This article was written on January 22, 2007 by CyberNet.
SeaMonkey is Mozilla’s browser that is more of an all-in-one type of solution with a built-in email client. I think this overview from Mozilla sums up SeaMonkey quite well for those:
The SeaMonkey project is a community effort to deliver production-quality releases of code derived from the application formerly known as “Mozilla Application Suite”. Whereas the main focus of the Mozilla Foundation is on Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird, our group of dedicated volunteers works to ensure that you can have “everything but the kitchen sink” — and have it stable enough for corporate use.
SeaMonkey 1.1 was released just the other day, and I have to admit that it features some nice enhancements. It is mostly stuff that can already be found in Firefox 2 since that is the basis for the browser. Here are some of the highlights:
Inline spell checking
About:config warning page
Drag and drop URL’s between existing tabs
Tab preview
Improved phishing protection in the email client
The tab preview functionality is pretty cool, but Firefox users can get an extension that does that. I have always found that feature to be useful when you have a bunch of tabs open and can’t see the name on it, but I’m not a very big fan of installing a lot of extensions to help keep Firefox slimmed down a little. It would be cool to see implemented in Firefox but there are a lot of other things I would rather see first.
I think SeaMonkey might be a good solution for some people looking for a packaged deal, but I still find it funny that the theme used with SeaMonkey is the old-school Netscape style.
This article was written on February 24, 2008 by CyberNet.
Ever since I released the Vista Flip3D mouse shortcut I’ve received a few emails from people who still prefer the Alt+Tab application switching (especially XP users who don’t have Flip3D). I have since modified my Flip3D AutoHotkey script, and spun it into a different variation that works great with the Alt+Tab key combination.
What this standalone (no-install needed) application does is execute the Ctrl+Alt+Tab key combination when you press and hold the left mouse button, and then press the right mouse button. The Alt+Tab application switcher will appear on the screen until you click on one of the windows that you want to switch to:
This should work in any version of Windows that supports the Alt+Tab key combination, and it can easily be set to start with Windows by placing it in your Startup folder located in the Start Menu. You’ll know this is running when you see the Vista-like orb in the System Tray, and you can temporarily disable the functinoality by right-clicking on the icon. Enjoy!
Here’s the one line of code needed for anyone looking to add this functionality to their own AutoHotkey script:
UPDATE: Thanks to the commenters I found out that this script doesn’t work in XP since there is no Ctrl+Alt+Tab command. I’ve created a version that does work with XP, and it can be downloaded here. To use the XP version press and hold the left mouse button while you continue to press the right mouse button to switch between the windows. When you release the mouse buttons you will immediately be switched to the selected window. This version will also work in Vista if you would rather have this behavior over the “click to select” method mentioned above.
This article was written on October 23, 2009 by CyberNet.
I’ve been working on a new version of CyberSearch for a little while now, and I’ve been trying to come up with ways to add all of the most requested features. It wasn’t until about August 2009 that I started to get inspired to work on the extension again, which is when we all of a sudden saw a huge surge in downloads that has remained constant ever since. In the last 3 months we went from getting about 300 downloads a day and 10,000 active users to an astounding 3,000-7,000 downloads a day and almost 90,000 active users. I believe the rapid increase has been coming from the fact that we’re now a Mozilla “recommended” add-on, and as some users have pointed out to me our add-on sometimes shows up in the add-on management window within Firefox. So a big thanks to Mozilla for giving me the motivation to push out a new version, because without them the CyberSearch growth graph probably wouldn’t look like this:
CyberSearch 2.0 is almost a complete rewrite of the previous version, and I did that for performance concerns. Since I wanted to add more features I knew I had to squeeze every last ounce of juice out before I could move on, otherwise I could have ended up with something sluggish enough that people wouldn’t even want to use it. To put it in perspective… CyberSearch 2.0 actually does about half the number of computations that CyberSearch 1.0 did for each search that is performed.
