Hasta La Gadget!

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

Time Saving Tuesday

When preparing the Daily Downloads a few weeks back I came across a nifty little program for Windows called Pitaschio (note that it’s spelled differently than pistachio the nut). It caught my attention not only because it was freeware, but also because it didn’t require any installation. Those two ingredients are pretty important when it comes to making a good first impression on me.

After I got it up and running I began diving through the manual to figure out what all of the options do. Believe me, at first it doesn’t seem like there is all that much to configure since there is less than 30 checkboxes, but don’t let that deceive you. That’s just a sign that it’s a well developed application.

Click to Enlarge

–Snap to Windows (Magnetic Edges)–

Pitaschio is almost like the FreeSnap application in that it makes it possible to better organize your windows. Pitaschio doesn’t offer quite the features that FreeSnap does, but one strong point is that it has a configurable snap-to-window option. This turns the edges of every application into a “magnet,” and when an edge of a window comes close to another edge they will naturally be attracted to each other. It thereby makes it easy to align multiple windows side-by-side.

There is also a “place window only in screen” option that I like. With it enabled you will not be able to drag any windows outside of your screen’s perimeter. If you enjoy being able to move your windows off the screen you’ll want to disable this setting because it will get annoying rather fast.

–Keys & Shortcuts–

The mouse shortcuts are one of the things that I fell in love with first. With them you can assign commands to various mouse operations that you normally wouldn’t use in Windows. For example, I have Pitaschio setup so that when I hold down Shift and right-click on the Title Bar of a program it will minimize that particular window:

Click to Enlarge

In all there are about 25 different commands that you can assign mouse shortcuts to, and all of them are pictured above. Some of the operations you can perform with the mouse shortcuts include:

• Start the screensaver or turn off the monitor
• Shutdown, hibernate, logoff, restart, or put the computer in standby
• Open your Documents, Recycle Bin, Control Panel, Task Manager, or Display Properties
• Adjust the transparency of the window
• Minimize to the System Tray or minimize to the Taskbar
• Center the window on your monitor
• Rollup a window to just the Title Bar:
  
• Maximize the height and/or width of a window

–Window Size & Position Manager–

This is similar to the AutoSizer application that we mentioned a few weeks back. You can specify the starting position of an application, the window size, and even how transparent you want the entire window to be.

A screenshot of the window manager is to the right, and I’m sure you can see just how powerful this feature can really be.

–And More–

I’ve covered a lot of great stuff in this article, but that’s really only about half of what Pitaschio is capable of doing. Take a look at some of the other things you may find useful:

• Disable keys that you don’t use, such as Insert, Windows Key, Caps Lock, and more. I’m actually surprised that keyboards still have a Caps Lock key, and it was nice being able to turn it off completely.
• “Allow extended rename” makes other versions of Windows behave more like Vista when trying to rename a file, assuming that you have file extensions shown. When you rename a file it will select just the filename, and not the extension. Vista already does this, and I recommend disabling it if you’re using Vista because it can cause some unwanted side effects.
• Autoraise windows as you hover over them. This will bring a particular window to the front if you just hover over it with the mouse, instead of requiring a click.
• Adjust the volume of the speakers using the scroll wheel on your mouse.

There are also some features that are only available through right-clicking on the System Tray icon for Pitaschio

• Clean the mouse/keyboard. How many times have you wanted to clean your mouse or keyboard, but you don’t want to inadvertently do things on the screen. Pitaschio will let you disable one or the other so that they can be cleaned.
• View stats on how far you move your mouse and how many times you press each key on the keyboard. This doesn’t really have a purpose, but it’s interesting to see.

When I tried Pitaschio out for the first time I didn’t expect too much from it, but after using it for a few days it quickly became one of my favorite freeware applications. I run it on all of my computers, and it’s painless to setup since there is nothing to install.

