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Mar 24

CyberNotes: Gmail Notifiers for Multiple Accounts

Posted in: CyberNotes, Email, Freeware, Gmail, Google, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on April 10, 2007 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

I’m not sure about you, but I have several different Gmail accounts that I am constantly trying to keep track of. I’ve actually got 4 different personal Gmail accounts as well as the ones that I have Gmail manage for our website (using the Google Apps for your Domain). There are just too many email addresses for me to check on a regular basis, and the Google Talk client only lets you monitor the email address that your signed in with.

I looked all over for a good (and free) email notifier that I could use with multiple Gmail accounts, but there really aren’t many out there. There is an extension for Firefox called Gmail Manager that is supposed to monitor multiple accounts (including Google Apps), but I have experienced problems before with it where it constantly signs me out of one account and into another. Not only that, but I don’t want to bog down my browser with constantly checking 7 or 8 email accounts every few minutes.

Then it clicked! I’m constantly monitoring feeds using FeedDemon and so I’ll just have it monitor my email accounts as well. That way I can set it up to popup with a desktop alert anytime a new email comes into my Gmail account, and I never have to worry about a limitation on the number of accounts to check. Here is what FeedDemon’s notifier looks like:

FeedDemon

It is important to note that FeedDemon is not free, but I use it because I believe it is the best feed reader available and is worth the $30. There are plenty of other feed readers out there though that have similar notifications without costing you a penny.

To gain access to your Gmail accounts feed there are two different types of URL’s that should work. The first URL is:

http://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom

This URL will require that you sign-in to the Gmail service before it will give you access to the feed. If you’re using FeedDemon or another desktop feed reader it should prompt you to enter in the username and password for the account. Another URL that you can use looks something like this:

http://username:password@mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom

In that URL you’ll replace the “username” and “password” with your own account information. If you’re trying to use the Gmail feed with an online feed reader (such as Bloglines) this will probably be how you have to do it. Actually, Bloglines even has a notifier available so that you could receive the email alerts right on your desktop.

Don’t worry though…because there are a lot more ways to keep track of multiple Gmail accounts. If you don’t mind using some widgets/gadgets then you might find these to be good alternatives:

Yahoo! Widget Engine has a few different widgets that will monitor your Gmail account for new emails.
Windows Vista gadgets has a really great Gmail checker available.

And then there are always the classic email management alternatives such as Thunderbird, Opera, Eudora, Outlook, and Windows Mail (a.k.a. Outlook Express).

Share your knowledge below by letting us know how you keep track of your email!

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Mar 20

Microsoft Releases Virtual PC 2007 (Freeware)

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

This article was written on February 19, 2007 by CyberNet.

I’ve been waiting for Microsoft to release Virtual PC 2007 and it looks like they finally have. I still remember the day that Microsoft started making Virtual PC a free application, and they are super smart for doing so. It allows users to install other Windows operating systems to test out new software, or more importantly check for software compatibility issues on the new Windows Vista. What’s the catch? Well, if your installing XP or Vista you will have to activate the operating system just like you would when installing it on your computer. It is just another opportunity for Microsoft to earn money off of selling Windows’ licenses.

Using Virtual PC 2007 you will be able to install Vista and all of your favorite software while still using your current operating system. This will let you see if Vista is right for you, or whether you should hold off until more developers get around to providing updated software releases.

When using a virtual PC there are two terms that you should become familiar with, host OS and guest OS. The host operating system (OS) is what you actually have the Virtual PC 2007 application installed on and a guest OS is the operating system that runs within the Virtual PC program. This will surely be helpful when reading about features or looking through documentation.

Here are the features that virtual PC has to offer:

Drag and drop copying – drag files and folders from your virtual PC to your PC and visa-versa. This is really useful for trying out software before you take the risk of cluttering up your PC.
Integrated mouse – makes it easy to move your mouse between the guest operating system and the host operating system.
Time synchronization – synchronize the time between your PC and virtual PC.
Folder sharing – easily share files and folders between your virtual PC and PC.

