Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on April 13, 2007 by CyberNet.

DivShare is a site that we watch very closely because they are one of the services that is unmatched on the Web. They are very active in keeping the service updated which is something I see as being very important. For example, in just the past few weeks they have managed to release DivShare Groups as well as redesign the Dashboard to make it much more user friendly.

Most video sharing services will normally compress your video down to 320 x 240 pixels, while DivShare’s new video service aims to nearly double that by making the maximum resolution 560 pixels. An example video has been posted here, but I noticed that the code they give you to embed the video in your site is slightly smaller in height/width:

You could easily modify the code yourself to make the video you’re embedding equal to the maximum resolution of 560 pixels in width. I think it would be a little better if they offered options for you to select which resolution you want to embed in your site.

One thing that may appeal to a lot of people is that you don’t have to register in order to upload videos with DivShare. When creating the video service they wanted to make sure that they kept their standards, so besides for not having to register you can also download all of the videos in a single click…and it will be in the format that it was uploaded!

They currently support MOV, AVI, WMV, MPG and ASF file formats with Real Video and 3GP support on the way. They also have a way to convert any of the videos that you have already uploaded in a file format specified above:

We know that a lot of you already have videos online — in fact, a large portion of our most popular files are already videos. To create a Flash version of a video that’s already on DivShare, just log in to your account and visit your video’s download page. From there, you’ll see a dialog with a link that says “Convert My Video Now” — click that, and you’re on your way! Conversion will take a few minutes, and you’ll get an e-mail when it’s all ready to go.

So we know that the resolution is higher than most video services, but how about the 200MB upload limit? I looked up the limitation that a few of the most popular services have and here they are:

• Dailymotion: 150MB or 20 minutes
• DivShare: 200MB
• Google Video: Unlimited if using desktop uploader, otherwise 100MB
• Metacafe: 100MB
• Revver: 100MB
• YouTube: 100MB or 10 minutes

DivShare isn’t 100% done with the video service but they are looking for any feedback that you may have on it. So stop by their post and leave a comment letting them know what you think of it!

Thanks for the tip Radu!

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

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

Facebook is already in college classrooms these days when students become "bored" with the lecture going on, or "multi-task" by typing their notes and then catching up with Facebook at the same time.  While it may already be in the classrooms, it’s being used a bit differently in a Stanford classroom this semester as the focus of a new course. The course is called "Create Engaging Web Applications Using Metrics and Learning on Facebook" and will be offered primarily to computer science majors.

Essentially the Facebook site itself falls under what’s needed for course materials and according to the instructor, students will use it to "learn how to build and market user-friendly software." For someone who is interested in social media and software development, this is an ideal course to prep them for what they’ll experience when they leave college. They’ll also have the chance to make money as well because at the end of the quarter, students we’ll have the opportunity to show-off their project to investors.

There are two main projects that students (who will work in groups of three) will need to accomplish. First, students will develop any application that they feel will appeal to "most" Facebook users. The second project involves developing another application that would be focused on using Facebook for education purposes. I know, it’s hard to imagine Facebook could be used for educational purposes, but the example that Venture Beat gave was an application that could be used by students to share class notes with each other which would be extremely useful.

And of course with most any other class you take in college, the students will get graded.  This is the only part of the course that I’d say is questionable.  Students will be graded upon how many users they can get using their applications. To me, it sounds like it has the potential to turn into a popularity contest, however, I could be wrong.  The one way that I could see it as a great way to grade is if students take the time to actually "market" their application. One lesson I’m sure they could/should learn is not to underestimate the power of a blog.  If the groups making the applications are able to get some high-profiler blogs writing about them with genuine interest, I’d say that they’ve got an awesome shot at getting a great grade.

Considering that this course is focused around Facebook, it’s no surprise that they’ve created a Facebook group for class. You can check it out here.

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

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

One of the things you may have noticed with Flickr is that the photos will have another image overlaid on top of them called spaceball.gif (here is an example photo) This prevents you from copying the address to the image or being able to save it to your computer. If you try to save spaceball.gif to your computer all you’ll get is a 1×1 pixel image that has no content to it.

Today we’re going to show you how to remove the spaceball.gif overlay image on Flickr photos. It’s pretty easy to do in both Firefox and Opera…

–How do I Remove Spaceball.gif in Firefox?–

1. Install the Stylish extension if you haven’t done so already.
2. Create a new Style by right-clicking on the Status Bar icon.
3. Add whatever description you would like, but in the content area paste this:
    
   @-moz-document domain(flickr.com) {
img[src*="spaceball.gif"] {display:none !important;}
}
    
   

–How do I Remove Spaceball.gif in Opera?–

1. Go to Tools -> Advanced -> Blocked Content, and press the Add button.
2. Add this as the URL to block:
    
   *flickr.com/images/spaceball.gif
    
    

Thanks to the anonymous tipster who sent this in!

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on August 16, 2007 by CyberNet.

Mozilla launched a new service that’s currently in the testing phase. It’s goal is to make it easier for you to view websites, images, and video on any mobile device. Please give a warm welcome for Joey…

Project Joey brings the Web content you need most to your mobile phone by allowing you to easily send it to your device. You can quickly mark content that is important to you and have that content always available while using your mobile phone.

The premise is this: you can use Firefox to send text clippings, pictures, videos, RSS content, and Live Bookmarks to your phone through the Joey Server. The Joey Server transcodes and keeps all of the content up-to-date. You can then use your phone’s browser or the Joey application on your phone to view and manage what you have uploaded.

So Joey is pretty much a Firefox extension for you to use that sends information to the Joey servers. Then you can access the information at anytime on your phone or PDA in a mobile-friendly format. It’s a nice idea, but it does require that you plan ahead of time what you’ll need access to. For that reason I think I’ll pass on this one.

If you don’t trust Mozilla with storing the information, that’s no problem because they walk you through what you’ll need to do to setup your own Joey server. It’s not quite as easy as point, click, and run, but I’m sure there are a few geeks out there who wouldn’t mind giving it a shot.

Joey Homepage
Sources: Lifehacker & Download Squad

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

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

When I logged into my Facebook account yesterday, I was surprised to see a box in the lower right corner welcoming me to Facebook Chat. It was surprising for a couple of reasons, but mainly because I knew I hadn’t signed up for chat and there it was telling me that I could start conversations. As it turns out, Facebook just started to roll-out this new Chat service to users and there’s not an option to opt-in, users just automatically have it (although not everybody will have the chat feature at this point).

After trying it out, it actually reminds me of how Google implemented Gmail Chat right inside Gmail except I believe Facebook has actually done a better job at integrating their chat. At this point it’s a basic chat without mounds of features. Conversations end up being tabbed across the bottom of the screen, and there’s even an option to “pop-out” the chat into a new window. Below is a screenshot of what a conversation would look like:

If for some reason you do not want your friends to see that you’re online, there’s an option to “Go Offline.” Settings include the option to show mini-feed stories right within chat and to “Keep online Friends Open.” Your chat window(s) will stay open as you navigate throughout Facebook and won’t close until you navigate away from the site. The chat feature adds a whole new element of communication to Facebook and could end up being a decent threat to other IM clients.

As though people don’t spend enough time already on Facebook, this addition could mean people spend even more time on the social network site keeping in touch with friends.The folks at Facebook have said that the process of rolling out Facebook Chat to all users will be a gradual process, so if you don’t have it quite yet, sit back and relax, you’ll have it soon.

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Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com