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Dec 04

CyberNotes: Netvibes Saves You Some Time

Posted in: CyberNotes, Today's Chili, Web Sites

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

Time Saving Tuesday

I used to be a user of Google Personalized Homepage quite religiously because of the extensive list of modules that they have available but I recently decided to make the switch to Netvibes. I didn’t think it would be that easy because there were some “Google only” modules that I thought I would miss, such as the one for Google Reader and the one for Google Calendar.

I made the switch about a month ago when Google released the tabs feature for the Personalized Homepage. Yeah, it is a little ironic that Google releases a cool new feature and that is what made me switch to Netvibes. Primarily I changed because I heard so often that Netvibes was better, but I had not given it a fair shot yet. On top of that Netvibes released some stats that said they have over 5 million users…which definitely shows that they are doing something right.

Like most people who start using Netvibes you will find a majority of the best modules located in the “Add Content” sidebar. Besides for modules they also have some of the most popular feeds in the Feed Directory, and CyberNet happens to be located in the Internet – Web 2.0 -> Web 2.0 directory.

Here is a quick overview of the actual modules that I chose from the sidebar:

Weather
Webnote

To Do List
Calendar (I use the iCal address from my Google Calendars)
Blog Search
Web Search
Video Search
GMail
Meebo

One of the most useful features in Netvibes is probably the built-in feed reader. After you add a feed it will look just like the one that your Google Homepage has except when you click on a title you will receive a full-screen view of the articles from that site:

The last thing that I wanted to cover was making your own modules. Maybe you won’t be able to find something that does exactly what you are looking for but if you have a little programming skill then you can probably make your own module without any troubles. Even I created a module that will retrieve your FeedBurner feed subscriber numbers for the current day and the previous day. It utilizes a feature that FeedBurner offers and as long as a site makes their numbers publicly available you can track them, there are no usernames or passwords needed:

Note: My Feedburner module is now available at Netvibes.

I think you would probably be surprised at how may sites use FeedBurner. Slashdot and Gizmodo both use FeedBurner but they pay extra in order to have “their own” feed URL instead of one that obviously points to FeedBurner. Unfortunately they have blocked people from viewing the number of subscribers but there are several sites that it still works for such as GigaOm. They don’t publish the number of subscribers on their site but using this method you can see that they have around 35,000.

Overall, I have to admit that I am much more impressed with Netvibes than I was with Google Personalized Homepage. It has a lot more to offer and they are consistent about adding new and useful things. Netvibes is going to be a keeper for me and I would like to thank to everyone who recommended that I try it!

Netvibes Startpages Get Google Search

Netvibes Gets A Few New Features

Netvibes Ginger Launches to Public

Netvibes Introduces Several New Features

Dec 02

CyberNotes: Easily Configure Firefox’s “Hidden” Settings

Posted in: CyberNotes, Firefox Extensions, Freeware, Software, Tips and Tricks, Today's Chili

This article was written on May 30, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

At first glance it may seem like Firefox lacks a lot of configuration options, hoever, much of the fine tuning lies underneath. Most Firefox power users will know about the about:config window which can sometimes be a tedious tool ,but there are a lot of customizable options located there.

Mozilla actually warns users that they should not change settings in the about:config window unless they really know what they are doing. Often times it is compared to editing the Windows Registry, where one wrong setting can crash Windows.

To help users out we have provided our own guide to configuring Firefox using about:config, which also includes a long list of tweaks. If it just doesn’t seem worth the hassle, then you’ll want to continue reading this article because there are now much easier ways to tweak those “hidden” settings…

—Preferential (Homepage)—

Nogg3r5 pointed out this great extension over in the CyberNet forum. It is a great extension because it takes everything from the about:config and breaks it up into categories. To top it off, they provide a description for all of the entries so that you know what they do without needing to visit Mozilla’s knowledgebase!