Virtual PC 2007

Once you have Virtual PC 2007 up and running you will be able to install any of these operating systems:

Windows 98: 64MB memory and 500MB disk space
Windows ME: 96MB memory and 2GB disk space
Windows 2000: 96MB memory and 2GB disk space
Windows XP Home/Pro: 128MB memory and 2GB disk space
Windows Vista Enterprise, Business, and Ultimate: 512MB memory and 15GB disk space

If you want to see more on how the Virtual PC 2007 works along with some of the features make sure to watch the demo. That should cover just about everything that you need, and then you can head on over to download the 32–bit version or the 64–bit version.

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Mar 12

CyberNotes: Best Firefox Extensions for Bookmarking

Posted in: CyberNotes, Features, Firefox Extensions, Freeware, search, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on September 12, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

Could you imagine having a browser without a bookmarking system? To me that would be like using a computer that doesn’t let you copy and paste…it’s almost impossible to fathom what that would be like! So I think it is safe to say that bookmarks are important for productivity, but the real question is, what can we do to make it better?

I crawled my way through all of the 218 bookmark-related Firefox extensions on the Mozilla add-ons site, and I quickly realized how poorly some of the extensions were categorized since many of them didn’t have much to do with bookmarking at all. I was able to find a pretty good amount of extensions though that I thought were pretty interesting.

–Synchronizing Bookmarks–

Circle Arrows One of the most common things people want to do with their bookmarks is synchronize them with some online service. That way they can be accessed whether they are at work, home, or on the go.

There are several different services that can be used to store your bookmarks, and here’s a listing of what I believe are the best synchronizing extensions:

GMarks (for Google Bookmarks) – This is my favorite Firefox extension for synchronizing bookmarks. It makes use of the Google Bookmarks system so that everything you bookmark is kept private, and it is packed with features. You can have your bookmarks in a toolbar or in the sidebar, and it’s capable of importing your existing Firefox bookmarks.
Smarky (for Simpy) – This is based off of the GMarks extension mentioned above, except this one works with the Simpy bookmarking system.
Del.icio.us (for Del.icio.us, duh) – This is a simple Firefox extension that’s used for managing your bookmarks on Del.icio.us. You can add a description, notes, and tags to each bookmark you save.
Foxmarks (for Foxmarks or custom) – I really like this extension because it integrates right into your existing Firefox bookmarks. You can hardly notice that the extension is synchronizing your bookmarks, but it is. Lifehacker also has a great tutorial on how to setup Foxmarks to work with your own FTP.
Clipmarks (for Clipmarks) – Clip certain sections of websites so that only the content you want is saved.

–Making Bookmarks More Productive–

Now on to more of the gems. Some of these extensions I had heard of, or even written about prior to this, but there are still several that I hadn’t seen. You may not need to use some of them now, but there are certain times when each would serve a useful purpose.

Flat Bookmark Editor – This adds several fields to the bottom of the Bookmarks Manager so that you can edit the contents of a bookmark without having to pull up the properties. This is extremely useful if you’re trying to edit a bunch of bookmarks simultaneously.
Speed Dial – The idea for this type of feature was originally from the Opera browser, but as expected, a version with slightly less features has also been turned into a Firefox extension. Using it, you can set some of your favorite sites to be displayed on a Speed Dial page.
Visual Bookmarks – Have a hard time finding a site or image in your bookmarks? This could be just the solution since you can view all of the sites as thumbnails. Unfortunately this doesn’t integrate into the Firefox bookmark system so you’ll have to bookmark sites separately with this extension, but you can highlight certain portions of the screen that you want captured for the thumbnail.
Bookmarks Duplicate Detector – When you reach a few hundred bookmarks, sometimes it is difficult to remember whether you’ve already bookmarked a site or not. Have no fear…Book Duplicate Detector will scour through your bookmarks looking for ones that point to the same address.
Smart Bookmarks Bar – Sometimes you may want to put a lot of bookmarks on your toolbar, but the problem is that there just isn’t enough room. This extension will collapse all of your bookmarks down to just their icon, and when you hover over them with your mouse it will reveal their names.
Bookmarks LInkChecker – You can check your bookmarks to see if the links have been broken. This should become part of your regularly scheduled maintenance.
Enhanced Bookmark Search – This is a much more powerful search mechanism for finding bookmarks. You can even save searches into dynamically updating folders…it kind of reminds me of how the dynamic playlists in iTunes work.
Dog Ears – This lets you bookmark your place on a page so that you can quickly jump to the important portions using the Shift+Spacebar hotkey.
AddThis – Using this extension you can quickly bookmark a site on any number of different services.
Bookmark Permissions – This lets you enable or disable certain options, such JavaScript, on a per bookmark basis. That way you can disable JavaScript system-wide, but enable it for the sites that you trust. Of course you’ll have to open the site using the bookmark in order for the settings to be applied.

