Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on March 08, 2010 by CyberNet.

Welcome to the WrapUp by CyberNet. This is a collection of news stories, downloads, and tips that we have collected over the last few days, but never got around to writing about. Don’t forget to send in your own tips, or just leave a comment on this page if you think you’ve got something we should include.

–News–

Ubuntu 10.04 To Sport a New Theme
After six years the Ubuntu operating system will be going under the knife, and will come out with a fresh new makeover. They are dropping a lot of the brown that users had come to associate with Ubuntu, and the old design dubbed “Human” is taking a backseat to “Light.” Everything has been revamped from icons to the boot screen, and even the logo has been modernized a bit. Canonical expects the facelift to represent the operating system for years to come.

Picnik Gets Acquired by Google
Picnik is an online photo editor that was being managed by just 20 employees… until last week when they were acquired by Google. According to their team nothing will be changing immediately, and integration with third-party services such as Flickr will still remain available. It seems only natural that Picnik will become heavily integrated into Picasa, but that will likely take months (if not longer) for them to accomplish.

–News in Brief–

Google Open Sources reMail
Not that long ago Google acquired the makers of an iPhone app called reMail, and they are now open-sourcing the technology so that iPhone developers can have an excellent starting point for creating apps that need to access IMAP email accounts.

Office 2010 Upgrade Guarantee
If you buy a copy of Office 2007 between now and the release of Office 2010 (business launch is May 12th, consumer launch is in June) you will get a free upgrade to the latest version.

Google Docs Welcomes DocVerse
The acquisition of DocVerse means that Google officially supports integration with the widely popular Microsoft Office desktop applications.

iPad Available on April 3rd
Apple announced that pre-orders for the iPad will begin on May 12th, and will be available at stores on April 3rd.

10 Billion Tweets
Twitter boldly passes the 10-billion tweet mark, and to celebrate the event tweeters around the world… tweeted some more.

Roger Ebert Regains Voice with Mac Software
Thanks to a heavily customized text-to-speech Mac application Roger Ebert can now speak in his old voice.

TiVo Unveils Series4 DVRs
This week TiVo held a media event to show off the new Series4 DVRs that include a revamped user interface and some new online video integration.

More than 90 Million Copies of Windows 7 Sold
In less than 5-months Microsoft has sold more than 90 million copies of Windows 7.

Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Windows Live Messenger Service
Interested in what goes on to keep one of the most popular messenger services running? Microsoft divulges some details on what it takes to make a few thousand servers work together to provide 300 million users the joy of instant communication.

Opera 10.5 Released, and Speedier than Ever
The newest milestone of the Opera web browser boasts significant performance and functionality enhancements.

Winners of the Street View Trike Contest
Google talks about what areas (such as college campuses) will be added to Street View via a man-powered trike.

–Tips, Tutorials, and Reviews–

Firefox Developer Preview Isolates Plugins
Mozilla has posted a preview release of the Gecko platform that forms the basis for apps like Firefox. The preview can isolate plugins like Flash and Silverlight from the rest of the browser. If one of those plugins happens to crash the rest of the browser will be fine. They offer a version of Firefox that can expose this feature, but keep in mind that it is currently not available for Mac users… it will be by the time they are done though.

Geosense for Windows
Some young pioneers decided to whip up a sensor for Windows 7 that will determine your approximate location using your WiFi and IP address info. This information can then be relayed on to apps, such as the weather widget, that can use that data to add relevancy. There aren’t many things that take advantage of it at this point, but I can see apps incorporating this functionality in later releases. It’s definitely worth keeping an eye on.

–Tips in Brief–

Get Google Wave Email Notifications
You can finally get notified via email when a response is posted to one of your waves.

Quickly Create Personal Websites
Flavors.me is a free service that lets you easily create a personal website without using any desktop software.

Increase Live TV Pause Buffer in Windows 7 Media Center
This will let you pause the television stream in Windows 7 for more than the default 40-minutes.

Setup Your Own Proxy Server
A quick set of instructions on how to set up your own free proxy server in just a few minutes.

