Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on December 16, 2010 by CyberNet.

Windows only
Several years ago we wrote an article covering some different ways you can assign a drive letter to an FTP site, and now that some time has passed I decided to check been in on a few of the apps that we’ve mentioned. I had an issue finding Novell’s NetDrive app, but with a little Google searching I stumbled upon a similar app that also goes by the name of NetDrive (it’s only free for non-commercial use). It doesn’t appear to be affiliated with Novell’s program, but it left me impressed regardless.

MacroData’s NetDrive is a polished app that is able to connect to both FTP and WebDAV servers even over a proxy connection. It comes pre-populated with several notable FTP locations for universities and companies, but they are all disconnected by default. You can manually choose to connect any of them, set them to connect upon startup, or add your own custom FTP sites.

The thing I love about NetDrive is that the drive letter that is assigned to the FTP site can even be accessed by other applications including DOS. That makes this a great utility for anyone wanting to tinker around with batch files that transfer files to/from remote locations. Of course you could use built-in Windows command-line FTP interface, but being able to use something like robocopy with an FTP server is pretty huge.

Here are some of the features highlighted by the developer:

• You can use NetDrive Site Manager to easily register and connect to all remote servers you wish to access.
• Simply map your drive to a specific site and it will be configured automatically the next time your Windows starts. You can add as many sites as you want.
• When you connect to a remote server, a drive letter will be mapped and you can transfer files and folders by drag and drop in Windows Explorer. You can manage files and folders with a click of mouse.
• NetDrive supports direct file operation in mapped drive. You can run any .exe files in remote server from your Windows explorer. To watch a movie file in your remote server, you just need to double click it.
• Once you install NetDrive, you will see an icon created in your system tray. (Right click your mouse on the icon to view menu) NetDrive tray icon provides shortcuts to use.
• NetDrive. You can open the site manager, configure NetDrive, connect to registered site or view logs.
• You can customize the program settings from Setup menu. From Setup menu, you can manage action after connection, auto-connection to specific site when Windows starts and log monitoring.
• Since NetDrive provides Windows system driver to mount drive, you can use DOS-prompt to use commands like copy, xcopy and dir. Other DOS-based legacy applications can be used since NetDrive provides DOS based file access.

If you’re in the market for an app like this I’d highly recommend checking it out, but remember it’s only free for home/non-commercial use. Otherwise it will run you $29 for a license.

NetDrive Homepage (Windows only; Free for Home Use)

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

New Virtual CD-ROM Utility By MicrosoftCyberNotes: Assign Driver Letters to Folders in WindowsCyberNotes: Map a FTP to a Drive in WindowsDrive Manager: Hide Drives, Assign Drive Letters to Folders, and MoreDiggdot.us and Others Forced to Remove ‘Digg’ from Address

This article was written on April 13, 2010 by CyberNet.

Windows only
Have you ever tried to open a file just to find out that you don’t have something installed that is able to handle it? That’s where the Universal File Viewer comes in. This free portable app is able to open most filetypes, and prevents you from having to hunt down the right app for the job. It supports most text, images, videos, documents, and many more. If you feel that it is lacking in some way stroll on over to the plugins page to see if one of the compatible add-ons already addresses your complaint.

Overall I’d say the range of filetypes that Universal File Viewer supports is rather amazing, but there is one downside. Microsoft office formats will only be supported if you actually have Office installed. That sucks because I could see wanting to use this on a machine that doesn’t have Office installed, and you may argue that this negates some of the usefulness of the app. On the flip side this portable program starts up way faster than the Office suite does, and can definitely serve as a trusty sidekick for viewing those Office docs.

I have a more extensive list of file extensions supported at the end of the article, but this is a pretty good overview:

• Text, Binary, Hex, Unicode: any files, of unlimited size (even 4Gb+ sizes are allowed)
• RTF, UTF-8: RTF and UTF-8 encoded texts
• Image: all general graphics formats: BMP JPG GIF PNG TGA TIFF… plus all formats supported by IrfanView/XnView external viewers
• Multimedia: all formats supported by MS Windows Media Player: AVI MPG WMV MP3…
• Internet: all formats supported by MS Internet Explorer: HTML PDF XML MHT…
• MS Office: all file types of MS Office (if installed): DOC DOCX XLS PPT…
• Converters: some types can be viewed as plain text: DOC DOCX PDF PPT ODT…

Sound useful? The entire package is available as a no-install download, and uses just 10MB of your drive. In terms of performance I’d say this is pretty well optimized considering how fast it is able to open files, and the fact that it uses only 11MB of memory when viewing most documents.

