Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on August 08, 2006 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

At one time or another I am sure you have come across two text files that you were trying to compare the differences with. It happens to me all the time with programming because a file will get updated and it is nearly impossible to spot small differences when you have 1000′s of lines of code to sift through. If you haven’t had a need to look for a solution yourself then these programs may be something you’ll want to bookmark, because the day will come when you’ll need them.

ExamDiff is the file comparison tool that I have been using lately. The list of features is pretty long and you will find that it is fully customizable. One of my favorite options is the ability to choose what color the changes are highlighted with so that they really stand out. ExamDiff also makes it easy to find the differences by using the “Find Next Change” button which will take you directly to the next change it finds. That will save a lot of scrolling when you have a 5000 line file!

They also offer ExamDiff Pro which has a few really great features that I wish were in the free version. The most useful thing in the professional version is the ability to directly edit the files within the comparison screen. Yeah, I know, it is kinda lame that you can’t do that in the free version but I normally just open Notepad++ and use the line numbers as a reference to quickly locate the text I am looking for.

I recently tried looking for a plug-in that works in Notepad++ to do the comparison but I came up empty handed. All was not lost in my quest because that is when I stumbled upon WinMerge. This is also free software like ExamDiff but they offer several features that ExamDiff Pro makes you pay for. The big one is, of course, being able to edit the files directly in the file comparison window. Heck, they don’t stop you at comparing files either because you can have WinMerge compare two directories with a bunch of folders and it will show you the differences in an easy-to-read format.

I haven’t had a need to compare any files since I found WinMerge so I don’t know how it will handle in a real situation that I throw at it. However, when I was just toying around with it I find it great to use. If you know of any good (and hopefully free) file comparison utilities then let us know…especially if you know of a Notepad++ plug-in!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on June 10, 2008 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

Windows only
When it comes to photo editors there is definitely no shortage of them available. It’s almost a guarantee that a Windows user can find a freeware application that will do all the things they want, and more. Some prime examples are Paint.NET, PhotoFilter, and the feature-rich Photoscape. Today we’ve got another one that we would like to add to our favorites: Photo! Editor.

What makes this application so special? Aside from being freeware it offers a lot of features that are often too complex for casual users, and presents them in a way that most people will understand. You can do all of the common tasks such as rotate images and remove red eye, but there are also several features you won’t find in most standard image editing applications.

Once you get the program fired up you should see something like this:

(Click to Enlarge)

–Click…Done!–

Photo! Editor doesn’t want to confuse you with settings that you won’t understand, and for that reason it has several auto-correct features that take only a single click. This includes removing the red eye, enhancing the colors, and removing noise (despeckling). You’ll find all of these options located on the main toolbar.

For those of you that want a little more control over the settings you can click the arrow located next to each of those buttons. Then you will be able to configure the details for each of those settings, and tweak them until you’re little heart is content. Each time you try to manually configure a setting it will provide “instant help” along the right side of the screen. That way you won’t have any troubles trying to figure out how a feature works.

I do want to say that the feature for removing the noise actually works well. Below is a portion of a photo that I took several years ago with a 1MP camera, and because of the lighting there was some significant noise. Take a close look at the left portion (unedited), and then look at the right half (with denoise applied). The program significantly improved the photo by smoothing everything out.

(Click to Enlarge)

–Make Up (Remove Blemishes)–

How many times have you wanted to touchup a photo before, but thought it was too much work? This photo editor has what’s commonly referred to as a healing brush, and it can remove blemishes from just about anything with very little effort on your behalf. To demonstrate this feature I snagged a photo of a car that had some rust on it, and gave myself 30 seconds to try and improve it using the healing brush in the program. Here are the before and after shots:

It’s obviously not perfect, but you also have to consider how large the areas were that I was trying to fix. In most cases the healing brush will be used to repair tiny blemishes on faces, and so this example is a little bit overkill. Oh, and there is even a special healing brush it includes that can be used to whiten teeth in a photo.

–Straighten Images–

Imagine that you just snapped an awesome photo of the sunset, but realized when you got home that you didn’t have the camera level with the horizon. What program would you use to rotate the image so that the horizon is beautifully level? Can’t think of one? Well, you can use Photo! Editor now.

In this app all it takes to straighten a photo is drawing a line that goes along the horizon. It will then take that information and straighten the image accordingly.

(Click to Enlarge)

–Caricature (Have Some Fun!!)–

I found this image of an adorable dog, and I just couldn’t hold myself back from using it with the Caricature feature. How this works is you open a photo with the Caricature setting, and then start warping it. Here’s what my initial screen looked like:

(Click to Enlarge)

I played with the photo for less than a minute, and all I used was a simple click and drag technique. After I was done I think it’s safe to say that the dog looked a little more interesting than it did before:

(Click to Enlarge)

I think this is actually my favorite feature of the entire application, and the best part is that it’s so easy to use. Go ahead, open up some photos of your friends and go to town! You know you want to.

