Sep 23

Create Interface Mockups in Firefox

Posted in: Firefox Extensions, Freeware, Google, Newly Released, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on August 03, 2008 by CyberNet.

Imagine if you will that you’ve got an idea for a program/website that you’re working on, but you’re trying to play around with a bunch of different layouts to see which ones would look the best. What tool do you use to create your mockup? Photoshop? Some expensive program that costs hundreds of dollars? How about a free Firefox extension?

That’s exactly what the Pencil extension was designed for. It has many of the tools needed for fast prototyping of websites, applications, and much more. I for one was shocked at just how much stuff it included:

  • Built-in stencils for diagraming and prototyping
  • Multi-page document with background page
  • On-screen text editing with rich-text supports
  • PNG rasterizing
  • Undo/redo supports
  • Installing user-defined stencils
  • Standard drawing operations: aligning, z-ordering, scaling, rotating…
  • Cross-platforms
  • Adding external objects

Once you launch the Pencil extension after getting it installed the configuration screen will open in a new window. From there it feels like an entirely separate application from Firefox, but it’s really not:

pencil firefox-1.png
(Click to Enlarge)

I’m sure this type of extension won’t appeal to everyone, but something as simple as this can sure beat trying to tinker with heavy graphics applications for jobs that should normally be simple. And how can you beat the price? Free!

Pencil Firefox Extension [via Digital Inspiration]

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Sep 21

CyberNotes: Photo Seam Carving using Liquid Resize

Posted in: CyberNotes, Features, Freeware, Newly Released, Photos, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on September 20, 2007 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Tutorial Thursday

Seam carving (also known as content aware image resizing) has been the hit lately when it comes to photo editing. It all started with the presentation by Ariel Shamir who put together a nearly breathtaking demo. In it he showed how scaling images could be done without losing or distorting the important aspects of photos.

Just three weeks ago we got a glimpse of what an implemented version of such a technology could actually do, and as expected, applications and plugins are popping up all over that make use of the technology. This article will focus on one free application called Liquid Resize that has made huge progress over the last few weeks. Below we’ll highlight some of the features, and you can watch a video we put together on how to use the program.

–Liquid Resize (Free Windows/Linux Application)–

The primary way that you’ll want to use seam carving is with the free program called Liquid Resize. It has almost everything that the original demonstration included, and it produced decent results from the few photos I tried. It’s available for both Windows and Linux, and doesn’t require any installation to begin using it!

Liquid Resize Seam Carving

Here are some of the features it has:

  • Increase or decrease the size of the image using the seam carving algorithm.
  • Animate the process of scaling the images (as seen in the video demonstration below).
  • Mark areas of the photo that you want to be removed first, and other areas that you want to be removed last. This is actually pretty easy to do because the program offers a resizable brush to designate the respective areas (called masks).
    • You can temporarily store and recall masks, which is important because the masks are removed once you begin resizing the image.
    • You can also save and load masks which is meant for more long term storage.
  • Zooming capabilities are a nice touch if you’re working with a large photo.
  • A “Reset” option to restore the original image.

I would say that this works pretty well, and it’s actually not a bad way to quickly crop someone out of a photo (by marking the person as an area to be removed first). Sometimes you get unexpected results, but it’s normally only if you try to resize a photo more than 50% of the original size. And be careful when trying to use this on large images because the process can take quite awhile, and in cases like that I would disable the animation.

Here is a video that I put together to show the Liquid Resizer in action:

–Other Alternatives–

Liquid Resizer is the best seam carving app that I’ve come across, and it’s especially nice since it’s free! There are a few less-detailed alternatives available, and so I thought I would present those as well:

  • GIMP Liquid Rescale plugin – This just gives you input options for the desired width and height, and then makes the appropriate changes. Definitely not as extravagant as the standalone program I mentioned above.
  • Picutel Photoshop plugin – I didn’t actually try this one out because the free version only works with images up to a resolution of 640×480. Beyond that you’ll have to pay a whopping $95 for the plugin!
  • Web-based Flash version – This is a nice way to quickly try out the seam carving, but you’ll have to pick a photo that is already online. This is also extremely limited in what you can do.

