Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on March 28, 2011 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–

NASA Demonstrates Photoshop Process for Hubble Images
Those jaw-dropping photos that come out of the Hubble Space Telescope takes hours for someone to assemble before they are posted for you to enjoy. The process involves combining images from Hubble (taken in grayscale), assigning colors to them, and repairing any artifacts that would detract from the overall beauty of the image. This video will give you some idea of what’s involved.

BlackBerry Playbook Will Be Compatible with Android Apps
There were murmurs a few months ago of RIM introducing Android app compatibility on their Playbook tablet prior to its release in April, and it looks like those rumblings came to fruition with this official announcement.

Firefox 4 Delivers 7.1M Downloads in First 24-hours
The big Firefox 4 release happened early last week, and it was met with success as 7.1 million people rushed to try out the new browser in the first 24-hours of availability. There were also another 3 million users that were running the release candidate, and were upgraded to the final version during the same time period.

Yahoo! Search Direct Provides a Better Search Experience
Yahoo! is working on a new way (currently in beta) to present users with results before they actually execute a search. In some of my brief tests I have to admit they did a nice job with the way you can get things like weather, sports scores, and many other tidbits of information as you are typing your query.

Windows Phone 7 “NoDo” Update Released
Microsoft started rolling out the “NoDo” update for Windows Phone 7 that brings copy and paste, faster resume times, improved Marketplace search, and more to the Windows Phone platform.

Amazon Launches Appstore for Android
Amazon’s new Android Appstore has a leg up on the competition because they will be offering a paid app every day for free, and will pay the chosen developers 20% of the normal retail price out of their own pocket.

Sprint Integrating with Google Voice
I was really happy to see that Google is now working directly with carriers to bring Google Voice to the masses, and they are starting with Sprint. Their direct integration, which will be rolling out soon, will let Sprint customers use their existing phone number with Google Voice without having to port the number over. Alternatively you can also replace your Sprint number with your Google Voice number.

AT&T to Acquire T-Mobile for $39 Billion
AT&T has officially confirmed that they will be acquiring T-Mobile USA for $39 billion. The deal is expected to close within the next year if all necessary approvals go through.

–Tips, Tutorials, and Reviews–

Increase Windows 7 Taskbar Previews
Are the Windows 7 Taskbar thumbnails a little too small for you? This free (and portable) tool will let you increase the size to something a little more useful. Unfortunately the size is not customizable.

Google Spreadsheets Adds Filtering
It has taken a little while, but Google Spreadsheets will finally let you filter columns of data. This is a feature that I use in large Excel spreadsheets all the time, and was frequently something I found Google Spreadsheets lacking. This could very well be the stepping stone that gets me entirely moved over to online document management.

Use Bing Maps to View 148 Mall Maps
Have you ever gone to a mall and wondered where you should park to optimize your path from the car to that one store you are heading to? Bing has integrated 148 US mall maps directly into Bing Maps so that you can zoom into mall and see the actual store layout. You can then use that information to figure out where the best place is to park. It even works if you switch to a non-angled satellite view making it even easier to see exactly where the parking spots are.

How to Make Ubuntu Look Like Windows 7
This guide walks you through installing a Windows 7 theme on Ubuntu, and the end result looks pretty good.

Lifehacker Launches Free Video Podcast
Lifehacker rolled out a video podcast last week that serves as a nice way to see some of the tips they cover on the site demonstrated by their own staff.