As far as new features go we’ve got quite a few! The first thing is Bing support. You can now create keywords that use either Bing or Google, which is pretty cool if you think about it. That means you can make one keyword that searches Bing, and another that searches Google. If you don’t like the results that one search engine shows just try using the other… and all you have to do is change the keyword. The real reason I wanted to add Bing support, however, is because they have some API functionality that Google doesn’t offer. Thanks to Bing you can actually create keywords that will do conversions/calculations using their Instant Answer technology, or lookup the spelling of a word. You can do this all from the comfort of your address bar.
Next up: search descriptions. This is undoubtedly the most requested feature. You wanted some way to view the descriptions of all the search results just as if you were at the search engine page. I struggled with this for awhile because I didn’t want to try and cram the descriptions into the Address Bar menu which is already cramped, and could require a lot of scrolling to see all the results. That’s when I came up with the idea to use the area behind the menu for this! That way I have a large amount of space to work with, and am able to display way more details than I originally anticipated. For example, if you’re using a keyword with the Google Local service just press the arrows on your keyboard to highlight one of the results. You should see the background behind the menu dim down, and location details will appear… including a thumbnail of a map for where that place is located (as seen in the screenshot above)! All of the different types of searches provide you with customized details (video searches show the duration, book searches provide the ISBN number, blog searches show the publication date, etc…), and screenshots of them all can be found on the CyberSearch homepage.
Those are the two main highlights of the extension, but that doesn’t mean that’s all that changed. You’ll also find little things throughout CyberSearch 2.0 that should make your life a little easier. Things like a “snapback” button in the address for pulling up the last search phrase you used, or the ability to import/export your configuration and keywords so that setting up multiple machines with CyberSearch is a breeze! These were all your ideas, and hopefully they are exactly what you wanted.
When I describe my extension to people they often ask if it’s similar to Google Chrome’s “omnibar,” which is the name for their browser’s address bar. It eliminates the need for a search box just like CyberSearch does, but it isn’t nearly as powerful. Just watch this 3-minute video I put together and tell me if Chrome can do this:
The next thing I want to try and work on is localization so that CyberSearch supports other languages/countries, but it will probably be a little while before I can get to adding any big features like this again. If you find any bugs please report them so that I can try to get them fixed right away. Thanks again for all of your support and feedback!
This article was written on July 08, 2008 by CyberNet.
I can’t even count the number of times I’ve been asked whether there is some way that users can synchronize select bookmarks with their work computer. It’s often because they like having access to some of their bookmarks from both home and work, while some they want left exclusively for one of the locations.
Foxmarks is once again coming to the rescue! A new version of the Firefox extension was just uploaded yesterday, and it includes the ability to create custom profiles. That way you can have some bookmarks show up on your home computer, some on your work machine, and so on. From what I can tell you can create as many profiles as you would like.
To get started you’ll want to go to Tools -> Manage Sync Profiles on your my.foxmarks.com page. Add the profiles you want to use, and select which bookmarks each profile should have access to:
All that you have to do after that is tell the Foxmarks extension which profile it should use. To do this open up the Foxmarks settings in Firefox, and navigate to the Profiles tab. From here you can select which profile the computer should be synchronizing with.
Pretty cool, huh? This feature is sure to make a lot of people happy because it’s now possible to have a central location for managing all of your bookmarks that are spread across multiple computers. Talk about convenience!
This article was written on November 30, 2006 by CyberNet.
It was exactly three weeks ago when Microsoft released a Virtual PC image that had a pre-activated version of Windows XP on it. The reason they posted it was because a lot of people were complaining that they had no way to run Internet Explorer 6 and 7 on the same machine. Microsoft’s solution to the problem doesn’t involve creating a standalone version of Internet Explorer, and instead they think it is more feasible to offer a free Virtual PC image of Windows XP SP2 that has IE 6 installed on it.
