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Jan 02

Wiimote: More than Meets the Eye

Posted in: Gadgets, gaming, Today's Chili, videos, wii

This article was written on April 17, 2008 by CyberNet.

The Wii has become rather notorious for the specialized controllers that it uses to draw people into the game being played. It’s very much possible that you’ve been using the controllers for quite some time without actually knowing what they are capable of doing.

Don’t worry, Johnny Lee is here to open your naive eyes. He has a page setup on his site that is merely for the Wii projects that he has undergone, which there are currently three of. For most of the projects you don’t even need a Wii console… just the Wiimote and a computer will do. To top it all off he not only provides the downloads of the applications but also the source code!

So what has he done that is so great? The video below shows off two projects that he has been very successful at. The first is a budget whiteboard that will cost just barely more than the Wiimote itself. And the second project is a head tracking gadget that could bring a new meaning to 3D games. If you’ve got about 6-minutes to spare I’m sure you’ll find this video thoroughly entertaining:

Pretty cool, huh? It’s really amazing that something as simple as a game controller could have so many different uses.

If you didn’t get enough geekiness from that video you should head on over to Johnny Lee’s site where he has some less formal, but more detailed videos of the projects in action. Let us know if you decide to take it to the next level and actually get one of his projects running yourself.

Ted Conference [via Joystiq]
Thanks to “Change” for the tip!

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Jan 01

CyberNotes: Reset a Windows Admin Password (XP or Vista)

Posted in: Software, Today's Chili, Windows, Windows Vista, Windows XP

This article was written on October 02, 2008 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

The other day I had someone who ran into a big problem that many of us hope to never come across. What happened was the user had forgotten the administrator password for their Windows Vista machine, and had no idea how they could log on. I’ve had people ask how to do this kind of thing in the past, but had never actually looked for a viable solution myself.

I was determined to find a workaround this time, and it had to be one that didn’t involve reinstalling Windows. That’s when I came across the free Trinity Rescue Kit, which turned out to be exactly what the doctor ordered. As you might expect this is a Linux-based password reset tool, and it takes no time at all to put it to work. In fact this works so well that it will make you think twice about the security of your own system!

Here’s what you have to do:

Download and burn the Trinity Rescue Kit (TRK) ISO image to a CD or DVD.
Restart your computer, and make sure it boots from the TRK CD/DVD.
When presented with the TRK menu be sure to select the first option that reads Run Trinity Rescue Kit 3.3 (default):
TRK will take a minute or so to finish loading, and when it’s done you should be left with a prompt where you can type your commands. Note that Steps 5 and 6 are not needed to change a password, but can be helpful.
The main command we’ll be working with is winpass, and for getting started you should type winpass -l to see a list of users on the machine. When you type that command it will ask you which drive you want the user list retrieved from, and in most cases you’ll want to type the number 1 followed by the Enter key (this selects the primary partition):
After you’ve selected the partition you’ll be presented with a list of users on the machine along with what accounts have been disabled or locked:
You should once again be at a prompt, and this time we’re actually going to change or reset a password for one of the accounts on the machine. At the prompt type:
winpass -u Administrator
In this example “Administrator” is the username you want to reset the password for. Replace it with the username you’re working with.
You’ll now be asked which partition you’d like to have analyzed/mounted just like in Step 5, and you’ll likely want to select the first one. After that you can look under the Account Bits section which lets you know whether the user’s password ever expires, if the account is disabled, and more. What you’ll want to focus on, however, is the User Edit Menu that lists the type of operations you can perform on the account. The easiest thing for you would probably be to choose the first option, which will just clear the password on the account:
That’s all there is to it. After that you should receive a message stating that a backup of the account has been made, and all you have to do now is restart the computer. If you’ve chosen to clear the password the next time you boot up you want to be sure to leave the password blank.

If you look at the options available in Step 8 you’ll also notice that there are other things you can do to accounts on the machine. This includes changing a password, promoting a non-admin user to an administrator, or enabling a disabled account. Once you get the hang of this tool you’ll pretty much be able to give yourself full access to any Windows machine that you can physically get your hands on. Crazy, huh?

Get Trinity Rescue Kit

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Jan 01

CyberNotes: Create a Custom Software Update Notifier

Posted in: CyberNotes, Software, Tips and Tricks, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on October 11, 2007 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

One of the most common things that I’ve been getting asked is how people can stay up-to-date on the latest software. I got really excited about the free UpdateStar application which I mentioned last week, but it still didn’t have information on a lot of the software that I used.

