Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on July 31, 2006 by CyberNet.

Million Dollar Monday

How might this change your everyday life? Just think about how your shopping experience would change. You’re in an electronics store looking for a camera. You walk in front of one camera to check it out and immediately you’re hearing all about the features of the camera you’ve stepped in front of. You step to the right of the camera, and you can’t hear it. You step to the left, and you can’t hear it. The only place you’re able to hear the message is when you’re directly under the ‘beam’ or in this example in front of the camera. You could move from camera to camera or product to product, stand in front of it and get a brief run-down without the entire store hearing about it. Now how cool is that?


Just imagine what could be done with this technology. Kevin Maney over at USA today brought up the idea of integrating this technology into laptop speakers. Only the person sitting in front of the laptop would be able to hear the sound. How perfect would that be for a plane ride or sitting in a lecture? Another example he gives is in the car. Mom and Dad could be listening to one CD up front with the kids listening to another in the back. It could even work great for trade shows or corporate lobbies. The possibilities are endless. Everyone wants to get their hands on this technology to experiment with it. Companies like Wal-Mart and McDonalds have expressed some interest as well as Fox and Sony.

Not only is this technology being considered for commercial use, it is also being used for more serious endeavors by military and police forces. Similar to HSS, LRAD which stands for Long Range Acoustic Device, as its name states is for long range use. It can produce a sound so piercing it could bring someone to their knees. LRAD was put into use after the attack on the USS Cole. It works as an unbelievable way to notify from a distance and provide information. It is turning out to be an effective non-lethal form of a weapon for militaries and police forces to use.

The inventor of HSS, Woody Nooris won the Lemelson-MIT prize of $500,000 for revolutionizing acoustics. He’s described as a classic independent inventor. His curiosity is unbounded and spans many fields. While we probably won’t see this technology mainstreamed quite yet, there are countless possibilities with it. Could this possibly be the next generation of advertising?

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on May 03, 2007 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

We knew that there was a new method coming that would let you sync Mozilla Sunbird and Lightning with Google Calendar, but we weren’t sure what form it was going to come in. It was thought that this would be a built-in feature but it looks like they took an alternative route by delivering the synchronization capabilities in the form of an extension called Provider for Google Calendar.

This way of synchronization is much easier than using the GCALDaemon which we explained a few months back. In fact, you can have this up and running in just a few minutes…

1. Download and install Sunbird (the stand-alone calendar application) or Lightning (the Thunderbird add-on) if you haven’t already done so. You will, however, need to be running a pre-release version of the calendar software (version 0.4 or higher). You can find the latest nightly of Sunbird here and the latest nightly of Lightning here (the extension is located in the linux-xpi, mac-xpi, and windows-xpi folders).
2. Download the Provider for Google Calendar extension by left-clicking on the Install Now link, then right-clicking on the Accept and Install link, and choose the “Save as” option.
3. Now open up Sunbird or Thunderbird, go to the Tools Menu, and select the Add-ons option. Then press the Install button and browse for where you saved the extension that you just downloaded. Restart the application to complete the installation.
   
4. Now pull up your Google Calendar, go to the Settings page, and then click on the Calendars tab.
   
5. Click on one of the calendars that you want to remotely access:
   
6. Copy the private XML address to the clipboard by right-clicking on it and choosing the Copy Link Location option.
   
7. Now go back to Sunbird or Lightning and create a new Calendar. You should be prompted with a dialog box asking whether the calendar is on your computer or on the network, choose the On the Network option. Then on the next screen choose the Google Calendar option and paste in the URL you copied from step 6.
   
8. You’ll be prompted to enter in your username and password for your Google Calendar account:
   
9. Now give your calendar a name and press the Next button. Then press Finish. Your calendar will now periodically synchronize itself with the Google servers.

As you can see that is pretty easy to setup, but it does have its drawbacks which you should be aware of:

• Recurring events can only be viewed, and not created or modified. I’m sure this will be a deal breaker for many people.
• The newest version (released April 30, 2007) of the extension does support alarms, but it has to use a workaround to do so.
• You cannot add attendees to your calendar.

