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May 28

2008 CyberNet Awards: Most Used Web Services

This article was written on December 30, 2008 by CyberNet.

cybernet awards 2008-1.png For this installment of the 2008 CyberNet Awards we are taking a look at some of my own Most Used Web Services from throughout the year. I don’t use that many web services on a regular basis, and so this was an easy list for me to assemble.

Without further ado here are my own most used web services…

–5th Place: Hulu–

There are really only a few shows on TV that I like to watch, and fortunately for me, most of them on are on Hulu. That means I can watch my favorite television shows anywhere that I have a computer and Internet connection, and the number of ads are minimal.

–4th Place: Google Reader–

I’m what some would call a news addict, and Google Reader helps me stay on top of it all. The interface is simple and yet effective, which is a must for me. Plus the iPhone-optimized site makes reading news on-the-go a piece of cake.

–3rd Place: Flickr–

Now that I’ve accumulated over 8,000 photos, I’m always looking for the best way to share them with family and friends. Flickr is the perfect tool for me to do that. They have different sets of permissions for friends and family that I can assign to each individual photo. Not to mention the fact that for a mere $25 a year I can upload an unlimited number of photos and have an unlimited amount of bandwidth. It’s tough to find a deal like that anywhere else.

–2nd Place: Gmail–

Gmail has been in my life for several years now, and as each year passes it becomes harder and harder for me to pull away from it. The addition of Gmail Labs and Themes have made the online interface a real treat to use, that’s for sure. They’ve been rolling out so many great features with Gmail Labs that I feel as though Google will get around to adding almost all of the things the users want to see, and this rapid pace of innovation is extremely appealing.

–1st Place: Buxfer–

I just started using Buxfer a few months ago, and there’s probably a good chance that you’ve never even heard of it. It’s an online financial management application that is similar in many ways to the popular Mint.com. I prefer Buxfer over a desktop application because it synchronizes with all of my checking and savings accounts, where Quicken only synchronizes with one of my 3 accounts.

There are two reasons that I prefer Buxfer over Mint.com. First off, I can manually add transactions instead of relying solely on synchronization. Secondly, Buxfer offers an option to have it not store any of the passwords on their server. That’s great for anyone afraid that their information will be compromised in the event the site gets hacked. Of course you have to manually enter in the credentials each time you want to sync, but it’s still a lot easier than going to each of your financial sites individually.

–-And Your Winners–-

Now it is time for you to chime in! Let us know in the comments who earned your “Most Used Web Services” award.

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May 24

Could it be? Sirius and XM Ready to Ink a Deal

Posted in: General, Today's Chili

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

Xmvsirius According to The New York Post, Sirius and XM, both Satellite Radio providers have been working all weekend to work out a merger agreement that could possibly be confirmed today. The Post says that talks are still in process, and that at any point the deal could fall through. If you’re a subscriber of one of these services, this could be a pretty sweet deal.

This is really a win-win situation. Users get more channels, while Sirius and XM save themselves some money. In fact, analysts say that they would be able to save $7 billion a year. That’s certainly not pocket change. With no competition in the world of Satellite radio should they merge, they might run into some problems with the FCC approving the deal. And, according to analyst Robert Peck, the approval could potentially take up to 15 months.

In the mean time while we’re waiting on the deal, Sirius subscribers can sit and listen to Howard Stern or Martha Stewart while XM subscribers can tune in to the start of the baseball season or Oprah.

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May 22

Apple, Google, Napster Sued by Intertainer

Posted in: General, Today's Chili

This article was written on January 03, 2007 by CyberNet.

Apple, Google, and Napster have yet another lawsuit headed their way. This time, it’s from a now defunct video-on-demand company called Intertainer. At one point, Intertainer was backed by investors including Intel, Microsoft, Sony, NBC, and Comcast. So, what is this lawsuit about? Intertainer is claiming that the three above mentioned companies are infringing on their 2005 patent (possible patent application here). Their patent covers commercial distribution of audio and video over the Internet.

The founder of Intertainer, Jonathan T. Taplin, claims that the company was the “leader of the idea of entertainment on demand over Internet platforms before Google was even thought up.â€ Pictured above is a direct mail promotion which at one point, was mailed out by Intertainer. Back in 1996 when Intertainer was first started, Mr. Taplin worked with Hollywood executives to distribute movies on demand. This was done via cable and phone lines and could be viewed on TV or computers.

While their patent covers “digital media content,” it does so very generally. Also important to note is that their patent wasn’t filed until 2005! The New York Times has reason to believe that Intertainer might have a difficult time with this patent suit because it was filed so recently. They stopped their operations in 2002, and now operate only as a patent holding company.

There are other companies that use technology similar to what Apple, Google, and Napster do. Examples would be Yahoo and AOL, yet they aren’t mentioned in the lawsuit because Intertainer was likely going after the three most influential companies, or they could have possibly reached agreements with the others.

This reminds me too much of Microsoft’s attempt to patent feed readers. Some of these companies are going off the deep end with their patent lawsuits!

