Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on November 10, 2007 by CyberNet.

Weekend Website

The biggest shopping day of the year in the United States is quickly approaching! There’s just 13 days left until Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving when people head out in herds to find the best deals possible.  It’s not unusual for people to be waiting in  line hours before a store opens, or to be packed into stores like a can of sardines, standing shoulder to shoulder. Big draw items are great way for retailers to get people into the store, and these items typically cause lots of rushing, grabbing, shoving and pushing. If you’re wanting a great deal though, you’ll need to know where to go. This means that you’ll need to view the ads for each store, but the problem is, stores don’t release these ads until Thanksgiving giving shoppers less than 24 hours to get their game-plan figured out.

Today we’re going to talk about a few sites on the web that will keep you up to date with all of the latest ads for stores as they get leaked so you don’t have to wait until Thanksgiving. Sites like BFADS.net already have ads for Sears, ToysRUs, Office Max, Old Navy, and more. If one of your highlights each year is always the day-after-Thanksgiving bargain that you get, you’ll want to check these sites daily between now and November 23rd.

BFADS.net

BFads.net is one of the best Black Friday sites on the web which is consistently updated as they get the ads for each different store.  For example, on Wednesday they posted the ad for Office Max. Not only do they list the items from each ad, for some of the items they offer an “Ad scan” or an image of the item for sale right from the ad.  Additional information they provide is whether or not a sale item is only available as an early bird special, or if a rebate is required.They also allow visitors to the site the opportunity to rate an item on whether or not it’s a good deal.

Features:

• Ad Scans Available in .ZIP format or .PDF format
• Memebership – sign up for a free membership and save a shopping list on their site, or post and reply in their new community message boards
• Mailing List – as they update their site with new deals, you can receive an email update
• RSS – Several different RSS feeds are offered so that you can keep track of the latest Black Friday deals right from your favorite RSS reader
• They provide the hours for when a sale starts and ends on Black Friday for each of the stores that they list
• Get updates on your mobile phone

Best/Worst Rated Items

Those who get up early to get a Black Friday deal want to be sure that they’re getting up for a good reason. They need to know where the best deals are, and where they should stay away from.  Bfads.net allows users to view the best rated items as well as the worst rated items grouped by either store, category, or all items. For example, one of the best rated items at Office Max is a HP Photosmart C7180 Wireless 4-in-1 printer for $149.99  while one of the worst rated items from the same store is a Sandisk Sansa e250 2GB MP3 Player for $69.99

Navigation

Navigating the site is super simple, and it’s easy to keep up with the newest activity.  On the right side of the page, they list the newest items added.  For last Wednesday, the newest activity included 63 items added to Office Max, 68 items added to PepBoys, and 37 items added to Walgreens. As Black Friday draws closer and more ads are leaked, the “newest activity” section will prove to be very beneficial for those seeking out the best deals.

Black Friday @ GottaDeal.com

Another great site that is very similar to BFADS.net is BlackFriday.gottadeal.com. If I had to choose between one site over the other, I’d pick BFADS.net, simply for the interface.  I like the look better, but GottaDeal still has all of the information that you’d be looking for. They too let you know if items are only available as an early bird special or if they have a picture of the actual ad.

Features:

• Message boards so that people can discuss the hot deals they find along with store specific discussions
• Come across an ad? Submit it to their site and they’ll ad it to the list
• Subscribe to their RSS feed for updates
• Receive mobile updates
• Receive email alerts
• View deals based upon categories like computers, televisions, and more

Latest News Archive

One of the things that I like about this site is their latest news archive.  Anytime that they get a new ad, they post an article about it. Viewing their latest news will give you a quick glimpse at what’s going on.

Other Sources

• Mr. Cheap Stuff – Keep an eye out for this one.  Last year they posted ads that had been leaked before Black Friday. The site hasn’t been updated yet, but I imagine it will be shortly within the next week.
• BlackFriday.info – They claim to be the “official” site for Black Friday ads, but all of the others claim this as well.  Just like the others, they post leaked ads as they receive them and give you a heads-up on where the good deals are at. They too offer and RSS feed as well as the option to sign-up for an email when a new ad is posted.

