Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on December 01, 2009 by CyberNet.

As we’ve learnt from following the news, simple passwords like 123456 aren’t the safest. On the other hand, if you pick a safe password with both letters and numbers, you’ll end up forgetting it. You can’t have your cake and eat it. Or can you? We’ll show you how you can use secure passwords on sites without ever having to write them down to remember them… James Bond style.

Method 1: converting simple words to secure gibberish

What you’ll need to remember: the URL of your favorite website

1. Get the URL of your favorite website. Attention: use just the domain name part to avoid confusion later! You’ll thank me for that, trust me. Valid examples are google.com and google.co.uk. Bad: http://google.com, google.com/ and Google.com.
2. Open this site. Enter the domain name in the “Input” field.
3. What we’re going to do is convert your domain name into an md5 hash. All we need to know about the md5 algorithm is that it’s commonly used to encrypt data.
4. Hit the “Create MD5″ button.
   
5. Take the first eight characters from the “MD5 hash” field and use it as your new secure password.

Obviously, it will take you a few weeks to remember this much securer password. Whenever you forget your password, repeat the above process to recover it. No need to write that password down!

Method 2: your favorite MP3 is the key

What you’ll need: an MP3 file

1. Download HashTab. Ryan explains how it works here.
2. Go find your favorite MP3 on your computer and pull up its parent folder in Windows Explorer or Safari.
3. Right-click the MP3, select Properties and go to the File Hashes tab. Mac users: select File Hashes from the right-click menu.
4. Look for the MD5 hash, right-click the entry and select Copy. This hash is a unique identifier for your file.
5. Again, take the first eight characters from the hash and use it as your new secure password.

Just like with method 1, you can follow these steps to recover your password until you’ve learned it by heart. Remember to never alter your MP3 in any way, otherwise the MD5 hash will change and this little trick will no longer work.

Image credit: Curious Findings

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Tutorial Thursday

Windows only
Sticky notes are one of those things that many of us have grown accustomed to placing all over our physical workspace, and our children. They serve as a great way to remember important things, but eventually you have so many of them that it becomes difficult to find what you’re looking for. That pretty much defeats their purpose, doesn’t it?

That’s why we hunted down two different free Windows apps that not only let you create sticky notes, but they also let you customize their appearance. By using different colors for different types of notes you’ll be able to find the things you’re looking for much faster, plus both of the applications let you set reminders/alarms for notes. After all, most of the things you probably write down on a note are important dates to remember, right? That way you can have the note appear when you need it instead of always cluttering up your workspace.

Alright, here are the two fabulous apps that will initiate the de-cluttering of your physical world!

–Hott Notes (Homepage)–

Hott Notes is one of the best looking note taking applications that I have come across. The thing that really stood out to me was its incredible interface, and the fact that there’s a portable version available means you can take your notes wherever you go.

Once you have it running the first thing you’ll probably want to do is create a new note. This can be done in one of several ways. The default keyword shortcut is the Windows Key+N, or you can use the System Tray icon to do it. Double-clicking on the System Tray icon will create a blank sticky note on your desktop, or you can right-click on it and go to the New menu. There you’ll see the three different types of notes you can create: note, checklist note, and scribble note.

The “note” option is your typical note, while the other two are somewhat special. A “checklist note” is something you would use for a list of things you want to check off, and the “scribble note” lets you draw freehand (great for Tablet PC’s). Here’s what the first two look like when they’re placed on your desktop:

Don’t they look nice? This is one of the few sticky note applications that I’ve seen which includes a built-in task manager format, which is really handy for the to-do lists. It does, of course, have some other features that I haven’t touched on yet:

• Set an Alarm – You can attach an alarm to any note, and when the time/date you specify comes around it can either have it bring the note to the front of the screen, or have it play a sound. Unfortunately there’s no “reoccurrence” option.
• Waste Basket – If you accidentally delete an important note that you needed there’s no need to panic. Hott Notes will place any notes that you crumple up (a.k.a. delete) into the waste basket in case you ever need to retrieve them.
• Note Desktop – The Note Desktop is assigned the Windows Key+S shortcut by default, and whenever it is pressed all of your notes will be brought to the front of the screen. Plus it will gray out the background so that it’s easier to focus on the dozens of notes you have floating around.
• Adjustable Appearance – Each note can have it’s own set of colors applied, and the nice thing is that you can actually create your own gradients by specifying a starting and ending color. That’s what I did in the screenshot above for the silver note… it starts with the silver color at the top and gradually fades to white.

