Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on December 04, 2007 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

Do you find Windows starting up slow because of all the applications that are set to automatically run at the beginning? If you consult anyone tech savvy they will say to cut back on the number of applications that start with your computer, but that’s hard for some people to do. Most of the time those programs serve a purpose, and people want them to be running when they need them.

If you delete the items you’ll probably end up manually starting them later on. So how about we delay the startup programs for a few minutes until after Windows has had time to run all of your most important applications? That’s where the free Startup Delayer comes into play (for Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP/Vista). With it you can designate which applications you want to start with Windows, and you can associate a delay for each one. For example, your instant messenger programs probably aren’t of immediate importance so why not have them start a few minutes after Windows has done its thing?

Lets take a look at how to make Startup Delayer work for you…

–Adding Startup Items–

The heart and soul of Startup Delayer is the central management screen. That’s where you can specify what programs you want to startup, assign each one a delay in seconds, and move them around so that each app starts in the order that you want it to.

Click to Enlarge

You would think that being able to assign a delay to a startup program is enough, but Startup Delayer does even more than that. You can also choose the process priority (low, below normal, normal, above normal, high, or realtime) and the initial window size (maximized, minimized, hidden, or normal) of each application.

–Import Startup Items–

Sure you could sit there manually adding all of the programs to Startup Delayer, but why go through the hassle? In the File menu there is an import option which will list all of the existing applications that are scheduled to startup with Windows. Check the boxes of the apps that you want Startup Delayer to handle, and click the Import button. Startup Delayer will import them, and it will remove the options from the Windows Registry/Startup folder to ensure that there are no duplicates!

Tip: There is a Create Backup button at the bottom that I highly suggest you use before importing any of the entries. This will backup all of your startup entries in case you decide to revert back to the traditional startup method.

–Make Your Sequence Start with Windows–

Entering in startup entries isn’t enough though. After you get the order and delays of your applications just right you’ll need to tell Windows to run your sequence when it starts up. Here’s what you have to do (see the corresponding diagram below):

1. Save the sequence to your computer. It doesn’t really matter where you save it just as long as it will always be accessible (tip: don’t put it on a USB drive).
2. Choose the display method (make sure to press the Save button if you make changes):
• This Window – At startup it shows the same management screen that you use to configure the startup entries.
• Report – At startup it shows a small window that lists which programs have already been initiated and which ones still need to run (screenshot in the next section)
• None – At startup no information is shown on the progress of your startup items. It’s all done “behind-the-scenes”.
3. Click the Execute with Windows link and find the file that you saved in Step 1. After completing this step your sequence will be scheduled to start with Windows.

–Enjoy the Fruits of Your Labor–

So you have all of that done? There is nothing left to do other than enjoy the faster startup of Windows! Here’s what the report view looks like when starting the computer:

Ahh, it’s nice being able to fully control and delay startup programs!

Download Startup Delayer

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on August 20, 2008 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

Before a Firefox extension has a chance to become unbelievably popular it has to go through an experimental phase to make sure it’s worthy of being added to Mozilla’s extension site. This process can sometimes take months, and so today we wanted to show you some of the best experimental Firefox extensions that you probably don’t know about.

Since each of these extensions are still in the experimental phase you’ll need to have a free Mozilla account before being able to download them. Believe me though, there are some handy add-ons here that are worth going through the extra hassle.

P.S. If you get a “file hash” error message when trying to download any of the extensions checkout this guide on tips to solve the problem.

–MyBookmarks (Homepage)–

MyBookmarks creates a homepage out of all the bookmarks located in your Bookmarks Menu. Just type about:mybookmarks into the address bar, and it will traverse through your folders grabbing each bookmark displaying the results on a central page. It also sticks each site’s icon next to the results making it easy to find your favorite sites.

The color scheme might not appeal to everyone, but that’s not a problem. Just pull up the options, and using a little CSS magic you can customize the look of the entire page. Additional information on skinning the MyBookmarks can be found here.

–Get File Size (Homepage)–

How many times have you wondered how big a file is before you start downloading it? With this extension you just right-click on the URL of the file, select the option to get the file size, and then you’ll receive a popup letting you know just how big the download is.

