Resizing on Mac

This article was written on August 12, 2011 by CyberNet.

Mac window resize

I love the way Microsoft integrated the quick window resizing in Windows 7, and so I started looking around for something similar on the Mac since I frequently work with two windows side-by-side. Not only did I find an app, Moom, for my Mac that would let me resize my windows, but it also blew away any expectations I had for such a utility.

It’s hard to do Moom justice without you actually trying it out (there is a free trial on their site), but I’ll do my best. Moom gets activated by hovering over the green zoom button located on each window. By default you’ll see pre-defined options to move/resize a window to the left half, right half, top half, bottom half, or full screen. If you click and drag on one of those icons you’ll notice that the icon changes to quarter segments. For example, in the screenshot above I clicked and dragged down on the “left half” icon which turned it into the bottom left quarter icon. If I would have clicked and dragged up it would have turned into a top left quarter icon.

The slickness doesn’t stop there though. You can add the optional grid to the popout menu, which I highly recommend. The number of boxes are customizable, but I found their default 6×4 grid to be just right on my 27″ iMac. To use this you just click and drag on the area/size you want for the window, and Moom will make sure the window gets put into that position. You’ll also notice in the screenshot that some of the boxes are shaded different colors. These are used to represent where the window is already located: the solid white box means that the window already occupies that portion of the screen, and the other shades of gray mean that the window only occupies a fraction of that space. Very slick!

Keyboard junkies aren’t left out in the dark either. There are plenty of customizable keyboard shortcuts, such as for moving a window to another monitor, available for you to play with. An unexpected use I found with Moom is that using these keyboard shortcuts you can gather up some of those off-screen windows that appear on a monitor that isn’t connected to your machine anymore.

Before I tried Moom I was thinking “$5 for an app that just resizes window?”, but it didn’t take long for me to change my tune to “this is just $5?”.

Moom Homepage (Mac only, $5 in the Mac App Store – trial available at the homepage)

Sep 27

How to Speed Up Downloads With Your Current Internet Connection

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on December 15, 2009 by CyberNet.

Our internet connections have become faster over the years, but with that our need for speed increased too. And sadly, having a fast internet connection does not mean the server you’re downloading from gives you the speed you pay for. That’s where download managers come in. One of their more interesting features involves speeding up your downloads. So how exactly do they do it?

Getting the software
Before showing you the tricks, let’s have a look at some good download managers. If you’re a Windows user, I’d recommend Free Download Manager (freeware) or GetRight (shareware that never expires). Another big name in the download manager business is Download Accelerator Plus, but I advise you to stay away from that one because it is ad-supported and tends to slow down your system.

Trick 1: chop the download in pieces
How long does it take to transport 20 people from point A to point B with one taxi? A lot longer than when you have multiple cabs at your disposal. It’s just like that with the internet: in most cases one connection is doing all the work, even though your pipe can handle more than one. When you let a download manager chop your download in segments, simultaneous connections with the server are established that enable you to download different parts of your file at the same time. Often referred to as segmented downloading, this technique can greatly increase your download speed.

I put this to the test by downloading Internet Explorer 8 (16.1MB) using Firefox and Free Download Manager. It took my browser around 47 seconds at an estimated average of 343 KB/s to download the entire file. FDM did it in a whopping 21 seconds, which accounts roughly for an average speed of 767 KB/s. These calculations are not fully accurate, but the difference is clear. Keep in mind however that your mileage may vary depending on your connection and the server you’re downloading from.

Trick 2: using download mirrors
A second trick to speed up your downloads is using mirrors. The idea behind this is that you download a file from multiple sources at once, combining the speed from these servers to get faster downloads. Both FDM and GetRight have a feature for automatic mirror search, but from my experience they don’t find any as soon as you download something that’s not on the list of the top 15 best-known programs.

You can however choose to enter mirrors manually. Whenever your download is bigger than 500MB and the site you’re downloading from offers alternate download links, it doesn’t hurt to enter them. A good example of when you’d want to use this is when you’re downloading Ubuntu‘s install CD.

Sep 23

Make Your Own Awesome Inception-Style Room for $350

Posted in: Today's Chili

With its $160 million budget, Inception‘s special effects—the floating hallway scene in particular—are pretty damn impressive. But take away the funds, the crew, the computers, and what do you have left? Videographer Justin Fredrick Clark’s very own (and equally incredible) gravity defying room—which he built entirely from scratch.