After installing the extension you’ll notice a new entry in the Tools menu immediately below the Options choice:

Then you’ll be presented with a bunch of collapsed menus which look something like this:

Click to Enlarge

You can now start browsing through the settings to find the ones you are looking for. From what I have seen, the largest category of settings can be found in the browser section:

Click to Enlarge

This is definitely something that Mozilla should look at including in Firefox as a better way to edit the entries in the about:config screen.

—Configuration Mania (Homepage)—

Now if that still seemed too complicated, you need something that breaks it down even further. How about something that puts the settings in an easy-to-understand interface similar to the existing configuration screen for the Options? Let’s now turn our attention to Configuration Mania!

This extension is cool because it puts a ton of settings together in a way that makes them very easy to understand and manipulate. Before now, almost all of these settings had to be configured through the about:config screen, but now they will almost seem as if they were naturally integrated in Firefox.

Just like the Preferential extension, Configuration Mania has its options located in the Tools menu:

Starting up that extension will present you with a screen similar to this one:

Click to Enlarge

As you can see this one also has collapsible menus, but it organizes the settings a little nicer. Oh, and don’t be deceived by the small appearance because there are a lot of settings there for you to tinker with. Here is a screenshot of what all the browser settings look like when they’re expanded:

Click to Enlarge

And that is only the settings from one of the 5 tabs! Here are a few more screenshots from the rest of the tabs:

Click to Enlarge

As you can see there are a lot of different things available for you to configure and play with, but it will take some time to go through all of the settings presented here. Let us know if you find any you didn’t know about!

“Hidden” Windows XP Command Line Programs

CyberNotes: Shortcut to Show/Hide Hidden Files

CyberNotes: Start Your Reply Before The Quoted Message In Thunderbird

CyberNotes: Disable And Remove Thumbs.db In Windows XP

Dec 01

CyberNotes: Synchronize Bookmarks Between Firefox and IE

Posted in: CyberNotes, Firefox Extensions, Freeware, Internet Explorer, Software, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on April 11, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

The bookmarks in your browser are probably one of the most valuable things you have invested in your browser…well, besides for your passwords. If you ever lost them I’m sure you would start scrambling trying to remember all the sites you had bookmarked.

Many of you are probably already using services like Del.icio.us that integrate well with most browsers. What if you could use the built-in bookmarking capabilities of Firefox and Internet Explorer (IE) all while harnessing the power of synchronization? I know, it almost sounds weird that people would want to keep their bookmarks synchronized between both Firefox and IE, but it is actually more common than you think.

I have lost count of how many people ask me if there is a way to synchronize the bookmarks between the two browsers. The most common reasoning behind it is that they use Firefox at home and Internet Explorer at work.

If you’re one of these people then you need to checkout Zinkmo. It is a free service that not only lets you share your bookmarks between the two browsers, but it also lets you synchronize them across multiple computers. Privacy is also very important to me, and Zinkmo definitely recognizes its importance by letting you choose which bookmarks/folders are public and which ones are private.

There is a small program that they require you to download and install before using the Zinkmo service. Here are a few screenshots from the installation with questions that they ask:

Then I went ahead and looked at what the Internet Explorer integration had to offer:

The Firefox extension has to be installed separately, and unfortunately it doesn’t have quite as many features as the Internet Explorer counterpart, but it does include the privacy option:

After I had it all setup in both browsers I began synchronizing a few bookmarks. The service worked very well and was surprisingly fast. There are two things, however, that makes the online bookmark management so wonderful: it checks for broken and duplicate links! Thats right, you’ll finally be able to go through all of those bookmarks that you have had sitting around for years without doing the grunt work yourself:

If you’ve been looking for a way to access your bookmarks no matter where you’re at, then Zinkmo will probably be just what you’re looking for. The service is completely free and definitely deserves a shot!

