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Jun 27

Public SMF 2.0 Beta Download

Posted in: Features, Freeware, Pre-Release, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on March 19, 2008 by CyberNet.

simple machines 2

We’ve always been a huge fan of the Simple Machines Forum (SMF) software that powers our forum, and I’ve recommended it to a lot of other people. This free forum software is about to get even better as they just made the first public version of SMF 2.0 Beta available, and after 18-months in the making it looks pretty darn nice.

Before you go making the upgrade you might want to think about the packages (the things that are like add-ons) that you have installed. It’s highly unlikely that any of your packages will survive the upgrade, and you’ll need to wait until the authors get around to updating them for the new version. You’re good to go if you’re okay about not using any packages at this point.

There are all kinds of things new in this release including a ton of bug fixes, but here is a quick list of the best features:

WYSWIYG editor, to improve the user posting experience
Paid subscriptions to allow people to make a payment with PayPal to get additional group access
OpenID support – to enable users to login and register with their OpenID account
A moderation center to bring together all moderation functionality into one place for all people with moderation abilities
Post and attachment moderation – setup through board permissions.
Additional group management features such as group moderators and joinable and requestable groups
Comprehensive user warning system.
Personal message labeling system and new viewing options
Custom profile fields to enable admins to setup new profile fields in addition to the default
Ignore boards and ignore user functions – so users only see what they want to see
Scheduled events and mail queuing systems to add additional functionality to the forum
Admin and user logs to track who makes what changes to a user’s profile
Database abstraction including support for PostgreSQL and SQLite

We won’t be upgrading our forum to the new Beta quite yet, but I’ll definitely be setting up a quick test site to tinker with the new features.

Simple Machines Forum 2.0 Public Beta

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Jun 22

Notepad++ 4.0 Now Available!

Posted in: Apple, Features, Freeware, Microsoft, Newly Released, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on January 29, 2007 by CyberNet.

Notepad ++

Notepad++ is definitely my favorite Notepad replacement because of the extensive features that it has built-in. A lot of applications are going to tabbed interfaces these days and Notepad++ realized the importance of this early on, which is actually why I started using it in the first place. Being able to have multiple documents open in the same window is a huge plus not to mention how much room it saves on your Taskbar.

Version 4 brings some new goodies to the table and now includes the Explorer plug-in pictured on the left-side in the screenshot above. It actually lets you navigate your hard drive so that you can easily open up the documents without fussing with a popup window. Besides for that there are a lot of bug fixes so the upgrade is highly recommended:

Fix the crash issue.
Add Docking feature for plugin dialogs.
Fix the bug that current “open” and “save as” directory are unchanged with the shortcut Ctrl+Tab.
Fix the bug that the new added languages in v3.9 can not be hidden from the language menu.
Fix the volatile search direction bug.
Fix the Tab display problem.
Add Haskell, InnoSetup languages support.
Add the option to open/save files in the last operation directory.
Enhance Document switcher (MRU and switch crossing view abilities).
Fix “Find Next” unicode bug for Find Replace Dialog.
Support Unicode in displayed result of Find in files & Find in all opened files.
Add Reload from disk feature.
Fix bug : quite (close or restart Windows) without prompt to save.
All the shortcuts of plugins commands are customizable via the shortcut mapper

If you’re a programmer then you’ll surely love Notepad++ with its syntax highlighting. It supports all kinds of languages including C++, Java, PHP, HTML, ASP, and much more. When you’re just trying to make a quick edit, whether it be to source code or any text document, there is nothing better than to have Notepad++ a click away!

Download Notepad++ 4.0 (Mirror)

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Jun 17

Digsby: A Nice Cross-Network Messenger

Posted in: Email, Features, Freeware, Pre-Release, Software, Today's Chili, twitter, Yahoo

This article was written on April 02, 2008 by CyberNet.

I’ve been meaning to give Digsby a spin ever since the public Beta was released about two weeks ago. It looked like it was a well designed cross-network (and cross-platform) instant messenger, and it offered quite a few features that no other instant messengers have touched on before. And after having used it for only about 30 minutes I think I may have found myself a new messenger. In case you’re wondering it is free!

