Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on April 19, 2007 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

I love testing out new software, but I like to use virtual machines to see what the software is like before I go installing it on my actual system. A virtual machine is a virtual computer environment which allows you to run one operating system form within your current operating system. This gives a lot of benefits with the biggest one being that you can run multiple operating systems (both Linux and Windows) on your computer without ever having to restart it. The next big benefit that I mentioned is that you can test out software and other things before installing it on your main system.

Microsoft offers a Virtual PC program that runs only on Windows and supports the installation of many different versions of Windows. This is the best choice for most people because it is easy-to-use and is actually free.

Probably the most popular solution for using virtual machines is VMware Workstation. This supports a very long list of operating systems but costs $189…which is well out of the range for most consumers. However, VMware currently has a Beta program going on to test the next milestone release of their software, and you can obtain a valid serial number at no cost to you without any restrictions! Despite having the “Beta” label, I would say that the software is extremely stable from my experiences, and works very well with Vista as both the host (your main operating system) and guest (the operating system installed on the virtual machine).

One thing that is frustrating about the virtual machines is that the graphical capabilities are normally pretty limited because they have to be shared with your host operating system. This can definitely have an effect on anyone trying to run Vista in a virtual machine because you won’t receive any of the Aero glass effects, even if your computer completely supports it. There is, however, a workaround to get Aero to work.

Note: This does require your virtual machine to have access to your network, and the host machine has to be running Aero for this to work.

1. Install Vista on a virtual machine and run it. Make sure to enable remote connections on the virtual machine in the Remote Settings located in the Control Panel under System Properties.
   
2. Your virtual machine should be running Vista without the Aero glass. You now need to find out the IP address of the virtual machine. To do this open up the Start Menu, type “cmd” without the quotes, and press Ctrl+Shift+Enter to run the program as an administrator.
   
3. At the prompt type ipconfig and press Enter. You are looking for the IP address in the output which should look something like this:
   
4. On your host computer start the Remote Desktop client and expand the Options. On the Experience tab, make sure all of the boxes are checked, and on the Display tab make sure the color is set to 32–bit. Then go back to the General tab and enter in the IP address that you found in the previous step.
   
5. Enter in the username/password if prompted and now you will have successfully connected to your virtual machine using remote desktop. The only difference is that the host machine is processing the graphics instead of the virtual machine so you can enable Aero on Vista!
   

I wish there was some other way to enable Aero in a virtual PC, but this is the only way that I have seen. You’re probably wondering why it would even matter whether Aero was running if I just wanted to quickly test out software? There is a lot of new software being developed that takes advantage of Aero’s capabilities, and if I want to test what it really has to offer, I need to have Aero running.

Eventually a better solution may emerge, but until then I think this is the only workaround that’s available.

Source: MSDN Blog

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on July 14, 2008 by CyberNet.

Microsoft/Mac Monday

As we mentioned yesterday, CyberNotes will be a little bit different this week. We’re taking a look back at our favorite CyberNotes from each day and compiling them into a summary that you can browse through. First up are our Monday articles. When we first started the CyberNotes series, Monday articles were themed “Million Dollar Monday.” We wrote about things that while they might not cost one million dollars, they were still expensive or worth a million bucks to someone. Eventually we changed the theme to “Microsoft Monday,” and more recently changed it again to “Microsoft/Mac Monday.” Today’s compilation of our favorites will include articles from all three themes. Enjoy!

Best Xbox 360 Case Mods
Some people like to trick out their cars with a fancy paint job and an expensive set of wheels. Others like to trick out their Xbox 360’s similarly with a fancy case modification complete with LED lights and more. Whatever you’re trickin’ out, most likely it will cost you a buck, or two, or more. It probably won’t be cheap, but in the end you’ll have some well deserved bragging rights (and maybe even an ego too) when done right! This article will point out some of the coolest Xbox 360 case modifications we’ve come across.

