Hasta La Gadget!

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

Foxmarks is the 13th most popular extension for the Firefox browser, and users who don’t mind test driving a Beta version can get a sneak peek at the upcoming Foxmarks 2.0! Initially you won’t be able to see a lot of differences because most of the work has been happening underneath the surface.

For starters Foxmarks has redesigned the way that they synchronize your bookmarks. Instead of synchronizing all of your bookmarks each time it will not only synchronize those bookmarks that have changed (newly added, renamed, moved, etc…). If you only have a handful of bookmarks you probably won’t notice much of a difference, but it should be a lot faster for those of you with hundreds (or even thousands) of bookmarks.

Foxmarks 2.0 has also implemented a new feature for synchronizing favicons, but from what I gather the favicons are still not shown on the My Foxmarks website. They are, however, synched across all computers that are running Foxmarks 2.0. This is especially great for all of you who use the Favicon Picker to customize the icons for your favorite websites.

There is some important information for those of you who are upgrading from Foxmarks 1.0:

You cannot easily mix Foxmarks 1.0.1 and Foxmarks 2.0; they exist in separate universes. If you do choose to run with Foxmarks 2.0, make sure you update all your existing installations to Foxmarks 2.0. There’s no risk of data loss, but changes you make with one version 1.0.1 won’t find their way to your Foxmarks 2.0 installations until you upgrade (and vice versa). Once you upgrade your first computer to Foxmarks 2.0, going to My Foxmarks will only show you Foxmarks 2.0 data — another reason to upgrade all your machines.

As of right now Foxmarks 2.0 is not compatible with pre-release versions of Firefox 3. The developer has said that he will begin working on a compatible version once Firefox 3 hits the Beta stage.

Get Foxmarks 2.0 Beta

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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

A new Firefox extension, called Glubble, is available that adds a parental control system to the Firefox browser. It’s nothing overly extravagant since it only enforces a whitelist of URL’s for the children, but it can give peace of mind to parents out there.

There is a default list of sites that ships with Glubble which are classified as kid-safe, and when setting up the accounts it asks whether the child is a boy or a girl. It uses that information to create a more customized homepage for the child based upon their gender. For example, a girl would have a link to Barbie on their site while a boy would not.

Children can request that certain sites be approved, and a parent can immediately approve the request if they are available to do so. If the parent is not available Firefox will prompt the parent to approve the site the next time they login.

Words don’t really do this justice, so I thought I would walk through a common scenario that might occur at a household. This demonstrates all of the various features that Glubble ships with (click any image to enlarge it):

1. After installing Glubble the parent will be prompted to create an account:
   
2. The parent then creates users, and they’ll be shown on a user management page. I named the users so that you can tell who is who, for example, the parent’s username stands for "I’m a Parent":
   
3. Firefox is locked until a child or parent logs in (this is what you’ll see when starting Firefox from now on):
   
4. A child logs on and is able to search Google, Yahoo, and visit some recommended sites using a customized Firefox skin. Note: When searching it only pulls up results for the approved sites.
   
5. A child can also navigate their sites using the drop-down menu from the top which shows thumbnail previews of the sites:
   
6. If a child tries to visit an unapproved site they will need to get the permission of a parent first:
   
7. If the parent wasn’t around to approve the site, they will be shown the request the next time they login to Firefox:
   
8. If the parent comes across a kid-friendly site while browsing around, they can instantly enable it for any of their kids:
   
9. Or they can manage the sites that are approved for a child:
   
10. And then when the child gets back online they will be notified that their site request had been approved:
    

As you can see this can be an extremely useful tool for parents who are trying to protect their kids from explicit content on the Internet. There is, however, a problem that arises for those people who have technological kids. It’s actually possible to remove (or temporarily move) the folder which contains the extension in the Firefox profile folder. That means the extension would immediately be deactivated and the user is given full access to the Internet, which can also be done by running Firefox in safe mode.

This doesn’t quite match up to the built-in parental controls that Vista has, which lets parents limit the amount of time that a child can use the computer, monitor their activity, and control which games they can play. In the reports the parents can even see the most recent websites that were visited, which applications a child ran, and what files they downloaded…none of which Glubble can do.