P.S. You are 100% liable for any relationships destroyed with friends and family due to embarrassing photos created using this feature.

–Overview–

If you do decide to give this app a try I’m sure you will see why it’s so great. It’s very straightforward, and has all kinds of features I haven’t found in traditional photo editing applications before. Let us know what you think, and be sure to post links in the comments to some of the caricatures you make.

Get Photo! Editor
Thanks to Radu for the tip!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on June 12, 2007 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

RSS feeds are a wonderful thing that have revolutionized the way many people read news. If you use feeds to keep up with your news, think about how difficult it would be to follow all of the sites your subscribed to if there was no feed available.

I use FeedDemon (our review) to keep up on all of my news, and it was definitely worth the $30 I had to pay to get it. Keeping up with 400+ sites would be a huge chore if I didn’t have a great desktop application to use, which is why I’m grateful to have a program like FeedDemon. If I didn’t use FeedDemon I think the next best thing would be Google Reader.

Now you just have to find the feeds that will be the most beneficial to you, and that’s why we’re here. We’ve compiled a list of what we believe to be the top-10 most useful feeds. They’ll increase your knowledge, save you time, and they are just plain awesome. Check them out, and get your feed readers ready!

–This Day in History (Feed URL)–

We all like to get some interesting facts from time to time, but what about getting one each day? The Encyclopedia Britannica offers a cool RSS feed that tells you what interesting things have happened for each day. It reminds me of something you would see on one of those desktop calendars that you flip through.

–Amazon Price Monitor (Feed Generator)–

Seeing that Amazon guarantees the lowest price for up to 30-days after your purchase, it might be in your best interest to monitor for price changes. After you buy something, you probably never think to check the price again, but it can be greatly beneficial if you do.

If you’re skeptical of prices flucuating that much, just checkout the feed for the full version of Vista Ultimate. Since the beginning of March the price has dropped $60!

All you have to do is provide an Amazon URL or Wishlist to this feed generator service to monitor for price changes. Each time the price goes up or down you’ll receive a notification in your feed reader.

–Tracking Airfare (Feed Generator)–

With the rising cost of airfare we all want to make sure we’re getting the lowest price possible. Thanks to Farecast, it is possible to track the prices of airfare using your feed reader, and they will even tell you whether the price keeps going up or whether it has been going down.

–BitTorrent Search Feed (Homepage)–

BitTorrent is a wonderful tool that is used by millions of people everyday, but have you ever been guilty of sitting around waiting for a torrent to get posted? You sit there refreshing, refreshing, and it just never pops up. Eventually you forget about it and check back a week later at which time you notice that it has already been available for a few days.

Don’t go looking for the torrents, instead let them come to you with an RSS feed! If you go to the BTJunkie.org homepage and perform a search there will be an orange RSS icon located at the top of the results. There’s your RSS feed, just subscribe to that and you’ll automatically be notified via the feed as soon as a new result is posted.

–Word of the Day (Feed URL)–

This is kind of like the “this day in history” feed in the sense that it provides knowledge that can actually make you smarter. Not only that, but it is also fun to impress your friends with big words.

–eBay Auctions (Homepage)–

At the bottom of every eBay search is a small discrete RSS button. It’s almost as if they didn’t want you to know that you can use RSS to monitor search results, but it works wonderfully. You can monitor for newly added items that match your search results…this is another great tool to hunt down deals!

–DHL, FedEx, and UPS Package Tracking (Homepage)–

This is one of the most useful feeds that I have. The site offers package tracking for a variety of shipping services, including UPS and FedEx, and also provides an RSS feed for keeping up-to-date with the status of your package. In fact, I somehow get the status updates from the site before they are even available on the shipper’s website.

–Weather (Homepage)–

We all want to know what the weather is like right now, as well as what to expect in the future. After all, that is probably the most used gadgets on computer desktops and personalized homepages. Now you can bring it to your feed reader! Just go to the Yahoo! Weather homepage, enter in your area, and click the RSS button.

–Using Google Calendar for Cool Feeds (Homepage)–

You probably already realize that you can retrieve a feed for your Google Calendar, or for any calendar that you’re currently subscribed to. The usefulness of subscribing to your own calendar might not be apparent because after all, you can send yourself email reminders along with several other notification options. I, however, use it for other purposes.

