Hasta La Gadget!

Apr 20

WrapUp: Netflix $1 Million Prize Winner, Best Online Image Editors, and More

This article was written on July 06, 2009 by CyberNet.

Welcome to the WrapUp by CyberNet. This is a collection of news stories, downloads, and tips that we have collected over the last few days, but never got around to writing about. Don’t forget to send in your own tips, or just leave a comment on this page if you think you’ve got something we should include.

–News–

Windows 7 RTM on July 13th?
According to one tech site Windows 7 is expected to RTM on July 13th. That means a leaked copy of Windows 7 (final version) could be in the hands of pirates by the end of the month! I mean, um… who am I kidding, that’s exactly what I meant.

Symantec: Free Antivirus Apps Can’t Keep You Safe
Symantec is starting to warn customers that free antivirus apps won’t be enough to keep users safe. They say that they can’t keep up with what full-price suites, such as Norton, are capable of producing. Please, let’s not all rush to Symantec’s site at one time to buy Norton.

GDGT Launches for Extreme Gadget Freaks
A new gadget site has hit the web, but this one has done a lot to distinguish itself from the competition. This one focuses primarily on social geeks who want to build profiles complete with a list of gadgets they own. This is a great way to find the 13 other Zune owners out there. Kidding, I’m kidding… well, only somewhat kidding.

Google Enhances Labels in Gmail
If you’re a Gmail user I’m sure you’ve already noticed the enhanced label support… it’s hard to miss the big popup the first time opening your mailbox after Google enabled the feature. Kudos to them though. I really like being able to drag-and-drop labels, but even more importantly I love being able to hid the labels I hardly use. Now if they’d let me nest labels I’d be perfectly happy.

Windows 7 Family Pack Coming?
Microsoft hasn’t announced any special pricing for future Windows 7 owners, but while digging through the license agreement Ed Bott noticed a section geared towards those who purchase a “Family Pack.” It apparently lets you install the OS on up to three machines in your household, but there’s still no word on how much it will cost.

Winner of the $1 Million Netflix Prize
Three years ago Netflix started a competition saying that they would give $1 million to the first team that could improve their movie recommendation service by more than 10 percent. I’m not sure exactly how the 10 percent improvement was measured, but one team just barely crossed the threshold coming in at 10.05% better than their current system.

Windows 7 Gets “Apple Style” Guided Tours
Microsoft has decided that they need to show off Windows 7’s new features in a few short video tours. If you watch any of the videos you’ll notice that they have an Apple-esque feel to them, and overall I’d say they are pretty good. The only puzzling part about the videos are the characters that look as though they were pulled from the Sims?

–Tips, Tutorials, and Reviews–

Best Online Image Editors
Lifehacker has a nice roundup of five different online image editors. Many of them try their best to replicate the layout and functionality found in Photoshop, and a few come really close. If you’re looking for a way to edit photos online you should check out their article.

Disable Tab Tearing in Firefox
When I was testing early pre-release builds of Firefox 3.5 the tab tearing functionality was terrible. Tab tearing, yes, that’s where you drag a tab off the tab bar to have it open in a new window. This feature has been drastically improved since the early days where it seemed like just moving your mouse close to a tab caused it to tear off into a new window. It’s not that bad anymore, but I still hate it. Thankfully there’s an extension that will let you completely disable this functionality.

Mac-Style Stacks in Windows 7
People are taking a liking to the new Taskbar in Windows 7, and it almost appears to have reignited the development of cool apps. This is a good example of that. Basically it lets you have some Stack-like functionality in your awesome bar.

Make Windows Live Messenger Minimize to Tray
In Windows 7 you’ll quickly find out that Windows Live Messenger no longer minimizes to the System Tray. Instead it falls down to the Taskbar. Don’t worry, there’s a simple trick if you still want it to go to the System Tray.

Opera Unite Walkthrough
If you still haven’t started playing around with Opera Unite there’s no way for you to know just how easy it is. This quick tutorial is a good demonstration of that, and it shows off some of the functionality Opera Unite brings to your machine.

Postbox Now Has Extensions
Postbox is a desktop email client that is based off of Mozilla Thunderbird, and I have to say that it has a lot of features that are way better than Thunderbird. The one downside was that it always lacked support for extensions, but not any longer. The list of compatible add-ons is rather short at the moment, but I’m sure it will be growing. I’m so happy to see someone take Thunderbird to the next level, because it doesn’t seem like Mozilla is.