And last but not lest, the Notebook. This is a central location where you can manage all of your notes, including the ones you’ve sent to the trash. Here’s what it looks like:

Overall Hott Notes is a nearly unbeatable application if you’re looking for a way to throw sticky notes all over your desktop, but we’ve got another application that might just tickle your fancy a little more…

–Stickies (Homepage)–

If you think Hott Notes has a little too much pizzaz then the more simplistic (in terms of appearance) Stickies application might be more of your taste. Once you get the app setup you can press the Windows Key+S to create a new note, or just double-click on the System Tray icon. You’ll instantly be able to start typing on your note, and formatting options can be applied by right-clicking:

The arrow in the upper-left corner is a quick shortcut to force the note to stay on top of all the other windows. This is quite handy when you’re trying to grab information from a note while using another application.

Just like Hott Notes this also has a central interface for managing all of your open notes, except this isn’t quite as spiffy. I know that some of you will probably prefer this app simply because there is a minimal amount of eye candy. It does, however, have searching capabilities to efficiently sift through the dozens of notes you’ll have created in no time at all.

The best feature it has may very well be it’s ability to make a note go to “sleep.” When you use this option the note will hide itself for a specified period of time, and you can set it up to reoccur at a variety of different intervals. For example, let’s say you pay your phone bill on the 15th of every month. You can create a note reminding you to pay the bill, and have it sleep until the 15th of each month. Then when the 15th rolls around the note will show up, and it can optionally play a sound to notify you. Cool, huh?

If you have multiple computers you would like to share sticky notes between then you may find the sharing options to be convenient. You can send sticky notes from one computer to another through direct networking, or via email.

If you decide that you want to use Stickies, but want a little more eye candy you should checkout the 70+ skins that they have available. Personally I really like the default skin that it comes with, but there are a few others that look rather slick.

–Overview–

So there you have it! Those are two amazing ways for a Windows user to create and mange sticky notes on their computer, and since they are free you really don’t have much to lose. Just imagine all of the things you’ll never forget now.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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

Mozilla has released a new prototype extension that attempts to bring the command line to the browser. The extension, called Ubiquity, uses a set of predefined commands to do things like map an address the user has highlighted, shoot off an email, and more. A good example of this can be seen in the screenshot above where the user highlighted “Chicago Comics,” launched Ubiquity, and was given a list of matching addresses.

Once you’ve got Ubiquity installed you’ll be able to press Control+Space (Option+Space on Mac) to launch the command line window. From there you can use one of the 71 built-in commands (that URL will only work if you’ve installed Ubiquity) to manipulate highlighted text, perform searches, and more. Plus users can even create and share their own Ubiquity commands.

The extension is pretty powerful, and I was surprised at it’s stability considering what an early release it is. They’ve setup a nice tutorial for beginners that will walk you through how a lot of the different stuff works, and it’s something you’ll really need to go through if you want to make the most of what it has to offer. There’s also a video demonstration I’ve posted at the end of this article.

I’ve read on some sites that a feature like this could be something we see in the next big Firefox release. In the past Mozilla has said that they only add features to the browser that will be used by over 90 percent of their users. Ubiquity is undeniably appealing to power users who praise the keyboard, but anyone that is mouse-centric probably won’t touch this with a ten foot pole. My guess is that this one will remain in the land of add-ons.

So what do you think of it? Is it something you’ll use, just try out, or don’t even have any plans on installing it?

Ubiquity Homepage
Thanks Trip!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on June 12, 2008 by CyberNet.

Earlier this year we posted some mockups of the Firefox Mobile that looked a lot like the Safari browser does on the iPhone. I think everyone expected other companies to copy their interface since Apple has received a lot of praise for their browser being “usable,” but it looks like Mozilla is finally making use of the recently hired Aza Raskin who’s well known for Enso (review) and Songza (review).

Aza put together a demo video that shows off a direction Mozilla might be taking with Firefox Mobile, and it not only looks nice but is also different from how the iPhone operates. One thing that they really focused on doing was utilizing the entire screen on a mobile device, after all there’s normally not a lot to work with. For that reason there’s essentially no visible buttons most of the time, and instead they are tucked away on the sides of the screen. Watch the video to see what I mean:

The new tab system is pretty cool, huh? They were definitely clever with how they designed that, and anyone that’s used any sort of mobile browser before would probably agree that being able to organize your tabs in this way would be extremely helpful.