If you know of any other great resources to keep on top of the Black Friday sales, let us know!

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on October 29, 2007 by CyberNet.

Last week Gmail launched free IMAP support, which was one of the most user-requested features. We were fortunate and got the IMAP access to show up in our account simply by logging out and logging back in, but some of my friends are still sitting around waiting for it to show up in their accounts. Google has said that it will take about a week to roll it out to everyone, which means all accounts should have access to IMAP by the end of the month (on Wednesday).

Since the launch of IMAP support I’ve received several questions from friends and readers wondering how it all works, and why they should use it. Lifehacker has a killer article that walks you through using Thunderbird with Gmail’s IMAP, and so I thought I would just give a quick rundown on the important points such as setting it up.

–IMAP vs. POP–

IMAP, unlike POP3, supports two-way communication between the email client and Gmail. If you read/delete a message in, lets say Outlook, the same action will be taken on the message in your Gmail account. If you put an email in a folder, for example “Personal”, in Outlook it will also be labeled as “Personal” on Gmail. I think you get the gist.

For a lot of people IMAP is just better because you don’t have to manage your email in two different places. Although some people still prefer to use POP because they know that their messages are still accessible in the event that they permanently delete it from their email client.

–How to Enable Gmail IMAP–

As of right now Gmail is still rolling out IMAP access to their users, but they plan on it being done around Wednesday, October 31st. They require that you set your interface language to “English (US)” in order to use the IMAP access, and when it becomes available this is how you can enable it:

1. Log in to your Gmail account.
2. Click Settings at the top of any Gmail page.
3. Click Forwarding and POP/IMAP.
4. Select Enable IMAP.
5. Click Save Changes.

–Setup your Email Client–

Setting up the IMAP access is not all that different from setting up a POP account, but there are some address and port changes you need to be aware of. Here are the general settings that you’ll need:

Google has more detailed setup instructions available for the most popular email clients:

• Apple Mail
• Blackberry
• iPhone
• Outlook 2003
• Outlook 2007
• Outlook Express
• Symbian S60
• Thunderbird 2.0
• Windows Mail
• Windows Mobile 6

–How Gmail IMAP Works–

*IMAP translates labels with a forward slash (/) into a folder hierarchy like you see in your computer’s file system. If you have a label such as ‘Family/Friends,’ you may want to reconsider your naming schemes because your IMAP client will display it as a folder named ‘Family’ with a subfolder named ‘Friends.’

**If you delete a message from your inbox or one of your custom folders in your IMAP client, it will still appear in [Gmail]/All Mail. Why’s that? In most folders, deleting a message simply removes that folder’s label from the message, including the label identifying the message as being in your inbox. [Gmail]/All Mail shows all of your messages, whether or not they have labels attached to them. If you want to delete a message from all folders, move it to the [Gmail]/Trash folder. If you delete a message from [Gmail]/Spam or [Gmail]/Trash, it will be deleted permanently.

–Applying Multiple Labels–

Managing your email can be a bit tricky since Gmail uses labels and almost all email clients use folders. Naturally if you move an email to a folder in your email client, it will have the same label applied on Gmail. But how can you add more than one label to an email?

It’s actually fairly simple. Copy a message, instead of moving it, to each folder corresponding to the labels you want to have applied. Gmail will recognize this action and apply multiple labels to the same message.

–What Doesn’t Gmail IMAP Support–

From first glance it may seem like Gmail’s IMAP service supports everything that you’ll need, but there are still a few things that have not been implemented:

• \Answered and \Recent flags on messages.
• Folder subscriptions. All folders are always in the ‘Subscribed’ list.
• Substring search. All searches are assumed to be words.
• Searching arbitrary headers. Only some headers are available for searches: From/CC/BCC/To/Subject.
• There is no SIEVE interface to Gmail filters.
• Only plain-text LOGIN over SSL tunneled connections are supported.

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on September 28, 2007 by CyberNet.

I can’t believe Full Circle Magazine is already on issue 5, but it’s true. They are even planning on starting a podcast which will add an entirely new dimension to an already great magazine.

