Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on April 16, 2008 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

Sometimes it’s hard to grasp just how valuable something as simple as a screenshot can be. When we first started writing on CyberNet we didn’t always focus on providing screenshots of the things that we wrote about, but it didn’t take long for us to see that they often got our point across more than words ever could. And that is part of what’s made our site as successful as it is.

So what about taking screenshots yourself? Sure there are all kinds of applications out there to do it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the screenshots you want to take are only of websites. If that’s the case and you’re a Firefox user then this is the article for you! Today we’ve got two different Firefox extensions that will appeal to both novices and professionals alike.

–Abduction (Homepage)–

First up is Abduction. This extension is rather different from the other one below. It’s not geared towards the people who want a screenshot utility brimming with features. Instead it focuses on how it can make snapping screenshots as easy as possible.

To activate Abduction just go to the File menu or right-click anywhere on the current site, and then choose the Save Page as Image option. You’ll immediately be shown a window similar to this one:

 
(Click to Enlarge)

Immediately after snapping the screenshot the entire site will be highlighted. That means if you hit the Save button without making any changes you’ll be including everything on the page… even the areas you would have had to scroll to see. That can easily be changed by drawing a box around the area that you want the screenshot to capture.

Abduction also lets you choose whether to save the screenshot as a PNG or JPG depending on what filetype is your preference. That’s it. No fancy interface and nothing to confuse you. Just snap your screenshots and go!

–FireShot (Homepage)–

FireShot, on the other hand, takes a completely opposite approach to screenshots. It’s possible to grab snapshots of a website in mere seconds, but it comes with a lot of additional tools that some users may not want. In particular it has a built-in editor that is extremely handy should you decide that you want to annotate a screenshot.

Here’s a list of features that I assembled after using FireShot for a little while:

• You can take a screenshot of the entire site (including scrollable area) or just the area currently visible. And then:
  • Modify the screenshot using the built-in editor
  • Upload it to screenshot-program.com where it will be hosted completely free
  • Save it to your computer
  • Copy it to the clipboard
  • Open it in an external editor that you specify
• Built-in advanced editor
• Add shapes, drawings, lines, or text to any screenshot
• Crop, blur, convert to grayscale, invert colors, or add a glowing border to any area you select on the screenshot
• Color-picker available when selecting colors, which makes it easy to match any color on a screenshot
• One-click screenshots are available using the settings you specify in the options.
• You can automatically have a website URL added as a removable object to each screenshot

The editor aims to keep things simple, but it has a lot of different controls that take a little getting used to. Here is what the editor looks like:

(Click to Enlarge)

–Overview–

The Firefox extension that you choose to use for taking screenshot really depends on what you’re looking to accomplish. If you just want to share a screenshot with someone I recommend Abduction because I found it to be a fast and efficient way to save a screenshot. However, if you need to point things out and need some more advanced tools FireShot will better suit you. Whichever you choose you really can’t go wrong!

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on January 13, 2010 by CyberNet.

The demand for parental controls on computers is rapidly growing as kids continue to get their own personal machines. That’s why Microsoft started to include some of that functionality in Vista and Windows 7, but it is generally pretty basic when it comes down to limiting the amount of time a user can spend on the machine.

Romaco Timeout is a free application that is a little different than other parental controls in that it doesn’t focus on filtering out web content or controlling what games a user can play. All it does is enforce usage time limits in a variety of different ways:

• Daily quota: Specify how much time the user is allowed to spend on the computer on any given day.
• Session time limit: Specify how much time the user is allowed to spend on the computer each time they login.
• Online usage restrictions: Specify how much time the user can spend online before their browser is locked. It considers you “online” when you have a web browser running. If you close the browser the quota will be paused.

If you’re going to use Romaco Timeout I highly recommend grabbing the Beta version because it has some extra features and bug fixes that previous versions don’t have. I don’t expect everyone to go out and grab an app like this, but there quite a few scenarios where I could see this being useful. The obvious use is if you have kids, but it may also be helpful for shared computers and/or kiosks that are in public places (which is where the “per-session” limits would really apply).

Romaco Timeout Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)
Thanks Tomas

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on April 18, 2008 by CyberNet.