It was promptly removed after it had been posted but it is back…and it looks like with some limitations:
A VPC hard disk image containing a pre-activated Windows XP SP2, IE6 and the IE7 Readiness Toolkit
This VPC image will expire on 04/01/2007.
I assume that expiration date was added and that is why Microsoft took down the image initially. According to the Internet Explorer Blog similar Virtual PC images may also be made available:
While we’ve released a VPC image today with Windows XP SP2, we’re also investigating creating other VPC images, for example IE5, IE5.5, IE6 and IE6 SP1, as well as versions of IE on different language operating systems.
I don’t understand why they can’t just create some kind of sandbox environment to run this in because enough people are requesting a solution. If they just keep creating Virtual PC images it will quickly become frustrating because they expire and for all of the different versions of Internet Explorer a user would need to use several different images…therefore taking up a huge amount of space when all they want is a way to test a site in a browser. Or what would be even cooler is if Microsoft made a way for users to remotely connect to different versions of XP that each has a different version of Internet Explorer. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about installing anything!
This article was written on July 10, 2008 by CyberNet.
The next 24 hours is going to be pure chaos for Apple fans, and the madness started early this morning when Apple released iTunes 7.7. That was then followed by the App Store launch, then a “leaked” iPhone 2.0 firmware, and more. It’s madness I tell you.
I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of Apple news on the gadget sites already, and so we wanted to throw all of the news into one convenient post. Here’s a roundup of the events from this morning:
–Download the iPhone 2.0 Firmware-–
MacRumors somehow grabbed a direct download link for the new iPhone 2.0 firmware on Apple’s servers so that you don’t have to wait until tomorrow to make use of the new App Store. The first thing you’ll need to do is grab the download, and then perform a little trickery:
In order to install the firmware, you will have to do it manually by pressing the Option key when pressing the “Check for Update” button in iTunes. Then select the .ipsw file manually. If for some reason your download is a “.zip” file, rename it to “.ipsw” before proceeding.
Be careful though… this update apparently erases all of the data on your iPhone. Unfortunately this does not work on the iPod Touch.
–iTunes 7.7–
Apple has released iTunes 7.7 today which is a requirement for anyone planning on picking up an iPhone 3G tomorrow. This version also includes support for the App Store, but we’ll get into that a little bit more in a minute.
One thing that jkOnTheRun has already noticed is that there’s now an option to sync your contacts with Google from within the iTunes settings. Apple also added remote control functionality so that you can use your iPod Touch or iPhone to control your iTunes. This will, however, require that you install a free app Apple provides called Remote.
–App Store–
The new iTunes also includes support for the long awaited App Store where developers can share and sell applications that they’ve made for the iPod Touch and iPhone. There are over 500 apps available right now broken up into over a dozen categories, and about 25% of them are free downloads. Of those that do cost money over 90% are under $9.99, which is actually a reasonable price. The most expensive is one called ForeFlight that provides weather and data for pilots. The cost? It’s $69.99.
What’s nice is that Apple has made it easy to browse through the App Store and have it show only those programs that are free. I’ve already skimmed through all of the free offerings, and currently have about 15 that are ready to be installed on my iPhone. These include eBay Mobile, Facebook (not that I’ll really use it), NetNewsWire, Pandora Radio, SportsTap (for sports scores), Twitterrific, WeatherBug, and the Yellow Pages. You can see all of the ones I’ve downloaded in this screenshot:
Note: To get theApplicationssection in my Library I had to enable it in the preferences. Then to browse through the available apps just click theGet More Applicationslink shown in the bottom-right corner of the screenshot. Or you can just click here to open iTunes and be taken directly to the top free apps.
The application that I’m the most excited about would have to be NetNewsWire because I felt that Newsgator’s mobile interface wasn’t as slick as what Google Reader offered for the iPhone. This free feed reader will synchronize all of your feeds across all of your computers (both Windows and Mac) which is very nice. I haven’t been able to try it out yet, but judging by the screenshot it should be just what the doctor ordered.
