Dec 18

CyberNotes: Recipe Managers

Posted in: CyberNotes, Features, Freeware, Mac, Software, Today's Chili, Windows

This article was written on June 24, 2008 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Time Saving Tuesday

Sure you might be a geek, but there’s a good chance that you don’t conform to the geek-code of ordering a pizza for dinner every night. If that’s the case then it might be time to trade-in your recipe box for a digital alternative. To help you make the switch we scoured around looking for a few recipe management applications for both Windows and Macs. We managed to find two free solutions that can both simplify your recipe management.

You might be wondering what kind of benefits there are for having an application store your recipes. The most notable feature in each of the applications is probably the fast search capabilities. With them you can actually pull up recipes that deal with, for example, chicken, within seconds. No more flipping through a recipe box looking for a specific index card… these apps will do the digging for you!

–Recipe Center (Homepage)–

arrow Windows Windows only arrow
This is one of the most powerful recipe managers out there, and the best part is that it will get your recipe collection rolling by giving you 200 different recipes to start off with. One of the really nice features is being able to copy and paste ingredients from a recipe on a website into the application. With some quick reformatting you can have it automatically parse the text, and insert the ingredients accordingly into the application.

Here’s a list of Recipe Center’s best features:

  • Advanced Recipe Encoder: You can copy and paste ingredients into the special recipe encoder so that it doesn’t take so long to enter in your favorite recipes

    (Click to Enlarge)
    recipe center encoder.png

  • Create New Recipes: Quickly add new recipes thanks to the IntelliSense that suggests ingredients as you type
  • Recipe Download: Recipe Center can import thousands of recipes from various compatible recipe websites
  • Recipe Resizing: Type in how many people you need to serve, and it will adjust the amount needed of each ingredient accordingly
  • Advanced Search Filters: Search by recipe name, ingredients, or keywords
  • Recipe Card Printing: Print out recipes, with the option to attach pictures
  • Recipe Exchange: Send recipes to your friends by email (PDF format, Text format and Recipe Center format)
  • Shopping List: Print your shopping lists based on ingredients of selected recipes
  • Unit Conversion Tool: Convert between an extensive list of units for cooking
  • Spell Checker: Spell check your recipe ingredients, procedures, and shopping list

recipe center.png
(Click to Enlarge)

Note: This app does display an advertisement in the bottom-right corner.

–Yum (Homepage)–

arrow Mac Mac only arrow
Yum isn’t quite as extensive as Recipe Center for Windows, but I’ve found that entering in recipes is a faster process with Yum. The reason for that is it includes a “paste ingredients” option that doesn’t even compare to how Recipe Center makes you enter in ingredients. All you have to do is copy the ingredients to your clipboard, and click the Paste Ingredients button. Yum will automatically parse what you have on the clipboard, and pull out all of the ingredients along with their corresponding measurements. In the few tests I ran this worked flawlessly.

Some of the other features are:

  • Instantly search through all of your recipes
  • Create as many categories as you would like, and you can even place recipes in multiple categories
  • Print a single recipe, all recipes, selected recipes, recipes in a certain category, or recipes from your search results
  • Customize the appearance of recipe directions including fonts, styles, paragraph settings, graphics (copy and paste, or drag and drop) — a few different themes are included by default
  • Ingredients are recommended as you type

yum recipe.png
(Click to Enlarge)

Note: This program will display a popup window every 10 times you run it, but you can get a registration code to eliminate the “nag” screen by donating to the developer. There’s no mention as to a recommended donation amount, so that is up to you.

–Overview–

I can definitely see how any recipe manager would be tedious if you’re trying to convert your handwritten collection into a digital format. What I recommend doing is performing some quick searches online to see if someone has digital copies of your recipes, because it will be much faster in both applications if you can just copy and paste.