For example, I subscribe to the Mozilla Developer Calendar so that I can see when they add anything new to it. After subscribing to an iCal calendar, all you have to do is go into the Google Calendar Settings -> Calendars and then click on whatever one you want to subscribe to. You’ll then be presented with an XML address which you can use with your RSS feed reader.

Apple has a nice list of iCal’s that you can subscribe to in Google Calendar. They include things like DVD and movie release dates as well as the top iTunes songs. By subscribing to these you’ll be one of the first to notice the new content.

–CyberNet News (Feed URL)–

If you’re not already subscribed to our feed, there has never been a better time! We are constantly providing cool tips on using Vista, Ubuntu, and a ton of freeware applications that are sure to save you some money. What, did you really think that we wouldn’t include our own feed?

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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

Tutorial Thursday

The biggest hassle with Web development is that different browsers have a tendency to display sites a little differently. Our site is typically verified in the latest two versions of Firefox, Flock, Opera, and Internet Explorer. I have machines that run two versions of each of those browsers, but if you didn’t, notice Safari isn’t on that list. First I’m going to walk you through where I find old versions of all the different browsers (standalone and installable versions) and then I’ll cover a couple websites that do the dirty work for you.

–Firefox–

Firefox is the Web browser that is beginning to capture a large percentage of the market share from Internet Explorer. Developers typically rejoice at this because there are normally far less problems designing websites that work with Firefox than with Internet Explorer. The best part is that it is a piece of cake to get your hands on any version of Firefox, even all the way back to Firefox (Phoenix) 0.1!

• Homepage for current version
• Install: Firefox 0.1 to the current release
• Standalone/Portable: Firefox 2, Firefox 1.5, Firefox 1.0

–Flock–

 Flock is a branch off of Firefox and is currently based on Firefox 1.5. Technically speaking if your site works in Firefox 1.5 then it shouldn’t have any problems in Flock, but it is always better to be safe by testing it in Flock as well.

• Homepage for current version
• Install: Flock 0.4.9 to the current release
• Standalone/Portable: Flock 0.7

–Internet Explorer–

The most popular browser used on the Internet is indisputably Internet Explorer, but other alternatives are starting to creep up and take over its’ market share. To make things a little more difficult, Microsoft does not allow more than one instance of IE to be installed at the same time. Therefore you will find the standalone versions below to be extremely useful. Note: Internet Explorer is much more standards compliant than previous versions and coding a website to work with it is much easier, but it isn’t quite as nice as other browsers yet.

• Homepage for current version
• Standalone: Internet Explorer 3 to Internet Explorer 6
• Standalone: Internet Explorer 7

–Opera–

Opera is often referred to as the most standards compliant browser that is available and when they started to offer their desktop browser at no cost, it attracted a lot of new users. At that time, standalone and portable versions started to emerge which makes it even easier for Web developers to test their sites against Opera.

• Homepage for current version
• Install: Opera 8 and 9
• Install: Opera 3.21 to Opera 8
• Standalone/Portable: Opera 8 and 9

–Safari–

Safari is Apple’s claim-to-fame browser that is based off of Konquerer for Linux. To the surprise of many people this is probably the most standards compliant browser, but Windows users are left out in the dark when it comes to testing a site using it. The Swift browser is supposed to render sites similarly to Safari except you can use it in Windows, but my experience with Swift is that it does not render things the same way as Safari.

• Homepage for current version
• Standalone/Portable: Safari (costs $0.99)

–Websites–

Alright, so we went through where you can find the most popular browsers so that you can install them, but what if you want to keep your computer clutter free and just want to do a quick check? The most popular website that will do many of the browsers you want is called BrowserShots. They recently trimmed down their selection of browsers eliminating Safari and Internet Explorer editions, but they still offer multiple versions of Dillo, Epiphany, Firebird, Firefox, Flock, Galeon, Konqueror, Mozilla, Navigator, Opera, Phoenix, and SeaMonkey. One thing that always eliminated the usefulness of the site, however, was that the screenshots can take up to 4 hours to be generated based upon how many people are waiting for their own websites to get processed.

Okay… drum roll please! Total Validator is my favorite website because it snaps screenshots of your site within minutes, and if you don’t feel like waiting around you can have it email you the results. Besides for checking screenshots it can also validate your HTML, look for broken links, and a bunch of other stuff, too. Oh yeah, and I almost forgot to mention that the browsers they do have available are also available on multiple operating systems, for example, Firefox 2 can be tested on Windows, Linux, and OS/X! Where else are you going to find a service that is able to do all of these:

