Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on June 11, 2008 by CyberNet.

A few weeks ago we showed you how to get fast dictionary definitions on both Macs and PC’s, but if you only need to grab dictionary definitions in your browser there’s a much better solution. Lingro is offering a free dictionary and translation service that works in Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Internet Explorer using a simple bookmarklet.

Once you activate the bookmarklet on a website you won’t notice any immediate changes… assuming you choose to use the “quick lookup” bookmarklet. What you can do, however, is click on any word on the page to instantly see a definition appear similar to the one above. The definition is displayed in a condense popup box that does a nice job not interrupting your browsing.

Want to do a translation while you’re at it? No problem… just click on the flags to select the appropriate languages. It currently supports most European languages including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Polish, and Swedish. Here are some stats that will give you an idea as to how extensive each of the databases are for the various languages.

There’s only one thing that I don’t like about how this works, and it would be that it only supports one-word definitions. Trying to define “memory card” wouldn’t work so well since both “memory” and “card” would each be treated as separate words. It’s probably not too often that you’ll need a multi-word definition though since it’s not a very common occurrence.

Lingro Homepage [via ReadWriteWeb]

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on August 30, 2007 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

Flickr is an extremely powerful resource for uploading your photos, especially if you’re like me and bask in the glory of their Pro account for just $25 per year. With a Pro account you get unlimited storage and no bandwidth restrictions. That’s the reason I use it to backup all of my images!

Uploading thousands of photos can be a daunting task, and that’s why I’m glad that I came across a tiny little app called FlickrSync. It’s free, open source, and runs on Windows XP SP2 as well as Vista. It supports one-way photo syncing…meaning it will take the photos on your computer and upload them to Flickr. It never modifies the images that are stored on your hard drive, so you don’t have to worry about permanently losing an image.

Here’s some of the features Flickrsync has to offer:

• Works with both Pro and non-Pro Flickr accounts
• Browse local folders and Flickr sets. Then match your local folders to the corresponding Flickr sets.
• Create new Sets when uploading new folders.
• Define Flickr permissions for each folder and other synchronization options
• Preview all operations (including photo thumbnails) before applying them to Flickr .
• Synchronize specific folders or all selected folders
• Synchronize all image information, including metadata like title and description, keywords/tags and even geo information. Works great with Vista’s built-in tagging and caption system.
• Use different synchronization methods according to your needs (ex: by date taken, by caption, by filename).
• Define optional filters for each folder. For example: only synchronize to Flickr images that have a certain keyword/tag on a specific folder.
• Support for all Flickr image formats

So now that you know exactly what FlickrSync is capable of doing, why don’t we take a look at how to use it:

Important: I’ve noticed a slight bug in the program, and it’s that you’ll get an error message if you have no sets in your Flickr account. So you’ll need to make sure that you’ve created at least one set before proceeding.

1. Download and install FlickrSync (currently in the Beta stage).
2. After installation you’ll be prompted to authorize FlickrSync so that it has access to your Flickr account.
3. After FlickrSync starts up you’ll want to check the box corresponding to a folder on your computer that needs to be synchronized (your Flickr sets are shown on the right side):
   
4. Now you’ll need to pick one of your existing sets or create a new one to be synchronized with that folder. Here you can also choose how you want FlickrSync to match up photos, what permissions they should be given, and whether you want to filter a certain set of images to be uploaded. Also, look closely at the two checkboxes located at the bottom of the window, because if you leave them unchecked some of your Flickr images might get unexpectedly deleted:
   
5. Now when you’re taken back to the main screen just go to the Sync menu and choose the View and Sync option to synchronize your photos. FlickrSync will then show you which photos will get uploaded, and which ones will get deleted:
   

Tip: If you don’t want to synchronize all of the folders that you have setup, just right click on a folder (or on the corresponding set) and choose the View and Sync option. This will synchronize only the photos associated with that particular folder or set.

This is one app that I’m really glad I found. There’s no doubt that it will shave some time off of my photo management process, and all I’m hoping to see now is a scheduler so that I can automate the syncing process. Boy, you’ve gotta love when you come across free apps like this that are unbelievably useful!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on December 05, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

One of the things that I’m looking forward to the most with Firefox 3 is to see what kind of redesign they will come up with for Vista users. Right now the Firefox theme in Vista is anything but stellar, but it is possible to improve it with very little work on your part. We are going to walk you through several changes that you can make, all of which will keep the default Firefox theme in tact. We’re not looking to clone Internet Explorer 7 … we just want a good looking Firefox!