There are hundreds of sites out there that provide RSS feeds for downloads, and I began to think to myself that there had to be a good way to use some of those feeds to my advantage. Then Yahoo! Pipes came to mind since I had just used that last week to show how to translate RSS feeds, and it works perfectly in this situation.

–Overview–

What we’re going to do with Yahoo! Pipes is combine several feeds from popular download sites into one central feed. I recommend a handful of sites at the end of this article that should offer exactly what you’re looking for.

Then we’re going to use Yahoo! Pipes to sift through every item in each of the feeds, and pull out only the items that interest us. Because of the nature of Yahoo! Pipes it will only take a second to go back and add more things to watch for, so don’t worry if you forget to put an app on the list to be monitored.

–Instructions–

Go to the Yahoo! Pipes homepage, and begin creating a new pipe.
Drag the “Fetch Feed” item over onto the grid (located under the Sources menu):
Add the feeds you want to monitor for the downloads (a recommended list can be found at the end of this article). To add multiple feeds just use the plus sign located next to “URL”.
Drag the “Filter” item over onto the grid (located under the Operators menu):
Adjust the filter so that it will only “Permit” a feed item to make it through if it matches one of the names you are looking for. You can add multiple names to search for by hitting the plus sign next to “Rules”. Just make sure each one has the “item.title” selected.
Now you just have to connect the dots, literally. When you’re done hit the “Refresh” link at the bottom to see a live preview of what the resulting feed will look like. Don’t be surprised if you don’t see any items because there may not have been updates to your programs in a little while.
Go ahead and hit the “Save” button in the upper-right corner of the screen, and give your Pipe a name. Then click the “Back to My Pipes” link towards the top, and you should see your new feed listed there. Click on it, and then subscribe to it with your feed reader!

–Feeds–

There are hundreds of different download sites that you can subscribe to, but that’s not really necessary. Below is a list of five different feeds that should take care of all your needs. All you need to do is copy and paste each of the URL’s that I provide into Step 3 above.

Download.com: http://www.download.com/3409-2001-0-10.xml?tag=lr_rss
Fileforum.com: http://fileforum.betanews.com/rss2
MajorGeeks.com: http://majorgeeks.com/news.xml
FileHippo.com: http://filehippo.com/rss/
CyberNetNews.com: http://feeds.cybernetnews.com/CyberNetDailyDownloads

–Tips–

One feed will probably be enough, and that way you eliminate the possibility of receiving duplicate entries in the feed which you can see happened to me in Step 6 above. I like to know as soon as possible when new programs are released (for obvious reasons), and having multiple feeds lets me do that. I recommend the MajorGeeks feed if you are going to choose just one of them.
Let’s say you have something that you’re tracking called “ER”. You can’t just enter that into the filter because every title that has “er” somewhere in the words will match. To get around this just put spaces before and after the “ER” in the filter so that it is treated as a word.

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Dec 30

How to connect and set up your new HDTV: all the cables, content, and calibration you need

Posted in: blu-ray, cable, hdtv, ota, satellite, Today's Chili

Whether you’re taking the wraps off of your first HDTV or your fifth there’s a few easily avoidable hurdles that can prevent you from enjoying that brand new display at its best. Now, with new internet connected TVs and 3DTVs in the mix, there’s even more to consider, but we’ll walk you through the minefield of figuring out how to hook that new TV up, what to connect it to and even throw in a few suggestions on where to find the stuff you like to watch most.

Continue reading How to connect and set up your new HDTV: all the cables, content, and calibration you need

How to connect and set up your new HDTV: all the cables, content, and calibration you need originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Dec 2010 15:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dec 29

The Best How-To’s of the Year [Bestof2010]

Posted in: diy, hack, Today's Chili, top

Click here to read The Best How-To's of the Year

From ludicrously affordable globe-trotting to finding the perfect spot to park your pr0n, 2010 was a good year to do it yourself. Check out the the best of 2010’s How-To guides. More »

Dec 25

So You Got a Fancy New Camera: Here’s How to Use It [How To]

Posted in: feature, photography, Today's Chili, top

Click here to read So You Got a Fancy New Camera: Here's How to Use It

Congratulations! A loved one loves you back enough that they bought you a brand new fancy camera. Now what? More »

Dec 24

Helpful Tip: Create a Remote Desktop Shortcut

Posted in: Software, Today's Chili, Windows

This article was written on October 31, 2007 by CyberNet.