Any iTunes user can start downloading the programs that are currently available in the App Store, but you obviously won’t be able to load them onto your device until you get the new firmware 2.0 upgrade.
–App Store on the iPhone–
Apple hasn’t officially released the new 2.0 firmware yet, but Gizmodo has been posting videos of how the App Store works on the iPhone. I have to say that it’s pretty slick how you uninstall an application the same way that you remove a web bookmark that you’ve added to your home screen (pictured to the right).
Overall Gizmodo seems to be really impressed with how smooth the whole process is. Apple might have really knocked one out of the park with the new App Store.
–MobileMe–
Apple is also preparing for their full scale launch of MobileMe, which is the rebranding process of .Mac. As TUAW noticed there is already an update for both the Mac operating system and Apple TV that switches over the branding to MobileMe.
–AT&T Gets iPhone 3G Shipments–
This is a video of an AT&T store receiving and stocking the new iPhone 3G’s for tomorrow’s big release. There’s really nothing that interesting with the video other than the fact that the white 16GB iPhone 3G’s come in a white box.
This article was written on June 18, 2008 by CyberNet.
In the last week we’ve seen two major browsers, Firefox (review) and Opera, release huge milestones for their desktop software. Just five days after the release of Opera 9.5 they are reporting that there have been an astounding 4.7 million downloads of the browser, thereby averaging almost a million downloads per day. That’s pretty good considering they have 20 million users, which means about a quarter of them have already made the upgrade.
Mozilla, who was going after a Guinness World Record, came barreling through with everything they had. Early in the morning they were having troubles keeping up with the greedy geeks like yourself that just had to be the “first” to get their hands on the browser. Mozilla’s pipes were definitely clogged as they were trying to serve up 2 Gigabits of HTTP traffic per second, plus another 13 Gigabits of downloads per second. While they could have been a little better prepared, that’s like trying to fit a bus through a tunnel the size of a straw. As things began leveling out they were able to get the traffic under control, and averaged 150 downloads per second (9,000 per minute). Not too shabby.
In the end those 9,000 downloads every minute worked out to a total of 8,271,687 downloads of Firefox 3.0 in the first day. That’s over 3 million more downloads than Mozilla was hoping to get! Here’s a breakdown of the top 10 countries according to Spread Firefox:
Note: The download counter still seems to be increasing despite the Firefox Download Day being over. These stats are taken as of June 18th at 1:19PM CST (3 minutes after Download Day officially finished).
United States: 2,582,070 Downloads
Germany: 666,627 Downloads
Japan: 403,417 Downloads
Spain: 298,204 Downloads
United Kingdom: 295,557 Downloads
France: 290,692 Downloads
Iran: 258,774 Downloads
Italy: 244,319 Downloads
Canada: 223,618 Downloads
Lithuania: 213,871 Downloads
Net Applications has also reported on the market share usage of Firefox 3 over the last 24-hours, and it looks as though a good portion of Firefox users are adopting the new browser. Here’s a chart of the market share starting on June 17th at 10AM (EDT), and ending on June 18th at 11AM (EDT):
Market Share for Firefox 3 in the First Day
In May 2008 Firefox had an 18.41% market share overall, and according to the hourly reports Firefox 3.0 alone peaked at 4.56% of the total market share. If those stats are anything to go by about 25% of Firefox users are already running the latest version of the browser.
Congrats to both Mozilla and Opera on successfully distributing their browsers to millions and millions of users! If you participated in the Firefox Download Day be sure to grab your commemorative form.
This article was written on July 13, 2006 by CyberNet.
It has almost been 2 years exactly since DVArchive was last updated. Version 3.2 brings some bug fixes, improved stability, and most importantly it is compatible with Java V1.4.2 AND ABOVE. DVArchive 3.1 always required that you were running Java V1.4.2 on your computer which quickly became a hassle.