Source: Search Engine Land [via New York Times]

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May 21

CyberNotes: Discover The World Via Blogs With TravelPod

Posted in: CyberNotes, General, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on October 14, 2006 by CyberNet.

Weekend Warrior

I don’t know about you, but I am always looking for some good blogs to add to my feed or my list of bookmarks as the not to miss, “must reads.” In fact, sometimes I find that blogs have more accurate or up-to-date information than a newspaper or other online news sources. So in keeping with the weekend traveling theme, I went out to find some of the best travel blogs out there. In the process, I came across TravelPod which is a rather large collection of travel blogs including blogs for just about every country or island possible! It was released in 1997 and is a great way to gather some tips, tricks, and photos of your travel destinations.

One of the first things you will notice when you go to TravelPod after clicking on destinations is the map of the Earth that is clickable. By clicking on a country, state, island, etc., you’re able to view the blogs that have been submitted for that particular location. People post everything from past experiences, maps, photos, thoughts, and some even post live updates while they are on their trip.

After viewing the large map of the Earth, I decided to pick a location to see just how TravelPod works. I’ve always wanted to go to Australia, so I clicked on Australia. From there, I was taken to the results page with all of my information. They use tags for things such as popular cities or tourist attractions so that if you’re only interested in a particular place, you can narrow your search results.

The results that it pulls up shows thumbnails of travel blog photos that have an Australia tag to them. It will also pull up a search box so that you can search for deals on airfare, hotels, and cars. Additionally, they include videos and MP3 Podcasts that might be beneficial in planning a trip. Then they give you the list of travel blogs available for the area.For Australia, the list was lengthy so I had a good choice in what I wanted to read. I narrowed my search to Canberra, the nations capital and got equally impressive results. The blogs were all unique and generally gave me a good idea of what to expect, or at least some interesting or funny traveling stories. The smaller countries or less traveled destinations typically have a smaller search results.

There are other features that you can expect from TravelPod such as an active forums that’s updated regularly. There are topics such as travel tips, “how to”, and general travel information. They also provide a tab specifically for finding tours that you might want to take while you’re visiting a certain destinations, as well as a search for hostels, and information on travel insurance (hey, ya never know what can happen while you’re away from home!).

If you’re looking for some great advice, they have a list of top travelers that’s updated daily. This is calculated based upon the number of visitors to their blog, number of forum posts, number of photos, and number of entries to TravelPod.

I always like to know exactly where I’m going and what I’ll be doing while I’m traveling. I like to call it being prepared. TravelPod is a great resource for finding pictures and blogs that pertain to the specific location that you’re traveling to. They receive visitors from those who have travel blogs just as much as they do from people who are looking for some good advice on a destination.

You don’t need a membership to browse the website or the blogs, although a membership is free anyways. They offer unlimited uploads of photos, and will notify up to 500 friends and family members of updates to your blog. They’ve changed a lot since 1997 when it all began! If you’d like to check it out, visit www.travelpod.com Even if you’re not interested in actually visiting some of these locations, you can certainly just look!

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May 21

How To Get A Free 128MB SD Or Compact Flash Card

Posted in: General, Today's Chili

This article was written on March 26, 2006 by CyberNet.

Get A Free 128MB Compact Flash Or SD Card From Shutterfly

I’ll keep this short and sweet. Shutterfly is giving away a 128MB memory card for taking a quick survey. This is the IMPORTANT part though, make sure when you are taking the survey that you select Windows XP for your operating system and Internet Explorer for your web browser. If you do not do this then they will say that the memory card will not work for you! Other details don’t seem to matter. Once you complete the survey they will give you the following response:

Thank you for your participation. Your Photo Loader memory card should arrive in less than 4 weeks. To enjoy your 25 free 4×6 prints, please use the Photo Loader card by June 30, 2006.

Deal Source: SlickDeals

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May 17

CyberNotes: $125,000 Xbox 360 Chopper

Posted in: CyberNotes, gaming, General, Today's Chili, xbox

This article was written on August 14, 2006 by CyberNet.

Million Dollar Monday

If you’re an Xbox enthusiast and a chopper fan, you’d probably have a hard time keeping your hands off of a custom built Xbox 360 Chopper worth $125,000. Should I mention that you could have had a chance at winning the lime-green bike? Gamestop Corp. together with Game Informer, a monthly magazine actually had a ”Sign Up and Ride” sweepstakes, and this was the grand prize.Unfortunately the contest is over so there’s no chance of getting it for yourself now. The majority of us wouldn’t even think twice about spending that kind of money on a chopper– a small one for that matter. Regardless, it’s still a pretty cool toy (which by the way now has a home with a proud owner in Illinois) worth mentioning.

Xbox Chopper

So, about the bike; it was built by Martin Bros Bikes who are known for their custom designs. As you can tell, the whole design of the bike was influenced by Microsoft’s Xbox 360. Some have joked wondering if the bike would overheat much like the actual 360 console. Apparently mistakes like that aren’t quickly forgotten. Microsoft is trying to be sure the Xbox 360 isn’t forgotten with the PlayStation 3 release not too far away.