–Overview–

There are still some things that I would like to see Liquid Resizer do, such as “blur” the seams that it adds/removes to the photos. That way the edges wouldn’t always look so jagged. Other than that I would say that this technique definitely has a good future in image resizing, and I can’t wait to see where it is taken.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Sep 07

FeedDemon 2.5 Released: Many Great Improvements!

Posted in: Newly Released, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on May 28, 2007 by CyberNet.

I was pretty excited this morning to see that FeedDemon 2.5 was finally released. I had been Beta testing it for a month or two, and the improvements it incorporated put it at the top in comparison to other RSS feed readers.

Before I get started on what’s new, I want to point out that this application costs $29.95 to purchase. I bought a license a few months ago, and it has been worth every penny for me. I read hundreds of feeds everyday and skim through thousands of articles…without using FeedDemon that would be quite a chore. If you’re just a casual feed reader then I recommend using Google Reader (online feed reader) or RSS Bandit (free desktop application).

FeedDemon makes it really easy to flip through a large number of feeds in a short period of time, which is the reason I love it so much. I have used other desktop applications made for reading feeds, but they just don’t offer the power that FeedDemon does.

One of my favorite features in FeedDemon, which has been improved in the new release, is the Popular Topics. In a single click you can get a list of the popular topics across all your feeds:

FeedDemon 2.5

This is done by looking for sites that are all linking to the same URL, and obviously the more people that are linking to a single URL the more popular that story probably is. Of course this doesn’t replace going through the feeds “manually,” but it does make it easy to see if anything big happened while you were gone. This is always the first thing I check when I get up in the morning. :)

Here is a list of what’s new in FeedDemon 2.5:

  • Synchronized news bins with shared RSS feeds – share a FeedDemon “news bin” (similar to a link blog) as an RSS feed so that others may subscribe to it. Simply copy a post from any feed into a shared news bin, and everyone subscribed to that news bin’s feed will get a copy of it. You can also drag-and-drop FeedDemon browser tabs – or even hyperlinks from an external browser – into a news bin to share those links.
  • Vastly improved offline support – including the ability to prefetch links and images in all unread items for offline reading.
  • Completely rewritten “Popular Topics” – view the most popular topics in all the feeds you’re subscribed to, alongside the topics that are popular with all NewsGator subscribers.
  • Embedded video support – video objects embedded in feed items can now be securely viewed inside FeedDemon.
  • “Who’s linking here?” – with a single click, find out who in the blogosphere is linking to a specific post in your subscriptions.
  • and much more…

One of the other features that I really like is being able to easily customize the feeds that appear in the desktop alert (a popup window similar to what you receive when someone instant messages you). In just a few clicks you can choose which feeds appear in the alert, instead of having to go through the properties of each feed individually:

FeedDemon Desktop Alert

Many of you probably know that I don’t purchase many applications, and I think there are only a small handful that I ever buy. Normally there are plenty of freeware options available to do what I’m looking for, but nothing matches up to what FeedDemon has to offer. Give it a shot and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Download the FeedDemon trial or purchase it for $29.95

Note: No, I wasn’t paid to write this review nor was I given the software for free. I really did spend the $30 out of my own pocket for FeedDemon after trying it out.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Sep 02

The Coolest WindowBlinds Theme: Novum OS

Posted in: Newly Released, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on August 23, 2006 by CyberNet.

Okay, I use WindowBlinds on one of my computers and up until now I have used the Windows Vista theme. Novum OS is what I am using now and it has to be the coolest theme that I have ever seen for a computer!

The image above doesn’t even do it justice and you need to check out this site that has a ton of high-resolution screenshots of the theme. You can tell that they are based on the Windows Vista theme but in my opinion it is way cooler! You even get 5 different start buttons that you can choose from and all of the rounded corners are leave me in awe. I think I am in love with the whole color scheme of the task bar.

It looks like Microsoft should have just bought the rights to WindowBlinds and this theme to use in Vista. That would have probably saved them some time…and I like it better. :o

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Aug 17

Resize the Vista Sidebar

Posted in: Features, Freeware, Newly Released, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili, Windows Vista

This article was written on August 17, 2007 by CyberNet.

Vista Sidebar ResizerLately I’ve been becoming more acquainted with the Windows Vista Sidebar. I’ve never been a big fan of these sidebars in the past, but after browsing through the gallery I’ve found some great gadgets that bring a lot of information to my desktop.

