Farewell Windows 3.11

This article was written on July 10, 2008 by CyberNet.

windows 3.11.jpgI’m sure for most of you Windows 3.11 has been out of your life for quite some time, but just because the operating system was retired from the retail market years ago doesn’t mean it wasn’t still available. In fact OEM’s are still able to license Windows 3.11 in the embedded channel, but come November 1st, 2008 that will no longer be an option.

Amidst the disbelief Ars Technica is pondering whether they should start a petition to save the irreplaceable operating system:

I’m not sure I want to believe this. How can Microsoft possibly discontinue an old operating system that has been around for so long and is so well trusted? Maybe I’ll start a petition to save it! I don’t want to move to something more bloated and resource-hungry if I can stay with good old Windows for Workgroups 3.11. Why fix what isn’t broken? I don’t like the new, the old works just fine!

One of these days Microsoft will learn that we don’t want new operating systems, but until then we’ll have to continue our grieving as one operating system after another finds their way into their final resting spots. You can, however, always view this gallery of Windows 3.11 screenshots. It’s not the same as having the actual operating system right in front of you, but it will give you the warm fuzzy feeling in your heart. Pull your Windows 3.11 floppy disks close to you, and we’ll get through this together.

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

Spotify’s ‘Follow’ button lets you recruit listeners from any webpage

Spotify gets more social, lets you add follow button on a website

Looking to tempt others to check out your Spotify tracks? Before, any interaction with other users or artists had to be done within the various desktop and mobile apps, but there’s now another option: you can embed a ‘Follow’ button into any website. The idea is to make it easier to promote your music (or musical taste) while expanding your follower base. Obviously, it’ll also give Spotify itself a greater online presence and allow it to ensnare new subscribers who’ve yet to download the app. You can grab the code snippets at the source, but you may first want to weed out that playlist from your ‘crunkcore’ phase.

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Source: Spotify

Elliptic Labs releases ultrasound gesturing SDK for Android, will soon integrate into smartphones

Elliptic Labs releases ultrasound gesturing SDK for Android, will soon integrate into smartphones

Elliptic Labs has already spruced up a number of tablets by adding the ability to gesture instead of make contact with a touchpanel, and starting this week, it’ll bring a similar source of wizardry to Android. The 20-member team is demoing a prototype here at CEATEC in Japan, showcasing the benefits of its ultrasound gesturing technology over the conventional camera-based magic that already ships in smartphones far and wide. In a nutshell, you need one or two inexpensive (under $1 a pop) chips from Murata baked into the phone; from there, Elliptic Labs’ software handles the rest. It allows users to gesture in various directions with multiple hands without having to keep their hands in front of the camera… or atop the phone at all, actually. (To be clear, that box around the phone is only there for the demo; consumer-friendly versions will have the hardware bolted right onto the PCB within.)

The goal here is to make it easy for consumers to flip through slideshows and craft a new high score in Fruit Ninja without having to grease up their display. Company representatives told us that existing prototypes were already operating at sub-100ms latency, and for a bit of perspective, most touchscreens can only claim ~120ms response times. It’s hoping to get its tech integrated into future phones from the major Android players (you can bet that Samsung, LG, HTC and the whole lot have at least heard the pitch), and while it won’t ever be added to existing phones, devs with games that could benefit from a newfangled kind of gesturing can look for an Android SDK to land in the very near future.

Mat Smith contributed to this report. %Gallery-slideshow99597%

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Source: Elliptic Labs

Grand Theft Auto Online update arrives, brings multiplayer to Los Santos

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If you’re already looking for a more worthy Grand Theft Auto 5 adversary than a computer can generate, here’s the dirt: you can now play it online. Whether your battleground of choice is PlayStation Network or Xbox Live, only a “small title update” should be required to get online. Of course, that is assuming the game’s servers can handle the load. With over 16.5 million copies already in circulation Day 1 connectivity could land somewhere near the Sim City end of the scale, and Rockstar’s Social Club backend has already experienced some strain loading up pictures and stats from the single player edition. Assuming everything goes to plan however, players should be creating their avatars, forming online crime syndicates and visiting each other’s houses.