–Downloads–

• Adobe Air 2.6.0.19120 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• BurnAware Free 3.1.6 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• CCleaner 3.05.1408 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Dropbox 1.1.5 ^Beta [Homepage] [Mirror]
• FileZilla 3.4.0 ^RC1 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Firefox 4.0 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Flash Player 10.2.153.1 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Foobar2000 1.1.6 ^{Beta 1} [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Foxit Reader 4.3.1.0323 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Google Chrome 12.0.712.0 ^Beta [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Miranda 0.9.18 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Opera 11.10.2064 ^Beta [Homepage] [Mirror]
• SeaMonkey 2.0.13 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• uTorrent 2.2.1.25130 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• VLC Media Player 1.1.8 [Homepage] [Mirror]

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Great news for people who love to read but wish the experience involved more advertising: an Amazon executive has announced the ad-supported Kindle, originally slated for a May 3 release, is going out to customers nearly a week early. Kindle with Special Offers, as it’s affectionately known, will ship out April 27, loaded with timely adverts from your favorite brands, including General Motors, Proctor & Gamble and Visa – those are your favorite brands, aren’t they? In exchange for sponsored screensavers and ads at the bottom of your home screen, you’ll get a latest generation WiFi-only Kindle for a only $114 – sorry, offer available in the US only. Act now, as Amazon promises it will never just give these away.

Ad-supported Kindle ships early, fans of grayscale advertising rejoice originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Apr 2011 06:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If the Droid Charge has you thinking that Verizon LTE phones have to cost an arm, a leg, and an extra $100, you’ll want to take a look at this. Amazon Wireless is chopping the Thunderbolt, Verizon’s original 4G bad boy, down to the extremely palatable price of $130 on contract, valid for new Verizon subscribers who buy the phone between now and midnight Pacific Time on Monday. The 4.3-inch, Android 2.2 smartphone from HTC impressed us greatly with the 4G speeds it was able to pull down in our review, and while those might not remain quite so spectacular once that network starts loading up more customers, a price like the present one makes it an excellent proposition in the short term. The source link is where you’ll find it.

HTC Thunderbolt drops to $130 for new Verizon customers at Amazon over the weekend originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Apr 2011 01:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After having already penetrated the UK’s e-book market last year, Amazon has now launched the German Kindle Store, bringing more than 650,000 titles to Europe’s most populous country. With today’s launch, the German Kindle Store instantly becomes Germany’s biggest e-bookstore, with some 25,000 German-language titles, thousands of free classics, and a similarly bountiful collection of independent newspapers and magazines. Customers will also be able to purchase the latest Kindle and Kindle 3G models directly from Amazon.de, along with a whole new suite of free, German-language Kindle apps for iPhone, iPad, PC and Android platforms. Germany’s writers and publishers, meanwhile, can use the Kindle Direct Publishing service to make their works instantly available on the new store, where, if they’re lucky, they may get to pocket some handsome royalties, as well. Full press release after the break.

Continue reading Amazon launches German Kindle Store with 650,000 titles and lots of long words

Amazon launches German Kindle Store with 650,000 titles and lots of long words originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 08:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon's Lending Library will let both Kindle owners and Kindle app users access e-book titles from their local library. Photo: Amazon.com

Sometimes you need a book, but you don’t necessarily want to buy it.

That’s what libraries were great for (remember those?). You could check out a book — say, if you needed it for a research paper, or weren’t sure if it was something you actually wanted to shell out money for — and then you return it.

Dealing with e-books has made the whole process much more simple (in general), but sometimes, you still don’t actually want to buy that e-book you’re only going to use once.

Solution: Amazon has announced that they’ll be launching a Lending Library so Kindle owners and Kindle app users can check out books from their local library.

In December, Amazon added two-week Kindle-to-Kindle lending for its users, but it required publisher approval for titles to be included in the lending program, and wouldn’t allow the e-book owner to access the title until the two-week trial was up. The Nook had a similar-style lending feature before that.

The Lending Library program will debut with over 11,000 library participants and will work with both Kindle devices and free Kindle apps. To help accomplish this, Amazon is working in partnership with a company called OverDrive, which provides access to digital content for school and public libraries.

One great feature about the program is that you’ll be able to take notes in the margins, like a real book. When your rental is up, the notes will disappear from the library’s copy because they’re stored privately. But if you check out the e-book out again, or decide to purchase it, your annotations will reappear along with any bookmarks you made.

Amazon’s Kindle Lending Library is set to launch “later this year.”

Kindle Library Lending [Amazon via RWW]