Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on July 01, 2006 by CyberNet.

Weekend Warrior

Many of us have become accustomed to digital video recording devices to use at home such as TiVo or ReplayTV. It’s an easy way to record the ‘must see’ shows that you’re not home to see! It sure beats using the VCR recording method right? More recently (late 2005), companies such as Archos have released a portable DVR, the Archos AV700 that is perfect for the traveler that can’t get enough of their TV shows or movies. For starters, a DVR or a digital video recorder is also known as a personal video recorder. It records TV or movies onto a hard drive (they seem to be getting bigger and bigger!) so that they can be watched later.

The Archos AV700 boasts a 7 inch wide screen which is great for viewing your pre-recorded media. It is made with a 40GB or 100GB hard drive and allows you to record TV directly to the device, or make scheduled recordings (the AV700 automatically adjusts the channel to record scheduled recordings.) Set-up consists of installing a TV docking pod. Infrared emitter cables allow you to control a VCR or a digital receiver such as satellite or cable through the TV Pod. You are able to connect to TV, VCR, DVD player, digital receiver or camcorder.

A few other great features include music playing capabilities, photo wallet, a built in microphone, and the option to download and play games. With the AV700 you are able to use it as a music player. You can fit thousands of songs organized with the ARCLibrary. What’s more, the AV700 is a great way to portably store and share your photos. Photos can be transferred directly from a digital camera (with USB Mass Storage Class), or a computer. As a bonus, photos can be watched in a slideshow form. Additionally, you can use the built in microphone to record notes to yourself or if you’re into gaming, you can purchase games and download them to play off of your AV700.

Here are some of the specs (the good and the not so good!):

• Cost (not so good): $600-800 for the 100GB model
• Display(good): 7″LCD 380X234 Pixels
• Power: Rechargeable Lithium-Ion Battery
• Weight(not so good): The great 7″ screen comes at a cost! The AV700 weighs over 20oz

Additional specs can be found here, and available accessories can be found here! If you’d like to read some of the reviews, check this out.

To sum up the Archos AV700, it’s a rather large, but very portable digital video recording device that makes it easy to catch your ‘must see’ shows on the go! It’s a bit bulky, and the price is pushing its’ limits. It does have a lot of great features from the digital photo wallet to the simplicity of recording shows from your TV directly to the device –meaning less hassle for you! If bigger is better in your book, the AV700 is a good option for a portable DVR making you a bit more travel tech savvy.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on November 28, 2006 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

If you’re anything like me then there are are just a few folders on your Windows computer that you are always accessing. I used to temporarily store things on my desktop because that was the easiest thing to do. Well, after a little while your desktop can quickly get cluttered and it is nearly impossible to find anything that you are looking for.

It’s time to clean up your desktop with the help of a sidebar that contains your most used folders. This is only for Windows users and the best part is that there is no software that you need to download in order to use the feature. Actually, it is one of the simplest things that you could ever do on your PC (it’s right up there with being able to use a mouse ).

The first thing you have to do is find the folder that you want in the sidebar…for me I chose the “My Documents” folder because that is where I store my downloads, music, pictures and just about everything else. As you can see in the screenshot the sidebar on my laptop is placed on the right-side of the screen. Alright, take a deep breath because we’re about to begin.

Instructions (I know, they’re long and tedious):

1. Find the folder that you want to put in the sidebar and drag it as far to the side of the screen as you can. When you let go of the mouse it will create the sidebar.
2. That’s all…did you expect more?

There are a few things to note that you may find useful. You can actually drag a folder to any side of the screen and make sure you checkout the right-click properties:

• Show Text – Display the name of the folders.
• Show Title – Display the name of the sidebar folder.
• Always on Top – Show on top of all the windows. If this is unchecked it will only be visible when other windows aren’t covering it.
• Auto-Hide – Minimize the sidebar when not being used so that it isn’t as obtrusive.
• Close Toolbar – The easy way to get rid of a toolbar that you just created.

Here are what all of the right-click options look like:

This is a really simple concept but many people I have talked with don’t realize that you can do this in Windows. Technically these are considered toolbars but they serve the purpose of a sidebar for me which is why I call them that. I especially love being able to auto-hide them because then they are only there when I need them. Yay for simplicity!

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on March 08, 2008 by CyberNet.

Weekend Website

Do you find yourself doing the same thing weekend after weekend? Maybe you go to the same restaurant or play the same game over and over again? If you’d like to change up your normal weekend routine, you’ll want to checkout Going.com, a local event-based social networking community.