Imagine sitting at a large round table over at AT&T trying to come up with ways to better your brand and service. Everyone is expressing their minds, and one individual says “how about we design a web browser?” There’s a slight chuckle in the room, and then everyone begins looking at each other with a slightly puzzled look on their faces. Finally, someone says “Hell, I’ve got nothing better. Why not!“

That may not be exactly how it went down, but that’s the best explanation that I can give as to why AT&T would actually develop a web browser… especially one called Pogo. It’s currently in a private Beta, but even if you do manage to get in you’ll need a computer with a minimum of a 1.6GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, and a video card with at least 256MB of VRAM. Now that is a power hungry browser if I’ve ever seen one.

Ars Technica managed to get their hands on the browser. They quickly got frustrated when trying to find a machine that could actually run the browser:

We tested Pogo on a dual-processor, dual-core AMD Opteron 2210 with 1.80GHz CPUs, 2GB of RAM, and a NVIDIA Quadro FX 560 video card with 128MB of VRAM running Windows XP. On this machine, the remainder of Pogo’s features actually displayed, but did not do much else. We found that with even minor use, the browser slowed to a crawl, animations built into the UI were laggy, and at some times, unusable. Performance was extremely poor when even trying to perform basic functions like clicking UI elements.

So what makes the browser need so many resources? There is a slick 3D interface for navigating through the browser’s history as well as bookmarks (screenshot:history on top, bookmarks on the bottom):

These are the resource-intensive tasks that Ars was having problems running on the machines that didn’t quite meet the minimum requirements. While they do look awfully pretty I can’t actually see myself using those methods of navigation very often.

Pogo is a Mozilla-based browser, and so you may be wondering where the tabs are. Notice the tiny thumbnails along the bottom of the browser? Yep, that is the tab bar which completely supports drag-and-drop rearranging.

I did sign up for the Beta, but I don’t know that I’d install it even if I do get in. It does look cool, but it doesn’t sound like it’s all that functional as it stands right now. If you want to see more of how it all works checkout this video demo assembled by AT&T.

Pogo Browser Homepage
Ars Technica Review
Thanks to “S” for the tip!

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on May 07, 2008 by CyberNet.

One of the really nice things that Microsoft added to Vista was three different power plans, and also provided the ability to create your own if you so desire. By default the operating system ships with a power saver, balanced, and high performance plan. I can really attest to the power saver plan squeezing every bit of juice out of your battery, but most people will likely never switch out of the “balanced” plan that Microsoft has set as the default.

Naturally you would expect performance to suffer when using the balanced plan when compared to the high performance plan. After all, the balanced plan is more friendly on your pocketbook and the environment. Interestingly enough that’s not turning out to be the case according to some recent CrystalMark benchmarks by PocketTables (here and here).

What they found was that Vista’s balanced power plan beat out high performance on two different machines that they tested. You would expect it to be pretty darn close since the balanced plan is supposed to kick up performance when it’s needed, but to flat-out beat the high performance plan in nearly every test is just crazy.

If you’ve been using the high performance power plan maybe it’s time you kick it “down” to the balanced option. 😉

[via jkOnTheRun]

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

3D printing can help you create prototypes or mockups quickly. Or should I say relatively quickly – it can take a 3D printer hours to print even moderately-sized objects. To speed things up, students from the Human-Computer Interaction Group at the Hasso Plattner Institute tested adding LEGO to their workflow.

Researchers Stefanie Mueller, Tobias Mohr, Kerstin Guenther, Johannes Frohnhofen and Patrick Baudisch call their project faBrickation. The idea is to print just the crucial parts of a prototype, then build the rest out of LEGO. To do that, they wrote a program called faBrickator, where they can open 3D models…

…and “Legofy” it at the press of a button.

Then they just mark the parts of the model that will be printed…

…and build the rest with LEGO using instructions generated by faBrickator.

They can also use faBrickator to go back to a 3D model, modify it and then print only the parts that were changed, once again saving time.

The group claims that on average, faBrickation lets them make prototypes nearly two and a half times faster than using 3D printing alone. I wonder if they can make a reverse faBrickation scanner, so laypeople can start making a “3d model” out of LEGO instead of a modeling software, scan that LEGO model then run the resulting model through faBrickation.

[via Hasso Plattner Institute via PSFK]