If you haven’t heard of DVArchive before then you probably don’t own a ReplayTV. DVArchive is a piece of software that you install on your computer and lets you manage almost everything on your ReplayTV. I use it all the time for scheduling shows, and the greatest thing is that you can remotely access DVArchive from the Web so you can schedule a show no matter where you are. If you are a ReplayTV user then this is one piece of software that you need.
Unfortunately ReplayTV is moving away from the set-top boxes and installing their DVR software right onto computers. I like the idea of having a computer do the work but it is also nice having a dedicated box that will do everything. The most beneficial thing about using a computer would be the ability to easily upgrade certain components like the hard drive capacity. It will be interesting to see how customers react in September when the new service launches.
This article was written on October 10, 2006 by CyberNet.
OpenOffice.org 2.0.4 was just put on the FTP server and can now be downloaded. They have not updated the download page to reflect the new version so the release notes are currently not available. Here is a list of what was expected to be done for this release
LaTeX export
Enhanced support for OpenOffice.org Extensions
extended Dialog Editor to support binding of UNO Objects
Library export in Basic IDE
Dependencies for extensions
Netbeans Integration enhancements
System Integration
Slackware
Use MacOSX installer for X11 builds
Automated Update Notification
Support of new locales
Fijian (fj_FJ)
Tigrigana (ti_ER)
Namibian (af_NA, en_NA)
Amharic Ethiopia (am_ET)
…
Database Enhancements
Reports from a native query
One person in the OpenOffice.org forums commented saying that the performance of 2.0.4 was better than 2.0.3 so it is probably worth doing the 90MB+ download.
This release comes a little over 3-months after version 2.03 was released. The typical schedule for new releases of OpenOffice.org is actually 3-months so this one is right on target. Of course they probably won’t officially announce this release until the end of the week since it will be the 6-year anniversary of the OpenOffice.org website going live (yes, it lands on Friday the 13th). That is when they opened themselves up to the world to enjoy a free Office productivity suite.
Here are the download links for the new OpenOffice.org 2.0.4:
The thought of OpenOffice.org 3.0 still floats around in my mind and surfaces every now and again for air. I am just curious what they will be doing to make it an even better productivity suite. Will they still stick with the toolbars or will they switch up the design a little to give it a fresh new look. I have read in a few different places that a tabbed interface is in the works and should get released before OpenOffice.org 3.0! It is still a little disappointing that version 3 will not be released for quite awhile (probably at least a year). Here is a list of the known release dates and what features the future versions should have:
OpenOffice.org 2.1 (December 2006)
SoC: SQLite driver
Extension Manager
Versioning of Extensions
OpenOffice.org 2.2 (March 2007)
Unknown
OpenOffice.org 2.3 (June 2007)
Chart2
OpenOffice.org 2.x/3.0 (Unknown)
Basic API & UNO support for bibliographic enhancements
This article was written on November 12, 2006 by CyberNet.
An anonymous tipster sent in a direct link to the Zune software so that anyone can download and use it…even if you don’t have a Zune! I’m not sure where they found it or how long it has been available but I didn’t see a link on the Zune.net site.
The setup file is only a small portion of what you have to download and once you get that running it will download the rest of the installation files. Here is what the initial setup screen looks like:
It isn’t anything really special but I did notice after it completed the download for the installation files that it also downloaded the firmware for the Zune. A little while later it finished doing everything (no advanced installation options available) and I was able to start playing around, but no until I restarted my computer.
Honestly, I can’t tell that much of a difference between this and Windows Media Player (WMP), which is exactly what I expected. The library and options all appear to come from WMP which makes me wonder why they didn’t just make the Zune work with WMP 11 in the first place?
Here is a screenshot of the interface for those of you who aren’t able to get it installed or just don’t want to install it:
It also appears that some Best Buy’s have started to sell the Zune a little early…I wonder what Microsoft thinks about that!
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
It was exactly three weeks ago when 
Apple hasn’t officially released the new 2.0 firmware yet, but 