Universal Viewer Homepage (Windows only; Portable Freeware)

Here’s a more detailed breakdown of the formats supported:

• Images: bmp, ico, wmf, emf, jpg, jpeg, jpe, jfif, png, gif, rle, dib, tga, tif, tiff, psd, fax, eps, icb, win, vst, vda, pcx, pcc, rpf, rla, sgi, rgba, rgb, bw, pdd, ppm, pgm, pbm, cel, pic, pcd, cut, pal, psp, jp2, jpc, pnm, ras, mis, ani, cur
• Media: avi, mpg, mpeg, mpe, mpv, mp3, mp2, mp1, m1v, m2v, mpv2, mp2v, mpa, m1a, m2a, asf, lsf, lsx, ivf, wav, mid, midi, rmi, kar, aif, aifc, aiff, au, snd, mov, qt, 3gp, 3gp2, 3g2, 3gpp, ra, rm, ram, rmvb, rpm, rt, rp, smi, smil, roq, asx, m3u, pls, wvx, wax, wmx, wmv, wma, wmp, wm, cda, ac3, dts, vob, ifo, d2v, fli, flc, flic, mka, mkv, ts, tp, tpr, pva, aac, mp4, ogm, ogg, divx, vp6, m4a, m4b, vqf, ape, mpc, flac, flv, dvr-ms, wtv
• Internet: htm, html, xml, xsl, mht, pdf, swf, xps, shtml, xhtml, shtm, stm, php, php2, php3, asp, pl, vrml, plg, htt, htx
• Office: odt, ods, odp, odg, odf, odb, odm, ott, oth, ots, otg, otp, sxw, sxc, sxg, sxi, sxd, sxm, stw, stc, std, sti, doc, dot, docx, docm, xls, xlt, xlsx, xlsm, xlsb, ppt, pptx, pptm, pps, ppz, pot, wbk, wps
• Text Converter (files that can be viewed as plain text): doc, dot, docx, docm, xls, xlt, xlsx, xlsm, xlsb, ppt, pptx, pptm, pps, ppz, pot, wbk, wps

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

Word 2007 Viewer Now Available from MicrosoftOpen Large Text Files or LogsMaybe Foxit isn’t the Best PDF Reader?Office 2007 Trial Soon And File Converters ReleasedGmail Now Has Integrated PowerPoint Viewer

This article was written on July 02, 2009 by CyberNet.

Windows only
Looking back at how Twitter has evolved I can’t help but be amazed by not only it’s popularity, but also the various services it is used for. I’ve seen ways to track packages using Twitter, add events to your calendar, manage your todo list, check balances on your accounts, and all sorts of other things. It’s crazy.

Now we can take it one step further. With the free app called TweetMyPC you’ll be able to remotely control several different aspects of your computer without any complicated setup process. There’s nothing you have to configure on your router because this simply goes out to Twitter to check for new messages that you’ve posted. Piece of cake.

So what can you do with this? Here are some of my favorites:

• You can shutdown, lock, hibernate, or put the machine in standby.
• Get a screenshot of your computer screen, and have it posted to Twitpic so that it can easily be viewed.
• View and kill running processes.
• Download files so that they are there when you get home. Perfect for large files like, well, the Windows 7 Release Candidate download that weighs in at several gigabytes.
• Get a list of files inside of a directory on the computer.
• Have it email you a document on your computer by providing the path. This only works with Gmail at the moment.
• Custom commands will let you create any command you want, and associate it with any executable on your machine. Unfortunately it doesn’t appear to work with batch files or command line arguments, which would be super sweet.

I think this could become an app that is widely used by a lot of the Twitter geeks out there. Once it is able to execute batch files and accept command line arguments this will become a must-have app for me. Because that means I can put my computer to work from the comfort of my phone.