World’s Most Expensive Limousines
Years ago, it was usually the millionaires, executives, and celebrities that were chauffeured around in fancy limousines, too busy to drive a car for themselves. Today, there are a plethora of different styled limousines that can be rented for a night out on the town, prom, a wedding, or a trip to the airport. It doesn’t matter how many zero’s are added at the end of your salary because limos are an affordable option to rent. Of course, just because you can rent them doesn’t mean that they aren’t expensive! Limousine companies pay a hefty price for some of these luxury vehicles, and they come in a variety of styles, and colors with features you may not even have in your home.

Changing Icons for Windows Vista
Icons are all around us and play a big part in the user interface of an operating system because they help make your experience more convenient. Because of Icons, you’re easily able to identify the recycling bin, folders, and other elements . Not everybody likes the manila folder icons that come standard with Windows Vista. Fortunately, there are several different ways that you can go about changing these icons, or you can also create icons of your own.

How to Make a Web 2.0 Logo in Paint.NET (tutorial)
Want to know how to create a Web 2.0 logo in Paint.NET? It uses all basic features in the application and it’s simple to do, assuming you have at least some experience with Paint.NET. Remember that Paint.NET is a free program but doesn’t skimp on features. Follow the basic steps in this tutorial and you’ll end up with a good lookin’ Web 2.0 logo.

Little Known Facts about Bill Gates
Bill Gates is known as the World’s richest man (although he was recently de-throned), yet most people really don’t know a whole lot about the name and face behind Microsoft. This Microsoft Monday is all about Bill and some little known facts about him. We also included a photo that shows the Microsoft team in 1978, and details about where everybody is now.

Windows Explorer Groups and Stacks in Vista
Vista is more known for all of its visual appeal than it is for the “under the hood” types of features. One such feature is the new file management options in Windows Vista that allow you to sort, group, filter, and stack your files. It’s simply a new approach to organizing all of your files in Windows Explorer, and something we think you’ll find convenient. Of course there’s still the option to sort files just as you always have in XP, but there’s so much more to file management in Vista than just sorting. This article goes through how to group, filter, and stack your files in Windows Explorer.

Vista Does Time Machine…Better
Apple touts their Time Machine feature in OS X as a breakthrough automatic backup system, but they’re not the only ones that offer such a thing. Believe it or not, Windows Vista has a feature that is much like Time Machine, except we’d like to think that it’s better. We’ll explain…

Snipping Tool for Vista
There are a handful of features in Windows Vista that don’t get talked about very often, so many people don’t realize that they’re even there. One such tool is the Snipping tool which you’ll find in all versions of Vista starting with Vista Home Premium on up. It was originally created for those using a tablet PC, but you certainly don’t need a tablet PC to take advantage of this feature.

History of Windows System Requirements
Ever since the very first version of Windows launched, technology has changed and improved by leaps and bounds. This article looks at the history of Windows system requirements which by itself, helps to show how technology has changed. We’ll start with Windows 1.0 and work our way up to Windows Vista. As you can imagine, the changes that have occurred are pretty drastic. Take a look…

MacBook Pro First Impressions
Switching from Windows Vista to Mac OS X was interesting. This article talks about our first impressions, what we liked and we we didn’t like, and what it was like going from being a Windows user to an OS X user. After using Windows for so long, there were definitely things that took time to get used to.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on July 21, 2006 by CyberNet.

Free For All Friday

The entire concept of RSS (Really Simply Syndication) is growing in all forms as people are slowly becoming aware of such a concept. Offertrax, a startup Web 2.0 company is using RSS to connect consumers and merchants with trusted rules of engagement. Using RSS, consumers will be able to get information from stores about sales, inventory, etc. to give them a simplified shopping experience.

According to Ronald C. Pruett, CEO and co-founder, ‘Offertrax will make online buying for merchants and consumers a social experience, less time-consuming, and extremely targeted’ Additionally, ‘RSS technology will dramatically impact the way people buy and sell online because it enables consumers to control how they would like to be alerted by merchants. In addition, customers can post notes and reviews while commenting and sharing with their friends and social networks. Offertrax will help build an entirely new channel of online marketing that will enhance email, search marketing, and personalization systems currently implemented by merchants’.

