Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on August 19, 2006 by CyberNet.

Weekend Warrior

Flight Aware is an extensive free flight tracking service that tracks flights live. Talk about impressive! Right now as I’m writing this, FlightAware is tracking 2979 aircraft with 27,215,352 total flights in their database. Just in the last 24 hours alone, they have tracked over 49,000 arrivals. It tracks both commercial and private traffic.

FlightAware has only been around since March of 2005 and according to their site, they track aroud 600,000 flights per day or around 7 requests per second. Their website hosts arrival and depature “boards” for users who would like to participate in a discussion.  Besides the convenient way of tracking flights, FlightAware also has a few additional features worth mentioning.

First, for pilots they provide helpful airport information like airport diagrams or airport procedures.  When searching, you can either search by a flight number, airport code, or just browse flights. Another cool feature is that you can become a registered user (again, for free) but you get some extra benefits.  These benefits include flight data history going back 4 months (7 days for non-registered users), and you can receive flight status alerts via email, AIM, or Jabber.

I clicked on a flight that had just departed Chicago’s O’Hare International headed for Los Angeles.  FlightAware pulls up a map showing me the path it’s taken along with information like the duration of the flight (4 hours and 9 minutes), and the progress of the flight. At the time that I tracked the flight, it was only 12 minutes into the flight and had 1,718 miles left to travel.  Additional information it provides is the departure time along with arrival time, speed, and altitude.

 FlightAware is a great source to gather aviation data or just browse at the insane amount of aircraft that are up in the air at a time. They have a good visual analysis of a day in United States airspace. Clearly, between 10:00 am and 6:00 pm air traffic is without a doubt the busiest time to travel.  If you have a few minutes this weekend, check it out.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on November 24, 2007 by CyberNet.

Weekend Website

Black Friday has already come and gone which means that it’s officially shopping season. Some of you have already spent some time trying to figure out what to buy friends and family which can be one of the most difficult tasks this time of year. Wouldn’t it be nice if you just had to look at a list online to see what everybody wanted? A fairly new site called Gifticus aims to make the whole gift-giving process a bit easier.

What is Gifticus?

Gifticus is a startup which will allow users to set up gift lists and share it with friends and family. This is great for any occasion where someone would be receiving or giving gifts like birthdays, Christmas, and other holidays. They also incorporate a social aspect to the site which we’ll explain in just a minute. 

On the Gifticus website, they describe themselves as:

Gifticus is the convenient, easy to use website that allows you to set up a gift list and share it with your friends. We make things as simple as possible – just create an account, login and begin your experience. No widgets to download, no waiting for fancy graphics to load next to each gift, just decide what you want and add it to your list. What could be simpler?

Getting Started

To get started using Gifticus, you’ll need to create an account. It’s the usual sign-up process and will allow you to keep a saved list of gifts that you can access and edit whenever you’d like. When you want to add a new gift to your list, you’ll just click “enter a new gift. Then you’ll enter in the name of the gift, a brief description, a link if there is one, the price range that it falls under, and the “priority” of the gift (low, average, high). I like how there’s the option to enter the price range so that if someone knows they want to spend a certain amount, they can look for an appropriate item.

The Social Side

Because it’s all about letting people know what gifts you’d like but also to see what other people want, there’s a social side to it.   You can create a friends list, and invite people to use the service. The more people you get using the service, the more useful it will be.

The Good, Bad, and Ugly

We’ll start with the good first.  One thing I like about Gifticus is simply the idea behind it. Many people around the world will be buying gifts for someone within the next month.  It’s always hard to know what to buy for someone which is why Gifticus could potentially be helpful.

Next, the bad. Searching for friends really isn’t very practical because you search for them by their first and last name. It would be much easier if they offered the option to search for friends via an email address. Another potential “bad” element is the fact that it’s so new and not many people know about it or use it.  This is one of those services that’s only useful if people actually use it.