How do you store your recipes? Whether it be an application like one of these, or a simple text file, we want to hear what you use to manage your recipes.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Dec 16

CyberNotes: Fast Dictionary Definitions in Windows and Macs

Posted in: CyberNotes, Freeware, Mac, Software, Today's Chili, Windows

This article was written on May 27, 2008 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Time Saving Tuesday

It’s crazy to think about how unpopular encyclopedias have become thanks to the various references found online, and the same thing is happening to dictionaries. These days word processors (and other apps) are integrating dictionaries so that they are even more useful to the end user. The next logical step for dictionaries is a system-wide integration, which gives the user access to definitions from within any application.

What we’ve got in store for you today is how you can maximize the convenience factor of system-wide dictionaries for both Mac OS X and Windows. You can literally retrieve definitions and synonyms within seconds if you know the right keys to press. ;)

–Mac Dictionary–

arrow Mac Mac only arrow
If you’re a Mac user you probably know about the built-in dictionary/thesaurus that you can pull up at a moments notice. What you may not know, however, is that in Cocoa applications such as Safari, iChat, and Mail you can also get in-place definitions. Just hover your mouse over a word and press Command+Control+D to bring up the definition:

mac dictionary.png

The menu in the bottom-left corner will let you switch between viewing a dictionary definition and synonyms from the thesaurus. Unfortunately this doesn’t work in non-Cocoa applications such as Firefox.

–WordWeb for Windows–

arrow Windows Windows only arrow
Last week one of our commenters, “skh.pcola,” pointed out a fabulous application called WordWeb. It operates much like the built-in dictionary on the Mac, except that it is compatible with nearly all Windows applications. The simplicity of WordWeb is really what makes this an indispensable app for any Windows user. Just Control+Click as you hover over a word and you’ll instantly see a definition appear:

wordweb definition.png

If you don’t know how to pronounce a word just click the speaker button towards the upper-right corner. This only uses the built-in Windows text-to-speech engine to speak the word, but it will give you some idea as to how it’s actually pronounced.

wordweb antonyms.pngWordWeb comes with 150,000 words and 120,000 synonym sets making it ideal even when you’re not connected to the Internet. It offers definitions, synonyms, antonyms, and more all in one place.

One thing that I want to point out is that there will sometimes be plus/minus signs when viewing different tabs, such as the antonyms pictured to the right. Clicking the plus sign will add more results by making the search criteria less restrictive, and the minus sign will do just the opposite.

There is support for viewing Wikipedia articles from within the application, but it’s nothing to really jump up and down over. It doesn’t modify the layout of the page at all, and is really no different than viewing the actual article in your browser:

wordweb wikipedia.jpg

Interestingly the free version of WordWeb has a license unlike any other that I’ve seen. They are actually trying to help the environment with the restrictions they’ve imposed:

WordWeb free version may be used indefinitely only by people who take at most two commercial flights (not more than one return flight) in any 12 month period. People who fly more than this need to purchase the Pro version if they wish to continue use it after a 30-day trial period.

–Overview–

Now if those aren’t two fast ways to get dictionary definitions then I don’t know what is. Drop a comment below with the tools you use to lookup words, whether it be a site like Dictionary.com or an application.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Dec 15

Make Better Use of Your Mouse’s Scroll Wheel

Posted in: Features, Freeware, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili, Windows

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

volumouse.png

arrow Windows Windows only arrow
You know that scroll wheel on your mouse? It’s pretty handy to have when you’re navigating around documents quickly and whatnot. But did you know that there is a lot more that you can use it for other than just scrolling?

An awesome freeware utility called Volumouse will breathe new life into your scroll wheel. As seen in the screenshot above you can configure different uses of the scroll wheel based upon certain criteria. For example, when Windows Media Center or iTunes is focused you can have the scroll wheel adjust the volume levels rather than actually scroll. Alternatively you can have Volumouse adjust the screen brightness or window transparency instead of just the volume.

To make things a little nicer Volumouse will also show a visual indicator whenever you are adjusting one of the various components using your scroll wheel. Features like this can all be configured on a per-rule basis by clicking on the “More” button located at the end of each row.

When it comes down to it this is a pretty incredible app, and I’m left wondering whether there is any other values this could be useful for adjusting? They do have a handful of plugins available on the Volumouse homepage, one of which will let you resize windows using the mouse wheel. Are there any other things you can think of that you would like to change using the scroll wheel?