Related Posts:

Foxmarks Beta for Firefox 3

CyberNotes: Syncing iPhone Bookmarks with Firefox

Space Saving Extension for Firefox Bookmark Toolbar Users

Google Sync Let’s Firefox Users Save Settings

Helpful Tip: Recover Lost Bookmarks in Firefox 3

Nov 28

CyberNotes: 10 Great Firefox Extensions For Tabbed Browsing

Posted in: CyberNotes, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on August 16, 2006 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

Last week we covered 10 Firefox extensions that would keep your information private and make your browsing experience as safe as possible. Going beyond the security we need to also think about what cool (and sometimes productive) extensions we can install that will make Firefox even better. Let’s target tab browsing this time…

–Tab Mix Plus (Download Page/Homepage)–
If you use Firefox, I’m sure you have heard of Tab Mix Plus. When I setup computers for people this is always one extension that I install for them just so that they can harness the real power of Firefox. I mean really, those buttons that you see all over the place that say “Download Firefox with Google Toolbar” should really read “Download Firefox with Google Toolbar and Tab Mix Plus.” Nah, scratch that, it should just be included with Firefox.

I think that this extension actually has more options within itself than the actual Firefox preferences has. You’ll find everything to tweak the session restore functionality all the way to customizing the context menu of the tabs.

If you decided to venture off and test out Firefox 2 Beta 1 then you should use the developer version of Tab Mix Plus to ensure proper compatibility. You can also check out my Firefox 2 Beta 1 tweaking guide for a how-to on customizing the built-in features.

Getting overwhelmed and don’t know what all of the options do? Go ahead and open this PDF which explains every option in the extension.

–Firefox Showcase (Download Page/Homepage)–
This extension pretty much had its concept taken from the upcoming Internet Explorer 7…except this takes it even further. The interface looks so simple that you would think it lacks in features but that is very deceiving.

For starters you can Ctrl or Shift click on any of the thumbnails to select multiple “tabs.” Then you can perform tasks such as Close Selected, Close Other Tabs, Duplicate in New Window, and Merge In New Window.

It also has its own Find feature that is activated the same way that it is normally used: Ctrl+F. The difference is that the Firefox Showcase Find feature will search all of your thumbnails for the text including the URL and title of the sites.

–IE Tab (Download Page/Homepage)–
IE Tab brings the Website compatibility of Internet Explorer into Firefox. At the press of a button you can switch from a page being rendered by Firefox to it being rendered by Internet Explorer.

You can also permanently set a site to open using IE Tab which makes it extremely easy to do your Windows Updates. The newest version that is available now supports the use of your Internet Explorer passwords which has been a requested feature for a long time.

–Tab Sidebar (Download Page/Homepage)–
Okay, the first time I saw Tab Sidebar I just had to try it. If you have looked at the screenshot closely, you can already see how cool this is. This is a replacement to your tab bar and it will actually hide the tab bar when you make the sidebar visible.

Yes, those are fully functional navigation buttons on the bottom of each thumbnail. If you choose to you can even drag the “tabs” around to reorder them.

You don’t have to worry about those thumbnails not refreshing either. They will automatically update themselves each time you visit a new page. Heck, they will even update when you refresh the page!

–Page Title Eraser (Download Page/Homepage)–
This extension is for when you’re at work with people looking over your should you don’t want to have them see what tabs you have open. Page Title Eraser cures that problem by giving you the option to hide the title and icon on any tab. If you have multiple sites open there is an option available that will let you hide all the titles on all of your open tabs.

–Tab Preview (Download Page)–
The concept of having a preview of a tab has become one of Opera 9′s nicest features. This extension for Firefox will give you a little more control over the appearance versus Opera.

You get to choose the size of the preview box that is displayed. Maybe you want it to be 50% as wide as the browser’s window is or, if you are like me, you just want it to be as wide as your tabs are. The choice is yours.

–Colorful Tabs (Download Page/Homepage)–
Colorful Tabs is nice because it makes finding certain tabs a little easier. When I have a bunch of tabs open it will sometimes start to look like one large tab with a horrid number of icons. I can find the site I am looking for 10 times quicker if I use this extension in conjunction with the Tab Preview one that I just mentioned.