Hopefully those remaining bugs will eventually get fixed because that will make this extension a lot more useful. In the meantime though, it is giving me an easy way to add release dates to our CyberNet calendar located in the sidebar!

Alternately you can also try using the newest version of Calgoo which also has several improvements. It does require Java in order to run which is something I’m not too fond of, but it does do a pretty good job of synchronizing the recurring events and reminders.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on June 29, 2006 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

It was just Monday that Digg v3 launched with a new breath of life. However, some people were not too fond of how Digg changed the layout. The most talked about change was the placement of the sidebar on the left-side.

There are several sites (like this, this, and this) that have come up with new CSS code that will overwrite the code that Digg already has in place. So how do you use this CSS code to redesign Digg?

It is actually amazingly simple for Firefox users (I haven’t tried this on other browsers). To make it as simple as possible you could just download the Stylish extension. You just need to copy the CSS code into the extension. You can then enable and disable different CSS styles as you please.

While Stylish makes it really easy I always try to minimize how many extensions I use to prevent memory leaks. So here is how you do it without using an extension:

1. Browse to your Firefox Profile. In Windows XP/2000 it should be located at C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\XXXXXX.default\. Here is some help on locating your Firefox Profile.
2. Open the chrome folder.
3. If you do not have a file called “userContent.css” then copy the file “userContent-example.css” and rename it to userContent.css.
4. Open up the userContent.css file in a text editor like WordPad.
5. Add your CSS code to the end of the file. You will find the code that I used below.
6. Save and close the file.
7. You will have to restart Firefox in order to see the changes on Digg.

That is it! You should now have a customized version of Digg. Feel free to tweak with any of the CSS code until you have it the way you like it. Here is the code that I ended up using:

@-moz-document domain(digg.com), domain(www.digg.com) {
.sub-menu .tool strong { font-size: 11px !important; font-weight: bold !important; padding: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; background-image: none !important;}
.news-summary { margin-bottom: 12px !important; margin-top: 12px !important; }
.digg-count { margin-top: 3px !important; }
h2 { font-size: 18px !important; }
h3 { font-size: 13px !important; font-weight: bold !important; letter-spacing: normal !important; }
.toggle a, .view-all a, .side-friends a, ul a { font-weight: normal !important; font-size: 11px !important;}
#top_ad, #item_ad, #footer, .copyright, .top_ad_image, .banner_ad, .comments_ad_image {display: none !important;}
.digg-count a strong {font-size: 14px !important; font-weight: bold !important; }
.sub-menu li .toplinep { width: 138px !important; }
.comment {width: 710px !important;}
.news-digg img { padding-top: 4px !important; padding-left: 1px !important; }
h3 a { border: none !important; background: none !important; font-weight: bold !important; font-size: 11px !important; letter-spacing: normal !important; text-decoration: underline !important; padding-left: 3px !important; }
.news-submitted { margin-left: 3px !important; padding-left: 0px !important; }
p { margin: 3px !important; }
#contents, #sidebar { float: left !important; border: none !important; background: none !important; font-size: 11px !important;}
#container {background: none !important; }
#sidebar {padding: 20px 0 1em 35px !important;background-position: 0 0; }
#footer {background: none !important;}
}


So now that you have Digg customized you start to think about how many other sites this technique might work for, right? This technique will work for many sites and userstyles.org already has hundreds of CSS styles that people have developed. These styles will take you to a whole new level of customization!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on November 07, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

Have you ever wondered how browsers have evolved over time? I’m sure many of you can recall using early versions of Netscape as they were pushed out the door, but some of the new features and interface designs have happened so slowly that it may be hard to appreciate the browsers we currently have.