–Find in Tabs (Homepage)–

Being able to find text on a page is nice, but being able to find text in any of your open tabs is even nicer! With this extension a new “Find in Tabs” button is added to the find bar. Once pressed it will pull up a listing of search results from each of the tabs that you have open. Clicking on one of the results not only takes you to that particular tab, but also focuses on the area where the match was found.

–Text Area Resizer & Mover (Homepage)–

We’ve seen extensions that let you resize text boxes before, but none of them are like this. Just right-click and drag to dynamically resize any text box, or double-(left)-click and drag on any text box to move it around. If you choose to double-click in a text field it will remain “locked” and movable until you double-click in it again.

The screenshot below demonstrates how you can do things like move a comment box up alongside an article so that it’s easy to pull out quotes. Then as you scroll on the page the text field actually moves with you.

–ErrorZilla Plus (Homepage)–

There are plenty of extensions out there that provide powerful “address not found” or “404 error” pages. Typically they just let you bring up the cache for a particular page, but this one is a bit different. ErrorZilla Plus also lets you customize a list of proxies, which you can then use to try and view the site. This is especially helpful for viewing sites that may be blocked for one reason or another.

–Google Redesigned (Homepage)–

The great people over at Globex Designs have taken the time to compile their two custom styles for Gmail and Google Calendar into one simple extension. A dark skin has never looked so darn good!

–GrandCentral Click to Call (Homepage)–

Do you use Google’s GrandCentral service? If so this extension makes it a lot easier to dial phone numbers that you come across in the browser. Just click on a phone number, and let the extension do the rest of the work!

The developer’s homepage has a lot more information about the extension.

–Noise (Homepage)–

I’m not a big fan of sounds while I’m surfing the Internet, but I know some people like them. If you happen to be one of those people this extension will let you add and customize the sounds used throughout the browser. Get audio alerts for when a popup is blocked, a download has completed, and much more.

–CyberSearch (Homepage)–

And the last one of the day is our own concoction. CyberSearch lets you view Google search results from the web, images, videos, local/maps, and more right in the Firefox 3 address bar. Be sure to checkout the options where you can customize the keywords used to drill down search results to a particular site or Google service.

–Overview–

There you have it! I have to say that there are a lot of great Firefox extensions that can’t wait to get out of the experimental phase, but in the meantime they’d love for you to take them for a spin. Let us know in the comments about any Firefox extensions you use that haven’t broken out of the experimental stage yet.

Update: You might have noticed that a few of the extensions are no longer experimental. It looks like some of them didn’t spend much time in the Sandbox.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on July 07, 2011 by CyberNet.

Windows; Mac
There are a multitude of screenshot utilities out there, but the nice thing with Puush is that it really only focuses on one thing: sharing screenshots. This is your kind of app if you’re the type of person that merely snaps a screenshot and immediately sends it to someone.

What Puush does is take a screenshot of the current window, your desktop, or a manually selected area of your desktop. It will then automatically upload the file to the Puush site, display a popup with the URL, and copy the link to your clipboard so that it can immediately be shared. What’s awesome is that the link you send out points directly to the screenshot rather than a page where the screenshot is just a small thumbnail.

So where do they make their money? The app requires that you sign up for a free account, and with that you get 200MB worth of storage. That amounts to a lot of screenshots, but the good news is that it’s extremely easy to clear out all of the screenshots you’ve taken to make room for new ones from the account management section on their site. For that reason most of you won’t have to worry about upgrading once you’ve hit the quota.

Puush Screenshots Homepage (Windows/Mac; Freeware)

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on October 02, 2007 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

Applications are pretty much the core reason that computers are useful, and I’ve seen people that have literally hundreds of different programs installed. I’m not sure how they make it through each day with the super-sized Start Menu that they normally have, but I’m guessing that they use some sort of efficient application launcher.

Today we’re going to bring you our top 10 free application launchers, and we’ll throw two gadgets/widgets into the mix as well. We’ve grouped the application launchers into various categories based upon their type: docks, menus, find-as-you-type, and then the gadgets/widgets.

–Docks–

There are some Mac features that applications try to bring over to the Windows side, and one of the most common types are clones of Apple’s Dock. Here are a few apps that will give you the Mac OS X dock feel while in Windows:

• ObjectDock [Homepage] [Our Full Review]
  This is one of my favorite docks, and the big reason for that is the new weather widget that they’ve incorporated into the latest version. There are both free and paid versions available, and the free version actually does more than the other free alternatives listed below. Vista users can even see live previews of any windows displayed in the dock.
  