–Ctrl Tab Preview (Download Page/Homepage)–
Are you an Alt-Tab addict? This is the Alt-Tab option except for Firefox. Yep, you can shuffle through all your open tabs and see small previews by simply using the Ctrl-Tab keyboard combination.

Without this extension Ctrl-Tab will go through all of your tabs showing you the most recently open ones first. I have written an article on these type of extensions before if you want to see other alternatives.

–PageStyle2Tab (Download Page/Homepage)–
This extension and Colorful Tabs have some similarities. The goal of Colorful Tabs is to make each tab stand out so that you can easily recognize different sites. Well, PageStyle2Tab actually makes it easier in my opinion. The color of the tab will match the style of the current page you are viewing. I am sure there are several sites that you visit that have a unique theme to them. Using this extension means you would be able to identify those sites even quicker.

If you really want to take it to the extreme, you can have the site’s style go beyond just the tab and on to your toolbars. That is a bit much for me but you may really like the themes of the sites you visit.

–Viamatic Tabnail (Download Page/Homepage)–
Everyone loves to use thumbnails in extensions they create. The downside to Viamatic Tabnail is the fact that you must use up a large portion of your screen space. Actually, the size of the thumbnail is up to you which means the amount of space the extension uses is at your disposal.

It is also pretty cool because the thumbnail will show the Website in real-time as the page loads. Wouldn’t that be something if they could just make those tiny links clickable. It might not be practical but it would still be cool.

–Overview–
So those are the extensions that I either currently use or I have used in the past. They all serve one purpose or another but some of them actually help me to be more productive, such as the Firefox Showcase extension. Let us know what other extension make your tab browsing experience better!

CyberNotes: Top 10 Firefox Extensions, and More

Your Week in Review with Sunday’s Summary

Firefox Extension: Thumbnails in Your Tabs

CyberNet’s Year In Review: August 2006

Nov 27

CyberNotes: Getting the most out of Firefox Sidebars

Posted in: Apple, CyberNotes, Firefox Extensions, Freeware, Microsoft, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on March 28, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

Firefox is an extremely customizable browser, and combining that with the growing popularity of widescreen monitors results in more sidebars. I used to never use sidebars before I got a widescreen computer because it just took up extra screen space that was otherwise pretty useful. Now you’ll hardly ever find me with a sidebar not open on my computer!

There are so many things that you can do and so many Firefox extensions available to utilize your sidebar space. Most commonly it is used for bookmarks, but there are a lot of other things that you can do with it as well. For example, Digital Inspiration recently noticed that you can place Google Talk in your sidebar:

It may sound like you need an extension to do something like this, but surprisingly, you don’t. Firefox is designed so that you can have any website open in a sidebar and since Google made the Google Talk client available on the Web, it is possible to chat with your friends in the Firefox sidebar. We’ll use the Google Talk as an example of embedding a website into a sidebar:

Right-click on this URL: http://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/client and bookmark it.

After you have saved the bookmark, go back to the Bookmarks menu and right-click on the bookmark. Choose the Properties option.
Now check the box that says Load this bookmark in the sidebar:
Now the next time you click on that bookmark to open it will popup in the sidebar!

You can use that trick with any website, but it is really only useful if the website is designed for smaller screens so that it fits the width of the sidebar well. I would also say that it doesn’t work too bad with Meebo, but if you have a lot of chat windows open it can quickly become cluttered.

If you wanted to put your Google Personalized Homepage in the sidebar it wouldn’t look quite right since there is a huge header area that you probably don’t need, and all of the modules are spread out over three columns. There is an actual extension called iGoogle that will bypass this problem by putting all of your modules into a single column, and you’ll still have access to your tabs:

But how do you manage all of your sidebars in a quick and easy way? For that you’ll probably want to use All-in-One Sidebar which makes it easy to switch between all of your different sidebars. Not only that but it also lets you configure which side of the screen, left or right, the sidebar actually appears.