Today I want to revive your memories of old versions of Opera, Netscape, Firefox, and Internet Explorer showing how they have become the browsers we use today. Below you’ll find over 20 screenshots for the popular browsers, some of which have been around for over a decade. For each version I also provide the month and year it was released. Some of them still had release notes available, and in those cases I hyperlinked the release date.

It’s time to open the door and step back into the time machine!

–Opera–

Opera is one of the most powerful browsers available, which makes sense because they’ve had over 10 years to develop it. Thanks to this Opera Fan Site I was able to get my hands on 10 different versions of the browser that have been released over the last decade.

• Opera 2.12 (February 1997) – The very first public version of Opera. In case you couldn’t tell that’s our site in the screenshot.
  
• Opera 3.0 (December 1997) – Wow, that is quite a bookmark list they’ve got there in the “sidebar.”
   
• Opera 3.6 (June 1999) – Looks like some better CSS support is making it’s way into Opera, but our site is still a bit funky.
   
• Opera 4.02 (June 2000) – If I didn’t know better I would say that a tab system is in the works there! And look at that, it almost renders our current site perfectly.
  
• Opera 5.02 (December 2000) – You can now get Opera for free instead of dropping $39 on it. The catch … that big banner in the upper right corner.
  
• Opera 6.0 (November 2001) – Yay for transparency! Opera now supports full PNG alpha transparency. The interface also got a much needed overhaul, and oddly enough the tab bar was moved to the bottom by default.
   
• Opera 7.1 (April 2003) – M2, Opera’s revamped email/news client, was introduced in this version! Hey look, the tabs are back at the top now.
  
• Opera 8.5 (September 2005) – Opera is completely free without any banner ads! Not to mention that the interface is much cleaner, and the browser doesn’t ship with dozens of bookmarks.
  
• Opera 9.0 (June 2006) – Is that a widget in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me? Opera is the first browser to develop its own widget platform.
  
• Opera 9.24 (October 2007) – This version of Opera comes with Speed Dial, and the infamous Start Bar is disabled by default (smart move).
   

–Netscape–

I think we’ve all used Netscape at some time or another because it was the browser for quite some time. Eventually Microsoft got around to launching Internet Explorer which sent Netscape down the tubes, but they have started to return using Firefox as it’s base. Most of the older versions of Netscape I managed to get from their own archive, but the really old ones took some scrounging.

• Netscape 0.91 (October 1994) – This is the earliest version of Netscape that I was able to get my hands on. It wasn’t very functional by today’s standards, but it opened without crashing.
  
• Netscape 1.22 (August 1995) – Now this is more like a web browser since it actually supports images.
  
• Netscape 2.01 (March 1996) – There’s the big-buttoned Netscape Navigator that we all love. This version added support for frames, JavaScript, Java Applets, and all kinds of advanced stuff.
  
• Netscape 3.0 (August 1996) – QuickTime support was added, and we’ve still got the big buttons.
  
• Netscape 4.79 (September 1999) – Version 4.0 introduced the entire Communicator suite which included a web browser, website authoring program, email client, and newsgroup reader. Oh, AIM, RealPlayer, and Winamp were all bundled with it as well. I think this marked the beginning of the bloated browser!
  
• Netscape 6.0 (November 2000) – Brand new interface that gave new life to the browser. It included an integrated search feature and advanced sidebar.
  
• Netscape 7.0 (August 2002) – Finally offers tabbed browsing and a popup blocker. They’re a little bit behind since Opera has had tabs for several years by this point, but Opera wasn’t free (from both a paid subscription and ads) until 2005.
  
• Netscape 8.0 (May 2005) – This is the first version of Netscape to be based on Firefox 1.0, and with it comes a completely reworked interface. I guess the search bar on the left side of the address bar never took off.
  
• Netscape 9.0 (October 2007) – This is based on Firefox 2, which means it has several notable features such as inline spell checking. They’ve also bundled a few things that aren’t included in Firefox which I’ve listed here.
  

–Firefox–

Firefox is currently the second most popular browser in the world, and only falls short to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Development on the browser started back in 2002 when it was named Phoenix.