In this issue I was excited to see their four-page review of Gutsy Gibbon (a.k.a. Ubuntu 7.10), which happened to just roll out in Beta form earlier today. What actually turned out to be the most interesting article in the magazine, however, was a review of a game that costs $19.95 to purchase. It’s called Bridge Construction Set (for Windows, Linux, and Macs), and the whole point is to build bridges that you stress test. I don’t buy or play games very often, but being an engineer I have to admit that it sounds kind of fun. 🙂

I’ve converted this issue of Full Circle Magazine into a JPEG image for those of you who don’t want to download the PDF, and here’s a quick overview of what issue #5 has in it:

• Fluxbuntu – Step-by-step Install
• How-To:
• Report Bugs with LaunchPad
• CoLoCo Edubuntu Presentation
• From VMware to VirtualBox
• Learning Scribus Pt.5
• Review of Bridge Construction Kit
• Preview of Gusty Gibbon
• Top 5 Strategy Games
• Freecol
• FreeCiv
• Glest
• Bos Wars
• Lincity-NG
• Letters, Q&A, My Desktop, My PC, the new My Opinion column, and more!

Read previous issues of Full Circle Magazine
Thanks to toe_head2001 for the tip!

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on July 11, 2007 by CyberNet.

Okay, so maybe Google isn’t exactly an advocate for video piracy, but they don’t seem to be taking the drastic measures needed to keep copyrighted videos off of their service. The National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) posted an article criticizing Google’s effort (or lack thereof) for stopping copyrighted videos from appearing on the Google Video site. They pointed out that:

Internet operations such as MySpace, TorrentSpy, DailyMotion and Break.com have set up filtering systems to block copyrighted material. Google is a $158 Billion company with arguably the most advanced search technology in the world. The argument that they cannot block pirated content because of technological or financial reasons is laughable.

The NLPC wasn’t just all talk either, they actually went to Google Video and scrounged up what they believe to be the top 50 full length movies, cable and television shows, and music concert videos. On average the 50 that they had chosen have been available an average of 168 days, and one Harry Potter video in particular has been up for well over a year.

They provide details for each of the items in their list, such as the year it was released, how many days it has been posted, and how many views it has had. However, they decided against linking to any of the videos for obvious reasons.

Google Video is such a haven for these pirated video uploads because they don’t have any restriction on the length or size of the movie (as long as you’re using the application to upload and not the web-based uploader). Not only that but Google makes it easy for users to download the original full-quality video that was posted by providing a "Download" link in the sidebar.

So how easy is it to find these videos? It’s kind of hit or miss, but I have found some techniques to be more successful than others. For example, if you were looking for Monty Python and the Holy Grail you could find it in just a few seconds by filtering your search results a little bit:

In that search I added "full" on to the end because most people who upload the movie will put that in the description to represent that it is the full video. I also added "site:google.com" onto the end because Google Video searches a lot of sites for videos now, but Google Video is one of the few with unlimited upload limits. So only allowing Google Video results will probably help you find what you’re looking for a little faster.

Lastly, I adjusted the duration of the videos by choosing "Long" from the drop-down box. This will make sure that only results over 20-minutes are shown, which helps eliminate the movie trailers that get posted.

My first attempt was successful as you can see from the list of results I received. The very first item on the list is the full Monty Python video, and using the download link in the sidebar I could even download the 693MB AVI file so that I could watch it at my leisure:

I tried searching for some other videos and came up empty handed, but this can be a good alternative if sites like Alluc and Peekvid don’t turn up the results you’re looking for.

Source: NLPC [via Mashable]

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

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

Over the last month, a new shiny blue bar has appeared off and on at the top of the Yahoo search results page.  I haven’t seen it yet for myself, but there are a handful of screenshots floating around the web. It appears this is something Yahoo is testing, presumably for further implementation.

From the looks of it, you might be able to customize the color. It’s currently blue, but it looks as though it would be easy for Yahoo to offer users a selection of colors that they could choose from, although the blue does look nice. It’s a pretty big change from the way that it currently looks, so what do you think?

(Click image to enlarge)

Source: Jim Boykin’s Blog

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com