What is Going.com

Going.com is all about helping you find fun things to do around town. You can also post events for others to see. In general, they tend to cater to those in their 20’s, but really, anybody could benefit from their site. Another big part of the site is meeting new people who will be attending the same events as you.  Going acts as a way to both meet new people and find new things to do.

Cities They Cover

At this point in time, they only service six different cities which include:

• Chicago
• New York
• Boston
• Los Angeles
• San Francisco
• Miami

As you’ll see once we get explaining all that Going.com offers, it’s really a great service and so hopefully they’ll be expanding to your city soon.

Features

You do not have to sign up for an account to benefit from Going.com.  You just won’t have access to all of their features. Here’s a quick run-through on some of their features:

• If you find an event that you’re interested in, just mark it as something you’re interested in and they’ll help you keep track of it
  
• Receive a weekly newsletter with updates
• Post your private Party or a public event and promote it
• Keep track of events via RSS

Searching for an Event

Many young people don’t exactly have a lot of money, so entertainment has to be cheap. When you’re searching for an event, you can modify the search and only view events that are free, under $10, $10-$20, or over $20. This will help you find the perfect event that helps you stay within your budget.

Are you looking to get out on the town at a certain time during the day, maybe between 5PM-8PM? Going allows you to select the time of day that you’ll be going out so that you can find events that are going on during that time.  You can choose daytime, 5PM-8PM, 8PM-10PM, or late night.

Not everybody wants to be heading to a club on a Friday night.  Events are broken down into different categories so that you can see only music events, only cultural events, etc. There are also editor’s picks which are fun too. Additionally, you can pick a specific date that you’re looking to get out and have fun on, and it will show only events happening on that day.

No matter what it is you’re looking to do and how much money you’re willing to spend, finding an event takes very little effort.

Events I Might Like

Another one of those perks to singing up to be a member is that you can get personalized events. Each time you read about an event, you can check “I like” or “Nope” that you don’t. Based upon this information, Going.com will come up with a list of events that you might like.

My Events

The “My Events” tab is personalized just for you and will help you keep track of your events.   It’s a color coded calendar that divides all of your events into four different categories:

• Events I’m going to
• Events I like
• Events I posted
• Friends’ events

This way you can easily keep track of what your social schedule will be like. You can also export the calendar to Google Calendar, Outlook, or iCal which is an extra added convenience.

Photos & Groups

Those of you on Facebook or MySpace know how crazed people are with sharing their photos with others.  Going wants you to share your photos too. Users can post photos from events that they attended so that other users can browse them. Additionally, users can tag someone in the photo by name. Thanks to privacy settings, you have control over who adds tags to your photos and which photos you can be tagged in.

If you’d like to talk more with those who will be attending the events, you can talk to them in any of the different groups that have been created. You can also create your own groups. Each group has a message board where people can talk and post comments.

Wrapping it Up

Going.com is a great place to go for when you’re wanting something to do and you’re just not sure what’s going on.  As mentioned, the service isn’t available in every city out there, so hopefully they’ll be expanding in the future.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on July 05, 2008 by CyberNet.

Weekend Website

In the past we’ve written about a few different “How-To” sites on the web that offer tutorials on how to do something. So far we have covered WonderHowTo and Expert Village, both sites which have excellent guides. Today we’re taking a look at another solution called Howcast. It’s got a great interface and professional videos, and we think it’s one of the best how-to sites available. You can never have too many resources on the Internet for learning how to do various things, can you?

About Howcast

Howcast was actually created by former Google and YouTube employees who wanted to create professional how-to videos for consumers. On their About page, they say, “Howcast brings together the personality of user-generated content with the quality of a professional video studio to create engaging, informative, and free how-to videos for consumers. It also offers emerging filmmakers an opportunity to gain experience, exposure, and income.”

The topics that they cover really varies, but the one thing that they all have in common is the professional nature of the how-to videos. Every video I watched while exploring Howcast was very professional and engaging which makes a difference.

Using Wiki Guides (link)

One of the unique aspects to Howcast is their Wiki Guides Section. This is where people are able to write various how-to guides that others can contribute to. Those who want to edit content must have a Howcast account, otherwise they won’t be able to make changes. Another nice feature is the option for people to comment of various Wiki Guides.

When you are viewing a Wiki Guide, you’ll notice options up at the top of the page like “older” and “newer” or “changes” and “rollback.” Users are given access to previous versions of a Wiki which is why those navigation buttons are available. By clicking “Changes”, everything that was added or deleted from the previous version is highlighted so that a user will know what has changed.