Now if you are fortunate enough to have a lot of extra screen space, you might want to use multiple sidebars. There is an extension for that as well called MultiSidebar that lets you pick the position of the sidebar in the browser as well as open multiple sidebars:

There is so much that you can do with the sidebars that it may seem a little overwhelming at first. Once you start getting used to them, you begin to wonder how much more productive they let you become. Let us know in the comments below how you use your sidebar to help you be more productive or useful.

CyberNotes: Customize Firefox Sidebars

Putting your Firefox Downloads and Add-ons in a Sidebar

CyberNotes: Your Week in Review with Sunday’s Summary

CyberNet’s First Optional Sidebar Add-On: Unread Comments

Nov 26

CyberNotes: Time Savings Windows Clipboard Software

Posted in: CyberNotes, Freeware, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on October 24, 2006 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

Computers would not be nearly as productive as they are if they didn’t have the copy and paste commands available to use. Think about how often you copy and paste text, files, images, and more throughout the course of your day. I do it so often that it seems like my fingers naturally rest on the Control+C keys on my keyboard.

Today I want to focus on tools that extend the functionality of the Windows Clipboard to make it easier to use and allow you to get tasks done much more quickly. Here is the software that I managed to find:

–Clippy (Homepage)–

Clippy is one of the coolest clipboard utilities that I have to present to you. It lets you perform common operations to any text that is currently located on the clipboard.

There are a ton of different things that you can have Clippy do and you will really see it shine in certain situations. This is one of those situations that we would have all liked to have this:

How often have you needed to extract text from your emails, only to find the simple, menial task to take more time than it should. You’ll have many ‘>’ characters appearing at the beginning of lines because your email has been replied to, back and forth, countless number of times. Often, you’ll also need to painstakingly reformat the text to make it appear readable.
Now with Clippy, you’ll be able to remove ‘>’ characters and reformat your text with a single click of a button.

You can add individual “tasks” for Clippy to complete or you can create your own “Clippers.” The Clippers are a group of tasks that you put together so that the program can perform multiple operations on the text with just one click. I like to think of these more like macros.

–Ditto (Homepage)–

Ditto is a free open source program that extends the Windows Clipboard to have even more features. The number of configuration options that it has is absolutely insane but don’t let those distract you from its primary purpose: copying and pasting!

Here are a few of the great features that Ditto has:

Search and paste previous copy entries
Keep multiple computer’s clipboards in sync
Data is encrypted when sent over the network
Accessed from tray icon or global hot key
Select entry by double click, enter key or drag drop
Paste into any window that excepts standard copy/paste entries
Display thumbnail of copied images in list

–Auto Copy (Homepage)–

When you highlight text in a web browser it is often to copy it so that you can use it somewhere else. There is an extension for Firefox that will actually copy the text to the clipboard anytime that you highlight some text. There really isn’t much more to it than that but you may be surprised at how useful the extension is.

–Overview–

Those are the clipboard utilities that I currently use or have used in the past. They all have some unique features that can save a bunch of time and hassle if you frequently copy and paste things like I do. If you know of any other great clipboard utilities please let me know because I am always looking for things to improve the standard clipboard’s usefulness.

Vista *Prepares* You For Daylight Savings Time

Your Week in Review with Sunday’s Summary

Internet Explorer Shows Users What’s On Your Clipboard

PasteCopy.NET: A More Advanced Windows Clipboard

Nov 25

CyberNotes: Online Unit Converters

Posted in: CyberNotes, Google, Mac, Software, Today's Chili, Web Sites, Windows

This article was written on June 17, 2008 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

Converting from one unit of measurement to another is something that should never be difficult, and luckily there are several online unit converters that make the process drop-dead simple. They save you from having to lookup any conversion values, and often take less than a second to return an answer to you. That’s why today we’re going to outline three of our favorite websites that will do the conversion work for you.