Of course Glubble doesn’t cost a thing, and knowledgeable parents not using Vista will hopefully see this as a way to protect their kids. When the final version of Glubble is released in October we’ll hopefully see some reporting features included, but they have definitely got the ball rolling in the right direction.

Download the Glubble Firefox Extension

Source: Spread Firefox

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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

Last week I started using Flock as my everyday browser and it may be tough to pull me away from it now. Some features, like the integrated News Reader, are amazing and do not compare to any other browser. The best part is that Flock is based on the Firefox code and even more importantly it identifies itself as Firefox. Any site that is compatible with Firefox should work perfectly in Flock.

There is now Flock 0.7.3 available and you can download it. One of the most notable features is the ability to export your News feeds. Other than that it is pretty much just a bunch of fixes that make this build more stable. Check out the release notes if you want to see the whole list of new stuff.

Also, I was reading through their forums and noticed that someone said their next Beta release will be based on Firefox 2.0! Hopefully that means Flock will inherit some of Firefox’s new features like inline spell check.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on May 30, 2007 by CyberNet.

The Windows Live Writer team just posted the Beta 2 which is now available for you to download. It has a handsome list of new features, but nothing I hadn’t really seen in a blog editor before:

• Inline spell checking
• Table editing
• Ability to add categories
• Page authoring for WordPress and TypePad
• Support for excerpts and extended entries
• Improved hyperlinking and image insertion
• Paste Special
• Automatic synchronization of local and online edits
• Integration with Windows Live Gallery
• Support for Blogger Labels
• New look and feel
• Available in 6 languages
• Improved accessibility and keyboard support

My first impression of the new Live Writer was…wow! It looks amazing, and if appearance counts for anything it blows the other blog editors out of the water. It is sharp, sophisticated, and most of all, usable.

Click to Enlarge

The inline spell checking and table manager are awesome features that will surely come in handy. Unfortunately it still doesn’t appear to support the XHTML standards, but I’m sure many of the Live Writer users don’t know what that is.

I played with it a little more, and two things I thought you might like to see is the appearance of the right-click menu for the spell checker, and what you can actually do with the tables. Here are two screenshots that will sum that up well:

When creating the table, it asks you for all of the basic information just as if you were creating it in a word processor:

As you can see there are a lot of great things available with the new Live Writer, and you should consider giving it a shot. Personally, I’m a huge fan of Post2Blog which coincidentally turned to freeware the other day. It is a great application that has a ton of features, but I would have to say that Live Writer looks better and is a little simpler to use.

So what’s it missing? Despite Live Writer supporting plug-ins, I still think there are some things that should be built-in. Some of these things might be available via a plug-in, but this is what I would like to see Live Writer shipped with:

• XHTML standards compliance
• Table options (a.k.a. the stuff from the Table Menu) should open in the sidebar like they do when you click on an image.
• Customize the order of the categories (I don’t know of any blogging software that does this though).
• Enable Auto-saving by default. I don’t know who wouldn’t like the assurance that their documents are constantly being saved?
• Align buttons! If I want to center some text, I shouldn’t be going to the Format -> Align menu. That takes way to long. There should be buttons to do this. Also, what about the shortcut keys for aligning things, such as Ctrl+E for centering?
• I’m not sure about this one, but maybe make the sidebar expand/contract when you hover over it? That way it saves space and is still extremely easy to get to.
• I would like to create snippets as well. That way some of the repetitive things aren’t so…well, repetitive. This is great for people who guest blog and always conclude each post with a short summary of who they are.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on December 14, 2005 by CyberNet.

Following in the footsteps of Microsoft, Yahoo has released its beta version of Messenger 7.5 which includes new inbound and outbound calling features. These new features include being able to make calls around the globe for only a few cents per minute. Between Microsoft releasing Windows Live Messenger Beta and Yahoo Messenger Beta there could be some stiff competition rolling out for Skype. Also, for $2.50 per month you can assign your computer a real telephone number. This way you would be able to hand out a telephone number to people and when they call, it will be your computer ringing. Despite the huge advancements that have been made in Voice-Over-Messenger services, they don’t seem to have the clarity that the low priced companies such as Vonage provide. These VoIP services have excellent call quality which, so far, only seems to be rivaled by Google Talk. Come on Google, it is time to roll out the big guns now!

Download Yahoo Messenger Beta 7.5

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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