Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on April 08, 2008 by CyberNet.

The robots have begun to invade the world, starting with Firefox 3! That’s right, the next-generation browser may not be what we were expecting all along. They are trying to pose as friendly inhabitants of the browser, but don’t get sucked into their evil spell. It’s too late for me, but save yourselves by switching to Internet Explorer!

Okay, maybe that’s a bit over-the-top, but the robots have definitely found a home in the latest Firefox 3 Beta 5. As James pointed out via a comment all you have to do is type about:robots into your address bar and press Enter. You should see this message:

Here’s a screenshot of the message you’re presented with.

(Click to Enlarge)

You’ll notice that the title of the page is “Gort! Klaatu barada nikto!” What does it mean? It’s from the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still released in 1951, where that particular message was meant to stop the robot Gort from destroying Earth [via Wikipedia].

What’s even better is that clicking the “Try Again” button will just replace it with another button that says “Please do not press this button again.” Naturally you’ll want to click it again, and then it will just disappear.

Note: This Easter Egg is only available in Firefox 3 Beta 5 and beyond.

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on March 26, 2008 by CyberNet.

Fedora 9 is stepping forward with their first Beta, and it looks like it has quite a few quality enhancements that both GNOME and KDE users alike will appreciate. Being a KDE fan myself I’m extremely happy to see that the Fedora team has taken the time to integrate the new KDE 4.0 into the operating system. And it apparently works so well that they decided to make 4.0 the default for anyone using the KDE desktop. I could be wrong, but I believe Fedora is the first to make KDE 4.0 the default for that type of desktop.

There has been a lot of work going on that will make this an incredible release, and you’ll even see the improvements during the installation. Now you’ll be able to resize ext2, ext3, and NTFS partitions during the installation process making it easier to install Fedora on a drive that isn’t empty.

That’s not all you’ll find in Fedora 9 either. Here are some of the other features you’ll find in Fedora 9 Beta:

• GNOME 2.22
• Helpful world time clock
• Better file system performance
• Security improvements
• Power management at the login screen
• The ability to dynamically configure displays
• Better Bluetooth integration
• Improved podcast support
• And many other enhancements
• KDE 4.0.2, which includes a brand new desktop and panel with many new concepts:
• Integrated desktop search
• Brand new visual style called Oxygen
• New multimedia API called Phonon
• New hardware integration framework called Solid
• Firefox 3 Beta 5
• Native look and feel
• Desktop integration
• The new Places that replaces bookmarks
• Reworked address bar
• NetworkManager Improvements
• Ad-hoc support, so that you can easily form a network with any near-by wireless devices
• Support for mobile broadband cards (GSM/CDMA) through PPP
• System-wide network configuration through NetworkManager with PolicyKit
• Support for creating and installing to encrypted filesystems

My download of Fedora 9 Beta is still in the process of finishing, but for those of you who decide to give it a whirl post your thoughts in the comments below.

Fedora 9 Beta Homepage

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on February 06, 2007 by CyberNet.

Windows might be the most common operating system but there is no doubt that Linux is gaining ground rather quickly. The biggest complaint that I always hear about Linux is that the hardware on a computer never quite functions right with Linux. Ubuntu is trying to conquer that problem, but wouldn’t life be a little easier if the computer you bought was built for Linux? Then you know that everything would work how it is supposed to.

No problem! System76 has several different laptops that vary in price to accommodate nearly everyone’s needs. You can even go as far as to customize them so that they are exactly what you want…you can even get a built-in camera. Honestly though, for the operating system being free I am quite surprised that their cheapest laptop is $700…and by the time you add some of those finishing touches I’m sure you can take it over $1000. Right now, without any coupons, I can go over to dell and pick-up a Windows Vista laptop for $689. I guess if you are looking into the future then the Ubuntu laptops might be appetizing since the operating system upgrades will always be free, but it would have been nice to see these in the $500 range.

Source: Engadget (Thanks for the tip Mohan!)

Since we are on the topic of Ubuntu I thought I should mention Ubuntu’s newest pre-release of version 7.04, which is still two-months away. This pre-release is dubbed Feisty Fawn Herd 3 and sports a few new features over the previous versions. The most prominent feature is the new Control Center (pictured above) which pulls in the feature I love the most from Windows Vista…instant search! Now you can just start to type the setting or option that you are looking for and it will instantly show you the results. Figuring out how to change that one hidden setting is now going to be a thing of the past.

A lot of the other things that are new in this pre-release are updates to existing programs, so they are primarily building on what already exists. I definitely like that idea because people aren’t necessarily looking for a lot of new features, but instead they want to see the existing features and applications made even better. With the popularity of Ubuntu it surprises me that they have not integrated XGL/Beryl to spice it up with the 3D effects, but I would guess that they might be holding back until the stability of those features gets a little better.

Thanks for the tip Chris!

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on December 04, 2008 by CyberNet.