–Unit Converter–

Unit Converter is exactly what you would expect from a conversion utility. First it breaks down the different types of measurements into 14 different categories, and from there you can enter in the starting measurement along with the type of units you’re converting between.

You’ll notice that there is no “submit” button anywhere on the site, and that’s because there’s no need for one! If you change a value in either the “from” or “to” fields it will automatically adjust the result in the other field. That’s definitely nice in the event you have to convert several different numbers.

unit converter.png

–Google–

The search engine that many of you probably use every day, Google, is also one of my favorite unit converters! Whenever you perform a regular search it will try to determine if you’re looking to convert a value. The keywords that you want to be sure to include in your conversion query is either “in” or “to,” which can be seen in these examples:

When performing a search that Google recognizes as a conversion it will show the results immediately below the search box:

google converter.png

Mac users can grab this Dashboard widget which utilizes Google Calculator to perform a conversion. Similarly Yahoo! Widget users (both Mac and Windows) can add a Google Calculator widget.

–Instacalc–

Instacalc is the online solution for performing and managing several conversions simultaneously. Much like the Google Calculator it uses a natural language system to bypass the need for excessive drop-down menus, but it takes it a step further than Google. It’s actually more like a spreadsheet because it lets you add as many rows as you want, and in each one you can get fast conversions:

We actually covered this site back in October 2007 because we found the Vista Gadget which gives the same conversion power right from the sidebar of your computer. Then just a few months ago they kicked it up a notch by making a bookmarklet that works in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Safari. For the sake of convenience I’ve copied the bookmarklet, and all you have to do is right-click on this to save it to your bookmarks:

Instacalc bookmarklet

If you want to see what the bookmarklet is capable of first just try clicking on it. You should see a small “window” open in the upper-right corner of the site where you can perform your conversion. Now how’s that for efficient?

–Overview–

Unit converters have been incredibly useful for me in the past, and Google’s method has quickly become my favorite. We’d love to hear in the comments how you go about doing your conversions!

Your Week in Review with Sunday’s Summary

Mio Releases New GPS Pocket PC With Rotating Antenna

Police Lose A New Car Because Of GPS Failure

CyberNotes: Your Week In Review With Sunday’s Summary

Nov 23

CyberNotes: Benefits of Using Messenger Plus!

Posted in: CyberNotes, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on August 11, 2008 by CyberNet.

Microsoft/Mac Monday

In the past we’ve mentioned Messenger Plus a few times. It’s an add-on for Windows Live Messenger (WLM) that adds all kinds of features and extras. There are millions of people who use WLM yet don’t know that Messenger Plus exists, so we thought we’d take some time today to explain the benefits of the add-on and all that it offers.

Before we dive-in, we wanted to point out that Messenger Plus! is considered Adware and that’s because when you are installing the application, it will ask you if you would like to become a part of their “Sponsor” program. By default it is NOT checked. They explain that their sponsor program is adware that helps keep Messenger Plus running. I don’t know many people who enjoy adware on their computers, so be sure you pay attention. If you do, you will have no issues.

messenger plus setup.png

In the past, people have asked if there are any spyware concerns with the program and there aren’t. Messenger Plus is a reputable application that has been around for a long time so there’s really nothing to worry about, other than paying attention during installation. But that’s something you should always do.

Background info:

For 7 years now, Messenger Plus has been available to Windows Live Messenger users. As of mid-July, 50 million people use the add-on on a daily basis. The current version is 4.6, and it’s a free download that you can find here. Installation is quick and painless, but again, make sure you pay attention while doing it. When you launch Windows Messenger for the first time after installing Messenger Plus, you’ll be taken through the configuration process.

Now on to the benefits of using Messenger Plus!…

Tabbed Chats

For those of you who enjoy a tabbed browser which seems to be the norm these days (Firefox, IE7, Opera, to name a few), you may find that you’ll enjoy a tabbed chat window. Grouping all of your chat windows will save you space in the taskbar and make it easier for you to keep track of all of your conversations. You decide where you want the tabs to be, whether it’s on the top or the side.

