Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on July 23, 2007 by CyberNet.

The IE-based Maxthon browser released a much anticipated version 2 today. This comes just 3-months after Google invested an astounding $1 million into the browser, and that raised a lot of eyebrows because of the close relationship Google has with Firefox. I’m guessing that Google saw it as a way to gain more popularity in China since 17% of people there use it to search sites like Google and Yahoo. Why? Because users can set it up to use proxies that will bypass any filtering techniques employed by the government.

We actually took a look at Maxthon 2 starting in August 2006 (yes, it’s been in development for over a year now). There hasn’t been many new features since then, but there have been quite a few bug fixes. For those of you thinking about trying it out here’s what you’ll find in Maxthon 2:

• New Look & Optimized Layout – The default skin of Maxthon Browser has been completely redesigned and polished to provide a clear and smooth user experience.
• Fully Customizable Interface – Almost all elements of Maxthon Browser are customizable. You can create layout to fit your browsing habit and have a different look of Maxthon Browser by applying skins.
• Quick Search – Type the keywords you want to search in the address bar and press Enter, Maxthon will search them with the Default Search Engine. You can also do a search by drag & drop selected text in page.
• Mouse Gestures – Hold down right mouse button and move in different directions, you can perform a lot of common operations with it.
• Super Drag & Drop – Drag & Drop a Link to open it in new Tab. Drag & Drop to Perform a search on selected text. With key combinations, you can perform even more operations with this feature.
• Feed Reader – Maxthon Browser has integrated a powerful and easy to use Feed Reader sidebar which supports all RSS and Atom feed formats.
• Popup Blocker – Prevent unwanted popup windows to show up unless it’s triggered by your interaction.
• Content Filter – Remove Ad Images & Flash Movies from your view.
• Anti-Freeze – Maxthon has developed a new technology to prevent freezing due to AJAX while browsing websites.
• Web Sniffer – Helps you find the real URL’s of FLV video files on sites like YouTube.
• Screen Capture – Capture Full Screen, Selected Area, Selected Window and Page Content as an image. Then copy it to the clipboard or save it to a file.

Of course there are two features that disappointingly don’t seem to work. One is the tab manager which I mentioned in my early review, and the other is Aero Glass support on Vista. The tab manager is equivalent to Internet Explorer 7’s thumbnail view of all your open tabs, and the Aero Glass support is supposed to add transparency to things like the address bar (for those of you running Vista).

Another disappointing thing is that you can no longer use the Gecko engine in Maxthon, which is a feature the previous version had. In Maxthon 1.5 you could choose whether you wanted tabs to render using Gecko (the same thing Firefox uses), or have it use the IE rendering engine. The benefit of using Gecko is that sites will typically load faster, but as it turns out most people only use Maxthon because it uses IE to render sites.

Maxthon 2 Tour
Maxthon 2 Features
Maxthon 2 Homepage
Maxthon 2 Download

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Is it Sony’s play against the Wiimote, or the Kinect… or both? Hard to say exactly, but there’s no question that the PS3 is no longer on the outside looking in when it comes to motion gaming. Now that it’s been on the market for a few months, we’re looking to hear from early adopters — have you enjoyed your time with the Move? Has it lived up to your expectations? Any quirks with gameplay that you’d iron out? Any particular games that you’d prefer to see play nice with the apparatus? Set yourself in the mindset of a SCEA designer for a tick and let us know how you’d do the Move differently down in comments below. And yeah, sticking with “Arc” is totally an acceptable suggestion to make.

How would you change Sony’s PlayStation Move? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Nov 2010 22:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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

I was just over at the OpenOffice site browsing through some of their marketing materials to see if there was anything interesting. I came across a presentation that was given on September 19th at the OpenOffice 2007 Conference. The presentation was called “OpenOffice.org 3.0 and Beyond,” and it walked through some of the most notable features that are expected to be released in the next big OpenOffice milestone.

The presentation was actually pretty interesting to flip through, but the one thing that really caught my attention was their reference to including a Personal Information Manager (PIM). More specifically the presentation mentions bundling Thunderbird with their Office Suite, and refers to it as an “Outlook replacement.” This is all assuming that Thunderbird recently losing two of it’s main developers doesn’t affect the decision, because I’m sure OpenOffice wants to ensure that Thunderbird will continue to progress before including it.

A post that I made earlier this year regarding Thunderbird as an Outlook replacement really sparked some heated debates in the comments. People were saying that it will never happen, yet this is the direct goal of the new OpenOffice. They plan on including the Lightning add-on for Thunderbird so that in addition to email support, users will also be able to manage their schedule and appointments.

This is pretty big news, but the PIM that is to be included in OpenOffice 3.0 won’t be the only notable feature (click on a thumbnail to enlarge it):

• New Personal Information Manager
• Supports local and server-based calendars
• Task management
• Month, week, day view
• Multiple calendars support
  
• Free/busy management
• Connector to Sun Java System Calendar Server (WCAP, iCal, WebDAV, CalDAV, and Google Calendar
• PDF Import and Export
• Microsoft Office 2007 XML Importing
• Improved Pivot Tables and Solver in Calc
• Web 2.0 Support (Blogging and Wiki)
  
• Presenter Console with Multi-screen Support
• Vista Integration
• New Chart Engine and Wizard
• New chart types like regression curves, 3D exploded pie, 3D doughnut, 3D smooth lines, and more.
  
