Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on July 31, 2012 by CyberNet.

Over a month ago I wrote about a Beta version of Dexpot that was packed with some very polished features that emulated the Spaces and Exposé features from the Mac OS. The developers have since put the finishing touches on the app, and have pushed it out the door after 3-years of development. The Spaces clone, pictured above, provides an interactive way to manage multiple virtual desktops. When you first enter this view, called the “Full-Screen Preview”, you’ll see all of your virtual desktops in a grid layout. Just start dragging windows between desktops to see how well Dexpot handles itself.

When in the Full-Screen Preview you can also tile the windows on any of the desktops by right-clicking on a particular desktop. Alternatively if you right-click in the space separating the desktops it will tile the windows in all of the desktops. If you find yourself tiling the windows every time you open the virtual desktop manager there’s a handy little trick to have that automatically happen. All you have to do is assign a keyboard shortcut to the “Window Catalog (all desktops)” option in the settings, and then use that shortcut for pulling up your virtual desktops. This is where you’ll find the setting:

While in the settings you should also check out the plugins section of Dexpot. I enabled the MouseEvents plugin which lets me specify actions to be performed when my mouse travels to the corners of my monitor. For example, I can have it execute the “Window Catalog (all desktops)” action that I mentioned above any time I move my mouse to the upper-left corn of the screen.

Aside from the virtual desktop management Dexpot also has a great Exposé clone built in. They call the feature a “Window Catalog” which may not make it immediately obvious what it does, but it’s basically the best Exposé clone I’ve ever used on Windows. If you’ve been itching for an alternate way to switch between applications Dexpot probably just became even more valuable to you.

Dexpot Homepage (Windows only; Free for Personal Use)

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on May 15, 2007 by CyberNet.

The Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) was going on for the last few hours and I watched it live online. It isn’t the most exciting thing in the world, and doesn’t have the cool demonstrations that are normally found at the Consumer Electronics Show in January of each year, but there was still some interesting information mentioned that I thought I would cover here.

Bill Gates has been the primary speaker and introduces everyone for each of the demonstrations. To begin the show he talked about Vista’s sales which, as of last week, have consisted of 40 million copies of Windows Vista being sold. He continued to mention that the sales are twice as fast as the Windows XP launch (which we already knew), but he also added that 78% of the sales were from premium editions of the operating system.

He then started to show off some of the Ultra Mobile PC’s and seemed to really focus on those, especially the ones equipped with SideShow. Gates explained how a large focus of Vista was on making the operating system look good on both a 3–inch display and a setup with three 30–inch monitors. Some of the Ultra Mobile PC’s that he talked about can be seen here.

Next Bill Gates invited Glenn Ward and Jim Barber to the stage to demonstrate Windows Rally. In the demo they showed how easy it was to connect a digital camera, game console, wireless access point, and digital photo frame to the computer in the “time it would take to pop a bag of popcorn.” The hardware devices need to be enabled with this technology, and once it is we should be presented with an effortless way to connect devices. They even went as far as to stream an HD show using a wireless media extender, all of which was setup and connected during the demonstration. The whole time I was thinking that something was bound to fail, but it went surprisingly perfect.

Bill Gates then introduced Steven Leonard who discussed Windows Home Server. He showed an example Home Server device that will be offered by HP (pictured to the right) and how easy it would be to add more storage to the unit.

Steven also went on to demonstrate being able to remotely connect to the server, and it reminded me of accessing files via an FTP, but the interface was much nicer and completely browser-based. He also mentioned that anyone purchasing Windows Home Server would get a free domain name through Windows Live, therefore making it easy to connect to your remote machine.

Windows Server Longhorn (view our Beta 3 screenshot gallery) also broke free of its codename today, and is now cleverly called Windows Server 2008. They said that they put a lot of work into coming up with a clever, and distinguishable name which is demonstrated in this brief 1–minute video.

A feature in Windows Server 2008 was demonstrated where an administrator can prevent certain USB devices from being used, such as a flash drive, but still allow things like a USB mouse to be plugged in. This is useful if the server has important data on it that shouldn’t leave the computer, and it was promoted as an alternative to pouring glue in the USB port to prevent users from having access to it.

Bill Gates came back to us to talk a little more about the progress of Windows and where the industry is headed. A big focus seemed to be on the convergence over to 64–bit software and operating systems over time, and presented the graph to the right. The graph demonstrates that both the server and desktop market is almost completely capable of running 64–bit operating systems since they have 64–bit compatible processors. The mobile market is still lagging behind a little, but there has been a huge jump from last year and there is expected to be another one by 2008. The reason Bill Gates stressed this so much is because the industry is only “half way there” when it comes to making compatible drivers and such to work on 64–bit operating systems.

Bill Gates left the stage for good this time as he welcomed Craig Mundie. The only cool thing that he really talked about was this virtual checkerboard that was simply a touch-screen device. You could setup real checkers on the board which the touch-screen would recognize as you move pieces and such.

Overall this WinHEC wasn’t nearly as exciting as some of the previous ones have been. Of course that is expected since Microsoft just released a new version of Windows a few months back. No information was given about what the next consumer version of Windows (codename Windows 7) will contain so it is currently left to speculation.

If you missed it, you can watch the WinHEC presentation at 100K, 300K, or 500K. The video is currently not available, but should be shortly for those that have about 2–hours to kill.

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on March 25, 2010 by CyberNet.

I take all kinds of videos from cameras that save the movies to a single file that is difficult to share with people who aren’t overly comfortable using a computer. When that happens I try to burn the videos to a DVD that they can watch it using any standalone DVD player, but this can be quite a pain depending on the original format of the video.

