Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on September 06, 2007 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

How many times have you seen someone take a post-it note, write their password on it, and slap it to their monitor? Unfortunately this type of thing is more of a common occurrence than it should be, but the problem is that people can never remember their darn passwords!

Windows has a built-in feature that is made for situations just like this. It lets a user create a password reset "disk" that can be used to change the password in the event that they forget it. The "disk" can be a floppy, USB drive, iPod, or any external drive. It takes less than a minute to create, and believe me…this can save you a ton of time!

Of course by the time you come across this article it will probably be too late, and you’ll want to reset the Windows password without a disk. If that’s the case then I’ve put together a small section at the end of this article dedicated to "cracking" the Windows password.

–Creating a Password Reset Disk–

Instructions on creating a password reset disk in Windows XP can be found here. Here’s what you have to do if you’re running Vista:

1. Open the start menu and start to type "User Accounts" in the search box.
   
2. In the window that pops up choose the "Create a password reset disk" under the Tasks heading in the left pane.
   
3. A wizard will now walk you through creating a password reset disk. After you get by the first screen you’ll be presented with a drop-down menu that lists the available devices that can successfully be used. It has to be some sort of removable media, such as a floppy disk, USB drive, or even your iPod.
   
4. Next just enter in your current Windows password, and then you’ll be done. If you check the device that you used for the reset disk there should be a hidden file called userkey.psw.
   

–Using a Password Reset Disk–

Like most things in life, the advanced preparations you made by creating a password reset disk can really pay off. To use the disk just insert it into your computer, and then try to login as if you knew the password. Windows will tell you that the password is incorrect, and when you return to the login screen there will be a "Reset password" option located under the password field. That will initiate a wizard that will guide you through the steps needed to create a new password.

Note: Your current password reset disk is still valid even after changing your password.

Click to Enlarge

–Don’t Have a Password Reset Disk?–

Unfortunately by the time you realize that you can create a password reset disk it’s normally too late. There are some solutions, which I’ll outline here, but for obvious reasons none of them are going to be very easy.

• Using a Windows XP loophole – You can launch the user account management while performing a repair on the operating system since you can access the command prompt. This is definitely the route I would go if I was running XP, but make sure you follow the instructions closely.
• Cracking a Vista or XP password using Ophcrack – This is an application that you burn to CD, and it will boot up with your computer. You’ll need to give your computer some "alone time" depending on the strength of your password.
• Login Recovery for NT, 2000, XP, 2003, and Vista – This is actually a service, and it requires that you download an application to put on a floppy that will retrieve your password file. You then send your password file to them, and they will decode it. There’s a 98.5% chance that it can be done in less than 10-minutes, but you’ll have to pay some money if you want it that soon. Otherwise they have a free service available, and with that you’ll get the password within 48-hours.

–Overview–

I highly recommend that you create a password reset disk if you haven’t done so already. I did it for all of my computers since I can just use a USB drive as the storage medium. You’re probably pretty confident that you won’t forget your password, but who knows, it could happen.

This might also be useful to backup passwords for friends and family who may often forget these types of things. I might start doing that because then they don’t have to worry about putting a darn post-it note on the desk with their password! Maybe they would also create a password that is more secure, too.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on November 15, 2007 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

There are all kinds of websites available for finding great deals, but a lot of times it takes some extra work to find the items that you’re looking for. With the holiday season coming up I’m sure you’ll be trying to hunt down all kinds of stuff for friends and family, but you don’t have to go out of your way to save some money.

We have already laid out several tools that can help you along the way, such as price drop notifiers and Black Friday savings, but we’re going to take it one step further. We turned once again to Yahoo! Pipes because of the sheer power it harnesses. Unlike with our custom software updater there will be little work for you to do this time around.

What do you have to do? Pull up the CyberNet Deal Finder that I’ve already taken the liberty of creating. You should see a screen similar to this, but without the coloring or numbering:

Using the diagram above here is what you have to do:

1. You can enter in up to five different items that you want to track.

   Tip: Put spaces before and after each item for more accurate searching. For example, if you’re looking for a “table” you’ll want to put a space before and after the name, like this: ” table ” (ignore the quotes, but note the space before and after the word). If you don’t do this it will match any words containing “table” such as “tablet”.

2. By default I fill in the form with 5 of the most popular deal sites. I decided to let users customize the sites because most of the deals available in the feeds I supply are for the United States only.
3. Run the pipe and examine the preview at the bottom of the page to make sure it is what you expected. You may not see any results initially, it all depends on how common your search words are.
4. If everything looks good go ahead and subscribe to the feed. All of the settings that you configured in the first two steps will automatically be stored in the feed’s URL.

If you have more than 5 items that you want to track that’s not a problem. Just create more than one feed, or you can clone the pipe that I’ve created and edit it accordingly.

