Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on October 17, 2012 by CyberNet.

When it comes to uploading images to a website you always want to try and make sure the file sizes are as low as possible without compromising on quality. Sometimes that is easier said than done, but with the free ImageOptim for the Mac it’s a breeze. 

ImageOptim can handle a variety of different image formats including PNG, JPG, and GIF. In general the file size savings depends on the image and how much it is able to compress it, and if you jump into the preferences for ImageOptim you can configure the settings available for the images. By default it will set the quality of JPG images to 90%, and so you might start to see some minor artifacts in the images caused by the app if you don’t tweak the settings at all. You can configure it to retain the full quality of the images though, and only have it try to reduce the JPG sizes by removing things like EXIF data and comments found in them.

When it comes to PNG images, however, they can often be significantly optimized without any loss of quality. How does it do that? One example the website mentions is that it will convert images from being a 24-bit PNG to 8-bit PNG with full alpha channel, but it will only do so when it won’t affect the quality of the image. It also runs the PNG images through several other image optimization tools to get the size down as much as possible.

ImageOptim Homepage (Mac only; Freeware)

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on July 22, 2008 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

Flickr is a photo sharing service that has around for over four years, and in that time it has grown at an astounding pace. Thousands of images are uploaded to Flickr every minute, and it was just last year that they had over two billion photos uploaded to their site. The good news is that with the increase in popularity also comes an increase in the number of free tools available.

Personally I’ve been a Flickr Pro subscriber for a little over a year now, and the amount of features you get for the $2 per month is well worth the money. I currently have over 6,000 images uploaded on my account that I share with friends and family, and I’m always looking for tools that make the job even easier. So what I’ve got for you today are my favorite free applications that help me upload photos to my Flickr account.

–iPhoto Plugin (Homepage)–

Flickr makes an application for Mac OS X that is easy to use, but the problem is that it doesn’t integrate into Apple’s flagship photo management application called iPhoto. This is a big deal because many Mac users will probably be using iPhoto, and using the standard Flickr uploader means that you’ll need to add tags, descriptions, and titles to all of your photos twice: once in iPhoto and again on Flickr. Yuck!

No problem. The Free Flickr eXporter iPhoto plugin works inside of iPhoto, and preserves all of your descriptions, tags/keywords, and titles while uploading your images. You can also adjust privacy settings, resize images before uploading them, and choose which set(s) you’d like the images placed in.

–Windows Live Photo Gallery (Homepage)–

Windows Live Photo Gallery is one of the best ways to not only manage your photos, but also to upload images to the Yahoo-owned Flickr. What’s interesting is that Microsoft ships Windows Live Photo Gallery with Flickr support, and that means there’s even less you have to do to get it running.

To upload images to Flickr all you have to do is go to Publish -> More Services -> Publish on Flickr to have the wizard walk you through the steps needed. After authorizing the application you’ll be able to choose which set your photos should be uploaded to, select a maximum image size, and also change the permissions. The application will automatically grab any tags and descriptions you’ve added to the photos and include those with what gets uploaded.

One of the things that is rather unique with Windows Live Photo Gallery’s implementation is that you can queue multiple uploads. After you get one set of photos uploading just switch back to Photo Gallery to start uploading more. The program prevents multiple uploads from going on simultaneously, and will add any other batches to a queue. Most Flickr uploading apps will just block you from trying to upload more than one batch at a time, which can be a pain if you just want to walk away from your computer while the uploading is going on.

Here is a step-by-step walkthrough of the Flickr support in Windows LIve Photo Gallery.

–Picasa Plugin (Homepage)–

Google’s Picasa application is an excellent way to manage your photos, and all hope isn’t lost if you don’t want to use it with Google’s online photo services. There’s a handy plugin called Picasa2Flickr that adds a “Send To Flickr” button to the Picasa toolbar near the bottom of the window. When you click on the button it will add the selected photos to Flickr Uploadr 3.0 where you can then finish the upload process.

It’s a bummer that in order for this to work you need to have both Picasa and the Flickr Uploadr installed, but it is more convenient this way. The button keeps you from having to find your photos on your computer, and then drag them into the Flickr Uploadr.

–Send To Flickr (Homepage)–

I’m thinking this has to be one of the fastest and easiest ways to get your photos on Flickr. After you get it installed you’ll be able to select any photos from Windows Explorer, right-click on them, and in the “Send To” menu you’ll see a Flickr option (pictured to the right). The images will immediately start uploading themselves to your account, and you’ll see a preview window that includes the status of your upload.

There aren’t any of the advanced options that you might be used to, but if you’re not concerned with how your photos are organized this is probably one of the best Flickr solutions.

–Overview–

I’ve only begun to scratch the surface with the tools that you can use to upload photos to Flickr, but I only wanted to cover the ones that I’ve used. Let us know in the comments how you get your photos on Flickr!

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on March 25, 2010 by CyberNet.

I take all kinds of videos from cameras that save the movies to a single file that is difficult to share with people who aren’t overly comfortable using a computer. When that happens I try to burn the videos to a DVD that they can watch it using any standalone DVD player, but this can be quite a pain depending on the original format of the video.