I’ve been waiting to see what Opera had in store for us in version 10, and it looks like everyone is finally getting a peak. In fact I’m a bit surprised by what has been revealed so far, but in a good way. For awhile it seemed like other browsers were trying to find their own ways to adopt features that were first introduced in Opera, but the opposite never really happened. By that I mean Opera never really went after the handy features that other browsers were introducing.

What features am I talking about? Inline spell checking and auto-updating. Last year I covered some of the things that I really wanted to see included in future versions of Opera, and those two things were definitely on my list. Opera 10 Alpha 1 is the first version of their browser to incorporate these features.

Here are some of the other highlights in this release:

• Presto 2.2 Rendering Engine
• Performance boost
• 100/100 and pixel-perfect on the Acid3 test
• Opera Mail improvements, including rich text composition and delete after X days
• Widget Improvements on Linux

The million dollar question is whether Opera is still doing enough to attract new users, or whether they’re fighting a losing battle? I found Opera 10 to be more responsive than any of the other browsers, and the pages felt like they were displayed faster as well. Does that mean I’m going to make it my primary browser? I’ve really become accustomed to the extensions that Firefox has to offer though, and it would be hard for me to use only Opera without some of that important functionality.

What do you think about Opera? Did you expect more from Opera 10? Guess we’ll have to wait and see whether they have a few more tricks up their sleeve.

Get Opera 10 Alpha 1 for Windows, Mac or Linux
Thanks Cody!

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on April 15, 2008 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

A few weeks ago we demonstrated an extremely simple backup solution called IdleBackup. It was nothing too fancy, and this time around we wanted to go to the other extreme with a freeware Windows backup application that will really knock your socks off. The program is called Cobian Backup, and I wouldn’t have found it without Leland’s help.

Cobian Backup is one of the most full-featured backup utilities that I’ve seen, and the best thing about it is that it’s completely free. I’ve been a proud owner of SyncBackSE for quite some time now, but Cobian Backup includes almost all of the same features in it’s latest version 9 Beta release. The interface is well designed, creating and scheduling backups is simple, and it is busting at the seams with customization!

(Click to Enlarge)

–Features–

Now I could have just listed off the features that the developer had put together, but I actually think the developer is rather modest of what the program is truly capable of. So I put together my own set of features highlighting all of the things that I find to be the most useful in Cobian:

• Can be installed as a service, which means it is able to run even when a user isn’t logged into the computer
• 3 different types of backups are available:
• Full backups: Every single file in the source will be copied or compressed. If you are overwriting, every file will be replaced. If Overwrite is unchecked, you will have several copies of the same source.
• Incremental:  The program will check if the source has been changed from the last backup. If there is no need to copy the file, it will be skipped, saving backup time. The incremental procedure checks the Archive bit attribute of the file. You may want to manually reset the attribute to force a full backup: use the “Set the archive attributes” on the Task menu.
• Differential: The program will check if the source has been changed from the last FULL backup. If there is no need to copy the file, it will be skipped, saving backup time. The differential procedure checks the Archive bit attribute of the file. You may want to manually reset the attribute to force a full backup: use the “Set the archive attributes” on the Task menu.
• Dummy task: This backup doesn’t need a source or a destination. It is useful to use the task just as an scheduler to execute applications, close services, reboot the computer, etc.
• Remotely connect to and manage your backups (Cobian will need to be installed on both the host and client machine to do this). Go to Tools -> Remote Client in Cobian to access this feature.
• Backup to or from a network or FTP location
• Compress your backups using 7-Zip or regular ZIP
• Split the compressed files up into multiple files according to a maximum size that you specify
• You can have multiple source and/or destinations
• You can have a timestamp added to backup filenames so that existing backups are not overwritten
• Perform a variety of actions before and/or after a backup starts:
• Pause for a specified duration
• Start or close a program
• Start or stop a service
• Restart or shutdown the computer
• If you choose to perform an incremental or differential backup you can set Cobian to automatically do a full backup every X backups, where “X” is any number you want.
• It will retrieve files from the Volume Shadow Copy (on XP and Vista) if a file is locked by another application
• You can provide a list of files and/or folders to exclude
• UNICODE support

–Creating a Backup–

When making a decision on which backup application to use it is pretty critical to see first-hand whether it is going to do what you want it to. And that’s what this screenshot gallery is for!

In Cobian there are seven different areas that you can configure for each backup task that you create. Below you’ll find a screenshot of each different area so that you can appropriately decide whether Cobian will be able to perform the backups in the way that you want it to.

(Click to Enlarge)

–Overview–

Cobian Backup is a tremendous application that will likely have much, if not all of what you’re looking for. It might take some time to get the backups setup just the way you want, but once you’re done the end result could save you days of frustration. Believe me, in the last two years I’ve had two different hard drives fail on me. If it wasn’t for the regular backups that I performed there could have been a lot of unrecoverable settings, pictures, and documents. Software like Cobian Backup can really come through in a pinch!

Cobian Backup Homepage
Note: In this review I was using Cobian Backup 9 Beta.

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