As you would expect with a cross-network messenger this one supports all of the major networks, just like the open-source Pidgin does. In addition to those you can also add some social networks like Twitter or Facebook where you can change your status from within Digsby. Still not impressed? Here’s a list of some of my favorite features it has:

AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, and Jabber messenger account support
Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook support
Check Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail. AOL, IMAP, or POP accounts for new mail
Reply to instant messages directly from the popup notifications
Tabbed conversations
Audio/video chatting provided by TokBox
Inline spell checking
Update your status with the music you’re currently listening to
Complete synchronization across computers (including everything from skins to status messages you create)

One of the coolest features has got to be the fact that you can reply to messages from within the notification window that pops up. I mean really, that is pure genius right there. No more having to switch back to the chat window just to send a quick reply! What a huge time saver.

It’s also been difficult for me to find a good application or messenger that can support checking multiple email accounts, and also provide decent notifications when the new mail arrives. That’s one of the reasons I’ve really grown keen to Digsby. Not to mention that the interface is very easy on the eyes:

digsby

If you haven’t been content with your instant messenger then I recommend checking out Digsby. It’s completely free, and works on Windows, Linux, and Mac operating systems.

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Jun 12

PC Tools Firewall Plus 3.0 – A Free Vista Firewall

Posted in: Features, Freeware, Newly Released, performance, Reviews, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili

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

PC Tools Firewall Plus

As it stands right now there are not many Vista-compatible firewalls available. PC Tools is coming through by not only offering one, but they are even making it free! A comment by bloodsugarwilksm convinced me to try out the new Firewall Plus 3.0 that was recently released, and before I get into some of the details I want to say that this firewall works with Windows XP, 2000, and Server 2003 in addition to Vista.

We included Firewall Plus 2.0 in our list of free antivirus, anti-spyware, and firewalls post that was done back in April, and even then it was the only Vista compatible firewall available. Now they have reached another big milestone, but you won’t notice any difference in the interface.

–What’s New in Firewall Plus 3.0?–

The PC Tools developers made changes where it matters most in a firewall: under-the-hood. Here’s a list of what’s new in version 3:

New Smart Application Rules
Firewall Plus now incorporates a set of new smart application rules, designed to make it simpler and easier for you to continue working with minimal interference from your Firewall. Technically, using the Application Rules, you can create a heuristic set of rules that control how applications are allowed to connect to the Internet/network and their permissions on your PC. If an application attempts to connect to the Internet/network and there are no corresponding rules, Firewall Plus will allow you to choose how the application should behave.
Stealth Mode protection
Firewall Plus provides you with extra protection via its Stealth Mode feature which enables your system to appear invisible to other computers in the network. When in Stealth Mode, your computer is able to make connections to other computers in the network, but Firewall Plus will prevent other computers from connecting with yours.
Data Validation using SPI (Stateful Packet Inspection)
Firewall Plus validates data using SPI – stateful packet inspection – in which it performs a protocol handshake and if successful allows data transfer, otherwise all traffic is blocked – ensuring no unauthorized data is transferred onto your computer.
Application protection
Firewall Plus offers additional application protection by guarding all the applications on your PC from unauthorized access. Enabling this option will shield applications on your system from other applications attempting to take control of them and potentially use them for malicious purposes.

–What I think about it–

I’ve always been a big fan of the Comodo Firewall because of its exceptional performance and outstanding protection, but I give a lot of credit to PC Tools for creating a very strong competing product. Firewall Plus takes up a mere 5MB of memory on my Vista machine, which I don’t feel bad dedicating to something as important as a firewall.

By default Firewall Plus is configured to show notifications that are stripped down to only the information casual users would care about. If you’re a power user that likes to see every little detail then there is an “Expert” mode in the settings. Despite being a power user myself I have found that the basic notifications are nice, clean, and setup so that you can quickly respond.

Am I going to use it myself? Actually I think that I will at least until something better comes along. My heart is still with Comodo, but I’m a bit weary running a beta build of their Vista-compatible version, which has been causing some blue screens of death for some users. I’m guessing that Comodo 3 will be out within the next month or two, and at that time I’ll reevaluate my firewall needs. Right now, however, Firewall Plus is what’s protecting my PC.

–Screenshots–

I’ll go ahead and wrap things up with several screenshots of the different areas in Firewall Plus 3:

Get PC Tools Firewall Here

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Jun 11

Put the Close Button on the Left Side In XP/Vista

Posted in: Freeware, Software, Today's Chili, Windows Vista, Windows XP

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

Windows users have undoubtedly become accustomed to having the minimize, maximize, and close buttons located in the upper-right corner of every window. Mac’s, on the other hand, have those buttons located in the upper-left corner of each window. Switching between the two operating systems can be rather tedious since you have to get used to two different button layouts.