Such a large percentage of Internet users are unaware of RSS and what it is. Those who have discovered RSS have found a great tool to simplify their lives. Few people really understand the power of RSS and how it will change the way we receive and sort through the information that is important to us.

Offertrax is using web-based services which allow merchants to offer ’subscriptions’ to consumers so that consumers are able to track only the items that interest them. Furthermore, Offertrax will allow consumers to share the offers that they have ‘tracked’ to lead others to the same purchases based upon their ‘trails’ via the web, mobile phone, or other handheld devices.

This would be a free service for consumers. They plan to generate revenue by charging businesses a fee to use the system. Offertrax is expected to release the first product in August and have announced their initial round of funding from private investors. CyberNet News looks forward to the release of Offertrax and will provide updates as Offertrax progresses!

Checkout their blog to get more information and updates!

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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

Web Browser Wednesday

Earlier this year a guy installed 100 Firefox extensions without any problems. Well…I decided to try and top that. I picked the nice round number of 200 for a few different reasons. First and foremost because Firefox “2″ was recently released but also because back in August Mozilla celebrated 200 million downloads of the fantastic browser! Right now they are past 263 million but this is kinda like a belated celebration.

A discussion about Firefox extensions also started over in the forum which is the whole reason I decided to do this. Hey Chris, hope you have Guinness on hold.

I don’t just have one screenshot to show you either… I have several to show you what installing all of these extensions does to your menus as well. Prepare to be amazed!

Installing the Extensions

To install the extensions I went through the Mozilla Extension page one by one, like any normal person would be doing. I went through the top Firefox extension page until I had all 200 installed. I did install repetitive extensions (such as the three versions of Forecast Fox) because I wanted to see if they affected each other, but there weren’t too many extensions that overlapped in functionality. The only ones that I really skipped were the dictionaries which there happened to be quite a few of.

After I had installed 50 of them I decided to restart the browser to see how things were going. It took about one minute to startup but everything looked like it installed correctly. Then I moved on and after about an hour I had all 200 installed and was ready to restart the browser. I didn’t think that it was going to work but to my surprise it did…

The Overall Result

Ahhh…the beauty of Firefox is in the eye of the beholder and let me say that it looks pretty sweet when running in Vista. It took 6-minutes to start Firefox with the 200 extensions installed but it worked! Not only that but there are the popup windows that you get for certain extensions right after they are installed…yeah…I received 47 of those. That also seemed to delay the initial start time but I didn’t sit there filling out information for all of the options, otherwise that would have taken me hours.

It was quite a site to see and there was a very limited viewing area for websites because of the toolbars. On my 24″ widescreen monitor I had about 2″ of viewable area at the bottom of the browser. But hey, it was still usable. Here is a screenshot of the overall result of a Google search that I performed:

Click for Full-size

It is also pretty amazing what the Google website looks like when I have all of those extensions installed. Not to mention how funny it is when you type a search in the search box and press “Enter” just to see it replicate itself amongst all of the toolbars. That was probably my favorite part about the whole experience. 😉 

Extensions That Were Installed

 The All-in-One Sidebar decided to replace the default Add-ons page in Firefox with its own sidebar module. That was fine except for the fact that it couldn’t handle all of the extensions. It didn’t show a listing of anything that I had installed and in the title it said “undefined [0].” I was a little worried at first because I wanted to show a listing of the extensions that I had installed…but have no fear because there was another menu option that listed them without any issues. Here are the several screenshots of the extensions I installed:

           
Click any of the images above to enlarge them

Using the ListZilla extension that I installed (which is the only one that I installed that isn’t in the top few hundred according to Mozilla) I also generated an HTML listing of all 200 extensions. See, some extensions do have a purpose.