The Content Creator tool that will let players design their own heists is one of the features scheduled to launch later this fall, for more details on what is available right away, check out this blog post. Access appears to be open on both PlayStation Network and Xbox Live, although we’re already seeing reports of connection issues and “Rockstar cloud servers are not available right now” on both sides.

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Source: Rockstar

Sunbelt Personal Firewall for Vista

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

sunbelt personal firewall-1.png

It has been over a year and a half since the consumer release of Windows Vista, and the Sunbelt Personal Firewall is finally compatible with it. The new version has better network performance, enhanced packet filtering, improved stability, Vista (32-bit) compatibility, and more. Plus, like always, it comes in both free and paid flavors.

Do you need a third-party firewall when Windows comes with one? According to Sunbelt the “built-in firewall in Windows is worse than useless, since it is only one-way.” They aren’t completely telling the truth there. Windows XP’s firewall is indeed a one-way firewall that is only capable of blocking incoming connections, but that’s not the case with Vista. I’m sure that Sunbelt is a much better choice for protection, but I think they need to be more clear in the claims they are making.

Aside from the new Vista compatibility there isn’t much that I’m able to accurately test in the new Sunbelt Personal Firewall. Memory usage between the three processes (SbPFSvc.exe, SbPFCl.exe, and SbPFLnch.exe) totaled about 35MB for me, which is a bit more than I had anticipated. When compared to Comodo that is about ten times more memory being used.

If you do decide to give this a whirl it’s important to know that the free version and the paid version are both bundled in the same download. Once you download the “trial” you’ll have a full 30 days to play around with all of the features. After that it will fall back to the free version that doesn’t include things like ad blocking, identity theft protection, and remote administration.

Sunbelt Personal Firewall Homepage
Thanks Scott!

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

Wii U update 4.0 brings Wii games to the GamePad’s screen

Wii U update 4.0 brings Wii games to the GamePad's screen

Nintendo’s pushing out version 4.0 of its Wii U system software, and it’s bringing a few unexpected — yet welcome — changes. Ironically, tweaks to how the hardware handles titles from The Big N’s last home console headline the update. Folks taking Wii games for a spin will now be able to do so using just the GamePad’s screen, and enjoy Dolby Pro Logic II surround output — though you’ll still need a Wii remote to play. Iwata and Co. have also rolled in an image sharing tool that mirrors the one on the 3DS, which lets gamers share screenshots on Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter. With the fresh code in tow, demos from Nintendo can be downloaded automatically and a variety of USB keyboards are supported, to boot. The box’s internet browser also got some attention, as it’s been bolstered with the ability to open PDF files and remember user login details for web sites. Check your Wii U for the update or click the source link for the full changelog.

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Source: Nintendo Japan (translated)

Pluck Throws In The Towel On Their RSS Reader

This article was written on October 31, 2006 by CyberNet.

Pluck RSS Reader

Apparently Pluck decided that it wasn’t worth the effort to continue their RSS reader services. They have announced to all of their users that they will discontinue the service starting January 5, 2007:

All versions of Pluck’s RSS readers for Internet Explorer, FireFox and Pluck’s web edition will be discontinued on 1/5/2007. The RSS Readers have served our community of end users well for several years, but with Pluck’s focus in other business areas, the venerable RSS readers are set to be retired from our product line.

They have removed all signs of the RSS reader from their site and all links redirect back to their homepage. I actually used Pluck for a little while but instead of being a standalone desktop application they offered add-ons for both Firefox and Internet Explorer users. The Firefox add-on was nothing near as powerful as the one available for Internet Explorer, and if the two were the same then I’m sure it would have been amazingly popular for Firefox. The problem is that most people who use Internet Explorer as their primary browser probably aren’t aware of RSS feeds, so their main focus should have been with Firefox.

I’m sure that it also doesn’t help with all of the great web-based feed readers entering the market. The best online feed reader right now, in my opinion, is the new Google Reader and once Google integrates it into GMail (without needing Greasemonkey) will be the day that it becomes very very popular.