Remote Desktop Shortcut The Windows Remote Desktop is a built-in tool that lets you take control of a computer over a network connection. It is useful for accessing computers that are not sitting in front of you, and it’s something that I use quite frequently.

I’m typically connecting to several computers every day using Remote Desktop, and it finally dawned on me that there had to be a better way to do it than pulling up the application every time. I came across a site from Microsoft that details special parameters you can use when creating a Remote Desktop shortcut, and it’s incredibly useful.

The first thing you’ll want to do is create a new shortcut, which can be done by right-clicking on the desktop and selecting New -> Shortcut. Then you’ll be entering in something like this:

mstsc.exe /v:192.168.0.101 /w:800 /h:600

Here’s what the various portions of that mean:

mstsc.exe – this is the name of the Remote Desktop application, and is required for the shortcut to work properly.
192.168.0.101 – this is the name or IP address of the computer you want to connect to.
800 – this is the resolution width for the computer that you’re connecting to.
600 – this is the resolution height for the computer that you’re connecting to.

With this information you’re able to create shortcuts for all of the computers you connect to, and when you execute the shortcut it will immediately begin connecting to the computer specified. This can definitely shave precious seconds off of the time it takes to launch Remote Desktop!

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Dec 23

CyberNotes: Add Album Art in iTunes

Posted in: CyberNotes, Freeware, itunes, Music, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on January 29, 2008 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

Album art seems to be the hot new craze these days, and with Apple’s Cover Flow (pictured below) more people want their library of music to be filled with gorgeous artwork. Cover Flow has changed the way that I find songs to listen to, and for that reason I wanted to show how you can use iTunes to retrieve your favorite album art.

Before we jump in we want to point out that there are numerous ways that you can add album art to your music collection, including the free MediaMonkey. This article only focuses on iTunes, but we’ll likely cover other ways in the future.

Below you’ll find instructions on having iTunes automatically fetch the album artwork, how to manually add it yourself, how to add it in bulk, and forcing iTunes to store album art in the music files. The end result will be a beautiful looking library filled with flowing album art…

iTunes Cover Flow

–Automatically Adding Album Art–

Assuming that you have correctly added the tag information (artist, title, album, etc…) iTunes will be able to retrieve artwork for your songs automatically. Of course this relies on the album actually being sold on iTunes, which is currently a problem for artists such as the Beatles.

To force iTunes to grab the artwork for an album just right click on the song(s) and select the Get Album Artwork:

iTunes Get Album Artwork

One big issue I’ve had with this working is when dealing with compilation albums or soundtracks. Any albums that have various artists on them will likely be unable to download no matter what you try to do, unless you’ve actually purchased the songs from iTunes.

The album art that iTunes downloads is stored in a special folder created by the application, and is kept separate from the music itself.

–Manually Adding Album Art–

One thing that I’m impressed with is how easily you can manually add album art in iTunes. The nice thing about manually adding the album art is that iTunes will embed it into the song itself, which is actually a nice feature. That way the artwork will be available in applications other than iTunes.

Here’s what you have to do:

Find the image that you want to use as the album art. I recommend doing a Google image search for the album name, looking on Wikipedia, or pulling up the Amazon page.
Once you’ve found a good quality image just right-click on it and copy the image. No, you don’t have to save it to your hard drive.
Now go find the song you want to add the artwork to, right-click on it, and select Get Info. Switch to the Artwork tab, click in the blank box, and press Ctrl+V to paste the artwork in that you copied.
Hit the OK button on the window, and you’re done. The album art has been embedded in that particular song.

–Bulk Adding Album Art–

If you have a ton of songs from the same album there is an easier way to add the same artwork in bulk. This isn’t entirely necessary to do since iTunes only requires one song in a particular album to have artwork associated with it, but other applications may like to have each individual song tagged with artwork.

In iTunes select all of the songs that pertain to the same album, which can be done using the standard Control and Shift keys while clicking on songs with your mouse. After that you’ll pretty much follow the same instructions for manually adding the artwork above, but the area for you to paste the album art into is in a different spot:

Bulk Album Art

–Embedding iTunes Album Art–

The album art that iTunes automatically retrieves is not embedded in the songs, which means that it will not be available outside of iTunes. Some of you may not mind that, but if you enjoy having the artwork no matter what application you’re using then you’ll want to go through these steps for each of the albums:

Note: This is unnecessary for any album art that you’ve manually added yourself.

Right-click on a song and click Get Info.
Go to the Artwork tab and press Ctrl+C to copy the artwork.
Now press Ctrl+V to paste it back in.
Hit the OK button.