Best Firefox 4 Theme

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on September 17, 2009 by CyberNet.

firefox 4 theme-1.png

There have been a few themes that have been developed using the mockups Mozilla made for Firefox 4.0. What’s funny is that while Firefox 4.0 is over a year away you can already get the same beautiful design without having to wait.

As you can see in the screenshot above the theme is extremely close to this particular mockup from Mozilla. Unfortunately, however, there are a few things that you have to install other than just a theme in order to get the full affect. The good news is that the theme developer outlines all of the different things you’ll want depending on exactly how far you want to go:

Strata40 – This is pretty essential… because it’s the theme itself.
StrataGlass – Needed for Aero glass effects on Windows 7/Vista.
Personal Menu – Needed for tools and bookmarks toolbar buttons. I noticed that if you hide the Menu bar that you’ll want to disable the ability to press the Alt key to quickly display the toolbar. If you don’t there is a small group of text that isn’t properly hidden by the theme.
Omnibar – Not essential but great for using the address bar for searching instead of the search box. You’ll probably want this because the theme seems to have a little bit of troubles if you have the search box displayed. Our CyberSearch add-on may also be handy in this respect.
Fission – Needed for “progress line” feature. Shows the page’s loading progress as a small line below the address bar.
The mockups also include a tabs on top version. If you would like a tabs on top version install an addon called Stylish, and then install this style.

It may sound like a lot of work, but I was actually able to get it all setup in less than 5-minutes. And there’s no need to say that I’ve had several people ask what browser I’m using when they’ve seen me running this.

Strata40 Firefox Theme [via ghacks]

Sep 20

Automatically Save Files to Specific Folders in Firefox

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on April 21, 2009 by CyberNet.

automatic save folder.jpg I’ve seen extensions before that let you designate specific directories on your computer for files to be saved based upon the extension of file. The thing that I normally hate about this is that it’s tough to say where I want all the ZIP files I download to be stored. There’s a new extension that has gotten the hint though.

Automatic Save Folder will not only let you filter according to filename, but also by domain. That way you can say that every file from, for example, Gmail gets placed in an attachment directory. Or you can go a little further and say that this only applies to ZIP files from Gmail.

Setting it all up might be a little time consuming if you do a thorough job, but the end result can be a very organized folder structure for your downloads. I’m kinda an organization freak so this is right up my alley. 🙂

Get Automatic Save Folder for Firefox [via Lifehacker]

Sep 17

CyberNotes: Fill Out Rebate Forms Digitally

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on June 05, 2008 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

One of the things that bug me the most when buying something are the accompanying rebates, but sometimes that is the only way to get a good deal. When it comes to online purchases I like to print off the rebates as soon as I make the purchase, but then the laziness kicks in for a few weeks simply because I don’t feel like filling out the form.

Luckily some of the free PDF readers out there offer annotation capabilities, and so you can actually fill out a rebate form on your computer before it’s even printed. Not only will it save you the hassle of having to handwrite the form, but I’m sure it will save the person on the receiving end some trouble trying to read your handwriting. 😉

Here’s what an example form looks like that I filled out:

rebate form-1.png

So how can you do this? We’ve got instructions below that make use of our two favorite (and free) PDF readers. The best part is that both of the apps also have portable versions, which means that you can fill out rebate forms digitally without ever installing a program!

Both of the PDF readers make use of a typewriter tool, which gives you a lot of freedom to type anything anywhere. To use the typewriter tool you just have to click on the document where you want to start typing, and then have at it. If there are any boxes or broken fields that you need to fill in just insert spaces to even it all out, like I did in the example form above for the UPC.