News Source: Bitemarks

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

VorpX turns BioShock Infinite, Mirror’s Edge (and more) into Oculus Rift-ready games

VorpX turns BioShock Infinite, Mirror's Edge and more into Oculus Riftready games

Irrational Games’ blockbuster BioShock Infinite and EA DICE’s Mirror’s Edge weren’t built with the Oculus Rift in mind, but both are part of a huge list of games supported by a new piece of software available today: VorpX. The still-in-beta, $40 application promises to convert a variety of games from monitor-exclusive experiences to Oculus Rift-ready VR games, including the aforementioned two and a lengthy list of others.

As none of the supported games are meant to work with the Rift, a variety of workarounds are implemented by VorpX. Clicking in and holding down your mouse wheel, for instance, allows you to “edge peek,” which allows users to look freely at the edges of their field-of-view instead of it moving with the headset’s movement. Additionally, since rendering two distinct views of high-def, modern games is taxing, VorpX uses a workaround called “Z-buffer,” which is apparently “the highest performing” of the two available options, but not as pretty. You can also choose “Geometry 3D,” which does render two distinct feeds and, well, we’re jealous of whatever system you’ve got that’s running that smoothly. Not every game supports both modes, but a fair number do (there’s a list right here comparing both). Head below for a handful of video demonstrations of VorpX in action, as well as the full list of supported games.

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Source: VorpX

Google Web Designer targets easy HTML5 animation (and Tumblr will love it)

Google has launched Google Web Designer, a new beta app for creating animated online content such as adverts or other moving graphics, all in HTML5. The Windows and Mac app aims to streamline the post-Flash online world with the option of code or graphical animation creation, for those of differing comfort levels with CSS and […]

Flock 0.8 Is Looking Pretty Darn Good

This article was written on May 17, 2007 by CyberNet.

I just saw a post on the Flock blog today reminding everyone of the test day last week for a pre-release version of Flock 0.8. The point of these test days are to find bugs and problems in Flock before it is released to the public, and it sounds like it should be in final form within a month or so.

Early this year I updated you on what was happening with this release, and it has progressed quite nicely since then. Since I’m a pre-release junkie I couldn’t help but see what has improved since my last look at the browser. After installation of the latest nightly I was presented with a nice loading screen:

Flock 0.8
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Then the first thing that I saw…a stunning new interface. The placement of the bookmark toolbar (and it’s appearance) is perfect as it sits alongside of the shortcuts for many Flock-specific services. Oh yeah, and I can’t forget to mention the prominent notification bar that alerts users when feeds, and a few other things, are available:

Flock 0.8
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A lot of the configuration and management of social networks is done through the sidebar now. This is a nice change because you’re no longer dealing with hordes of popups or wasted screen space when trying to manage accounts:

Flock 0.8
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The blog editor could still use a little TLC because it really only offers the most basic features for writing articles. Seeing that this browser is built around social networks I would think that adding YouTube videos or Flickr images would be astoundingly easy, but such a feature appears to be missing. At least they do make your clipboard readily accessible:

Flock 0.8
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Next up, the Flock feed reader. Not much has changed here, but as always it provides a quick and flexible way to read through your news. You can choose between viewing feeds in one or two columns, as well as a headlines or full-text view. It will automatically mark the feeds as read once you scroll past a news story, and will also scale any images in the articles so that they fit the width of the column:

Flock 0.8
Click to Enlarge

This last screenshot helps put it all in perspective. It shows the bookmark manager for the sidebar, the Media Streams bar, and the My World start page. The Media Streams bar is cool because it lets you search sites like Flickr and YouTube while displaying the results right there in the bar, without having to visit a site. If you double-click on any of the results it will instantly take you to the page where that result was found.

My World is simply a start page for Flock that gives you a quick overview of everything that has been going on. It summarizes what your favorite sites, feeds, and media are so that they are only a click away. In other words it’s a homepage customized to you:

 Flock 0.8
Click to Enlarge

And I can’t forget one of the best improvements for the new Flock: Firefox 2! Now that Firefox 2 is used as the backbone (instead of Firefox 1.5) new features like spell checking, anti-phishing, and session restore are all part of the browser. Flock is shaping up to be a great browser for anyone actively involved in social networks, and when the final release hits the Web I’m sure there will be a lot of people raving about it.

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com