–Overview–

I think I’ve covered almost all of the interesting bookmark-related extensions, but I would love to hear of any others you can come up with. Don’t forget to checkout our URL-related extensions as well, but even more importantly, make sure that your Firefox extensions don’t have memory leaks.

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Mar 09

Helpful Tip: Disable Drag Drop Images in Firefox

Posted in: Firefox 3, Freeware, Software, Tips and Tricks, Today's Chili

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

firefox drag drop.png

In Firefox 3 Mozilla wanted to make dragging and dropping items in the browser a little more intuitive, and so they decided to show a preview of the item your dragging underneath the mouse cursor. On Windows and Macs the image should be translucent like the tab preview shown in the screenshot above, but on Linux the preview image is not transparent.

I’ve been wanting to disable the preview image for quite some time because it’s more difficult when trying to drag and drop things. For example, I frequently bookmark sites by dragging the tab into the bookmark sidebar, and I always drop the tab onto the folder where I want the bookmark to reside. Sometimes the preview image gets in the way, kind of like it does in the screenshot above where it’s a little difficult to see the “drop indicator.”

How can you disable this feature? Miles left a comment on one of our Firefox tips pointing to a setting that will instantly disable the preview image. To do this you need to open the about:config and find the nglayout.enable_drag_images setting. Set the value to false by double-clicking on it, and the changes will be applied without needing to restart the browser. Refer to this article if you need help using about:config.

Once the setting has been changed to false anything that you try to drag and drop will merely show a box outline instead of the preview image, and this makes it a lot easier to see where exactly you’ll be dropping the item.

A million thanks to Miles for digging up this hidden gem!

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Mar 05

Grand Theft Auto 1 and 2 Available for Free Download

Posted in: Apple, Freeware, gaming, Microsoft, playstation, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili, xbox

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

GTA 2 If you’re looking for a great way to spend the rest of your Sunday afternoon, maybe you should do it playing some Grand Theft Auto (GTA). There is no doubt that GTA is best known for it’s car stealing madness as you rush around trying to avoid the cops and complete the jobs you’re hired to do…but that is what makes it so fun!

The most popular version of GTA is probably Vice City, which I happen to own myself for the Xbox, and it is quite addicting once you start playing it. There were two versions of GTA prior to that one and Rockstar, the creators of GTA, recently released Grand Theft Auto 2 as a free download for PC users.

You can currently download GTA 1, GTA 2 and another game called Wild Metal at no cost to play on your computer. They do want you to register before downloading the games, but they just redirect you to another site to finish the download process. Here are the those direct links for anyone who doesn’t want to register (yes, the URL is an IP address which I also thought was weird…but you can always register at the above address if you don’t trust these URL’s):

GTA 1 Download – 328MB
GTA 2 Download – 344MB

I tried both versions on Vista and I couldn’t even get GTA 1 to install, but GTA 2 worked flawlessly. If you’re using XP you shouldn’t have a problem with either of them though.

One thing that I really like about those games is that they aren’t graphics intensive so they work great even on slightly older PC’s! So if you’re looking to keep yourself occupied tonight this might be do just the trick, but watch out for those pesky police officers because they don’t like when you steal their cars.

Source: Kotaku

Thanks for the tip Mike!

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Mar 03

Use Yahoo! Mail or Gmail for MailTo Links in Firefox 3

Posted in: Email, Firefox 3, Freeware, Gmail, Software, Today's Chili, Yahoo

This article was written on May 21, 2008 by CyberNet.

gmail mailto firefox.png Earlier this week we showed you how you could take advantage of Firefox 3’s built-in support for web applications. To be more specific we demonstrated how you can preview iCal calendars using 30boxes.com, and thanks to Lifehacker it looks like you can do the same thing for MailTo links.