I’m still wondering if hiding the buttons off to the side is the best way to go. For example, when scrolling vertically on my iPhone it can sometimes be difficult to scroll perfectly up and down. With a browser like this I would probably be showing the menu a lot more than I’d like to when all I want to do is move around the current page.

What still amazes me is that the mobile browsers still haven’t attempted some kind of gesture system for navigating, just like mouse gestures on a regular computer. You’ll obviously still need to have some sort of buttons available, but throwing in four or five gestures could possibly account for a majority of the things a user wants to do (back, forward, bookmark, new tab, etc…).

Is this the mobile browser you’ve been waiting for?

Read more about the new design at Aza’s blog [via Lifehacker]
Thanks to “Googler” for the tip!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on August 07, 2008 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

Windows only

Have you ever been working on a project where you wish you had a copy from a few hours or days ago before you made some changes? Most people never think about being able to setup a system that manages revisions of files (a.k.a. version control) because they think it’s too complicated, but it takes only minutes to do using the free Cobian Backup software.

I’ve been a huge fan of Cobian Backup ever since I wrote about it back in April. It has a number of features that truly makes it one of the most complete backup solutions I’ve found, and today we’re going to demonstrate how it can also serve as a revision management system for you’re most precious files. What it will do is make a copy of a file every time it recognizes that a change has been made. As you can imagine this type of system can be priceless for programmers, writers, designers, and more.

How do you set it up? Here is the step-by-step guide on what you need to do:

1. Download and install the free Cobian Backup 9. You should see a screen like this when you run it the first time:
   
2. Click Task -> New Task. Give the new task a useful name, and choose Differential as the backup type:
   
3. Click on the Files section along the left side, and in the upper-half of the window choose the files and/or directories you want revisions kept for. After you’ve done that move down to the bottom where you’ll choose the location you want the revisions to be placed.
   
4. Now switch over to the Schedule section. Change the type to Timer, and then at the bottom of the window enter in how many minutes you would like between each backup. If you’re working on something where having lots of revisions is very important you can have it check every minute, otherwise every 15 to 30 minutes should be suitable. Alternatively you can set a specific time/day for the backups to occur, but generally a timer works better for keeping track of revisions.
   
5. That’s it! Press the OK button to have it start creating your revisions. Any file(s) that get changed will be copied over into a new folder that is labeled with the date/time that the backup was performed:
   

Now that you have everything setup you can rest easy that you’ll have revisions available for your most important files and folders. I know what you’re probably thinking now. What do you do when you want to see all of the revisions for a particular file? Do you have to navigate through each folder individually? Nope, you just need to perform a search in your backup folder for the particular file. This can easily be done by right-clicking on the backup folder, and choosing the Search option.

One thing that you want to keep in mind when doing all of this is that duplicates are made of a file every time a change has been made to them. So if you’re working with large files (movies, music, etc…) these backups can really start to eat away at your disk space.

–Other Configuration Options to Consider–

If you’ve followed the steps above your backups should be working just fine, but there are a few things that you may discover that you want to configure:

• Changing the Timestamp Format
  Each time a new folder is created to hold your revisions the name is assigned to the current date and time. The format of the time can be changed by going to Tools -> Options -> Advanced and altering the value in the Date/Time Format field.
• Disable the Popup Alert
  Whenever a backup starts a little popup is shown down by the System Tray telling you what’s going on. If your backups are frequently getting executed this can get quite annoying, but they can luckily be disabled. Just go to Tools -> Options -> Functionality, and uncheck the Show backup hints option.
• Archive Each Backup
  If you’re frequently doing backups they can quickly start to take up a lot of room. One thing you can do to help conserve space is archive/compress the files each time they are backed up. When you’re configuring your backup you should see a section along the left side labeled Archive, and clicking on that will let you choose your compression method. I recommend using 7Zip since it will save the most room, but the standard ZIP format might be the easiest for you to work with since Windows includes built-in support for it.

–Overview–

As a programmer and writer I’ve found revision systems like these to be incredibly useful, and that’s largely because everything doesn’t always work out the way you want it to. Being able to revert back to a file’s previous state can save a lot of frustration. If you’re working on a report, project, or anything else that’s extremely important I’d recommend setting up a revision system like this so that you don’t regret it later on.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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