Volumouse Homepage
Note: Volumouse has a version available that doesn’t require installation, but it’s not portable since it uses the Windows Registry to store settings.

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Dec 15

CyberNotes: A Minimalist Firefox

Posted in: CyberNotes, Firefox Extensions, Screenshots, Software, Tips and Tricks, Today's Chili

This article was written on May 21, 2008 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Web Browser Wednesday

Are you one of those people who like to conserve every square inch of screen space when it’s possible? If so we have a treat for you today! We’re going to demonstrate how you can become the ultimate Firefox minimalist with the help of some extensions and themes. If you implement everything that we have listed below you’ll wonder where half of your browser has gone. You might also go cross-eyed… don’t say we didn’t warn you. ;)

–Themes–

compact firefox.pngThe first major step that a minimalist Firefox user takes is often in changing their theme. By choosing a more compact theme you can eliminate nearly any and all spacing found throughout Firefox, and the end result can save a lot of area in your browser.

The screenshot to the right shows the Classic Compact Firefox theme laid overtop of the classic theme. The double-ended arrows indicate how much space you save by simply applying this theme. There are a few other themes (like miniFox) that are similar, but Classic Compact is really the one that has won the hearts of minimalists around the globe.

–Toolbars & Menus–

There is a lot of “fat” that lies within the toolbars and menus in Firefox. The themes aim to take some pounds off the toolbars, but there are some extensions that can take the minimalist design to a whole new level:

  • Searchbar Autosizer [Homepage]
    Keep the browser’s search box small when it’s not being used. This will let you have a really small search box that expands as you type. That means your Address Bar gets even more room!
  • Faviconize Tab [Homepage]
    You’ll be able to double-click on a tab and have it collapsed down to only it’s icon. Now you won’t feel like such a pig when you have 40 different tabs open.
    faviconize tab.png
  • Personal Menu [Homepage]
    How often do you really use those menus (File, Edit, etc…) anyway? If it’s not very often you can stuff them into a single icon by using this extension. All of the menus will still be accessible, but they will just take an extra click to get to them.
  • Smart Bookmarks Bar [Homepage]
    If you’re not ready to give up your Bookmarks Bar then maybe this extension will help keep things a little more tidy. By default it will only show the icons for the sites located on the Bookmarks Bar, and then when you hover over them it will expand to show the name as well.
    smart bookmarks bar.png

–Status Bar–

I wouldn’t say that the Status Bar is the hugest space consumer, but hey, we’re trying to scrounge up every pixel that’s possible. Right? So we’ve got a few specialized styles and one extension that can clean up your Status Bar a little bit.

  • Mouseover for Clutter [Homepage] Requires Stylish
    This will hide the excessive number of icons that you probably have in the Firefox Status Bar, but they will reappear each time you hover over the bar. That way you’re not really losing any functionality, unless of course one of those icons also serves as some sort of notifier (such as a new mail notifier).
  • Autohide Status Bar [Homepage] Requires Stylish
    Get the Status Bar completely out of the way with this style. Once installed it will create an area that is just one pixel in height, and when you hover over that it will show the Status Bar.
  • autoHideStatusbar [Homepage]
    This is an extension that’s similar to how the previous style operates, except that it goes one step further. With this extension you can set it so that when you hover over hyperlinks it will show the Status Bar, which means you can still see where the links point to. The Status Bar can also be shown when the page is loading so that you can monitor the progress.
    Note: This extension is currently experimental, and you’ll need to login to your Mozilla account before downloading it.

–Overview–

I think you have a pretty good set of tools to work with so that you can be well on your way to becoming a Firefox minimalist. I’m sure many of you have trimmed down your Firefox in one way or another, and I would love to hear how you’ve managed to conserve space in Firefox! Shoot us a comment below with your thoughts.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Dec 14

Change Your Google Talk Status to Away

Posted in: Features, Freeware, Google, Newly Released, Screenshots, Software, Tips and Tricks, Today's Chili

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

I absolutely love Google Talk because of its simplicity, and the fact that I’ve got all of my friends using it is a huge plus. There is only one thing that I really dislike with the instant messenger, and it’s that I can’t change my status to away.