By default Firefox 3 includes support for Yahoo! Mail with the MailTo links, but using any other email service will require a little bit of work. So below we have instructions on registering either Yahoo! Mail or Gmail as the default handler for MailTo links.

Here’s a MailTo link that you can test the new system on once you get it all setup:

tech@cybernetnews.com

–Yahoo! Mail–

Mozilla made it easy for all of the Yahoo! Mail users out there by including it as on option out-of-the-box. Here’s what you have to do if you’re using Yahoo! Mail:

Open the Firefox preferences, switch to the Applications tab, and look for the “mailto” option in the list. Next to it you should see a drop-down menu, and when expanded there should be an option to Use Yahoo! Mail:

yahoo mail firefox 3.png

–Gmail–

Type about:config into the address bar, and change the gecko.handlerService.allowRegisterFromDifferentHost value to true by double-clicking on it. You don’t need to restart your browser after doing this.
Click this link to add Gmail as the MailTo handler. It’s just a snippet of JavaScript.
You should see a little bar pop down from the top of the window asking for permission to have Gmail handle your MailTo links. Click the Add Application button.
Go back to about:config and set the gecko.handlerService.allowRegisterFromDifferentHost back to false. If you don’t do this any website can attempt to register protocol handlers in Firefox 3, which could pose a security issue.

Note: If clicking on a MailTo link opens an external application (or another service) you’ll need to refer to the steps under the Yahoo! Mail section above for changing the default handler to Gmail.

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Feb 24

Wine 1.0 CrossOver 7.0 Released Today

Posted in: Freeware, Linux, Mac, Newly Released, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on June 18, 2008 by CyberNet.

wine birthday Mac; Linux
It took an astonishing 15 years to complete, but Wine 1.0 has finally been released! Wine, for those of you that don’t know, serves as a way to run some Windows applications in Linux without the need for an emulator. The team has done their best to recreate the Dynamic Link Libraries (DLL’s) that are used in Windows, and it all had to be done without an ounce of code from Microsoft.

The project has been very successful, and Wine 1.0 brings thousands of Windows-only applications and games into the Linux world. Take a look at the different rating systems they’ve come up with for the different applications, along with how many programs fall into each category:

Platinum (1300+ programs): Applications which install and run flawlessly on an out-of-the-box Wine installation (ex. Half-Life 2, Photoshop CS2)
Gold (1500+ programs): Applications that work flawlessly with some special configuration (ex. World of Warcraft, Command & Conquer 3)
Silver (1000+ programs): Applications with minor issues that do not affect typical usage (ex. Call of Duty 4, StarCraft Brood War)

Similarly CrossOver 7.0 for Mac and Linux was released today, and it now supports Microsoft Office 2007 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook) in addition to the Adobe CS2 line of products. CrossOver 7.0, unlike Wine, will run you at least $39.95, but might be well worth it if you really want to run Office 2007.

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Feb 20

Mozilla Comments on Apple’s “Update” Practices

Posted in: Apple, Freeware, Mozilla, Newly Released, Software, Today's Chili, Windows

This article was written on March 24, 2008 by CyberNet.

kick safari

Last week we wrote about how Apple was trying to push the Safari “update” on any computer with the Apple Software Update installed, regardless of whether Safari had ever been installed before on the machine. I don’t believe there was really anyone in our comments who thought that it was okay for Apple to do this, and now Mozilla has stepped forward with their thoughts on the topic.

Needless to say Mozilla isn’t too fond with how Apple is using the Software Update application to distribute Safari. Maybe they’re concerned with how this could affect their market share, but in the end it seems as though they are genuinely on the side of the consumer:

That’s a problem because of the dynamic I described above — by and large, all software makers are trying to get users to trust us on updates, and so the likely behavior here is for users to just click “Install 2 items,” which means that they’ve now installed a completely new piece of software, quite possibly completely unintentionally. Apple has made it incredibly easy — the default, even — for users to install ride along software that they didn’t ask for, and maybe didn’t want. This is wrong, and borders on malware distribution practices.
It’s wrong because it undermines the trust that we’re all trying to build with users. Because it means that an update isn’t just an update, but is maybe something more. Because it ultimately undermines the safety of users on the web by eroding that relationship. It’s a bad practice and should stop.