• Flexible source ranges
• Enhanced logarithmic scales
• Enhanced data editor
• Improved Notes
• Rectangle Selection in Writer
• New Report Engine for Base
   
• Improved Extension Management
• Icon Redesign
• Better Chapter Numbering in Writer
• ODF Toolkit

OpenOffice 3.0 is due out in September 2008 which is perfect timing for the Linux world. Most Linux distributions have a new version that comes out every spring and fall, so OpenOffice 3.0 should be able to make it into the fall lineup of Linux distributions.

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This article was written on February 26, 2009 by CyberNet.

(Click to Enlarge)

Windows only
Media players are becoming an increasingly important part of our daily lives. Many of us listen to music while we work, study, or just browse the Internet. The chances are pretty good that you’re using a media player such as iTunes, Windows Media Player, or Winamp, but there’s one more that’s worth checking out.

Quintessential Media Player (QMP) is a completely free Windows application that brings back simplicity to your music, and version 5.0 was just pushed out the door last week. It comes in two different flavors: one with a media player and one without. Neither of them will cost you a dime, but the “lite” version focuses more on playing music and assembling playlists rather than trying to keep a library organized.

Here are some of the features QMP has to offer:

• Rip CDs or convert music into your favourite format
  Insert your favourite music cd into your computer and click the record button to start ripping! You can also use the encoder to convert files to other digital formats. Select the files you want to convert and drag them into the encoder window or click the convert button on the playlist.
• Keep your music files clean with the track editor (Media Library version)
  The track editor allows you to edit single tracks or groups of tracks at the same time. It will also rename your physical files, import filename to use in tag and if your tags are still incomplete you can use the autotag feature which is powered by Gracenote CDDB.
• Play the track you want with a click of the mouse
  With Quintessential player’s Quick Track feature you have your entire playlist at your fingers tips. Place your mouse over the track name or over the icon in the windows tray and right click to reveal your playlist. This feature is heavily customizable so you can get at the music you want with no delay!
• Organize the songs you’ll hear with the Playlist Editor
  One of the most powerful features in Quintessential player is the Playlist. Quickly organize what you want to hear by dragging, blocking, pruning or adding tracks to your playlists. Right clicking tracks on the playlist opens up more options to help you to organize your collection. Simply tell Quintessential Player where your playlists are stored and have your entire collection at hand.
• Save your desktop space when using the Remote
  Get all the power of Quintessential Player but with 1/10th the desktop space. Using the new skinning engine the remote can stretch revealing as much information as you want to see.

If the application sounds a bit too simple there are always a wide range of plug-ins available. That way you’ll be able to do things like get Last.FM support, display the lyrics of the song being played, and much more. There are also dozens of skins available for those of you who want to customize the appearance a bit.

I myself am more of a fan of the lite version of QMP. I use it to fire up a quick playlist of songs that I want to listen to when I don’t feel like dealing with a “heavy” application like iTunes. It’s also handy to test out songs or media before you go adding them into your well-organized library. It does support all popular audio formats including MP3, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, and CD’s.

QMP 4.0 was released back in August 2003, and since then there have been a significant number of updates. Some people were beginning to think that the project had died off, but a long awaited version 5 seems to have reunited a lot of users with the media player they once loved. Give it a whirl and let us know what you think.

Get Quintessential Player 5.0 for Windows
Thanks nimicitor for the tip!

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This article was written on September 23, 2009 by CyberNet.

Windows only
One of my favorite features in Windows 7 has to be the redesigned Taskbar. The entire user experience is so smooth, and I think they really went down the right path with it. At work I’m stuck on XP, and I went looking for a way that I could get a lot of the same functionality as what Windows 7 offers.

That’s when I came across the free ViGlance. It’s a rather lightweight app (uses about 10MB of memory when running) that simulates the Windows 7 Taskbar. What I like is that it doesn’t replace the entire Taskbar in XP. Instead it replaces just the portion where the Taskbar buttons normally reside, and leaves the System Tray, Quick Launch, and other native sections untouched.

Here are some of the features:

• Pin your favorite applications so that they serve as a shortcut when they aren’t running.
• Hovering or clicking on an icon with multiple instances running will show thumbnails of each window, and you can then select the one you want. If just one instance of the app is running when you click on the icon it will instead minimize/restore the window depending on the window’s current state.
• Drag and drop the icons in the order you want them to appear.

I expected this app to be nice, but I figured after using it for a week that I would have kicked it to the curb because of annoyances I would find. Surprisingly the features that are implemented are done pretty well. For example, I was wondering what would happen when someone sent me an instant message… how would ViGlance alert me? In a case like that the icon lights up orange as you can see in the screenshot above.

If you do decide to use this there’s just one thing that I want to give you a heads up about. When I first started using it none of the icons would show up, and I was rather perplexed. After some searching around I was finally able to fix the problem by switching my computer from 16-bit color quality to 32-bit in my display properties. I’m not sure why this prevents the icons from displaying, but it does. Aside from that I’d say it’s becoming a solid app, and a great solution for anyone who’s stuck using XP.

ViGlance Homepage (Windows XP only; Freeware)

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