One thing that could be viewed as good or ugly is the design. It’s simple and clean which could be good, but it almost feels as though it’s missing a design element like a real logo.  At first glance, their logo looks like it’s just Comic Sans font in bold which doesn’t give them any type of branding. It’s simple, but there’s not much to it.

Wrapping it up…

Is it the best site I’ve ever visited, no, but it’s still a site that some of you may find useful if you’re able to get a majority of your friends and family using it.  There’s always room for improvement, and I think there’s a lot that Gifticus could do to make the service even better. Instead of keeping wish lists all around the web for the different places you’re wanting something (some sites will let you create a “wish list” for their site), try Gifticus to get them all condensed into one, it just might make your holidays a little less stressful.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on November 23, 2006 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

One thing that I never understood about Windows was why there are preset locations for the system folders like “My Music” and “My Pictures”. Operating Systems are about giving users choices (well, sometimes) and this is something that should be easily adjustable. Microsoft must have realized that and they now offer an extremely easy solution for users to move the location wherever they want in Vista.

First of all, many of you may be wondering why I would ever want to move the location in the first place? On my desktop PC I have two hard drives: one for my operating system and another for my main files. The hard drive that stores my main files is very important because it keeps backups of the other computers (and our website) along with my pictures and music. I don’t want to waste space on my operating system hard drive when I already have the music and pictures located on the other hard drive…so basically I just want to link the “My Music” and “My Pictures” folders to the other hard drive.

For Windows XP you can dive into the Registry but I think it is much easier to use the TweakUI utility that Microsoft provides:

1. Download TweakUI from Microsoft
2. After you install it, go to your Start Menu and execute the application. Browse to the the My Computer->Special Folders option.
3. Select the drop-down menu and choose which folder you would like to change.
   
4. Click the Change Location button and select Yes to agree to the warning prompt that you will receive.
5. Choose the new location for your folder. Click OK to accept the new folder location and continue changing any other folders that you would like. You should also browse through the TweakUI program because it offers a lot of great things that you can change.

Microsoft actually got smart and made it possible to change this feature in Windows Vista without the need for additional software or Registry hacks. Look at how easy it is now:

1. Open up Windows Explorer and browse to the folder that you would like to change. In this example I am doing the Downloads folder.
2. Right-click on the folder and select the Properties option.
   
3. Go to the Location tab and change the location to wherever you would like.
   
4. Repeat this with all of the folders that you would like to change.

In both Windows XP and Windows Vista it is pretty easy but I am happy that Microsoft finally decided to integrate this option into the Vista user interface. I have noticed a lot of these subtle features as I have been using Windows Vista and I will continue to share them with you over the next few weeks. By the time the consumer version is released you will be all prepared and knowledgeable about these time-saving features.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on October 06, 2006 by CyberNet.

Free For All Friday

With Google revamping and polishing up Google Reader recently with a new look, some AJAX, and new features, I thought I’d point out a reader that has been around for a little while and uses AJAX technology nicely.  Feeds 2.0 strives to give you a more personalized reader which is something that makes them stand out above many others as a truly personalized Web 2.0 RSS Aggregator. Getting an account is free, however they’re currently in private beta (plans to go public soon).  I sent a request for an account and got my invitation in less than 12 hours, so it appears the private beta isn’t all too difficult to get involved with.

– A Personalized Experience –

Feeds 2.0 is all about personalization, and they do it well.  They use a learning “engine” that over time learns what you like and what you don’t like. By clicking on an article to read it, you’re telling the engine that it’s something you’re interested in.  A simplified way to do this if you’re in a hurry is to click the heart that accompanies each article. Using an algorithm, they analyze what you’ve read and liked, but also what you’ve read and marked as non-interesting or ignored to determine what articles should be recommended to you.

– Features –

One feature in particular that I like is the tag cloud which gives you an overview of the most dominant words in the post.  When a word is found multiple times throughout posts, it is considered more important and will appear larger in the tag cloud. If you were to click on a word in the tag cloud, it would pull up posts that have the related word from the tag cloud in the article.

