Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on February 17, 2007 by CyberNet.

Weekend Website

One of the most popular things to do over the web is share photos, which people do through social networks, blogs, and emails. BubbleShare is an online service that enhances the photo-sharing experience by helping you create stories out of your images that you can share with others. Or as they say it, “Tell you story, you way, instantly.”

–Why I like It–

I was just introduced to BubbleShare recently, and after playing around with it for a while, it will probably be one of those sites I actually use.  Here’s why I like it:

• No registration required to view images
• No software downloads are needed to create a new album
• It’s free!
• You can tag photos.

-How it works–

It’s actually a very simple process.  If you’re wanting to create an album, first you’ll need to create an account. It only takes a few minutes, and then you’ll be right on your way.  First you’ll upload your photos. By clicking “new album,” you’ll be guided through the process.  When I was creating an album, I just control clicked to select all of my pictures out of my picture folder, and then clicked upload.  This made it a one-click, simple process.

You’re not required to resize your photos like some services, but keep in mind that if you have a high resolution camera, it could potentially take a while for all of your images to upload.  While you’re waiting for all of your images to upload, you’ll be shown the status.  It will give you the percent completed, and how many bytes it currently has uploaded.

After your pictures are uploaded, you’ll get an email with the link to the album when it’s complete.  This is nice because you could get the upload process started, walk away for a while, and come back when it’s done.

From there, you’re left to fill the album with creativity by adding comments, clipart, or even snippets of your voice narrating the pictures.  You’ll receive a private link for your album so that you can pass it out to friends and family who will be able to view your creation.

This album is powered by
BubbleShare
– Add to my blog

-Features/Community–

Being that it is a Web 2.0 site, they have that community aspect that shows different album’s that have been created. You’re given the choice of whether or not you want to share your album with the community, which is nice.

Features that you’ll probably like:

• Add clipart to your photos.  The selection is very limited, but hopefully they will be expanding that.
• Caption bubbles – They offer a few different styles of bubbles that you can drag anywhere on a photo to add your own captions.
• Audio captions – Record a 30 second audio clip to attach to  the photos in your story!

Sharing your photos is the point of BubbleShare, so they make this process easy to do.  You can place HTML code into blogs, websites, or social networks like Hi5, MySpace, Xanga, Live Journal, Friendster, etc.  You can also share by email, as mentioned.  All you have to do is enter in the email addresses of the people you’d like to share the album with, and BubbleShare will send them a link.

–Keep in mind–

Keep in mind that photos are shared in low resolution, and they include a row of text ads. The good news is that the ads aren’t very obtrusive, and at some point, they plan on offering a premium service. Your photos will be stored for one year, and then you’ll need to renew the album. It’s free to renew, and would be available again for another year.

If you share photos with family and friends often, this is a great solution, especially if you typically share them via email.  When you share pictures via email, it takes time both on your end (for you to upload) and then on their end (to download).  While it may take you a decent amount of time to get all of your high-resolution pictures uploaded to BubbleShare, there won’t be any delay for those whom you’re sharing your photos with.  It’s a simple, easy sharing process.

I put together a quick demonstration that gives you a small idea of what you can do. The pictures are from a Chicago Cubs/ Milwaukee Brewers Baseball game that I went to a couple of years ago. I didn’t add any voice narration to it, but that’s something that you could easily do.

When you’re wanting to display your images on a blog , or other website, they give you a few different options for display, including choices for the size from small to large :

1. Gizmo player – the person viewing has control over when to view the next picture, or if they want the slide show to play.
2. Bubble Slider – this displays your pictures in a horizontal slide show.
3. Vertical Slider
4. Bouncy Animation – Adds a little bounce to your pictures.

I think that’s about all there is to it! It’s a very simple process that would be easy for anyone to understand, and it’s a good way to share photos with friends and family. Visit BubbleShare here to get started!

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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

Time Saving Tuesday

Just last week I finally decided to sit down and get a little more organized by setting up my Google Calendar. I started scheduling everything but I quickly got frustrated going back and forth between my calendar homepage and the “Create Event” page. I knew about the Quick Add feature but I hadn’t experimented with it so I decided to figure out how I could use it to schedule almost anything.

I originally thought that it would only recognize simple phrases like their “Dinner with Michael 7pm tomorrow” example but I soon realized that it is really powerful. Here are some examples on how you can use it:

• Volleyball at 5pm — Schedules the event for present day unless the time has already passed, then it will schedule it for the next day.
• Bank holiday 8/14 — All-day event.
• Staff meeting next Monday at 13:00 — One hour event.
• Running w/ Pat 2:15 tomorrow for 45 minutes — Specify the length.
• Running w/ Pat 2:15 – 3 pm tomorrow — Specify the start/end time.
• National Conference 9/23 – 9/26 in Atlanta — Multi-day.
• Lunch at Charlie’s tomorrow noon gcal@gmail.com — Add someone to the guest list.
• Call New York at 3 pm EDT — Specify the time zone.
• Lunch with John at “Taco Tuesdays” Friday 12 pm — Place quotations around the name of a place to prevent the Quick Add from interpreting the name as a date/time.