What I’m left wondering is how many people who install Safari for the first time this way will actually use it? Is Apple just looking for a number that they can boast as to how many computers have Safari installed, or will they actually be able to see a jump in market share as a result of their slightly deceitful practices? We’ll have to keep an eye on the browser stats next month and compare them to how they have performed in the past.

[parts of the image by flatrock]

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Feb 18

Post2Blog Turns to Freeware!

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

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

Click to Enlarge

This is a pretty exciting day because there is a new freeware application available that previously cost $39! The software is Post2Blog (Download Mirror) and it makes it easier for you to post to your blog using a WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) editor.

There is no doubt that this is the most extensive blog editor available, and here are just some of the reasons why I love it (I’ve put some of my favorite features in bold):

WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) editor with complete hot-keys support
Built-in “Live” spell checking
“Portable Mode” support
Images are uploaded automatically (supported uploading types: Flickr, file area of your blog, imageshack.us, picturelli.com, custom FTP server)
Post text and/or images from Firefox or Internet Explorer to your blog with 2 clicks only using plug-ins for Firefox (check example) and Internet Explorer
Compose new posts in MS Word and post them to your blog using Post2Blog toolbar for MS Word
Integration with RSS Bandit (rssbandit.org) and Sharp Reader (sharpreader.net) – you can post selected items from these RSS readers using Post2Blog plug-in
Post files, images, documents from Explorer or any other program using “Send To -> Post2Blog” command
Add Technorati, Del.icio.us, Buzzwords, 43 Things tags to your posts
Automatically send trackbacks, ping web-services to notify about updates in your blogs
Earn money using “Insert Amazon Link” feature
Use built-in smiles for use in your blog
XHTML standards compliance

One thing that I do want to point out is that the software was bumped from version 2 to version 3, but there aren’t any new features other than the software becoming freeware. I would say that the freeware switch constitutes its own version number though, after all, it surely beats our last “workaround” for using Post2Blog for free.

This good news comes just a few weeks after FastStone Capture did the complete opposite and took their program from freeware to shareware. Oh well, Post2Blog is definitely a nice addition to my freeware collection!

Post2Blog Homepage (Download Mirror)

Thanks for the tip Radu!

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Feb 18

Recommended Tags Plugin for WordPress 2.3

Posted in: Features, Freeware, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on September 25, 2007 by CyberNet.

Many of you might have noticed in our Daily Downloads today that WordPress 2.3 has been released. One of its most acclaimed features is the built-in tagging system, but to be honest it is a overly simple as it currently stands. It has no sort of near-duplicate detection when adding tags to your posts, which can quickly create a huge mess for anyone with a few dozen tags. In no time you could have tags such as “download” and “downloads” created all because you couldn’t remember which one you originally started with.

To solve that problem we were able to take the Click Tags plugin, and derive our own from it called Recommended Tags. It uses what I consider to be an intelligent system to recommend tags to you based upon the content of each article, and in the event that a specific tag is not recommended there is always a full list of all existing tags towards the bottom of the “Write a Post” page (as seen in the screenshot below). I setup options in the code so that you can easily enable or disable the displaying of both recommended tags and the entire list of tags.

How are the recommendations “intelligent?” For starters all HTML tags are stripped from the post so that linking to a Wikipedia article won’t necessarily recommend the “Wikipedia” tag that you’ve created (since URL’s are removed before matching up tags). Take a look at an additional two features (both enabled by default) that will help match tags:

Tags can be “exploded” so that the tag name is broken up into individual words. This will let a tag called “Windows Vista” be recommended even if you only mention “Vista” (note that it is without the “Windows”) in your article.
Common plural/past endings (in English) can be trimmed off of the end of tag names. That way a tag called “downloads” will still be recommended even if you only mention “download” in the article.

We will continue to add more features to make adding WordPress 2.3 tags even easier, so keep your eyes peeled for updates to Recommended Tags plugin!

Here’s a screenshot of the plugin in-action:

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Hasta La Gadget!

CyberNotes: Gmail Notifiers for Multiple Accounts

Microsoft Releases Virtual PC 2007 (Freeware)