Pitaschio Homepage

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on July 09, 2008 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

Mac only
Making one browser look like another has been a trend for ages. More often than not users like the functionality of a browser, but don’t exactly like how it looks on the particular operating system. That’s how I am with Firefox on just about any operating system I use it on, and that’s despite the fact that they’ve redesigned Firefox 3 to take on characteristics of the various operating systems.

In the past we’ve already shown you how you can make Firefox fit in a little better with Windows Vista, and that’s especially true if you install this extension which gives Firefox 3 the Aero glass effect. Today, however, we’re going to jump to the other side of the pond and show you how to make Firefox 3 take on a look that’s more in line with Mac OS X’s Safari browser. We’ve got a few tricks up our sleeve that should get the job done.

–The Theme–

Firefox 3 does include a new theme for Mac OS X that fits in well with the operating system, but it still doesn’t look like Safari. So the first thing that we need to take care of is finding a near-perfect replica of the Safari theme, and we’re in luck because there happens to be one that’s already compatible with Firefox 3. It’s called GrApple Yummy, and it’s as close to Safari as it gets:

You might recall us having written about this theme before, and it’s important to note that it has a nearly identical twin brother called GrApple Delicious. We won’t bore you with all of the minor differences again, but it’s safe to say that GrApple Yummy is the theme that’s the most Safari like for Firefox 3.

Okay, we’re off to a good start… now let’s move on.

–The Address Bar–

Safari uses the Address Bar to show users how much time a page has until it finishes loading, and it actually looks pretty nice, too. To get this feature all you need to do is install the Fission Firefox extension and you’ll be ready to go.

This is what the Address Bar will look like while loading a page once you have Fission installed:

–The Status Bar–

Personally I would go crazy in a day’s time if I didn’t have the Status Bar in my browser, but for some odd reason Safari has decided to disable it by default. For the sake of consistency… if you want to ditch the Status Bar just pull up the View menu and uncheck the Status Bar option.

–Resizable Text Areas–

In Safari you can resize text areas, such as the comment box we have located below, simply by grabbing onto the corner of the box and dragging it to the size you desire. Firefox 3 users can enjoy the same experience with the Resizeable Textarea extension.

–Find as you Type–

Safari has a rather slick find-as-you-type feature where it grays out the background as you shuffle around the page looking for specific words. The current selection is not only highlighted in green, but it also bounces up and down to really help it keep you’re attention.

It takes a little bit of work, but as we’ve previously outlined it’s very much possible to get a search feature just like this in Firefox. We also put together a video demonstration in case you want to see it in action.

–Stop / Reload Button–

Once you install the Stop or Reload extension you will notice that a button is missing on your navigation bar. Don’t worry, the stop button will be visible whenever a page is loading, otherwise it will serve as the refresh button. Clever, huh?

–Overview–

Now if you followed through on a lot of the stuff in this article you should find that it’s difficult to distinguish the two browsers when glancing at them. Here, see for yourself:

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on August 21, 2007 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

Transferring files from one folder to another, or from computer to computer is something most people do on a regular basis. Have you ever thought about speeding up the process by using a file transfer utility? They’re similar to the download managers in your web browser, except they’re made to be used all around your computer.

The best part is that the two free programs that I mention below replace the built-in Windows file transfer manager. You can still use Windows Explorer just as you normally do, but anytime you try to copy, paste, or move files, these apps will do the dirty work for you. Not only that, but both programs will pick up where they left off, should you shutdown your computer in the middle of a transfer, or need to stop it for some reason. Heck, you can even pause the transfers and resume them later on!

–Copy Handler (Homepage)–

This is probably my favorite of the two programs this article covers. It has an insane number of options (over 60) that you customize, doesn’t require any installation, and is open source. One of the reasons that I love this program so much is that you can adjust the number of simultaneous transfers, and once that number is hit it will queue up the rest for later on.