–Foxit Reader (Homepage)–

In Foxit Reader you’ll find what you need at Tools -> Typewriter Tools -> Typewriter. When you click on this for the first time you’ll see a warning saying that an evaluation mark will be placed on the document if it’s saved. Don’t worry, we don’t plan on saving the rebate form. Right after you get done filling out the form just go ahead and print it… there won’t be an evaluation marks as long as you never save it.

foxit typewriter.png

–PDF-XChange Viewer (Homepage)–

In PDF-XChange Viewer just navigate to Tools -> Comment And Markup Tools -> Typewriter Tool to get started. Unlike Foxit you can save the document without any evaluation marks being placed on it, but I’m guessing that once you print the rebate form you won’t need it on your computer anymore. If for some reason you like to save all of your rebate forms then this is probably the better solution for you.

pdf xchange typewriter.png

–Overview–

I’m not 100% convinced that typing out a rebate form is faster than writing it by hand, but it’s definitely a lot easier to read than one that’s handwritten. So maybe it’s better if only to help minimize any mistakes that may prevent you from getting your well-deserved money!

Sep 12

Firefox 3: Have I Visited this Site Before?

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on April 13, 2008 by CyberNet.

There’s a new feature in Firefox 3 Beta 5 that I just came across yesterday when using the browser, and I’m not sure how long it has been there. What I did was I clicked on the icon for our site which brought up what would normally be security-related information for the page your viewing. Then I clicked the More Information button:

I was then presented with more details on the security of the site, which includes being able to view cookies or passwords for that particular domain. What I found to be really interesting, however, is that it says whether you’ve visited that particular site before… and how many times you have done so:

firefox visited this site

If you frequently clear out the browser’s history then it obviously won’t be able to keep track of this, but it’s been a month or so since I’ve done that. Needless to say I’ve visited our site quite a bit in that period of time. 😉

Sep 08

Apply Effects to Your Photos With BeFunky

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on December 08, 2011 by CyberNet.

Befunky

For the every-day photos that you snap just for fun, there’s no reason to spend hefty sums of money and quality time learning Photoshop. Instead, head over to BeFunky.com where you can quickly, and easily, edit your photos for free. Not only can you edit your photos, you can also add effects and design elements with very little effort.

No need to sign-up for an account, with BeFunky, you can get started right away. You can pull in your pictures from all sorts of various sites like Facebook and Picasa, or you can tinker around with a few sample photos which is what I did to get the gist of what BeFunky is all about.

Using a simple interface, BeFunky makes it possible for anyone to navigate and use their services. Want your photos black and white? No problem. Want to add a frame? Simple. With just a few clicks, users are able to use their imaginations to transform photos into something much more than they originally were. Creative options include photo effects, artsy effects, a framer, goodies (like “stickers”), and a text editor.

A word of caution: not ALL features are available for free. There are some “premium” effects that are available for a nominal fee. They offer enough free of charge options that for most people, an upgrade won’t be necessary. With tons of interesting ways to express yourself, BeFunky is a cool way to add a little something special to your photos.

BeFunky Homepage

Sep 08

Look Up an IP’s Geolocation

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on December 07, 2011 by CyberNet.

Ip geo lookup

Looking up the geolocation of an IP address is something that’s simple to do because there are so many sites out there providing the service for free. One downside is that many services cap you at how many requests you can make each day to try and avoid having people abuse their systems. You may think that you’ll never make more than a handful of requests in a day, but I’ve run into situations where that limitation was a problem. One example is when trying to figure out if a set of IPs performing a DOS attack on a site is in the same geographic area. In that situation you may be checking dozens of IPs all within a few minutes.

In those kinds of situations you can use a service like utrace or ip:2:loc. Both of the services have a similar interface where you can enter in an IP address and the resulting region will be displayed on a Google map. Nothing extravagant, but they’re extremely straightforward and I have yet to see any sort of limit on them.

If you’ve got your own services you use for looking up the geolocation of an IP address please share them in the comments below.

utrace Homepage
ip:2:loc Homepage

Sep 04

How to Make a Watermelon Smoothie Using Just a Drill and a Coat Hanger

Posted in: Today's Chili

Now that it’s September, you probably want to soak up as much of the summer as possible. And nothing says summer like watermelon. YouTube’s favorite hacker Mark Rober just posted a video showing you how to make a watermelon smoothie in under two minutes. Get it while you can.

Hasta La Gadget!

Moom Provides Quick Window Resizing on Mac

How to Speed Up Downloads With Your Current Internet Connection

Make Your Own Awesome Inception-Style Room for $350

Best Firefox 4 Theme

Automatically Save Files to Specific Folders in Firefox