Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on December 22, 2009 by CyberNet.

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Windows only
There are some situations where it’s nice to monitor the amount of bandwidth that’s being used by your computer. One reason would be if your Internet Service Provider (ISP) caps the amount of data that you’re allowed to plow through in a given month. This kind of thing is especially prevalent in wireless carriers who tend to cap Internet usage at about 5GB per month, which actually isn’t all that much when you get into watching YouTube videos or streaming music.

Networx is a freeware utility for Windows that tries to provide you with every possible tool you can imagine for monitoring your bandwidth usage. You can see graphs of your usage, view your transfer rate, get detailed reports organized by time period or by the user logged into the machine, and keep an eye on how close you are to reaching your quota. Here are some more features it offers:

• Clear graphic and/or numeric display.
• Usage reports with export to a variety of file formats, including Excel, MS Word and HTML.
• Permits close supervision of uploads and downloads.
• Works with dial-up, ISDN, cable modems, ADSL, Ethernet cards, and more.
• Includes network information & testing tools with advanced netstat that displays applications using your Internet connection.
• Scalable to your own modem download capabilities.
• Option to notify user or disconnect from the Internet automatically when network activity exceeds a certain level.
• Speed meter to accurately time downloads and report the average transfer rates.
• Dial-up session journal with detailed information about every session.

On top of all that Networx can also be used on-the-go thanks to the portable version, which means there’s nothing you need to install on your PC to start using it. And when you run it for the first time there’s nothing that you have to configure… it will just sit in your System Tray and immediately start keeping tabs on your network activity.

It’s not often that I come across an app that thoroughly covers what it sets out to, but this one does. If you want something that monitors bandwidth usage, this has got to be the best freeware utility available to do it. The wide range of utilities and customizability make this an extremely versatile app that will be tough to beat.

Networx Homepage (Portable Freeware, Windows only)
Thanks Tyler for the tip!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on January 24, 2007 by CyberNet.

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I don’t think that anyone would argue that getting used to Microsoft Office 2007′s new interface takes some time. I’ve been using Beta 2 for what seems like forever (probably about 8 months in reality) and I finally feel comfortable being able to find the commands that used to reside on toolbars and menus in previous versions of Office.

It turns out that Microsoft is working on a plug-in for Office 2007 with the codename Scout, according to I Started Something. It will offer an additional tab that is similar to the one pictured above so that users will be able to quickly search for the commands that they could instinctively find before. As you start to type a word in the search box, such as “pictur” in the example, it will show you live results from the list of available commands.

One recommendation that I can give you is to make good use of the Quick Access Toolbar that is located above the tabs. It keeps you from having to constantly switch back and forth between tabs to get to the commands that you use frequently. The easiest way to add something to the Quick Access Toolbar is to just right-click on any item located on a Ribbon, and select the “Add to Quick Access Toolbar” option:

To keep the toolbar from getting too cluttered you can customize it using the respective option on the right-click menu. That way you can reposition items and put separators in.

Of course, you’ll have to be able to find the command in the first place. I’ve found the help to be quite useful and it can save you more time than you think, but once the Scout add-on becomes available that will surely speed things up. This morning I actually came across an interactive tutorial that Microsoft is offering for Word 2003 users that lets you hover over a command to see where you can find it in Office 2007 (as pictured below). If that isn’t enough for you then click on the command and it will actually demonstrate how you can find that command in Word 2007.

I was really impressed that they even let you go through all of the menus and select commands there as well, so it will be pretty comprehensive for most Word users. It would have been nice, however, if they put a tutorial like this together for Excel and PowerPoint but I couldn’t find one.

Once you start to get used to Microsoft Office 2007 it is hard to switch back to the previous versions that only have the toolbars. Everything works so smoothly and, despite the initial frustration, you can find things much faster. If you really give the new interface a fair shot, and still walk away not liking it I would be quite surprised.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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

A few weeks ago I wrote about a free application called Liquid Resize that implemented the much acclaimed seam carving (also known as content aware image resizing). It is pumped with features, and it has already had a couple of more updates from time I wrote the article.

However, there is a new seam carving app in town, and I have a feeling that it will conquer all the others. Give a warm welcome for Rsizr, which a free and completely web-based solution to seam carving. To get started all you have to do is select an image from your computer, and then drag the two sliders over a bit to start the processing (I outlined them in the screenshot above). Then the necessary “handles” will get placed on the corners of the photo for resizing it.