Then there are programmers who get clever ideas that tackle common annoyances. One such programmer has done just that, and has found a way to make Mac users feel a bit more at home when using Windows. The program is called LeftSider, and it’s free, small, and requires no installation. You can download the XP/Vista 32-bit or Vista 64-bit versions from our mirrors, extract the files, and run the executable that’s included.

Immediately after running it you should see the icon/title switch positions with the buttons (as pictured above). The program creates an icon in the System Tray where you can enable/disable the left-sided alignment of the minimize, maximize, and close buttons. And if you want it to start with Windows just place it in the Startup folder located in the Start Menu.

At first I thought it was pretty cool being able to switch things up like this, but I quickly realized how much I miss having the buttons located in the upper-right corner. It’s almost as if my mouse naturally gravitates that way, and when the buttons are in the other corner it screws everything up.

Give it a whirl and let me know what you think!

LeftSider Homepage [via WinMatrix]

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Jun 04

CyberNotes: Best Desktop Feed Reader

Posted in: CyberNotes, Features, Freeware, Reviews, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on September 11, 2007 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

I’ve come across a lot of great feed readers before, but I don’t believe any of them match up to a new one that I was introduced to by Pieter in the CyberNet Forum. It’s called Newzie (Windows-only), and it has a strong focus on making feed reading as easy as possible. I wasn’t quite sure how good this would perform when I first started using it, but I quickly fell in love with the features it offered.

Many of you may consider discarding this post simply because you’re content with the desktop feed reader that you’re currently using, or maybe all of your feeds are on an online reader. Newzie has things that I’ve never seen before in a feed reader, and I can guarantee that some of them are sure to impress you. So at the very least scroll through the article and checkout the screenshots…you won’t be disappointed.

Oh, and I should mention that the interface definitely reminds me of iTunes!

Click to Enlarge

–Feed Organization–

Newzie Organization One of the most unique things with Newzie are the various methods available to organize your feeds. Of course it has the standard tree view that most desktop feed readers have, and you can create as many folders and subfolders as you would like.

More uniquely, however, is the time-sorted view that shows the most recently updated feeds first. It groups feeds in update intervals, such as 30-minutes to 1-hour, so that you can view the most recent news first.

There are also a few "folders" that are created by default which can be used for temporary storage. These are the "My Favorites" and "My Readings," and together they let you breeze through all of your feeds quickly. You can then come back to the news of interest when you have more time.

–Viewing Feeds–

In terms of feed viewing there are three different modes available:

Report View – This is often referred to the "River of News" view because it shows one story after another in their entirety. If it becomes hard to read that way you can always contract the posts, and then expand them as needed.
List View (Top) – This is similar to what you’ll see in an email application with a subject-only view above the content of the posts.
List View (Side) – This is also like an email application, but the list is placed on the side of the content. Widescreen users would probably prefer to use this method.

And don’t worry about the oversized buttons located at the top of the application. I originally thought it was a huge waste of space, and then I saw a button that collapsed the header down to almost nothing:

Newzie Header

–Quick Read–

Newzie Hover Feed Newzie makes it extremely easy to scan your feeds without actually having to read them. One of the ways it does this is with its unique hover window that is displayed when your cursor rests over a feed in the sidebar. It shows you how many unread posts there are in that particular feed, when the last article was written, the last time it checked for updates, and the titles of the last 5 articles. I love when tooltips like this are actually made useful.

–News Bar–

This is like a stock ticker, but for your news. Anytime you hover over the News Bar, it will pause so that you have time to take action on the item(s) that are currently scrolling across.

Newzie News Bar

–Today Panel–

There is a highly configurable Today Panel available in Newzie for those of you that don’t like the News Bar. This isn’t quite as compact, but it can show more information.

Newzie Today Panel

–Search & Filters–

Newzie Filters There are several more advanced search features included with Newzie that help make it so great. Besides being able to search your feeds for text, you can also filter your subscriptions in using special commands that have been created. Here are some examples:

title:cybernet – Searches the title of feeds for matches.
updated<5day – Finds feeds updated in a specific period of time.
priority>60 – Finds feeds that are within the specified priority interval.

More information on how these work as well as more examples can be found in the Newzie help file.

–Monitor Sites, too–

Newzie Website Monitor Just when you thought Newzie already did everything, it goes and does even more! Not only can it aggregate all of your feeds into one central location, but it can also check websites to see if there have been any changes made.