The free DVDStyler takes the hassle out of the DVD burning thanks to the wide variety of formats and simple-to-use interface. You can throw multiple videos onto a single DVD (each one can actually be a different format), integrate a menu, and you’ll be ready to roll. Here’s a rundown on some of the available features:

• Creation and burning DVD video with interactive menus
• Support of AVI, MOV, MP4, MPEG, OGG, WMV and other file formats support of MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, Xvid, MP2, MP3, AC-3 and other audio and video formats
• Support of multi-core processor
• Allows using MPEG and VOB files without reencoding, see FAQ
• Allows put files with different audio/video format on one DVD (support of titleset)
• User-friendly interface with support of drag & drop
• Flexible menu creation on the basis of scalable vector graphic
• Import of image file for background
• Placing of buttons, text, images and other graphic objects anywhere on the menu screen
• Changing the font/color and other parameters of buttons and graphic object
• Scaling of buttons and graphic objects
• Coping of any menu object or whole menu
• DVD scripting

IMPORTANT: Don’t blindly install this app. It will try to install a third-party tool during the setup process unless you explicitly say you don’t want it. You’ll be fine as long as you don’t click “Next” during the install routine without actually looking at what you’re agreeing to.

DVDStyler Homepage (Windows/Linux; Freeware)

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on December 24, 2010 by CyberNet.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m trying to use Google Voice more, and one thing that I’m shocked Google hasn’t done is tightly integrate SMS messages with the Google Talk instant messenger. That way if you’re online and someone sends you an SMS it will also flow through to your chat client so that it’s easier to respond.

Last week I decided to start searching around to see if anyone had found a way to do this… a way for me to receive my SMS messages as an IM to my Google Talk account, and then be able to turn around and respond to them as if it was a typical IM conversation. Turns out there is a web-based service called GVMax that works remarkably well in this regard.

As you can see in the screenshot above there are several different notification methods you can use including Google Talk, Prowl, email, Twitter, Howl, and more. For my purposes I’m only using it for Google Talk, and once I got it configured I was amazed with the results. You’ll notice that within seconds of receiving an SMS message you will receive the IM, and responding to it goes back through your Google Voice account as an SMS to the recipient. That’s right, this fully supports two-way (send and receive) conversations instead of just serving as a notifier. The person you’re chatting with will have no idea that you’re using Google Talk rather than your phone, and the history of your messages are still kept in Google Voice just as if you had sent them using a typical method.

There are some things to note though. For one all the messages you receive will appear as a new contact. If the number is in your Google Contacts they will show up as the name of the person followed by the label designated for a particular number. That might sound confusing, but it’s actually simple. The names of your contacts will look like “John Doe [mobile]” or “John Doe [home]” depending on the label you set to the phone number they sent the messages with.

After you set up the service it’s important to be aware that GVMax automatically creates a filter in your Gmail account so that the messages are forwarded on to a special GVMax email address that is specific to you. Make sure you don’t delete this filter, otherwise the service will stop working.

GVMax Homepage

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on April 10, 2008 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

Grouping similar Taskbar buttons in Windows is either a feature you love or hate. It’s nice because when your Taskbar starts to get full it will start grouping applications together to conserve space. For example, if you have 10 Firefox windows open at a time they will only show up as a single button on the Taskbar if you have grouping enabled.

This may not only help reduce clutter in your Taskbar, but for some people it could help maintain their sanity. The only thing is that the grouping of similar buttons will only occur once crowding sets in on the Taskbar. Don’t worry, it’s actually possible to let the feature kick in regardless of how full your Taskbar is. Just look at this screenshot I took after applying the tweak I’m about to show you:

It grouped the two Windows Explorer windows into a single button despite there being nothing else on the Taskbar. Feel free to proceed if you’re running Windows XP or Vista…

–Customizing Taskbar Grouping–

1. To simplify the process we’ve created this registry file that you can download (advanced users can find the registry information toward the end of the article). After you download that go ahead and extract the file. If you double-click on it right away it will set the Taskbar to start grouping when two or more of the same applications are open.

   If you want to change it to, for example, group only when there are three or more of the same applications open you’ll need to edit the file. To do this right-click on the TaskbarGroupSize.reg file you downloaded, and choose the Edit option. You would replace the “2″ with a “3″ in this case resulting in the line looking like this:

   "TaskbarGroupSize"=dword:00000003

   Similarly setting the value to “0″ will force the Taskbar grouping to return to the default method.

2. Now you need to enable the setting. If you feel like killing some time you could restart your computer or logoff, but it’s probably easier to just re-enable the option in the Taskbar properties. To do this right-click on the Taskbar and choose the Properties option. Uncheck the Group similar taskbar buttons option if it is already checked, and then click Apply. Now check the Group similar taskbar buttons box, and click OK:
   
3. The feature should now be enabled. If you didn’t modify the Registry setting in Step 1 you should see that any two similar windows will be grouped together regardless of how much space is being occupied in the Taskbar:
   
4. You can go back and modify the Registry setting in Step 1 at anytime. Running it again will merely overwrite the current value, and setting it to “0″ will return the grouping back the Windows default method.

–Advanced Users–

If you’re an advanced user and know your way around the Windows Registry you can create the necessary value yourself. You’ll need to navigate to this location:

HKEY_CURRRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Advanced

Then you’ll need to create a new DWORD (32-bit) value called TaskbarGroupSize there. A value of “0″ will disable the feature, while a larger numerical setting (2 or higher) will initiate the grouping when that number of similar windows is open.

–Overview–

So now I’m curious… how many of you use Taskbar grouping in the first place? I generally don’t use it, but I know a lot of people who do. Drop us a comment below with your thoughts.

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com