Skinning

Skinning is another important part of Messenger Plus because you can select different skins to make the application look unique. They have a whole online database where you can browse through the options and find the one you’d like, and then import it.

To access the skins, just go the the Preferences, then the Customize tab up at the top, and then the skins tab on the side. Or you can just follow this link to the skins database. They have them divided up into different categories or you can browse by downloads, ratings, or date added.

The highest rated skin based upon downloads is Vista Ultimate. It works with Messenger 8.5 only and makes your messenger fit right in with Windows Vista as far as looks go. For Mac fans, there’s an “Apple Live Messenger” that will make your messenger look like it’s a Mac application. It too has been downloaded many times and is rated fairly high.

messenger plus mac skin.png

Quick Texts

Quick Texts is a text replacement feature that can turn your shorthand jibberish into complete sentences:

For example, you could set it up so that anytime you typed TTYL it would automatically replace that text with “Talk to you later!.”

Polygamy

If you have multiple Windows Live accounts that you would like to have open at the same time in messenger, Messenger Plus will allow that to happen. It’s just a matter of going to the Preferences, then going to the “Customize!” tab. Under the “General” tab on the left, look at the “Multiple Accounts” section and check the box that says “Allow me to connect to several accounts simultaneously.”

Show Contacts on the Desktop

This is one of those features that you have to try and actually use before you appreciate it. Contacts on the Desktop allows you to select certain contacts that you would like to keep a close eye on, and then it places them on your desktop. This makes it easier for you to keep track of what they are doing – when they are online or when they are away, etc. Instead of always having to navigate to Messenger to check, you can just take a quick look at your desktop.

Messenger Lock

This is for those times when you’re on Messenger but you’re not supposed to be (e.g., work or school). With Messenger Plus, with one shortcut all of your windows instantly hide.

Scripting

Scripting isn’t a feature for the inexperienced. It’s a scripting system that will allow people with programming experience to add their own features to the application. Below is the interface of what you’ll see should you decide to add your own features:

Other Features:

Custom sounds
Personalized Status
HTML Chat logs that are searchable
Color and formatting options
Event viewer and logging
Contact list clean-up (deletes duplicate contacts)
and more…

Get Messenger Plus Here

Microsoft Gains Messenger Users with “I’m” Initiative

Messenger Plus! Live Soon To Be Released?

MySpace Has An Instant Messenger, Too!

Windows Live Messenger Available To The Public

Nov 22

CyberNotes: Auto-Click Your Mouse

Posted in: CyberNotes, Freeware, Software, Today's Chili, Windows

This article was written on June 12, 2008 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

Windows only
Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a way for you to dominate those “shoot the monkey” ads that popup all over the place? Just imagine all of the fame and glory you would receive from your friends! You just need one tool to get the job done… a mouse auto-clicker.

On a more serious note having something that can automatically click the mouse buttons can actually be handy. Maybe you’re trying to test the way an application operates, or maybe you’re playing an intense game that requires excessive clicking. It doesn’t really matter what you’re reasoning is, but if you need to click the mouse at regular (and somewhat insane) intervals we’ve got the application for you.

AutoClick is a freeware Windows application that requires absolutely no installation. Once you have downloaded it and get it running you should see a screen similar to this:

–Automated Clicking–

To get started you should start by playing around with single-task automated clicking. This will simulate the clicking of the mouse in a single area on the screen, and if you enable the Freeze Pointer option the position you specify will remain constant even if you move the mouse.

Here are the steps needed to automate the clicking of a single point on the screen:

In the settings specify what kind of clicks you want performed (left/right/middle and single/double), and also the interval at which the clicks should occur. Optionally you can limit how many clicks should be performed.
Hover your mouse over the area on the screen where you want the auto-clicking to be performed.
To start the auto-clicking press the F3 key.
To stop the auto-clicking at anytime press the F3 key.

–Smart Clicking–

Smart Clicking is a little more advanced because you can specify multiple “hotspots” that will be clicked at any given interval.