After you download the ZIP folder and extract the contents, the first thing you’ll want to do is register the DLL. This will ensure that Copy Handler replaces the built-in transfer manager for Windows:

Then whenever you go to transfer a file you’ll be presented with an extremely compact file transfer window (left – actual size), or you can open a more detailed window full of all the stats that you crave (right – click to enlarge):

Then if you want to try and speed things up even more, or want to change how something works, just head on over to the options where there are plenty of things for you to play with:

There is one downside to this program, and it’s that it isn’t actively developed any more. The last update was provided back in October 2006, but luckily it still works great on Vista. The developer is currently looking for a sponsor so that he can continue the development on Copy Handler.

–TeraCopy (Homepage)–

This application is similar to the Copy Handler above, but I saw it on Lifehacker recently and it also piqued my interest. I gave it a whirl and found it to be much simpler than Copy Handler. It doesn’t really have anything for you to configure, and what you see below is essentially the entire application.

You’ll be notified if an error occurs while in the middle of a transfer, but TeraCopy will continue working on the other files. That way one bad file doesn’t screw up the entire batch of files being transferred.

–Overview/Benchmarks–

You’ll only notice a large speed difference with these file transfer utilities if your moving or copying many files, or really big files. To give you a quick comparison of the differences in using these I transferred 85 images over the network that totaled 114MB. Again, the differences aren’t that large, but if you’re moving around a few gigabytes of data these utilities could possibly chop a few minutes off of the transfer time.

• Copy Handler – 58 seconds
• TeraCopy – 1 minute
• Vista (with Performance Pack) – 1 minute and 3 seconds
• Vista (without Performance Pack) – 1 minute and 14 seconds

Note: Default options were used in each of the applications.

If you find yourself frequently moving large things around, these apps could be priceless to you. Of the two, I would recommend Copy Handler to anyone that is a power user, and TeraCopy for anyone looking for a simple replacement for what’s built-in to Windows.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on July 26, 2008 by CyberNet.

Windows only
I’ve been a big fan of uTorrent for quite some time mostly because of its small size, but there are a lot of features it has that I’ve never really needed. For example, how often do you look at all of those fancy graphs in uTorrent? If you feel the same way then you might want to checkout the Halite BitTorrent client.

Halite is a simple stripped-down BitTorrent client without the frills of uTorrent, but it comes packed with stellar performance. When downloading a file using Halite it used up no more than 8MB of memory, which is just a little bit less than uTorrent. Download speeds are also on par to what I get with uTorrent for the same files, which is probably one of the more important things.

Overall I’m pleased with how Halite handles itself, and I’ll definitely be using it more from now on. If you’re on Windows this is a great solution, otherwise you can checkout some of the other cross-platform BitTorrent apps that we’ve covered.

Download the Halite Bittorrent Client [via Lifehacker]

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on November 26, 2007 by CyberNet.

TechSmith has decided to offer both of their award-winning applications as free downloads! The first application is SnagIt, which is used to capture and create screenshots on your computer. The only catch is that they will give you a free license only for SnagIt 7.2.5, whereas the current version is SnagIt 8.2. One of the big drawbacks is that this version will not work properly in Windows Vista.

Here’s what you have to do to get SnagIt 7.2.5 for free:

1. Download SnagIt 7.2.5 in your language: English, German, or French.
2. Request a free license for the software.

The second application is Camtasia Studio, which is used to make and edit video screencasts. This is a $300 application, but just like with SnagIt you will not get the latest Camtasia 5 that was recently released. Instead you will get Camtasia 3, but it will satisfy the needs of most Windows users with the exception of those running Vista.

Here’s what you have to do to get Camtasia Studio 3 for free:

1. Download Camtasia Studio.
2. Request a free license for the software.

They may not be the latest versions of the applications, but that doesn’t mean they are lacking in quality. I’m sure these will be more than adequate if you don’t care about running the latest software.

[via Download Squad and Digital Inspiration]
Thanks for the tip “S”!

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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