Scheduling reoccurring appointments with Quick Add:

• Meeting at work every Monday at 2pm – Repeats Weekly. 
• Tennis practice Tuesday 7pm to 9pm weekly – Repeats Weekly. 
• Dinner at Mom’s on the first Tuesday of every month — Repeats Monthly.
• Manicure on 9/1 every month — Repeats Monthly.
• Mom’s birthday June 19 yearly — Repeats Yearly.
• Wedding anniversary July 3 yearly — Repeats Yearly.
• Baseball Game every Thursday for 10 weeks — Repeats weekly for a specified duration.
• Language Class every Wednesday 7-8pm for 5 months — Repeats weekly for a specified duration.

If you love the Quick Add feature you may want to think about getting the Firefox extension that will make it even easier to get the Quick Add box. You won’t have to load up the Calendar once you have the extension, instead you just need to press Ctrl+; (that is Ctrl+semicolon) and the Quick Add box will popup right away!

Source: Google Help Center

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

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This article was written on June 30, 2006 by CyberNet.

Free For All Friday

It is Friday and I thought I would provide some lucky people with the chance to try out Writely! This will give you something to do this weekend as you prepare for July 4 (which is Independence Day for us in the United States).

CyberNet News currently has 50 ‘invitations’ to join Writely which was closed off to new members once Google acquired them. To get one of the invitations please read the details below.

These are not really invitations, but I will briefly go through how it will work. To invite someone to join I simply create a document. I then add someone (by email address) to be a collaborator on that document. Writely then sends an email to that user saying that they can now join Writely and they provide a temporary password. Then all you have to do is go here and login with the email address you provided and the temporary password they emailed you.

So this is how it will work:

1. Leave a comment below with your email address. You ONLY have to place your email address in the email field so that it does not get posted on this page. This will prevent your email address from getting spammed.
2. Periodically during the day I will send out these invitations. I am not always going to be at my computer so you may not get it immediately.
3. The first 50 comments will get an invitation, and please do not double post a comment. Anyone that posts more than one comment will not receive an invitation.
4. Once 50 invitations have been sent out I will post in the comments below letting you know. We do plan on doing this again in the future and we may possibly make this a Friday thing (it is quite time consuming to send the invites out though)!

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on September 13, 2006 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

I thought today I would do something a little different than usual. Sure I have done lists of Firefox extensions before (tabbed browsing and security) but this one takes a unique approach. It isn’t focused on productivity or usefulness, instead we are taking a look at funny extensions. Some of them are even great for pranks.

–Ad Bar (Download)–
Duh, this is what Firefox has been missing all along. Ads!

This extension will display ads in Firefox much like how Opera used to. If there are some relevant ads to be displayed from Google it will do so, otherwise you will see a Firefox ad like the one pictured above. Before you jump the gun…no one is making money off of this because the Google ads use a “test” mode:

If adbar were to generate revenue from ad clickthroughs, it would violate the AdSense policy that disallows client software from showing the ads. While Google has made an exception for the free version of Opera, it did not respond when I asked for an exception for adbar.

Two of the other FAQ’s will give you a good laugh as well:

Can I register and get rid of the ads?

Of course! Paypal $19 (51% cheaper than Opera!) to me or the Mozilla Foundation, then uninstall adbar using the Extension Manager in Firefox’s Tools menu.

When I visit porn sites, why do I get public service ads instead of ads for porn?

Good question.

They say “51% cheaper than Opera” because this extension was last updated back in 2004…you know the days when Opera didn’t offer a no cost version that was ad-free.

–Firesomething (Download)–
Sick of your title bar always saying “Mozilla Firefox”? Then have it say something a little more random. Firesomething will replace the word Firefox with Fire**** where the asterisks are random words.

I’m sure the title of this extension makes a lot more sense now.

–Hammer Time (Download)–
So you’re trying to introduce your Grandma to the Internet but she just doesn’t understand how the stop button works, right? I know, that is a common issue but the Hammer Time extension will solve all of your woes! You can now replace the stop button with an MC Hammer icon. I mean how can anyone forget what that button does now…”STOP! Hammer Time..” 

–Remove Links (Download)–
If you find yourself browsing the Web too much then this extension will definitely solve that problem. Why? It will remove every link so that you have nothing to click on. If you can’t click then there isn’t much you can do.

–Anti-Paranoia (Download)–
If you are constantly watching over you back, can’t sleep at night, or stressed out at work then you need the Anti-Paranoia extension.