The free DVDStyler takes the hassle out of the DVD burning thanks to the wide variety of formats and simple-to-use interface. You can throw multiple videos onto a single DVD (each one can actually be a different format), integrate a menu, and you’ll be ready to roll. Here’s a rundown on some of the available features:

• Creation and burning DVD video with interactive menus
• Support of AVI, MOV, MP4, MPEG, OGG, WMV and other file formats support of MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, Xvid, MP2, MP3, AC-3 and other audio and video formats
• Support of multi-core processor
• Allows using MPEG and VOB files without reencoding, see FAQ
• Allows put files with different audio/video format on one DVD (support of titleset)
• User-friendly interface with support of drag & drop
• Flexible menu creation on the basis of scalable vector graphic
• Import of image file for background
• Placing of buttons, text, images and other graphic objects anywhere on the menu screen
• Changing the font/color and other parameters of buttons and graphic object
• Scaling of buttons and graphic objects
• Coping of any menu object or whole menu
• DVD scripting

IMPORTANT: Don’t blindly install this app. It will try to install a third-party tool during the setup process unless you explicitly say you don’t want it. You’ll be fine as long as you don’t click “Next” during the install routine without actually looking at what you’re agreeing to.

DVDStyler Homepage (Windows/Linux; Freeware)

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

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

Tutorial Thursday

Grouping similar Taskbar buttons in Windows is either a feature you love or hate. It’s nice because when your Taskbar starts to get full it will start grouping applications together to conserve space. For example, if you have 10 Firefox windows open at a time they will only show up as a single button on the Taskbar if you have grouping enabled.

This may not only help reduce clutter in your Taskbar, but for some people it could help maintain their sanity. The only thing is that the grouping of similar buttons will only occur once crowding sets in on the Taskbar. Don’t worry, it’s actually possible to let the feature kick in regardless of how full your Taskbar is. Just look at this screenshot I took after applying the tweak I’m about to show you:

It grouped the two Windows Explorer windows into a single button despite there being nothing else on the Taskbar. Feel free to proceed if you’re running Windows XP or Vista…

–Customizing Taskbar Grouping–

1. To simplify the process we’ve created this registry file that you can download (advanced users can find the registry information toward the end of the article). After you download that go ahead and extract the file. If you double-click on it right away it will set the Taskbar to start grouping when two or more of the same applications are open.

   If you want to change it to, for example, group only when there are three or more of the same applications open you’ll need to edit the file. To do this right-click on the TaskbarGroupSize.reg file you downloaded, and choose the Edit option. You would replace the “2″ with a “3″ in this case resulting in the line looking like this:

   "TaskbarGroupSize"=dword:00000003

   Similarly setting the value to “0″ will force the Taskbar grouping to return to the default method.

2. Now you need to enable the setting. If you feel like killing some time you could restart your computer or logoff, but it’s probably easier to just re-enable the option in the Taskbar properties. To do this right-click on the Taskbar and choose the Properties option. Uncheck the Group similar taskbar buttons option if it is already checked, and then click Apply. Now check the Group similar taskbar buttons box, and click OK:
   
3. The feature should now be enabled. If you didn’t modify the Registry setting in Step 1 you should see that any two similar windows will be grouped together regardless of how much space is being occupied in the Taskbar:
   
4. You can go back and modify the Registry setting in Step 1 at anytime. Running it again will merely overwrite the current value, and setting it to “0″ will return the grouping back the Windows default method.

–Advanced Users–

If you’re an advanced user and know your way around the Windows Registry you can create the necessary value yourself. You’ll need to navigate to this location:

HKEY_CURRRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Advanced

Then you’ll need to create a new DWORD (32-bit) value called TaskbarGroupSize there. A value of “0″ will disable the feature, while a larger numerical setting (2 or higher) will initiate the grouping when that number of similar windows is open.

–Overview–

So now I’m curious… how many of you use Taskbar grouping in the first place? I generally don’t use it, but I know a lot of people who do. Drop us a comment below with your thoughts.

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on January 17, 2006 by CyberNet.

For everyone trying out the Windows Vista 5270, you might have realized that it failed to work after January 1, 2006. Microsoft released a patch but you had to be a member of Connect in order to get it. The patch has finally been posted for other people, who aren’t members (not posted by Microsoft of course). This patch will fix your Media Center Edition (MCE) issues that you are experiencing.

Some people have claimed that it does not work, while others say that it does work. It could be possible that some people did not follow the directions correctly. Here is what Microsoft has posted for instructions (The download links are located after the instructions):

Update to Resolve Expired Notification When Launching Media Center in Windows Vista December 2005 CTP – 32bit (English)

Date/Time Posted
2006-01-05 19:25:34 (UTC)

File
en_MC_Patch_windows_vista_ctp_december_2005_32bit.exe Self-Extracting Executable

File Size
1 MB

SHA-1 Hash
62540b69e16521ac117f3dc870e7ee69357f49fd

Description
If you try to open Media Center or access any Media Center functionality in the Windows Vista December 2005 CTP, the following notification will display: This Trial Version has Expired and Can No Longer Be Used.

Please install this update to enable use of Media Center and Media Center functionality in Windows Vista December 2005 CTP.

Important: Only install this update on the Windows Vista December 2005 CTP. This update will break all previous versions.

Instructions
This self-extracting compressed file contains the entire product contents. Click on the Download link to download the file. Save the file to a temporary folder (Example: C:\TEMP). After download is complete, run the file to extract the setup files into a temporary folder (Example: C:\TEMP\SETUP). When the extraction is completed, the compressed file can be erased to free up space. You can now install the software by starting the setup program (Example: C:\TEMP\SETUP\SETUP.EXE). Note: the actual setup program name will vary.

Download For 32-bit Vista
Download For 64-bit Vista
News Source: ieXbeta Board

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