One thing that Microsoft did, however, is put gadgets on multiple "pages" once a user has filled up the sidebar. You would then use the left and right arrows at the top of the sidebar to shuffle through the multiple pages of gadgets.

Back in June Ashley reviewed a free application called the Windows Sidebar Styler. It’s a nifty little application that gives users the ability to style the sidebar with different skins. Yesterday a new version was launched, and one of the big new features is a sidebar resizer. Instead of gadgets overflowing onto multiple pages, they will then show up in multiple columns.

Resizing the sidebar is about as natural as it gets. You just grab the edge and drag it to the width that you want it. What I’ve noticed though is that enabling this completely disables the "page" feature for the sidebar. This could become a problem if you have, for example, 4 pages worth of gadgets, but your sidebar is only wide enough to display two of those pages. The rest of the gadgets that aren’t displayed will never be visible to you.

Some of you might be wondering why you would want a wide sidebar in Vista since it would just take up more room. The sidebar doesn’t actually have to be on top of all the other windows, and instead can just appear as part of the desktop. Sure you could drag the gadgets off from the sidebar onto the desktop, but the sidebar makes it nice and easy for you to keep them organized.

Note: You’ll find the option to enable a resizable sidebar by pressing the "More" button:

Vista Resiable Sidebar

Download the New Windows Sidebar Styler

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Aug 17

360Desktop is a New Kind of Virtual Desktop

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

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

Virtual desktops are one of those things that have been around for ages, and they have been an integral part of the Linux operating system for a long time. It wasn’t until Apple released Mac OS X Leopard last year that a virtual desktop system, which Apple calls Spaces, shipped with an operating system other than a Linux distribution.

Just because Windows doesn’t include a virtual desktop manager doesn’t mean that you can’t get them. In fact there are several third-party applications that will get the job done, and most of them are free. There’s one free program for Windows called 360Desktop that puts a new spin on virtual desktops.

What it essentially does is extend your desktop so that it is ultra-wide, and it will feel like you have three or four different monitors attached to each other. You can pan across your desktop moving icons and windows around as you so wish. In the end you’ll have a 360 degree desktop that can wrap around from one end to another:

360desktop-4.jpg
(Click to Enlarge)

Here are some of the things that I like about the program:

  • The navigation window shown in the upper-right corner of the screenshot makes it easy to move around the desktop. Normally the desktop preview portion is minimized so that it doesn’t get in your way while you’re working, but it can be activated by clicking the red 360Desktop icon on the scrollbar.
  • It shows little program icons on the desktop preview indicating where you’re running applications are located.
  • Clicking an application on the Taskbar will take you to where it’s located on the 360Desktop.

With all of that being said there are still some things that need to be worked on. For example, there are only a handful of panoramic backgrounds currently available, but it will support custom photos soon. 360Desktop is still in the early stages, and I suspect that it will get better over time.

My question to you is whether a program like this is something you’d prefer to use over a real virtual desktop application. Do you like having your virtual desktops separated into different blocks, or is it nicer when it’s one seamless desktop like 360Desktop offers?

Get 360Desktop [via Lifehacker]

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Aug 14

Cover Flow for Firefox Bookmarks

Posted in: Firefox Extensions, Freeware, Newly Released, Software, Today's Chili

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

firefox coverflow bookmarks
(Click to Enlarge)

Apple has really been successful with their Cover Flow representation of album covers, and with their latest Leopard operating system they even added a Cover Flow view for browsing files. This has to leave you wondering why you’re not able to browse your bookmarks in a similar fashion?

Well, thanks to this new Firefox extension (install it here) you can. As you visit websites that you’ve saved as bookmarks the extension will create a small JPG snapshot (about 30KB in size) that will be used when you open up your Bookmark Manager. In the Bookmark Manager you’ll see a Cover Flow-like interface for flipping through your bookmarks.

If you click on the View menu you can switch between the Details view (the one that looks like Cover Flow) or a regular Thumbnails view. The Thumbnails view tiles all of the websites on one page which might be a little more user friendly if you’re going through hundreds of bookmarks.

There is also a Create Previews option located under the File menu if you want to have the extension go through all of your bookmarks and grab previews for them. It’s all done in the background so you can go about doing your business in Firefox while it works, but it will likely take awhile if you have hundreds of bookmarks.