Monitor for Experimental Firefox Extension Updates
This add-on will let you update your Firefox extensions whenever an experimental release is posted. That means you won’t have to wait for Mozilla’s stamp of approval.

Make Windows 7 Remember Explorer Windows’ Size and Position
This free app should resolve the issue where Windows 7 doesn’t always remember the last size and position of a Windows Explorer window.

Visually Browse Open Chrome Tabs
Get a coverflow-like interface for viewing all of your open tabs in Google Chrome.

Utilize Drop.io for 100MB Attachments in Outlook
Attach files up to 100MB in size to your emails without leaving Outlook by using the free Drop.io service.

Analyze Hard Drive Usage with Disk Space Fan
A fast and beautiful hard drive analyzer that can help you determine what’s eating up all your space.

–Downloads–

• AIM 7.2 ^{Beta 2} [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Audacity 1.3.12 ^RC1 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Cobian 10.0.0.394 ^Beta [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Eudora 8.0.0 ^{Beta 9} [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Evernote 3.5.2.1663 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• FeedDemon 3.1.0.20 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Firefox 3.7 ^{Alpha 2} [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Foobar2000 1.0.1 ^{Beta 2} [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Google Chrome 5.0.342.2 ^Beta [Homepage] [Mirror]
• K-Meleon 1.5.4 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Miranda 0.8.16 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Notepad++ 5.6.8 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Notepad2 4.1.24 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Opera 10.50 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Recuva 1.36.479 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• SetPoint 6.0 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• uTorrent 2.1.18304 ^Alpha [Homepage] [Mirror]
• WinSCP 4.2.7 [Homepage] [Mirror]

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on August 25, 2008 by CyberNet.

Microsoft offers a lot of free apps, but the problem is that finding the programs isn’t always easy to do. We’re always on the hunt for free programs put out by Microsoft, and when we stumbled across Microsoft Pro Photo we definitely had to look into it.

After you download Microsoft Pro Photo you’ll quickly realize that the sole purpose of the program is to manage the metadata attached to the photos you take. You can do things like adjust the date/time a photo was taken, assign categories, view information about the shot (aperture, focial length, etc…), and more. The really handy part of the program is the geotag capabilities.

Once you have Microsoft Pro Photo up and running you’ll want to open some images located on your computer, which can be done through the File menu. After that select one or more images from the thumbnail section, and then click the Location option in the left sidebar. This is where you can adjust the geotag information that is associated with a single or group of photos. The best part is that you don’t need to fiddle around with latitude/longitude… just enter in the address of the location and click on the Get GPS Info button. That’s it, you’re done.

With Microsoft Pro Photo you can also geotag photos by simply browsing a map. It will give you a pin on the map that you can drag around, and it will automatically determine the coordinates based upon where you drop the pin. This is a nice option for anyone wanting to more precisely geotag their photos.

While the program is really nice there are a few things that I’d like to see in a future release:

1. You should be able to browse the photos in your pictures folder instead of having to open each image.
2. Instead of being able to geotag by address the user should also be able to geotag according to points of interest. That way you don’t have to lookup the address of, for example, the Eiffel Tower. You can kind of do this when using the “Map Browse” feature, but it should be as simple as it is when entering in an address.

Microsoft Pro Photo Homepage
Microsoft Pro Photo Direct Download (No WGA Check)

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on June 12, 2007 by CyberNet.

How often do you take a bunch of pictures and then forget to upload them to your computer? Or, how often do you take pictures and promise to share them with others, only to forget? It happens, and one start-up out of Mountain-View California called Eye-Fi is hoping to provide an easy way for you to auto-upload your photos to your computer or photo sharing site through the use of a Wi-Fi enabled SD card with built-in memory.

Sure, there are Wi-Fi equipped cameras available on the market, but they are a bit on the pricey side.  Through the use of en Eye-Fi SD memory card, you’d be able to choose to send the photos to your computer or favorite photo sharing site as they’re taken, or at the end of a photos session.