• RocketDock [Homepage] [Our Full Review]
  This is a freeware-only dock that is well updated, and supports many of the same features as ObjectDock. Vista users can also take advantage of live previews for windows that have been minimized to the dock.
  
• RKLaucher [Homepage] [Our Full Review]
  This launcher isn’t updated very frequently, but it is well known for being light weight. Out of all the options I would say that this one is the best performance.
   

–Menus–

Menu access to your programs is probably among the most popular launchers because of how familiar users are with menu systems. We managed to scrounge up four of the best application launchers that use a menu-like structure for listing out your shortcuts.

• 8Start [Homepage] [Our Full Review]
  This is one of my favorite application launchers because it is extremely powerful. The best part is that it always opens the menu of programs where your mouse is located, so the necessary mouse movement is kept to a minimum. That may not sound like a big deal, but if you have a high-resolution monitor it can make a big difference.
  
• SC-QuickStart [Homepage]
  This is one of the lighter application launchers, and it primarily resides in your System Tray. You can also assign hotkeys to each of the applications to make launching your favorite programs even faster.
  
• JetStart [Homepage]
  This comes in both free and paid flavors, but the free version will be more than suitable for most people. It has several different ways to display your shortcuts, but my favorite is the customizable menu that’s displayed when you hover over the Start Menu (clicking on the Start Menu will still serve the normal purpose).
  
• SpeedyStart [Homepage] – Thanks to “Chance” for the tip!
  This is a tiny little program that lets you customize the right-click menu attached to the Start Menu. Access to your favorite apps has never been so quick!
  

–Find As You Type–

The find-as-you-type application launchers have really been taking off lately. They offer what I believe to be the fastest way to find what you’re looking for, and are typically very customizable.

• Find and Run Robot [Homepage]
  Pressing just a single key will launch the search utility, and then you can immediately start typing the name of the program or file that you’re looking for. When the item shows up in the list just hit the corresponding number on your keyboard’s number pad.
  
• Launchy [Homepage] [Our Full Review]
  This is the most popular “find-as-you-type” application launcher available. It has a slick yet simple interface, and there are several powerful plugins to extend the built-in functionality.
  
• Colibri [Homepage]
  I just recently came across this program, and it’s not only intuitive but it looks good, too. It seems to lack some of the power the other two options have, but if looks could kill…
  

–Widgets & Gadgets–

Since gadgets and widgets are blanketing the world of computers I didn’t think I could make it through this post without mentioning a few gadgetized application launchers.

• Vista Sidebar [Homepage]
  This is a sidebar widget for Vista, and you can add shortcuts to nearly anything (including folders).
  
• Yahoo! Widget Engine [Homepage]
  This makes use of the cross-platform Yahoo! Widget engine, and it can be setup to launch all of your favorite programs. It utilizes user-created categories to organize the shortcuts.
  

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on June 27, 2008 by CyberNet.

Windows only
Panoramic images have been something that I’ve been trying to do more often, and a lot of that is due to how easy it is to stitch together multiple photos. Plus the new Windows Live Photo Gallery is capable of taking multiple photos and stitching them together to form a full panoramic shot as well. Once you have taken a marvelous panoramic photo you have to do it justice by showing it off. That’s where the free WPanorama software comes into play.

WPanorama is a panoramic photo viewer that can animate your images to make it seem like you’re standing in one spot looking around. It can then transform this animation into an AVI video or even a screensaver that will play on your computer. The screensaver can also be configured to rotate through dozens of different panoramic images if you’d like.

This is WPanorama showing off a panoramic shot that I took in Ames, Iowa

When you fire up the program and load an image it should initiate the auto scrolling right away. This will give your photo a more life-like effect, and it will bounce back and forth as if you repeatedly turned your head from the left side to the right side. If you have a 360 degree panoramic photo you can go to Config -> Advanced options -> Auto reverse, and select the Off option so that the photo will be treated as a 360 degree image. That way when WPanorama is scrolling through the image it will wrap the photo around so that the two ends join together.

If you’re not in to taking your own panoramic shots then you can find some refuge at WPanorama’s 700+ photo gallery (top 20 can be found here), and don’t forget to check out Panoye.

Get WPanorama
Thanks Radu for the tip!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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