Here’s why I think Rsizr is so great:

• The image processing is done prior to scaling the image (by using the sliders). This is especially useful when working with large images where the processing can take a long time. With this you can just drag both the horizontal and vertical sliders all the way over, and then walk away until it’s done. When you come back the image will be ready for its instantaneous resizing!
• You can scale the image without using seam carving, revert back to the original, or crop it in a few clicks.
• There are tools available to mark areas on the photo which you want to preserve or remove first. A good demonstration of how that would be useful is when trying to remove someone from a photo:
   

I suggest that you check Rsizr out and see how well it performs for you! If you decide to upload your results to a photo sharing site make sure you drop a link in the comments so that we can see, too.

Rsizr Image Scaling (works with JPG, PNG, and GIF images)
Sources: Go2Web2 & Download Squad

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on December 16, 2009 by CyberNet.

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Mac only
I’ve been using a Mac for nearly two years, and with as many screenshots as I take there was just never an app that quite matched the capabilities of SnagIt on Windows. I’ll admit that Skitch was pretty close, but the screenshot editor lacked in a lot of different areas. My biggest pet peeve is the inability to manage/manipulate multiple screenshots on the same canvas… a.k.a. turning more than one screenshot into a single image. That was something SnagIt on Windows really shined at.

Techsmith has heard the pleas from Mac users, and released a Mac-compatible screencast recorder earlier this year. Then yesterday I received an email from them saying that they have officially unveiled the Beta version of SnagIt for taking screenshots on a Mac. The interface is wildly different from the Windows counterpart, but that’s understandable considering that the Windows version uses the Office 2007 Ribbon UI that Microsoft hasn’t made available for Mac applications.

How does SnagIt for Mac handle itself? Right now I’d say very well. It offers an all-in-one capture mode that tries to detect whether you want to grab the full screen, a window, a specific region, or even a scrolling area. That’s cool and all, but it’s the small things I appreciate having again… like the small magnified window when capturing a region:

The awesome thing about the magnified window is that it doesn’t actually appear until your cursor isn’t moving much on the screen. That makes sense because when your cursor is only being nudged a few pixels at a time is when you’re probably trying to get a pixel-perfect screenshot, and that’s when you need the magnified area.

Overall I’d say there are a lot of nice touches in the app. You can use keyboard shortcuts, the Menubar icon, or the hide-away window (pictured in the first screenshot) to initiate a capture. SnagIt for Mac isn’t full-featured yet though, and you’ll notice that as soon as you click on the “Effects” tab where all you’ll see is a “Coming soon” message. The things that are available work very well though.

I like where the app is headed, and I’m already confident that I’ll be purchasing it once it is released. It offers all the intuitiveness that Skitch does, but tacks on a much better screenshot editor. If you hardly edit your screenshots I’d say this isn’t the application for you, but keep in mind that the Beta of SnagIt for Mac is completely free to use until a commercial version is released. They haven’t specified when that will happen, but I’m guessing it will give you more than enough time to try it out to determine whether it’s something you’ll want to buy.

SnagIt for Mac (Beta) Homepage (Mac only; Freeware while in Beta)

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Yesterday Netflix did something pretty big: it cut the umbilical cord on its streaming video offerings. What was once a funny little niche offering, a rag-tag collection of canceled TV shows you never watched and ’80s movies you never rented, had grown into something big, something that still wasn’t quite great but was legitimately very good. As such, that service deserved its own plan, to stand tall and apart from the red envelopes that made the company famous.

But there’s one problem: after cutting Instant loose, creating a new $7.99 streaming-only plan, Netflix stuck the dagger right in its own side by not re-thinking its disc-based rentals — plans that looked a lot more valuable before than they do now. Netflix has succeeded in making its on-demand offerings so good that those unlimited snail mail samplings can’t quite stand up on their own two feet anymore. At least, they can’t stand up tall enough to support their $7.99 and up prices. Maybe, Netflix, it’s time to go back to the fundamentals.

Continue reading Editorial: Netflix was too cheap before, but now it’s just wrong

Editorial: Netflix was too cheap before, but now it’s just wrong originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jul 2011 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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