There are several different options for choosing how the websites are monitored, such as looking for the addition of keywords, text being inserted, hyperlinks being added, or new images appearing. Or you can just go the old fashion route of monitoring every aspect of the website to see if it changes.

When you view a site that has been changed, Newzie will automatically highlight the changed portions so that you don’t have to try and figure out what’s new. Now how cool is that?

–Stats–

Newzie tracks what you read and how many items it brings in each day. It then puts it all together in a pretty bar graph so that you can realize just how addicted you are to the feeds (obviously my stats aren’t all that extravagant in the screenshot since I started with a fresh profile for the review):

Newzie Stats

–And More–

I think that I touched on almost everything that Newzie can do, but there are still some other things that might appeal to you. For the sake of being thorough I’ve included those additional features here:

I found it to be one of the fastest-updating feed readers available (in terms of checking feeds for new content).
Browse your feed items in a slideshow fashion. This is cool, but not something I can see myself using.
Minimize to the System Tray
Keyboard shortcut customization
Assign priorities to feeds
Change the rendering engine (uses IE by default)
Setup keyword watches on your feeds
You can monitor IE favorites for new feeds
You can add feeds from a Bloglines account

Some of you may still prefer the online feed readers such as Bloglines or Google Reader, but I have to say that this is hands-down the best desktop feed reader that I’ve used. It’s packed with features and focuses heavily on making reading feeds an effortless process. I highly recommend this desktop feed reader to all the news junkies out there!

Newzie Homepage

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Jun 03

Use Yahoo! Mail or Gmail to Email Files Photos

Posted in: Email, Freeware, Gmail, Newly Released, Software, Today's Chili, Windows, Yahoo

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

Windows only
A few weeks ago I received an email from the developer of a Windows application called gAttach, and it looked pretty cool. At the time, however, the program was new and I wanted to give it some time to mature before I gave it a whirl. Since then it has had a handful of updates, and it is on its way to becoming a handy little program.

What is gAttach? It makes it possible to email attachments right from your Windows desktop using your Gmail or Google Apps email account. You can right-click on a file in Windows Explorer, click on email links in your browser, use the email option in Windows Live Photo Gallery, and much more for sending files through Gmail. It basically acts as your default desktop email client.

One of the nice things with this is that it can even handle multiple attachments, which means adding a dozen or so different files to an email isn’t such a pain anymore. Your attachments still have to be under the 20MB limit that Gmail imposes, but you can send quite a bit in that size. After it is done attaching the files all you’ll have to do is check the “Drafts” section in your Gmail account to finish sending it.

There are some downsides to the program though. The biggest one is probably that it uses Internet Explorer to log you in. If you’re not logged in Internet Explorer it will prompt you to do so, and sometimes it would tell me that I needed to login even after I already did. Plus there is no way to rapidly switch between multiple accounts. Hopefully we’ll see these things fixed for a future version.

Are you a Yahoo! Mail user? No problem. The developer has also created a version of the applications that works with Yahoo! Mail dubbed yAttach.

Get gAttach (for Gmail) or yAttach (for Yahoo! Mail)
[via FreewareGenius & Lifehacker]

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May 27

Big Oops: Mozilla Releases Compromised Vietnamese Language Pack

Posted in: Freeware, Mozilla, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on May 08, 2008 by CyberNet.

firefox bomb-1.png I think it’s safe to say that a lot of Firefox users associate the browser with security. It may normally keep you out of harms way, but that’s not the case if you downloaded the Vietnamese language pack after February 18, 2008. It turns out that Mozilla released a copy of that particular language pack which was modified by a virus on their system. Since November 2007 there have been over 16,000 downloads of the add-on, but they aren’t sure how many of those downloads came after February 18th.

The actual language pack itself does not contain the virus, but it was modified by a virus to load remote content. They believe that it was mostly used for showing the user ads, but they don’t deny that it could be used for more malicious purposes.

The script that was injected into the language pack will be detected as HTML.Xorer by most antivirus applications. It was first recognized as a virus on April 14th, but it wasn’t found sooner by Mozilla because they only perform scans when the add-ons are uploaded. There are no subsequent scans, but they assure us that this will be changing in the future.

This makes me a little leery of installing any add-ons now. Just because it is coming from a trusted developer doesn’t mean that the extension hasn’t unintentionally been compromised. We just saw it happen right here, and it affects all operating systems since it is merely a script that has to run. I guess this is even more of a reason not to install an abundance of extensions.

The Vietnamese language pack has since been removed from the add-ons site.