There’s also a Print button up at the top. Clicking on it will format the page nicely for your printer, and then you’ll be able to print something you found that was helpful.

Several sort and filter options are available when you’re looking through Wiki Guides and they include options to sort by most viewed, most recently added, top rated, top favorites, most emailed and most discussed. You can also filter down the Wikis by selecting only certain categories. There’s also the option to view only those written by Howcast writers, or those written by the community.

Searching Through Categories (link)

Multiple categories of how-to guides are available at Howcast. Just look for the “Categories” tab at the top of the page. There you’ll find a list of categories ranging from Arts and Media to Travel. You know what? We’ll just go ahead and list the categories right here so that you’ll know what’s available:

Howcast Community (link)

Once you sign-up for an account, you can become part of the Howcast community. One way to do this is to upload your own how-to videos, while another way is to write your own Wiki Guide. If you decide to write-up a guide of your own, the Howcast community will be able to edit it. It can also be made into a video as well.

Each member has a profile page that they can edit and add information to. It also acts as a “dashboard” and will show you how many videos you’ve added, how many wiki guides you created, and how many comments and subscribers you have. And yes, you can subscribe to someone’s profile so that you’ll be updated when they add new content.

Wrapping it up

One of the features that we failed to mention is that you can create playlists of how-to videos that you want to watch, but you must have a Howcast account to be able to do it.

Looking through the videos, here are a few videos that might interest you:

• How to fix a wet cell phone
• How to take great pictures with your cell phone
• How to fix a scratched CD
• How to use your iPod as a backup hard drive
• How to setup a custom WordPress blog

If you’re trying to figure out how to do something, checkout Howcast. We think you’ll be impressed with the quality of the videos, the interface, and the opportunities that they provide for the community to get involved.

Thanks for the tip Pieter!

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on January 03, 2008 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

The tool that I used for a long time for extracting and compressing archives is 7-Zip. It’s free, open-source, and has a powerful set of command line options that is perfect for performing backups. And today that’s exactly what we’re going to use it for.

We’re going to use a special version of 7-Zip that has no user interface whatsoever. It has to be used via the command line, and one of the benefits for using this version is that the entire application is self-contained in one single executable file. That makes it a great tool to carry around with you on a USB drive, and extremely easy to work with.

Here’s how to use the 7-Zip command line options to create backups at the click of a mouse:

1. The first thing you’ll want to do is go download the command line version of 7-zip. After you extract the contents you’ll notice that there are five files available. All we need is the 7za.exe, so you can delete the rest if you wish.
   
2. Open up Notepad, and now we’re going to create a batch file that will backup a folder location of our choosing. I’ve decided to backup everything on my desktop this time around, but it will work for any location as long as you know the path.

   7za.exe a cybernet.7z "C:\Users\Ryan\Desktop"

   Be sure to include quotation marks around any paths that have spaces in them. For this example I didn’t have to put quotation marks around my path, but it never hurts to include them.

   This will archive the documents in the 7-Zip format, which means you’ll need to have 7-Zip to extract it. It’s good because the compression ratio is very high, which means the backup file will be rather small compared to the other compression formats. If you were going to send this to someone they may have troubles opening it, but you can choose save the file as a ZIP by replacing “7z” with “zip” in that line of code.

   

3. Now we need to save the batch file in the same place where the 7za.exe is located. In Notepad go to File -> Save As, and choose any filename. The only thing you need to make sure of is that at the end of the filename you include the .BAT extension:
   
4. Now all you have left to do is double-click on the batch file that you just created to run it. The resulting backup file will be located in the same place as the 7za.exe and the batch file, unless you’ve specified an alternate location in Step 2.
5. Extra Credit: You can always create a scheduled task that will run your batch file automatically at a time/date that you specify. That can be done by using the built-in Windows Scheduled Tasks wizard, which can be found in the Control Panel.

One other tip that I wanted to provide is how to automatically insert the current year, month, and day into the resulting filename. This would be useful for anyone looking to schedule backups, without wanting to overwrite the previous backup. In Step 2 from our example above you would want to replace:

cybernet.7z

with:

%DATE:~-4%-%DATE:~4,2%-%DATE:~7,2%_cybernet.7z

which for today would give a result of:

2008-01-03_cybernet.7z

Now every backup will remain in tact, assuming that you create no more than one backup per day.

For those of you who want to dive a little deeper in to the 7-Zip command line options, here are the different things that the “a” can be replaced with in Step 2:

• a: Add to an existing archive, or create a new one
• d: Delete files from an archive
• e: Extract files from an archive
• t: Test the integrity of an archive
• u: Update the files in an archive

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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