Tools Menu

Many extensions will put some sort of “helpful” link in the Tools menu when you install it. Well, I can confirm that nearly all of them put something in the menu. You don’t even want to know how long it took me to find the “Options” in this disaster:

  
Click any of the images above to enlarge them

Possible Toolbars

I wanted to conserve some space so I ditched the Bookmarks toolbar that is included with Firefox. After all, it is all about the extensions, right? Here is a listing of all the toolbars that are available to choose from but I didn’t setup Weatherbug which is why it’s not shown:

Click for Fullsize

Possible Sidebars

Thank goodness that in Firefox you can’t have a bunch of sidebars open at the same time, because I would have absolutely no website viewing space! Here is a listing of the possible sidebars that could be shown:

Click for Fullsize

Other Less-Altered Things

Here are a few more screenshots of things that didn’t get hit quite so hard by the extensions hurricane…

File Menu

Click for Fullsize

New Menus

Click for Fullsize

Options Screen

Click for Fullsize

Memory Usage

Firefox is notorious for its memory leaks but it didn’t turn out to be as bad as I thought. By the time Firefox would start after a few minutes it had climbed up to 145MB but it capped off around 195MB. I didn’t use it as much as I typically use a browser to see if memory leaks would really start to kick in but it was running for quite awhile. I did however find that it would become sluggish or become unresponsive pretty frequently but it only crashed once in the two-hours that I had it up and running. Here is a screenshot of the memory usage at the end of that two-hours:

Click for Fullsize

Conclusion

Hope you enjoyed this because I know that I sure found it interesting. I thought about uploading my profile to a file-sharing site but it would have taken way too long since it is over 120MB in size. It was definitely an experience and I was thinking about naming this the “Firefox 200!”

What are you still doing here? Go download some extensions.

You should also stop by the forum and share what extensions you are currently using.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on August 26, 2006 by CyberNet.

Weekend Warrior

With airline ticket prices jumping around just as much as gas prices these days, you never know when the best time to buy is. It is so frustrating to buy your tickets one day only to find the next day or week later they’ve dropped in price. Airfare can become one of the most costly aspects of any trip or vacation, not to mention the hassle of constantly checking for lower prices. The site, www.farecast.com  is a great website that does a lot of the work for you and may even help you save some $$$ by telling you if they think the best time to buy is now, or if you should wait until later.

–How It Works–

To put it simply (although you can read the complicated version here), Farecast uses algorithms to make predictions based upon patterns. They will tell you how confident  they are on their prediction. Of course it’s not ALWAYS going to be 100% on the money, but they claim a 75% accuracy rate which gives you pretty good odds.  After you have searched for a particular fare, you will be shown a prediction of what the airfare will look like for the next 7 days.  This gives you a good indication whether or not to buy now or wait. According to their blog, the percentage of the time that they are right continues to increase.

–Track Your Airfare Using RSS–

I, like so many have found how useful RSS feeds are. It makes sorting through information that is important to me so easy.  I thought it was great that Farecast offers an RSS feed that will give you the ability to track airfares and predictions. You’re able to select your airport, a departure date,  the length of the trip, the number of passengers, and up to 3 destinations which will then be created into a customized feed to make searching for the lowest fare simple and nearly effortless.

–Other Information–

Farecast is in beta so there are a few limitations.  Currently they are able to make predictions for 55 home airports like Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, etc.  They have already had a great deal of success, and I can only imagine they will continue to grow and add additional home airports. Additionally, they’re only able to offer predictions for round trip airfare- again. They conveniently point out the limitations they think you may face using the product in beta which gives us an idea of what we can expect as far as improvements for the future.

–Overall–

Overall, Farecast helps you find the lowest price for many airlines (although not all) and from many departure cities. There are some kinks that need to be worked out, but that’s why it is still in beta. With airline prices changing in the blink of an eye, the RSS feed simplifies the process of trying to determine when to buy or when to wait it out. Hopefully they’ll be adding additional airports in the near future to accommodate more passengers. Unfortunately, I think I’ll be waiting a while for the Des Moines, Iowa airport where you could probably fit the entire airport into one parking garage at the Los Angeles airport .

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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