• Firefox 0.1 (September 2002) – This first version had a primary focus of speed. Oh, and you won’t find any extensions quite yet.
  
• Firefox 1.0 (November 2004) – Better tabbed browsing, several different languages are available, and there’s an extension system. We’ve got a truly great browser on our hands!
  
• Firefox 1.5 (November 2005) – Can you say automatic updates! Firefox can now update itself without needing the users to redownload the entire installer.
  
• Firefox 2.0 (October 2006) – Firefox got a nice new theme, inline spell checking, session restore, and more. What’s not to love?
  

–Internet Explorer–

Unfortunately it is pretty impossible to get older versions of Internet Explorer to work in Vista, so I had to pass on that one. Microsoft has created their own Internet Explorer history page that walks you through the different versions of the browser, but here is a screenshot that I took awhile back of Internet Explorer 3 and 5 running side-by-side:

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on January 31, 2007 by CyberNet.

Special Vista Edition: Part 2

Now that Windows Vista has been released (read our review) I expect to see the number of Internet Explorer 7 users begin to increase. A majority of those users will have previously used Internet Explorer 6 as their primary browser, and I suspect that many of those people will enjoy the changes that they find. 

I prefer to use Firefox or Opera myself, but I have become accustomed to the community that surrounds those browsers and therefore find it hard to break away from either of them. One thing that wouldn’t hold me back from using IE 7 is a lack of features, because it has quite a few nice additions that take their browser to the next level. Not only that, but you can get add-ons that do even more like restoring your tab session after a crash, blocking ads, integrating mouse gestures, and adding RSS notifications.

Here are some of my favorite add-ons available for Internet Explorer 7:

–Find As You Type (Homepage / Mirror [version 1.1])–

This add-on we have actually written about before, but I find it to be such a necessary feature in other browsers that I had to include it in this list. Basically, it will let you search for words on a website instantly while you type them.

It is very similar to Firefox’s “Find as you Type” feature. In Firefox this can be initiated by pressing an apostrophe if you don’t have this feature enabled to automatically start while you type. In Opera you can use this feature by pressing the period (“.”) key and then typing your search term.

–IE7pro (Homepage / Mirror [version 0.9.8])–

If you use Internet Explorer on a regular basis then you’ll probably find this extension to be unbelievably useful. It has all of the best features that people talk about loving the most in other browsers, such as mouse gestures and ad blocking. These are just some of the customization options that you’ll find in the add-on:

The other thing that you’ll notice is that the add-on installs an icon in the Status Bar of the browser. If you click on that little icon it will offer several different things that you can do, including refreshing the current page at a given interval or saving the site to an image file (it automatically scrolls the entire site to create the screenshot). Here is what that menu looks like:

–Feeds Plus (Homepage / Mirror)–

Microsoft did a nice job of integrating RSS into Internet Explorer 7, but they could have still taken the extra step to add some features to make it even more useful. The IE RSS team must have had some things that they just couldn’t fit into the final release though, because they too have developed their own add-on.

You can group your feeds into folders and then browse all of the news contained in that folder, making it much easier if you have a large number of feeds that you read. It also adds a notification popup to notify you when there are new feed items!

–Overview–

There are actually more add-ons for Internet Explorer than you probably think. When I started looking around I was surprised to see the things available that add a lot of the features people boast about in other browsers. Of course, one of the biggest reasons that people use other browsers is because of the security vulnerabilities that are constantly being found in Internet Explorer, and unfortunately there is no add-on to fix that problem.

Internet Explorer 7 is still not my browser of choice, but it is leaps and bounds better than the previous versions that were offered. Now that Vista is shipping on all new computers it will be interesting if that impacts Internet Explorer’s market share for the better, or if it will continue to decline as people search for other browser alternatives. I can’t wait to look back in a few years to see how browsers have evolved to meet the demand of users turning to more and more online services to get things done.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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