Mozilla Security Blog [via Heise]

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May 26

CyberNotes: Best Lite Apps

Posted in: CyberNotes, Freeware, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on January 15, 2008 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

We’re a few weeks into the new year, and we thought that it would be nice if we helped you with your resolution to trim off some fat…from your computer that is. Today we’re showing off 6 different applications that are all condensed versions of what you might already be using.

Almost all of the programs that we’ve scrounged up are freeware, and we’ve made sure to throw in some you may not be aware of yet. Now lets take your computer to the virtual gym, and we’ll watch those pounds fly off!

–AIM Lite (Freeware)–

One of the things that I like the most about Google Talk is its simplicity. AIM Lite is a slightly new experimental program from the folks over at AOL. Its goal is, in some ways, to make it more like Google Talk. They’ve trimmed things up so that it doesn’t have many features, and in the end the result was a fast little instant messenger. Who would have thought that AOL could make something that wasn’t bloated.

Download: AIM Lite

–Nero Lite & Micro (Commercial/Trial)–

I’ve used Nero for years because I find it to be one of the most powerful CD and DVD burning applications available. One thing that I’ve found, however, is that as time passes Nero continues to get more and more bloated with each subsequent release. It includes more apps that all do things I don’t need. That’s why I’m so appreciative of Nero Lite & Micro!

These apps are not officially endorsed or created by Nero, but they should be. The Nero 8 download weighs in at a whopping 183MB, while Nero Lite and Micro are only 42MB and 20MB respectively. That’s an incredible reduction in size.

For those of you wondering, Nero 8 Lite includes Burning ROM, Express, Cover Designer, and Wave Editor while Nero 8 Micro only has Burning ROM. And yes, you’ll still need to have a serial number to use this after the trial period expires.

Homepage: Updatepack.nl
Download: Nero Lite | Nero Micro
Mirror: Nero Lite

–QuickTime Alternative (Freeware)–

QuickTime Alternative offers a quick way for you to watch QuickTime movies (.MOV) in your browser without needing to install the full program. I know a lot of people who use this to avoid the bloat that the full app includes. Now you can watch all of those Get A Mac ads.

Download: QuickTime Alternative

–Real Alternative (Freeware)–

With Real Alternative you’ll be able to watch Real videos (.RA and .RAM) in Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox, and Netscape. I don’t come across this media all that often in my daily browsing, but I’m sure there are still plenty of sites who use it as a source for streaming content.

Download: Real Alternative

–Adobe Reader Lite (Freeware)–

Adobe Reader Lite removes some shortcuts and disables the license agreement, but more importantly it cuts out some of the fat. By that I mean it removes some of the plugins that regular users like me and you probably won’t use in our lifetime.

While Adobe Reader Lite sounds like a nice thought, I don’t think it is enough to pull users away from Foxit or PDF-XChange.

Download: Adobe Reader Lite

–Winamp Lite (Freeware)–

Winamp comes in several different flavors, one of which is a Lite version. The Lite version comes stripped of a lot of features, including device synchronization and SHOUTcast radio stations. If you just want something that will play your songs, and not much else, then Winamp Lite is what you’re looking for!

Download: Winamp Lite

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May 25

Helpful Tip: Backup Apple Mail or Entourage

Posted in: Email, Freeware, Mac, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on June 22, 2008 by CyberNet.

Mac only
We’ve already shown how to backup data from email programs on Windows, and so we thought it was only fair to do the same for Mac users. Using a free tool cleverly named Email Backup you’ll be able to rest easy knowing that you have a backup of your Apple Mail, Microsoft Entourage, Eudora, or Thunderbird data. For those of you who have suffered the heartache of data loss you know just how valuable a backup like this can be.

Email Backup is really nothing fancy because all it does is copy the data and configuration files for the various applications into the location you specify. To restore the data from a backup you’ll have to manually copy it back into the respective directory, which for Apple Mail is /Users/USERNAME/Library/Mail/.

The one nice thing about this is that you can schedule a backup to occur at any time and on any day. You can additionally choose where you want the backups to be stored:

mac email backup-1.png

While it’s nothing too fancy this application can really come through in a bind. Once you have it setup you don’t really have to worry about anything else. And hopefully in a future version the developer will include a way to restore a backup from within the application.

Get Email Backup

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Hasta La Gadget!

Public SMF 2.0 Beta Download

Notepad++ 4.0 Now Available!

Digsby: A Nice Cross-Network Messenger