A free program called gAlwaysIdle is looking to solve that problem. It provides an option in the Google Talk right-click menu that will let you always have your status set to away, whether or not your are using your computer:

Google Talk Idle

It has three different modes that you can choose from:

  • Normal Idle – Uses the default Google Talk settings
  • Always Idle – You’re always set to idle
  • Never Idle – Makes sure you are never set to away even when you’re not at your computer

As you can see from the screenshot above I was using this on Vista, but anytime I tried to change the status I got a fatal error. The only way to get around this is to run Google Talk as an administrator, or to disable the User Account Control (UAC) all together. My guess is that this program adjusts registry settings on-the-fly, and without the proper permissions in will crash and burn. As soon as I ran Google Talk as an administrator it worked as expected.

I wish that Google Would just implement this feature themselves … it would be so much easier. ;)

gAlwaysIdle Homepage [via Life Rocks]

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Dec 13

FastAero: Vista-like Transparency (with Blurring) on XP

Posted in: Apple, Freeware, Hacks, Microsoft, Pre-Release, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili, Windows XP

This article was written on May 24, 2007 by CyberNet.

When we mentioned the Vystal software a month ago I was pretty excited. It was the first solution to come forward which offered Vista-like visual effects in Windows XP. Now there is another one called FastAero (Download Mirror) which hopes to do the same kind of thing, but it looks much more promising.

On FastAero’s homepage you’ll find several downloads available, with the latest claiming to be pretty unstable. I decided to give build 0510 a go (Download Mirror) on my only remaining XP machine, and getting it to run couldn’t have been much simpler since you don’t have to install it.

Unfortunately it didn’t work quite right probably because my graphics card in this machine isn’t the greatest, but I was still able to see the blurring effects in action. There were no borders to the windows though, so I took the liberty of outlining the borders in red so that they were a little easier to see:

FastAero
Click to Enlarge

I tried multiple versions of FastAero, and the latest one was the best. None of them put the minimize, maximize, and close buttons on the top toolbar for me though. If you do get it to work properly it would look something like this:

FastAero
Click to Enlarge

I recommend trying it out just for giggles if for nothing else. A new version is expected next month that takes advantage of the Mirror Driver. This will mean that a direct link can be made between the video driver memory and FastAero, effectively bypassing the CPU for much of the processing.

After you get done trying it out leave a comment letting us know how well it worked.

Note: This will not “skin” windows that you currently have open, instead it will only skin windows that are opened after enabling FastAero. And after closing FastAero, it will automatically restore the normal Windows XP borders so there should be no concern with it screwing up the appearance of your operating system.

FastAero Homepage (Download Mirror)

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Dec 13

Google’s Teach Parents Tech site to help mom and dad find the ‘any’ key this Christmas

Posted in: Google, Today's Chili, video

It happens every December. You head home for the holidays only to be accosted by parents who need help fixing their computers. This year, it looks like Google will be lending a hand with its unannounced Teach Parents Tech series of public service videos. The Google-registered website teachparentstech.org still shows a “coming soon…” graphic and the videos remain unlisted on YouTube, but that shouldn’t stop you from sending the source link below to your parents right now. At the moment, we’re counting 54 cross-platform how-to videos hosted by real live Google employees. The videos are brief (less than a minute) covering topics as simple as “how to copy and paste” and “how to attach a file to an email” to more advanced sessions covering “how to setup an email autoresponder” and even “how to find cheap flights.” Unfortunately, even Google can’t explain to parents how to create a FAT32 hard drive partition. See what we mean after the break.

Update: And it’s live. Might as well get in the gift-giving spirit, eh?

[Thanks, Nathan G.]

Continue reading Google’s Teach Parents Tech site to help mom and dad find the ‘any’ key this Christmas

Google’s Teach Parents Tech site to help mom and dad find the ‘any’ key this Christmas originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Dec 2010 02:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceTeach Parents Tech (YouTube), teachparentstech  | Email this | Comments

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Dec 11

View Solutions on Experts Exchange without Registering

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on January 28, 2009 by CyberNet.