I estimate that each preview image is around 30KB in size, and about 30 previews will take up about 1MB of space. All of the JPG files are stored in your Firefox profile in a folder called bookmarkpreviews that will be deleted if you uninstall the extension.

Bookmark Previews Firefox Extension
Kudos to “Trip” for the tip!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Aug 06

Adobe Digital Editions – Lightweight PDF Reader

Posted in: Newly Released, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on October 30, 2006 by CyberNet.

Adobe Digital Editions

So Adobe has finally gotten around to releasing a PDF Reader that doesn’t take ages to open. They call it Adobe Digital Editions and it is a Flash-based application without many options, which can be seen in the screenshot.

I went to their site and decided to install it thinking that it was going to download some kind of setup file to my computer. Well, it isn’t exactly your typical installation. It is all done in a little Flash window and then all of a sudden it says that the installation is complete. There is no “where would you like to install this” or any of those questions that you would typically expect.

Then I was in awe that it installed a shortcut in my Start Menu and there was actually an uninstallation option in the Add/Remove Programs. That kinda worries me because it only took a few clicks to perform the installation…and think about all of the Flash banners out there that people click on.

After the “installation” I opened the program to see what it was like. It was actually more difficult to open a PDF then I would have ever imagined! There is no option to “Open a File,” instead you have to add a PDF to the library and then you can open it. Between that and the huge lack of features I decided that it won’t be pulling me away from Foxit Reader. I thought Adobe was listening to what the people wanted…but they must have ear muffs on or something.

News Source: Digg

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Aug 05

Monitor Your Computer Usage with Slife

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

This article was written on June 25, 2008 by CyberNet.

slife.png
(Click to Enlarge)

arrow Mac Mac only (Windows version coming soon) arrow
Have you ever wondered how much time you spend on your computer performing certain tasks, or how often you run some of your applications? If so then you might want to checkout the newly released Slife 2.0. This is the first release of Slife that is completely free for users, and once you have it setup you’ll be able to see just how productive you actually are. It’s like having your own personal stalker.

What’s pretty cool with this is that you can create goals to help ensure you’re not wasting excessive amounts of time doing things that you shouldn’t be. For example, you can limit yourself to under 30-minutes of web browsing each day, and Slife will notify you once that limit has been reached. You won’t be locked out of a program or anything, but it will make sure you’re aware when you’ve gone past your goal.

They decided to start offering the application for free because they think they will be more successful by building subscription-based services around the program in the future. I’m guessing they are referring to things like tracking the work habits of employees.

There isn’t a Windows version available right now, but the team says that it’s on the way. If you go here you can grab the Mac version, and you can enter in your email address to be notified when the Windows version is released.

Slife Homepage [via Lifehacker]

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Jul 31

WebRunner Becomes Prism – Roll Your Own WebApp

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

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

Mozilla Prism
Click to Enlarge

Do you remember the WebRunner browser that we wrote about last week? It was created by Mozilla as a way for websites, such as Google Reader, to provide a standalone application for their users. That way people don’t have to keep their main browser open all of the time if all they want to do is read news on Google Reader, or browse Facebook.

At the time shortcuts (called a WebApp) had to be downloaded for each of the sites that you wanted to use with WebRunner, or you could create your own which was slightly complicated. Now WebRunner has been moved to a Mozilla Labs project, and it was renamed to Prism.

There are two really great things that were introduced with the release of Prism: a create your own WebApp GUI, and inline spell checking. In the screenshot above you can see what the GUI looks like when you run Prism for the first time. It asks you for details on creating your own WebApp, and takes just seconds to do.

Tip: Enabling the location bar does not mean you’ll be able to type an address into it. The location bar is a read-only bar that accepts no input, so it doesn’t serve any purpose other than telling you what site you are currently on.

And spell checking! Oh how I love the inline spell checking. It is arguably Firefox’s best feature, and now you can use it in Prism. This is great news for anyone who wants to use Prism for writing emails. Not to mention Prism’s extremely low memory footprint, which means it will be friendly on your system’s resources.

I believe that Prism really has a great future, and it will be interesting to see if offline support ever finds its way into the project. That would really make it even more superb!

Prism Homepage [via Mark Finkle]
Kudos to RangingTrip for the tip!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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