So now it is time to prepare for the holidays and watch for the falling prices!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on July 13, 2007 by CyberNet.

Funny Friday

Hacking is no laughing matter, but the list contained within this article is!

The content below was not written by me. I am unaware of the original source, however, this is the source I got it from.

1. Your phone bill lists 1,987 household lines.
2. Your son tells you that his private interview with the Secret Service agent was for a social studies class essay.
3. You receive mail addressed to Phil E. Phreak.
4. The kid cheers Lex Luthor whenever a Superman movie runs on TV.
5. The CEO of a regional Bell operating company appears on your doorstep, sobbing uncontrollably and begging forgiveness.
6. You find a copy of Phrack magazine hidden under the underwear in your son’s bedroom dresser. (The Playboy magazine is next to the handheld scanner, of course.)
7. The kid asks for a Novell Access Server for his birthday.
8. The little silver-colored wheel on your electric meter spins so fast it flies off, slices your neighbor’s elm tree neatly in two and flattens a tire on a Chevy Monte Carlo three blocks away.
9. Your son’s English teacher calls, sounding really curious, to ask why the kid selected the Oklahoma City phone directory for his monthly book report.
10. He names Robert Morris Jr. as his “Most Admired American.”

Along the same lines, head on over to the forum to participate in a quiz titled “Computer Hacker or Cannibal.” How many can you get right? Post your score in the forum…

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on February 01, 2007 by CyberNet.

Special Vista Edition: Part 3

This is the third and last part of our special Vista Edition of CyberNotes this week. We’ve already reviewed all of the various applications and features that are included in Vista, as well as covering some add-ons that can be used to make Internet Explorer 7 even better. I wanted to wrap up today by offering some tips and tricks on using Vista.

Here are the tips and tricks listed in this article:

• Checkboxes and Dragging Files/Folders
• Taking Full Advantage of Flip3D
• Quick Calendar View
• Slow Down Aero Animations
• Scale Desktop Images to make them Larger or Smaller
• Keyboard Shortcut to Launch Quick Launch Apps
• Customize the Location of User Folders
• Open Command Prompt Here
• Modifying Vista’s BCDEDIT the Easy Way
• Disable User Account Control (UAC)
• Get a Report on your System’s Health
• Temporarily View Menu Bar in Windows Explorer
• Overview

–Checkboxes and Dragging Files/Folders–

Vista makes you very aware of when you are doing things with files and folders to prevent accidents from happening. I’m sure it’s happened to all of us at some point or another, where we accidentally dragged a folder or file somewhere and didn’t realize it.

First, go to the Folder Options in Vista, then the View tab, and check the box that says “Use check boxes to select items.” Now when you’re selecting multiple items, Windows Explorer will place a checkbox on that item so that you can easily see what items you currently have selected:

The other thing that I wanted to mention was dragging files around in Vista. If you have multiple files selected it will show you how many items you are actually dragging which can be really helpful at preventing accidents from occurring:

–Taking Full Advantage of Flip3D–

Flip3D is one of Vista’s new ways to switch between running applications. It angles all of the open windows so that they can all be seen at the same time, but there are some things you may not realize you can do with it:

Note: To activate Flip3D press the Windows Key + Tab

• Use your mouse’s scroll wheel to quickly flip through the open windows.
• Use the arrows to flip through the open windows
• Click on any portion of a window with your mouse to quickly switch to it without having to flip through them.

–Quick Calendar View–

By left-clicking on the clock in the System Tray you’ll get a nice calendar popup. Once you get used to having quick access to a calendar like this you’ll take it for granted. Also, if you observe Daylight Savings Time it will notify you one-week prior to setting your clocks back so that you don’t forget.

–Slow Down Aero Animations–

The Aero Glass interface is pretty nifty, but the animations happen so quickly that there just isn’t enough time for you to savor them.

No problem! It requires a little Registry work to tweak the timing, but it might be worth the extra “wow” factor.

1. Click on the Start button and in the Search field type regedit. Press Enter.
2. Click Continue if you see a User Account Control Prompt.
3. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM
4. In the right hand pane, right click on an empty space and from the context menu that appears choose New > DWORD (32-bit) Value.
5. Give the new DWORD (32-bit) Value a name of AnimationsShiftKey
6. Double click on the AnimationsShiftKey value and give it a value of 1.
7. Close the Registry Editor and logoff of Windows and log back in to see the effect.

You’ll only see the effect of the slow animation when holding down the Shift key, so it doesn’t completely hinder your productivity.  The source of this tweak also found out that the coolest animation has to be when starting Windows Flip3D by pressing CTRL+WinKey+Tab and then holding the Shift button while clicking on a window. It’s just something you gotta see at least once.