The odds are pretty good that you’ve come across the Experts Exchange site while trying to troubleshoot some sort of problem. You probably got frustrated when you noticed that the question being asked was visible, but you couldn’t find the answers without registering first. That may not be a big deal if registering was free, but they actually charge $13 a month to get an account.

The good news is that you don’t have to pay just to see the answers. Experts Exchange obviously wants search engines to be able to see both the question and answers so that they can get a better ranking. Google, for example, forbids that a site show different content to their crawler than what the user sees. So Experts Exchange had to figure out a workaround.

What they ended up doing is checking to see if a user is coming from a search engine like Google using referrer information provided by your browser. If that’s the case the solutions are indeed displayed on the page, but you just have to scroll all the way down to see them. Here’s what I’m talking about…

You’ll see the question just as you’d expect:

experts exchange question.jpg

If you scroll a little farther you should see the hidden answers/solutions, followed by a long list of categories:

experts exchange hidden.jpg

After you scroll past the categories you should see all of the answers/solutions:

experts exchange answers-1.jpg

Now there’s a catch. If you try linking directly to an article you won’t see the solutions. Experts Exchange is specifically looking for the referral information in your browser to ensure that you’re coming from a search engine. That’s why this will work if you click the first link in these Google search results, but won’t if you try to jump directly to the article by clicking this link. Similarly this won’t work if your browser is set to hide the referrer information from websites.

So there you have it. You can view the answers from Experts Exchange without needing to register, and you don’t have to try to use a cached version of the page.

Thanks to Michael and Cory for giving me the idea to write this article!

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Dec 10

How to Extend the Life of Your Gadgets

Posted in: Gadgets, Today's Chili

This article was written on November 25, 2007 by CyberNet.

extend life of gadgets Gadgets these days don’t come cheap, so when one of them stops working, not only is is frustrating, it could be expensive to replace. CNN put together a great article on how you can extend the life of some of your gadgets, and I thought parts of it were definitely worth highlighting here. You can read the entire article from CNN here. So how can you extend the life of your gadgets?

–Extend the life of your iPod–

One of the easiest things that you can do to extend the life of your iPod is to buy a protective hard rubber case because  iPods are so small and easy to drop. Sure it may not break the first time it tumbles to the ground, but it’s possible. Another suggestion is to simply run down your battery about once a month before you recharge it – this will help the battery last as long as possible.

–Extend the life of your Cell Phone–

Like iPods, it’s not a bad idea to let your battery drain completely a couple times a week. Some of you are probably used to just putting your phone on the charger every night, even if the phone isn’t in need of charging. Letting the battery drain a few times will allow the battery to work more efficiently. A protective case or cover for your cell phone isn’t a bad idea either. How many of you drop your phones on a regular basis?

–Extend the life of your Flat-Screen TV–

Did you know that the average life-span of a flat-screen TV is ten years? One of the best things you can do for your TV is to keep your hands off of it! According to a TV salesman at Best Buy, putting your fingers on the screen can cause some of the pixels to burnout which of course, isn’t good.  Another suggestion is to just use a soft cloth to clean the TV and avoid using glass cleaner or other spray cleaners.

–Extend the life of your DVD Player–

This may come as a surprise, but the average life of a DVD player is only about four to five years which really isn’t very long. If you want to get as many years as possible out of your DVD player, make sure that it’s got room to breath. Shoving it in the smallest compartment or slot on your TV stand doesn’t help … keep it cool! If you decide to move it from one room to another to use, be sure that you turn it off before you unplug it or move it.  The less it moves, the better, so try to keep it in just one room.

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Dec 09

How to Travel Around the World for $418 [Travel Hacking]

Posted in: Today's Chili, top, Travel

Steve Kamb decided he wanted to travel the world for as little money as possible. This map is his travel plan: 35,000 miles, visiting four continents, nine countries and 15 cities for just $418. Here’s how he got it: More »

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