While we tend to take more pictures these days, sometimes it takes a while before those pictures make it off of the camera and on to the computer.  With Eye-Fi, all you’d have to do is turn the camera on and let the software do the rest of the work for you. Currently, they’re working to secure partnerships with more than 20 web photo service providers and social networks which would make the sharing process even easier.

According to Eye-Fi, four out of five digital photos are never printed or shared because of the complex process required. If you’re one of those who tends to take the pictures and then just forget about them, would Eye-Fi be something that you’d consider using?

One of my first thoughts after I thought about how cool it would be to have my pictures instantly uploaded to my computer, was battery-life. I wasn’t sure how the Wi-Fi would affect the longevity of the battery, however after reading into it, they explain that the network functions are off when photos aren’t being sent, thus saving on battery.

Hopefully it’s not too good to be true because this is something that could really change the way we take and share photos, and it’s reasonably priced.  Eye-Fi is scheduled to debut in the Fall as a 2GB card priced at around $100.

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

Say what you will about urban exploration as a hobby, these guys sure do find some cool shit sometimes. Thank God they take cameras with them.

Read more…

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

Tutorial Thursday

One of the hot new ways for viewing photos is using a JavaScript technique called LightBox. I’m sure you’ve seen it before on sites where you click on a thumbnail, and a fullsize version of the image is superimposed on the page that your viewing. It then grays out the background so that it’s easy for the viewer to focus on the image. Here’s a working example of LightBox that demonstrates the feature.

Personally I’ve never been a big fan of LightBox, but there are a lot of people who swear by it. When I came across a free program called LightBox Web Gallery Generator, I knew it would be an extremely handy tool for many of you.

What’s so great about it? Not only is it open source, but you also don’t have a thing to install. Once you download the LightBox Gallery Generator you can start working with it immediately!

–Basic Settings–

When you launch the app for the first time, you’ll notice that it’s extremely simple, and there isn’t much you can configure. It’s important to know that the LightBox Gallery Generator will only work with JPG images, but that’s the format that most cameras use so you shouldn’t have any problems.

You’ll want to select the folder with the images, and the folder that you want to output the gallery to. The program will generate thumbnails for all of the images and align them to a grid with however many columns and rows you specify. If you have more photos than can fit on the page it will show next/previous buttons on the generated site as well as page numbers.

The “Image” section in the program is used to specify what the dimensions are of the photos that are shown when the thumbnails are clicked on. By having them resized it helps cut back on the bandwidth needed especially when the original image is gigantic! You can always provide a link to the original image by checking the “Add link to hi-res image” option.

–Advanced Settings–

At first I didn’t really realize that the program had any advanced settings because the text links at the bottom looked like they were hyperlinks for a website. When I clicked on one of them it actually expanded the program’s window to show more settings that you can change to truly customize the look and feel of the gallery that is generated.

The “CSS” option is used to specify your own custom styles to the site. This is where you can customize border, background colors, font types, and more:

At the top of the gallery is a breadcrumb trail that visitors can use to navigate to other pages on your site. This is where you can specify your own custom homepage link or turn it off all together:

The “Master Page” option is truly the heart and soul of the LightBox Gallery Generator. You can create your own custom HTML template to be used with the galleries that you generate. How’s that useful? It means you can put your own header, footer, and sidebars on the site with the gallery being placed in the center of it all.

–The Result–

**drum roll** The end result is what you’ve worked so hard for, well, I use the term “work” loosely. The screenshots below are from a gallery that I generated in under a minute after starting the program up for the first time. The one on the left shows what the thumbnail gallery looks like complete with navigation links, and the one on the right is the “fullsize” image that visitors are shown when a thumbnail is clicked.

If you chose to include a link to the high resolution images you’ll see that next to the title of each photo:

This program doesn’t quite stack up to the JAlbum software in terms of configuration options, but this is definitely the simplest gallery generator that I’ve ever used. If you need to quickly create a photo gallery with some pizzazz I don’t think there is a better option.

LightBox Web Gallery Generator

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com