When you copy and paste the album art in steps 2 & 3 you won’t really see anything happen, but you can easily verify that it worked by monitoring the date modified and/or filesize of the song. If you can see an increase in the filesize then the album art has been added.

It might take some time to get your library just the way you like it, but once you’re done the result will look great… especially for those using Cover Flow.

Related Posts:

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Dec 22

CyberNotes: Top 10 Sidebar Sites

Posted in: CyberNotes, Email, Features, Gmail, mobile, Movies, Opera, Today's Chili, twitter, Web Sites

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

Web Browser Wednesday

I’ve been addicted to sidebars ever since I bought my first widescreen monitor. Sidebars have the ability to provide a lot of information inside a very small space, and it wasn’t until recently that I fully started to utilize them. It all started when I put the Tab-Bar on the side in both my Firefox and Opera installations (video on customizing Opera), and then seeing how Start++ handled the implementation of mobile sites capped it off.

So what I’m going to show you today is my top 10 favorite sites to put in your browser’s sidebar. Most of the sites mentioned were created for mobile devices, which means they load at least twice as fast as the normal site. This makes it even more appealing to me.

Both Opera and Firefox support this kind of feature, so I’ll get started by showing you how to do it in each of those browsers.

–Firefox–

Having a site open in the sidebar is pretty easy in Firefox:

Right-click on one of the URL’s that we provide below, and then bookmark it.
After you have saved the bookmark, go back to the Bookmarks Menu and right-click on the bookmark. Choose the Properties option.
Now check the box that says Load this bookmark in the sidebar:
The next time you open that bookmark it will popup in the sidebar!

–Opera–

Opera is actually a little easier when it comes to placing sites in the sidebar, and they have more features as well. One thing that you should know is that Opera refers to the sidebar as “panels,” and here is how you add a bookmark to a panel:

Right-click on a URL to bookmark it. Then click the button labeled Details, and then check the box that says Show in panel:
Now you’ll notice that the bookmark was also added to your list of panels. Note: If the Panel’s bar takes up too much room read our tutorial on making it smaller.

Opera’s additional sidebar features come in handy for displaying sites. When you’re viewing a site in one of the panels, you can adjust the zoom so that the text is bigger or smaller, or you can have the site optimized for small screen display (removes most images, etc…). I recommend that you try out the small screen rendering on all of the sites, and you’ll notice that some of them look better that way:

Opera Sidebar Instructions

–Top 10 Sidebar Sites–

Alright, on to the sites! I’ve gone through dozens of different mobile sites (including ones made for the iPhone) and were able to pick 10 of them that look and work well in the sidebar. So without further ado, here are my favorites in no particular order:

Tip: The site titles are hyperlinked to their mobile sites, and all you have to do is follow the instructions given above for bookmarking them in your browser.

Weather Underground
What you’ll want to do with this site is visit the URL in your browser first, enter in your Zipcode, and then bookmark that address. Then you won’t have to worry about putting in that information each time. If you’re using Opera I recommend enabling the small screen rendering that I mentioned above.
goMovies
Just like the previous one, you’ll want to visit the URL, enter in your Zipcode, and then bookmark that address. Then each time you pull up your movie listings, it will automatically retrieve them for the theaters in your area. Opera users should probably set the zoom a little lower (I use about 80%).
Gmail
The mobile Gmail site not only looks good, but gives you fast access to all of your emails. Using it you can read and compose emails, which makes it an amazing time saver! I’ve been using this for most of my mail needs since it is so much faster than the actual Gmail interface.
Google Calendar
This gives you a quick overview of your upcoming events, but the best part is that you add items to your calendar from here.
Remember the Milk
My favorite task manager now has the ability to sit inside of my sidebar. You can add new tasks and see what’s due. I’ve found myself using the service a lot more now that it is so condensed and easily accessible.
Google Notebook
You can manage your entire Google Notebook from your sidebar.
Digg
If you’re a Digg addict then I think this is a must. The mobile version of the Digg site gives you a fast-loading alternative to view the news. It’s nice when it only takes a second to load instead of 30-seconds like the normal site does sometimes!
Google Talk
Chat it up with all your friends with this handy little Flash app.
Facebook
I know that a lot of you are addicted to Facebook, and so I thought this would fit right in. It displays recent events from your news feed, upcoming events, and lets you change your status.
Twitter
This is a really handy site for anyone that uses Twitter. You can update your status, and view recent entries from your friends. The small screen rendering in Opera is also really nice for this one.