If you’re bummed that you missed out on the chance to win the chopper, I scrounged up another contest for you. If you’ve got a Pappa John’ s Pizza close by, you can get a free Large original crust one-topping pizza with the purchase of an Extra-Large Specialty Pizza at the regular menu price . Okay, so it’s not as great as the $125,000 chopper but you get a free pizza If you’re interested in other promotions that Xbox has going on, they have a whole webpage dedicated specifically for that. And of course we have our own contest going on. Don’t forget to tell us about your craziest voicemail and you could win a 2GB iPod Nano! There’s only one week left to enter.

News Source: BornRich

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May 10

Big Deal: MacBook Pro for $1,650!

Posted in: General, Today's Chili

This article was written on July 18, 2006 by CyberNet.

Here’s a deal of the day for you. Check out Amazon.com for an awesome deal on the MacBook pro. They typically sell it for $200 less than Apple. On top of it they’re adding a $150 mail in rebate which gives you a total of $350 in savings! The MacBook MA463LL/A is a notebook PC (1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo, 523 MB Ram, 80 GB Hard Drive, and SuperDrive) with a 15.4″ screen. Shipping is free, however the deal is only good for today, Tuesday!

Deal Source:CNET

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May 07

We’re Working On A New Site Design

Posted in: General, Today's Chili

This article was written on November 17, 2006 by CyberNet.

All of this week we have been working on a new site design and we’re just wondering if there is anything specific that you would like to see? As of right now the site will have a new look and include some nice new features but it won’t be so drastically different that you’re not going to recognize the site. We think it is important to keep the site recognizable but it was undoubtedly ready for a facelift.

When we made the site a little wider a few weeks ago there was some important feedback that we received and have done our best to implement everything that people wanted. As of right now (assuming we keep on schedule ) the new site will be launched next week on Thursday at 1:00AM Central Time. Before we complete the work and testing on the new design we just wanted to make sure that there wasn’t something that you really wanted to see. Shoot us your suggestions in the comments below or by using the contact form.

Some of the feedback that we receive now and then is to make the site load faster. Our new site will be heavily optimized and as of right now it loads almost twice as fast. That is pretty good considering we haven’t even gone through our CSS code with the intent of optimizing it yet.

This will also serve as a reminder that when you come to the site next Thursday you will definitely have to empty your cache because everything will look insanely crazy. That is because our CSS has changed quite a bit so things are going to be thrown all over the screen until your browser downloads our new CSS file.

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May 04

We Have Made Some Big Updates To Our Site

Posted in: General, Today's Chili

This article was written on June 19, 2006 by CyberNet.

We Have Made Some Big Updates To Our Site

CyberNet Technology News has been growing quite a bit lately and we thought it was time for some changes. One of the biggest changes that we are excited about is the beginning of our CyberNotes tomorrow morning. We are going to try and post them early so that people can read them before they head off to work (they should normally be posted around 6:00AM Central Time). CyberNotes kicks off tomorrow with Million Dollar Monday and we are sure that you will find the article interesting.

Another big change is our “Sponsors” section on the sidebar to the right. This gives businesses an affordable way to advertise themselves or their products. We have had some businesses contact us asking about advertising so we thought it would be time to put a sponsorship program together.

We also decided to remove all of our Google Adsense advertisements from the site for the time being. They will remain off of the site as long as we are able to get support from our sponsors. This is great because it gives a cleaner and better interface for the reader.

We hope you enjoy the changes. Make sure to check back tomorrow morning for our NEW CyberNotes!

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May 01

Qtrax Offers Free Music Downloads… Hopefully!

Posted in: General, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on January 28, 2008 by CyberNet.

qtrax We all know people like free music and this was proven a few days ago when Last.fm launched their free on-demand streaming music service (with limits, of course). They saw a HUGE spike in listeners, page views, and unique visitors shortly after it launched. Knowing how much people love free music, it is then easy to understand why there has been so much hype surrounding a new start-up called Qtrax. Qtrax uses the words “free” and “music” quite a bit on their site to describe “the worlds first, 100% legal and free Peer-2-Peer music application.” They were set to launch last night at midnight and early reports were praising the service to no end, especially since they said they had all 4 major record labels on board and more than 25 million songs to choose from. All of the praises started to come to an end once people found out the real details…

As it turns out, the worlds first 100% legal and free Peer-2-Peer music application with all 4 majors on board actually doesn’t have all four on board. In fact, at this point, there are 0 major labels participating. Webware says both Warner and Universal are in fact negotiating with Qtrax but that nothing was ironed out. Then BMG chimed in and said that they hadn’t set anything in-stone while EMI said there was no final agreement. At this point they haven’t launched the download yet and it could be another 24 hours before it is available. Another downside aside from the obvious is that when it does launch, songs will not be playable on the iPod or Mac Computers (yet).

Compensating artists would work as follows: Because users are required to use a special application, when you download and play the music, Qtrax can keep track. Money earned from the ads that you’d see in the application are then divvied out to the artists which you listen to for their work.

If Qtrax is actually able to get the four major record labels on board, this could be huge. But until they do, Qtrax is just another start-up with a lot of funding (30 million thus far).

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Hasta La Gadget!