When organizing your subscriptions, you’re able to create folders which can be collapsed or expanded.  There’s also the option to view all of the unread posts, and posts that have already been read. The AJAX that has been incorporated into Feeds 2.0 makes for quick and easy transitioning from tab to tab to manage your reader and all of the settings.

By far, the best feature of Feeds 2.0 is the personalization engine they’ve incorporated.  There are lots of feed readers out there which make you wonder why you’d  need to try yet another one, however this reader is different.

You can sign up for the private beta on the Feeds 2.0 home page.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on November 01, 2007 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

I was recently approached by a friend who had just installed Quicken 2008 onto his computer, and previously he had kept his transactions in a complex Microsoft Excel spreadsheet much like myself. He thought that the import process would be a piece of cake, but that didn’t turn out to be the case since Intuit, the parent company behind Quicken, decided to start phasing out Quicken Interchange Format (QIF) file support a few years ago.

The decision came about because QIF was seen to have many inefficiencies that the new format, Open Financial Exchange (OFX), is able to conquer. Intuit wanted to make it extremely difficult to import QIF files into Quicken 2008 (as well as 2005, 2006, and 2007) so that banks and credit card companies would start using the new format. This has angered many people because some banks only provide their data in the QIF format.

But wait, why do I even care about QIF if I’m trying to import data from Excel, which doesn’t have the ability to save a QIF. Actually there is a nifty little add-on for Excel called XL2QIF that will convert your spreadsheet to a QIF file using the data that you specify. In just a few seconds I had the Excel data converted into the needed format.

TIP: All QIF files can be edited and examined in any text editor, such as Notepad or WordPad. This is important because we’ll be doing some manual editing in a minute, but don’t be intimidated because it is pretty straightforward.

Here are the steps you need to take to import QIF files into Quicken 2008:

1. Open Quicken and create an account for the data that you want to import. You don’t have to create another account if you already have one made.
2. Now go to File -> Export -> QIF File, and select the account that you want to deal with from the Quicken Account to Export from. This should be the account that you created/used in Step 1. It’s crucial that you check the Account List box.
   
3. Now open the QIF file from Step 2 in a text editor, such as Notepad. Copy all of the text up to the line that specifies the date for the first transaction (highlighted in yellow below). The data we want should look something like this:

   !Option:AutoSwitch
   !Account
   NCyberNet Credit Card
   TCCard
   L0.00
   ^
   !Clear:AutoSwitch
   !Account
   NCyberNet Credit Card
   TCCard
   ^
   !Type:CCard

   Now open the QIF file that you want to import. Paste the text that you just copied, and replace all of the data up to the date on the first transaction. The entire process should look something like this:

   (Click to Enlarge)
   

   Wondering why you just did that? The data that you just copied is used by Quicken to identify which account the transactions belong to. The original file was missing that critical information, and without it Quicken will have no idea where to put the transactions. In older versions of Quicken it would let you select which account to apply the transactions to, but that doesn’t work anymore. Needless to say it’s an important part of the process if you want to import a QIF file into Quicken.

4. In Quicken go to File -> Import -> QIF File. Browse for the file location on your computer, select All Accounts as the account to import into, and make sure the Account List box is checked. Then hit the Next button!

   (Click to Enlarge)
   

5. Now all that you have to do is accept the transactions that you just imported from the QIF:

   (Click to Enlarge)
   

It may seem like a long process, but once you understand how it works you can probably import a QIF file into Quicken in under 30 seconds. Just save the account information that you copied in Step 3 if you regularly download QIF files from your bank. By saving that information you will never have to go through the export process in Step 2.

Believe it or not it took me upwards of two hours to figure out that this trick would work. I tried dozens of different techniques mentioned around the web, and then I finally figured that if Quicken can still export the data as a QIF that it should also be able to import it. Turns out that I was right.

Whether you’re trying to import Microsoft Money data or import an Excel spreadsheet this trick should be just what you’re looking for!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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