It will add an option to the Tools menu that says “I am afraid” which activates the extension. Once it has been activated you will see a notification box every 3 to 7 minutes popping up in the bottom-right corner of Firefox with comforting messages like “Everything is good” and “The world is a good place”.

–Random Theme Switcher (Download)–
This extension does have some usefulness to it but I would say it would be awesome for performing a prank. All you have to do is install a bunch of crazy themes and this extension on someone’s Firefox and they will go crazy…especially if you make it a point to tell them that a virus has been going around lately that infects Firefox which makes it constantly change its appearance.

–Goodbye, Cruel World (Download)–
Someone thought the Hello World program was a little too cheery. Enough said.

–Mood Tap (Download)–
This extension will let the whole world know how you are feeling. Just select your mood from the list of options and it will add it to the other statistics on MoodTap.com. It looks like right now the world isn’t feeling too good.

–Office Poltergeist (Download)–
Sure you could setup someone’s computer so that you could remotely control it but why not just hijack their web browser? All you have to do is download this extension and install it on your friends existing Firefox installation.

Once installed you will be able to access the computer by typing in http://IPADDRESS:666 to if installed on a PC and http://IPADDRESS:13013 if the computer is a Mac. Once you are in control you can change the URL of the site they are viewing, make an alert box popup, play a sound, shake their window, or replace every word on the screen with another word.

This extension can give you hours of amusement when installed on a friends computer.

–Autobrowse (Download)–
This extension will take all of the pain away from finding search results. How? Just activate it from the Tools menu, choose the search term,  and pick the search engine. Once it has that information it will automatically start surfing through the results!

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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

Time Saving Tuesday

How often do you open and save files on your computer? I’m sure that even the most casual users will do it several times throughout the day. Whether it be adding an attachment to an email, uploading a photo to a website, or simply saving a document you’ve been working on… opening and saving files is a part of our computer-driven lives.

Now the question of how to speed up the process comes into play. Most of the time spent opening or saving files is probably navigating through hierarchy of never ending folders on your computer that you’ve meant to cleanup for months. We’ve all been there, and luckily we have some excellent solutions for the Windows users out there!

–Vista Favorite Links–

First off Microsoft has made a valiant effort of addressing this problem in their latest Windows Vista operating system. When you go to open or save a file in Vista you’ll likely see a screen similar to this:

(Click to Enlarge)

Along the left side I’ve highlighted a section labeled Favorite Links. The Favorite Links is designed to serve as bookmarks for the folders you use the most on your computer. Vista ships with common bookmarks to the desktop, documents, music, pictures, and more, but you can add or remove them as you please.

If you come across a folder that you want to add just drag it into the Favorite Links. The order for the shortcuts can be changed at any time simply by dragging and dropping them where you would like. And if you want to remove one of the shortcuts just right-click on it, and select the Remove Link option. Nice and simple… just the way I like it.

–Direct Folders (Homepage)–

This is actually the application that sparked us to write this article. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that a free version of Direct Folders emerged, and there has been quite a bit of buzz about it around the Internet. The free version will be more than enough for most of you, and it’s actually quite slick as to how it works. Once you have it installed just double-click with the left mouse button in an empty area of Windows Explorer (or an Open/Save dialog):

(Click to Enlarge)

You should see a menu popup, and at first glance there isn’t much there. What you need to do is go through all of your favorite folders and add them to the list. You can do this by navigating to a folder that you want to add, double-clicking in an empty space with the left mouse button, and then choosing the Add here option.

The nice thing about this is that there are no buttons that clutter the interface, which is something many of you will appreciate. The one thing that I don’t like is that it’s sometimes a hassle to find an “empty space” to double-click.

–FileBox eXtender (Homepage)–

This is an open source project that I’ve used off and on again for the last few months. It has several advanced configuration options that power users will love, and even has a few features that almost any application will be able to benefit from.

This program works a little differently than the Direct Folders previously mentioned. FileBox eXtender adds a few buttons to the Titlebar of Windows Explorer and the dialogs. The folder icon with the heart is the one you want to look for because it’s where you can store your favorites:

(Click to Enlarge)

Next to the heart folder is another button with a clock, and that menu will contain folders that you’ve recently accessed through the open and save dialogs. That’s pretty smart since you’ll likely be pulling up the same folders over and over again.

There are two other icons you’ll see in other applications aside from just Windows Explorer:

• The up arrow will roll up the current window collapsing it down to merely the Titlebar. It’s just like WinRoll.
• The pin button will force a window to remain on top regardless of whether it is the window currently in focus.

Any of these buttons can be removed from the Titlebar by going through the configuration options, but it’s nice knowing that you’ll get some additional features that can be used outside of the Explorer windows.

–Overview–

Now we want to know about any tricks you use to make opening and saving files a speedy process. Drop off your tips in the comments below.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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