Source: Windows Now

–Scale Desktop Images to make them Larger or Smaller–

While on your Desktop hold down the Control button on the keyboard and start scrolling with the scroll wheel on your mouse. You’ll notice that you can make the icons on the desktop very small or very large. Here is the smallest and largest that you can make the icons:

–Keyboard Shortcut to Launch Quick Launch Apps–

Open any of your applications or documents in the Quick Launch bar by simply pressing the Windows Key + Num where “Num” corresponds to the position of the shortcut. Here is an example of how the numbering scheme works (for example, Internet Explorer would be Windows Key + 3):

–Customize the Location of User Folders–

The most important things on your computer are probably your documents, music and pictures. The custom locations option is something you’ll love if you happen to place these things on a separate drive just incase the Windows hard drive fails. That’s what I do and now I can point the My Music, My Pictures, and My Documents folder to the location on a different hard drive. Then whenever I click a link to one of those locations it will immediately pull up the results from that other drive.

–Open Command Prompt Here–

 You can easily open a command prompt window pointing to any directory by simply right-clicking on a folder while holding down the Shift key. That will reveal the “hidden” option that says “Open Command Window Here“:

–Modifying Vista’s BCDEDIT the Easy Way–

Microsoft changed how users modify the boot entries available when starting your PC. If you want to do something simple like modifying the name of the operating system that appears, you’ll be forced to go to the Command Prompt because Vista uses BCDEDIT. However, there is an alternative that I have talked about before called VistaBootPro that makes this chore a lot easier.

–Disable User Account Control (UAC)–

 If you get tired of those User Account Control prompts always popping up wanting to get your permission, just disable them. To do this just go to the Control Panel -> User Accounts and Family Safety -> User Accounts -> Turn User Account Control On or Off. After doing this you will have to restart your computer though.

–Get a Report on your System’s Health–

It’s always nice to know that your computer is up to par when it comes to its’ health. That’s why you can generate a health report in a few minutes that analyzes a bunch of different aspects of your system. Pulling up the report is pretty simple, just go to the Control Panel -> System and Maintenance -> Performance Information and Tools -> Advanced Tools (located in the left sidebar) -> Generate a system health report.

If something is not quite right this report will be sure to tell you after it is done analyzing your system. Who knows, a health report might be just what the doctor ordered.

Source: ZDNet

–Temporarily View Menu Bar in Windows Explorer–

The Menubar (File, Edit, View, Tools, etc…) is hidden by default in Vista when using Windows Explorer. It can be enabled by going to Organize -> Layout -> Menu Bar but I think you’ll find that you hardly need it. If, however, you do want it real quick just press the Alt key while in Windows Explorer to temporarily reveal the Menu Bar. It will disappear immediately after making a selection in one of the menus.

–Overview–

That completes our first Vista tweak guide. If you found any of these interesting you should make sure to follow future postings closely because I’m sure we’ll find other great things to tweak as we are able to play around with Vista a little more.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on June 18, 2008 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

It’s been a year and a half since Mozilla shipped Firefox 3 Alpha 1, and what we saw initially wasn’t very breathtaking. For this first milestone release Mozilla focused on backend improvements that would, in the long run, make the browser a better competitor in a world that is largely dominated by Internet Explorer. Fast forward to the final release of Firefox 3 yesterday and we’ve got ourselves a rich browser that I believe Firefox users will embrace with open arms.

Firefox 3 has its sights set on Internet Explorer as it comes barreling through with over 15,000 updates. There have been enhancements to performance, stability, rendering, security, bookmarking, and much more that makes this the best version of Firefox yet. For the first time we’re going to list out all of Firefox 3′s best features for those of you who are jumping on the bandwagon for the very first time, and we’ll even take a brief look at the browser’s performance.

–Table of Contents–

In this article we’re focusing on several different aspects of the Firefox 3 browser, and we thought it might be easier for you to navigate if you had a table of contents. Here are the main topics that we’re going to cover:

1. Themes
2. Performance
3. Security
4. Usability
5. Developers
6. Conclusion

–Themes–

One of the most frequently discussed aspects of Firefox 3 is the fact that it ships with a handful of different themes that are all customized to the operating system you’re using. They’ve got one for Vista, Linux (varies depending on distribution used), Mac, and Windows XP. Each one focuses on trying to make the browser appear as though it was designed specifically for that operating system. There is, of course, some debate as to whether Mozilla succeeded in doing so.

Firefox 3 themes, from top to bottom: Vista, Linux, Mac, XP

The theme changes go beyond just a few changed icons, too. As you can tell in the screenshot above there are some rather drastic differences between each of the themes. A good example of that is the address bar and search box which have rounded corners on some operating systems, and don’t on others.