• Windows XP
  • Internet Explorer 7
  • Internet Explorer 6
  • Internet Explorer 5.5
  • Internet Explorer 5
  • Internet Explorer 4
  • Netscape 6.2
• Windows 2000
  • Lynx 2.8
  • Firefox 2.0
  • Firefox 1.5
  • Firefox 1.0
  • Mozilla 1.7
  • Netscape 4.8
  • Netscape 3.0
  • Opera 9
  • Opera 8
  • Opera 7
• Linux
  • Lynx 2.8
  • Firefox 2.0
  • Firefox 1.5
  • Firefox 1.0
  • Mozilla 1.7
  • Konqueror 3
  • Epiphany/Gnome 2
• Apple Mac (OS/X)
  • Safari 2.0
  • Firefox 2.0
  • Mozilla 1.7
  • Opera 9

 I would recommend that you install at least one version of each primary browser mentioned above, and then you can use an online solution to test the rest. From the images you should be able to see if the HTML code is being displayed properly, and whether there were any serious errors by a malfunctioning script that you might be using. If you have a better solution for testing a website in another browser feel free to let us know in the comments below!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on November 14, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

It’s been well over a year since we’ve jotted down some excellent tab-related Firefox extensions, and so we thought that it was time to do another round. Since the last article there have been numerous milestones, including the release of Firefox 2. As you can imagine between then and now a lot of new extensions have made their way out the door.

Almost all of the extensions we’re going to mention in this article have never been highlighted before on our site, and a few of them have not even become popular enough to hit the mainstream Mozilla Add-ons site. So we’re pretty confident that there are at least a handful of the extensions that you haven’t heard of.

–Installing Sandbox Extensions–

Some of the extensions are located in the Mozilla Sandbox, which is essentially a holding room until they become popular. To access the Sandbox you need to have a Mozilla account, but if you really don’t feel like creating one here is a generic username and password you can use:

Username: bugmenot@mailinator.com
Password: bugmenot

We’ll make sure to label all of the extensions below that are still located in the Sandbox.

–Multiple Tab Handler (Homepage)–

One feature that I’ve always wanted in any browser is the ability to manage multiple tabs similar to how I manage files and folders on my computer. Opera comes close with their window manager panel, but it’s not as natural as I would like it to be.

This extension is about as good as it gets, and once installed you’ll be able to Ctrl+Click on tabs to simultaneously select them. Then you can duplicate, reload, bookmark, close, or move the selected tabs to a new window. The only other thing I would like to see in this is the ability to reorder all of the selected tabs.

–Tab Scope (Homepage)–

This is a killer extension that I’ve quickly fallen in love with. Ever since we wrote about this several months ago I’ve become more and more accustomed to using it. At first glance it may look like any ordinary tab preview, but underneath the slick appearance lies some powerful controls.

First off, Tab Scope provides real-time previews of websites. For example, if you’re uploading some images to a site you can watch the progress bar move from within the preview.

The thumbnail preview is also fully navigatable. You can use the forward, back, and refresh buttons located at the top to move throughout the site, or you can click on links. You can also scroll up and down on the website if your mouse has a scroll wheel.

–Ctrl Tab (Homepage)–

This extension is located in the Sandbox. Read the instructions at the beginning of the article on how to download it.

There are all kinds of extensions out there that try to bring the Alt-Tab feature to Firefox. By default in Firefox pressing Ctrl+Tab will cycle through all of your open tabs, but there is no interface for it. This extension not only adds an interface, but adds a pretty slick one if I may say so myself. As you use the Ctrl+Tab key combination you’ll see a popup located at the bottom that shuffles through your open windows. Take a look at the sweet reflections, too:

–Fancy Numbered Tabs (Homepage)–

This is a rather new extension that provides an extremely simple, yet useful feature. It replaces the red “X” close button on the first 8 tabs with a number corresponding to their position. This makes it easier for you to utilize Firefox’s built in tab switch feature: using CTRL+[1-8] you can switch to the respective tab.

[via Firefox Facts]

–Separate Tabs (Homepage)–

Don’t confuse this extension with the Separe extension, because they are similar in name and appearance but differ in how they work. This extension automatically sorts your tabs according to the domain name:

One of the things that I noticed is that new tabs are automatically added to the end of the list, and when the site finishes loading it is sorted. If a site hangs up and never gets to finish loading it will probably never get sorted.

–Tree Style Tab (Homepage)–

This extension is located in the Sandbox. Read the instructions at the beginning of the article on how to download it.

Tree Style Tab is a unique extension that not only lets you orient the tab bar vertically, but it also lets you treat the tabs almost like folders. As seen to the right you can nest the tabs within each other, and there is an expand/collapse button available for easy control. When collapsed a number is shown next to the close button representing how many child tabs there are.

By default Tree Style Tab will automatically nest new tabs that are opened from the parent site, but you can also drag and drop tabs onto each other for manual nesting.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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