All of the tweaks we are going to demonstrate are available on Userstyles.org, which means you’ll want to have the Stylish extension installed before continuing. That way it will just take a few clicks to get each feature installed. Lets get stylin’!

–Toolbar Color (Homepage)–

One of the things that irks some people, including me, is the toolbar background color in Firefox. It is like a pastel blue, and doesn’t feel anywhere near the same as it does in other versions of Windows. You can change that though by adding this style to your repertoire, and you should notice a difference rather quickly:

Note the change in background color behind the navigation buttons

–Maximized Toolbar Color (Homepage)–

When you maximize Internet Explorer 7 in Vista it darkens the toolbar background to make it easier to focus on the content of the page. This style will do the exact same thing for Firefox so that only when the browser is maximized will it have the dark background. In the screenshot below we also have the Hide Menubar extension installed which makes the Menubar disappear until you press the Alt key.

–Tab Background (Homepage)–

If you didn’t decide to go with the first style mentioned in this article you may want to consider using this one. It will alter the background color behind the tabs to match that of the toolbars (the pastel blue), which I think does help tremendously in making Firefox have more visual appeal:

Note the difference in background colors next to the last tab

–Joined Back/Forward Buttons (Homepage)–

I’m a bit uneasy as to how well this fits into the default Firefox theme, but it will work for any theme that you are using. If you prefer to have the back and forward buttons “joined at the hips” like they are in Internet Explorer 7 just install this style, and voila:

Note the different back/forward buttons

–Vista Throbber (Homepage)–

In our quest to Vistify Firefox we can’t forget about the little throbber icon! Naturally it only makes sense to use the same “busy” icon that the mouse uses for indicating that a program is busy, and this will do just that:

–Address Bar Progress Meter (Homepage)–

This isn’t something that will necessarily make Firefox more like Vista, but it does look pretty sweet. You’ll need to install the Fission extension first, which makes Firefox show the page loading progress in the Address Bar. Then when you apply the style it has a Vista-esque feel to it:

–Overview–

I’m anxious to see what Mozilla has been brainstorming for a Firefox 3 theme in Vista, but as it stands they will be shipping a Vista-specific theme to compliment the eye candy incorporated into the operating system. One can only hope for amazing things!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on November 14, 2007 by CyberNet.

Ashley has already covered the different ways to clean your keyboard, but have you ever tried to clean your keyboard or mouse while the computer was on? I’ve done it, and the result is programs and files unexpectedly being opened, or even worse getting deleted. It’s almost like closing your eyes and typing on the keyboard … you just don’t know what’s going to happen.

What I normally do to get around this is lock my computer or put it in standby, but I thought to myself that other people had to be having the same problem as me. So I ventured out looking for a program that would lock both the keyboard and mouse so that they could easily be cleaned. That’s when I came across Donation Coder’s ToddlerTrap. The program requires no installation, and you don’t need to have AutoHotKey installed if you download the EXE (click the little floppy disk symbol on the site).

The program basically intercepts any keyboard or mouse inputs and makes the computer think that the key was never even pressed. The entire program, pictured above, consists of a text box and a close button. The text box is a little bit deceiving because it shows what key is currently being pressed on the keyboard. My initial thought was that this is used to create some sort of hotkey for the program, but it actually serves no real purpose.

The keyboard and mouse lock is automatically activated once the program is started, and it is disabled when the program is closed. Don’t worry, you can still move your mouse around the screen with ToddlerTrap activated, and the red X on the program is the only thing that is clickable.

So now you have an easy way to clean your keyboard and mouse without having to suffer from adverse effects. And I guess you could use this program for its intended purpose, which is to prevent young kids from messing anything up on the computer.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on June 09, 2008 by CyberNet.

Mac only
One of the things that I found interesting when getting used to my Mac was that Apple didn’t include a way to quickly access the connected drives from the Dock. Sure they place the shortcuts on the desktop for everything that’s connected, but navigating to the Dock is much faster in my opinion.

I didn’t think adding any connected drives and devices to the Dock would be too difficult since you can already add any folder, which will then create a stack. After a little searching I came across an easy solution on the MacRumors forum:

1. Open Finder and press Shift+Command+G
2. Type /Volumes into the window that appears, and press Go
3. The Finder window should now display a hidden folder called Volumes located at the root of your hard drive, and in it are shortcuts to all of the connected drives/devices
4. Drag the Volumes folder onto your Dock to create a stack from it (switch to column view in Finder if you don’t see the Volumes folder)

Whenever you click on the newly created stack it will pop-out with any DVD’s, USB drives, cameras, and external drives that might be connected to your computer. Pretty cool, huh?

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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