As you begin to dive a little deeper you’ll notice that the OS-specific skinning impacts more than the browser’s main window. Everything from the settings to managing bookmarks have all been designed to fit in with the general appearance of your operating system.

–Performance–

We’re not going to dive deep into the performance realm today because that’s something we plan on exploring more in the future. One thing that we can say is that the performance hasn’t changed much since our last extensive test, especially in the memory usage department. Firefox 3 still knocks the socks off of the competitors when it comes to minimizing the amount of memory it uses.

But you know darn well that we won’t move on without giving you some sort of benchmarks. We decided to see how Firefox 3, Opera 9.5, and Safari 3.1 do on the SunSpider JavaScript test. We left Internet Explorer out of this because it is pretty much the only one not claiming that it has significant JavaScript speed improvements. Here are the results from the three browsers running on Windows XP (a smaller number is better):

1. Firefox 3: 3057.6ms (results)
2. Safari 3.1: 3464.0ms (results)
3. Opera 9.5: 4440.0ms (results)

What’s interesting is that on Apple’s Safari site they say that “it executes JavaScript up to 4.5 times faster than Firefox 2 and up to 5 times faster than Opera 9.” While that may have been true at one point, I think they’ll need to be updating their facts. Although you know darn well that they won’t admit defeat to Firefox 3.

–Security–

Security is normally one of the main ways that people try to “sell” Firefox to their friends and family. They talk about how vulnerable you could be if you’re not using Firefox, and it looks like this will continue to be a selling point even in Firefox 3. Take a look at some of the new security features it brings to the table:

• Enhanced Web Forgery Protection: Firefox will try and block any sites that are infested with malware (example site), or are trying to compromise your confidential information through a phishing attack (example site).
• Antivirus Integration: After you download a file Firefox 3 will automatically scan it using any antivirus software that you have installed on your computer.
• Vista Parental Controls: I wish Mozilla got around to integrating with Vista’s parental controls a little better, because the only thing Firefox 3 will honor are any download restrictions that have been established. That’s nice and all, but website blocking is something most parents are probably concerned about more.

–Usability–

While Firefox 3 has a lot of improvements that are constantly working behind the scenes, there are also some great things that you’ll want to start taking advantage of right away. Here are the main features that you surely don’t want to miss:

• Enhanced Address Bar (a.k.a. Awesome Bar): The address bar has received one of the biggest overhauls, and it now uses an intelligent algorithm to determine which results you’re likely looking for. It uses a combination of the recency and frequency of your visits to figure out what belongs at the top of the list.
  
• Better Download Management: The download manager in Firefox was revamped a bit, but what’s more important is that in the Status Bar of the browser you can now keep an eye on how much longer your downloads have. Plus you can resume your downloads after you’ve restart the browser.
  
• “Remember My Password” isn’t so annoying: I absolutely hate when a browser asks you if you want it to remember your password before you even have a chance to see if what you entered was correct. I use different passwords on different sites, and now with Firefox 3 it will popup with an information bar along the top of the browser asking if I want it to remember my password. What’s nice about that is it doesn’t interrupt the page from loading, which means you can actually see whether the login credentials you used were correct before having Firefox store that information in its database.
  
• Simplified Bookmarking: Bookmarking a page is now as simple as clicking on the star located in the address bar. If you click the star a second time it will let you edit details such as the name of the bookmark, the location, and even any tags that you think will help find it in the future.
  
• Smart Bookmarks: The Smart Bookmarks are kind of like the automatically generated music playlists that applications like iTunes create. These special bookmarks can show a listing of your most visited sites, places you recently bookmarked, and more. We’ve even put together instructions on how to create your own Smart Bookmarks in Firefox 3.
  
• Full Page Zoom: By default when you go to zoom in and out on a website it will now zoom the entire page instead of just increasing or decreasing the size of the text. This is more like what the other mainstream browsers do, but you can always go back to the old way of “zooming” only the text if you want.
  

–Developers–

There are also some great things that developers of websites and extensions alike will want to take advantage of. Here are some of my favorites:

• Offline support: Firefox has the ability to take a website offline so that users can still interact with it even when not connected to the Internet.
• Web-based protocol handlers: We’ve already shown you how Firefox can integrate with online services (here and here), and hopefully there will be more web applications looking to take advantage of this feature.
• Animated PNG graphics: Could this be the thing that drives animated GIF’s into the grave?
• Several new XUL elements for extension creators: Now add things like date and time pickers to your extensions.
• And much more!

–Conclusion–

Firefox 3 is undoubtedly a next generation browser, and I’m anxious to see how well this version can compete against the other top-dogs out there. Let us know in the comments what you think of it, what your favorite features are, and when/if you plan on making the leap to Firefox 3.

P.S. Keep an eye out for next Wednesday’s CyberNotes as we show you some tweaks that can help make the browser even better.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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