TweetMyPC Homepage [via gHacks]

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

Follow CyberNet on TwitterIs Twitter Becoming a News-Wire?Post to Evernote via TwitterUse Twitter to Track your UPS, FedEx, USPS, and DHL ShipmentsDo You Remember When…

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

Mozilla is apparently not going to sit on the sidelines while browsers such as Flock get all of the social fanfare. Instead they are trying to develop a way to integrate Web 2.0 services such as Twitter, Facebook, Google Talk, and more into a central location that makes following your friends easy. Huh, sounds like exactly what the Flock browser is for.

Snowl (download) is the name for Mozilla’s project, and it ships in the form of a Firefox extension. Once you get it installed you’ll be able to enter in the address of RSS feeds, provide your Twitter credentials, or import an OPML file containing a list of feeds.

After you get it all setup you’ll want to pull up the View menu in Firefox. From there you can show the Message List, which is simply a listing of your feeds in a classic three-pane fashion:

(Click to Enlarge)

Any RSS feeds for blogs or websites will appear at the top of the list, while people you’re following (currently only available with your Twitter account) will appear at the bottom.

Also in the View menu you’ll see an option for a River of Messages. This is a two-pane interface that makes it possible to scroll through all of your messages without needing to click on any of them. Normally when I’ve used these kind of layouts in the past the scrolling is always done vertically, but for some odd reason this one is horizontal:

(Click to Enlarge)

I’m extremely disappointed with how the extension handles itself, but I guess I’ll cut them some slack since this is still a very early prototype. Snowl, in its current state, can’t hold a candle to how well the Flock browser has integrated the social web. Here are some of the reasons I’m not impressed:

• The interface is very rough around the edges. For example, the vertical divider in the River of Messages view covers the text as you scroll horizontally. This particular view still needs a lot of work.
• Aren’t designers always taught to minimize the horizontal scrolling? Why is it then that they’ve decided to implement their River of Messages view horizontally rather than vertically like other feed readers.
• Tighter integration with web services is needed. I shouldn’t have to go to the settings in order to setup my Twitter account. The extension should recognize when I’m on Twitter’s site, and ask whether I want my account associated with Snowl. And providing my Twitter credentials only lets me read messages from friends… I can’t even respond to them from the extension?
• Better sidebar functionality is a must. I can’t tell which feeds have unread items, can’t group them into folders, or anything like that.

Maybe I’m being overly hard on Mozilla since this is still early in development, but I hardly think it’s usable in its current state. They should have held off a bit more, and polished the extension up a bit. It just feels like Mozilla is trying to play catch-up with Flock now, and is losing big time.

Get Snowl 0.1

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

Mozilla Officially Releases Firefox 2 Beta 2Mozilla Messaging Touches on Thunderbird 3Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.5 Release Scheduled For ThursdayMozilla Makes Web Apps EasyDownload The Portable Version Of Firefox 2 Beta 2

This article was written on February 18, 2009 by CyberNet.

Windows only
For the most part Microsoft hasn’t made it very easy for people who want to run multiple versions of Internet Explorer on their machine, which can be difficult for web developers who need to test sites against older versions of the browser. A new tool, however, called Internet Explorer Collection will let you pick and choose which versions you would like installed on your computer.

Once you being the installation process you’ll be prompted with a screen similar to what you see above. Versions of Internet Explorer that are not compatible with your operating system should be automatically disabled just like how IE 1.0 is since it’s running on Vista. Similarly you can also checkout the homepage of the software to see a chart of which versions of IE are compatible with your operating system before you even try to install them. Sorry to break it to you, but no operating system will work with all versions of IE that are bundled in the app.

Internet Explorer Collection is frequently updated, and even includes the latest IE 8.0 Release Candidate 1 build. Just be careful… once you start using Internet Explorer 1.5 you may not want to go back to anything else.

Get Internet Explorer Collection for Windows

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

Test Websites in Internet Explorer 5.5, 6, 7, and 8Previous Versions Support To Be Added With Windows VistaTracking Down Old Versions Of Software To DownloadHelpful Tip: Remove Old Versions of Java (JRE)Microsoft Releases Vista 5728 To Connect Testers