Here are the steps needed to automate the clicking of multiple points on the screen:

In the settings specify what kind of clicks you want performed (left/right/middle and single/double), and also the interval at which the clicks should occur. Optionally you can limit how many clicks should be performed.
Press the F4 key to begin recording the click positions. Click and drag the Record button onto the area(s) you wanted to be clicked. The cursor should turn into blue crosshairs while you are dragging the Record button:
Repeat Step 2 for each of the areas that you wish to be clicked. When you’re done press the F4 key again.
Check the Smart Click box in the settings to enable the playback of the clicks you just recorded, and then press F3 to start the auto-clicking. You should see it rotate through all of the areas you selected in Step 2.
To stop the auto-clicking at anytime press the F3 key.

–Overview–

A tool like this can definitely save some time, and I was actually having some fun seeing what it looked like when clicking the mouse every 1/1000th of a second. It could actually make for a fun prank, too. Did I say that out loud?

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CyberNotes: How To Create A Batch File For Synchronizing Folders

Posted in: CyberNotes, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on July 27, 2006 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

I have multiple computers around the house and one of my greatest fears is that a computer will crash and I will lose all of my pictures, music, and documents. The time it would take to try and recover all of the information is far longer than if you spent a few minutes to prepare for the worst. Backing up your files is extremely important so that you will always have something to fall back on, but what kind of software do you need to do it? CNet actually has a whole category dedicated to backup software but a lot of it you need to pay for, and I am kinda cheap .

Instead of adding more clutter to my computer I have decided to use simple, yet powerful, batch files. A batch file is not complicated for those people who aren’t familiar with them. It is simply a text file that has the extension .BAT and inside the file is a series of DOS commands which run one at a time. Batch files are very frequently used by people to perform repetitive tasks which is why they are perfect for scheduling some backups!

First, we need to create a blank batch file which is as simple as opening up Notepad, go to File->Save As and type “batch.bat”. Once you press the Save button it will save the file with the .BAT extension instead of the normal .TXT extension. Okay, now hopefully you left the file open after saving it, but if you didn’t all you ever have to do is right-click on the file and select “Edit”.

The DOS command for copying a file from one location to another is “xcopy” which is what we are going to use. The command is used in the following format:

xcopy "Source" "Destination" /c /q /d /e /h /y

For the Source and Destination you just have to put in the folder or file path that you want to backup and the location to backup to. If you have spaces in the path then you will need to include the quotation marks, for example, “C:\Mozilla Firefox\” would need to have the quotes because of the space. So an example command with the path in it would look like this:

xcopy "C:\Mozilla Firefox\" "\\Server\C\Firefox\" /c /q /d /e /h /y

Now you are probably wondering what the “/c /q /d /e /h /y” does at the end of that command. Each one of those parameters perform a different action. Microsoft has a long list of available parameters that can be added but those are the ones that I use. Here is what each of them does:

/c – Ignores all errors which helps make sure that the backup will complete even if there is a small problem.
/q – Prevents the command prompt from displaying an “xcopy” message for every file or folder that is copied.
/d – Only synchronize Source files if they are newer than the files in the destination. Otherwise every file will get copied each time the batch file is executed.
/e – Copy all subdirectories even if they are empty.
/h – Copy hidden and system files.
/y – Prevents an “Overwrite existing file?” prompt for each file that already exists in the destination.

Feel free to remove any of those parameters that you don’t feel are necessary but those are the ones that I have found to work best for me. Inside the batch file you can add more than one “xcopy” command by separating them by a new line. That means you can backup multiple folders with one single batch file.

Once you have the batch file completed and saved you can right-click on it and select “Run” to see if everything works how you want it to. You should probably test it on a small folder with just some test files before you go and do the real thing to prevent any unexpected actions. If everything works great then maybe you want to think about scheduling it to run itself using the Scheduled Tasks located in the Control Panel. Now that wasn’t so bad was it?

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