This article was written on July 16, 2006 by CyberNet.
Freespire is a free version of the popular Linux distribution called Linspire. The goal of Freespire is to gain a large Linux audience by making it easy to switch from other Operating Systems. Here are a few things that Freespire Beta 1 uses to make the transition easy:
Freedom of choice, with a mix of FOSS (free open source software) and 3rd-part, legally licensed, proprietary software.
Multimedia support of MP3, Windows Media, QuickTime, Real, Java, Flash, etc. You should be able to use all of these files, right out of the box, without doing anything: http://linspire.com/filetypes
Plug-N-Play hardware support from nVidia, ATI, Intel, and many others, right out of the box, without installing anything.
It is quite impressive that they have the Plug-N-Play support for the popular hardware manufacturers. Another included feature that has made Linspire great is the CNR (Click-N-Run) Warehouse which makes it easy for users to select software from a virtual warehouse and get it installed for you. They have a variety of freeware and shareware available for users to choose from there.
Alright, so if you want to download Beta 1 you can head over and download it. More information on this release can also be found here. This is the first release and it is about 2-weeks ahead of schedule. While this is considered to be Beta 1 they are trying to get some improvements and bug fixes in before it is officially released.
We love a nice pre-release leak as much as the next tech blog, but come on, aren’t you starting to feel sorry for these Windows Phone 7 guys? By the time Steve Ballmer takes the New York stage on Monday, we‘ll be more familiar with the stuff he’ll be showing off than the big Microsoft boss himself. Today, LG’s Optimus 7 handset has suffered the only indignity left, after being videoed, pictured, and handled many a time — it’s had its official press shots unleashed unto the world. It’d be hard for them to tell us anything we don’t already know, but at least they’re nice and neat. More at the source link.
Looks like we’ll soon have another heavyweight to throw into the renewed cameraphone wars, as Panasonic has put up a teaser site for its first Lumix-branded phone. Lumix is of course Panasonic’s camera label, which counts among its luminary membership the likes of the GF1 and the newly refreshed LX5. The new phone shooter promises to beat both in terms of pure resolution with its 13.2 megapixel CMOS sensor, which is accompanied by a 3.3-inch LCD atop a 146-gram body. Much like Nokia’s N8 and its protruding sensor compartment, this Lumix handset will have to make room for its expanded imaging equipment, which is why it’ll offer a comparatively chubby 17.7mm thickness, to go along with a 116mm height and 52mm width. We’ll know more next week when CEATEC 2010 gets rolling over in Tokyo.
[Thanks, Anton]
P.S. — It’s also noteworthy that Panasonic’s press release indicates a folding mechanism for this handset, which, given current trends in Japan, makes it most likely to be a clamshell device. It’s also got some DLNA voodoo inside and is coming out by the end of this fiscal year (April 2011).
This article was written on January 18, 2007 by CyberNet.
With all the hype focused on Firefox 3 and Thunderbird 2, we tend to forget about some of Mozilla’s other great applications. One of them is their calendar application that they offer in two different flavors: Sunbird is the standalone program that will only manage your calendar while Lightning is the Thunderbird add-on that provides both a calendar and email client in one convenient application. We have had the joys of tinkering with version 0.3 of both Sunbird and Lightning for over three months and a new release, version 0.5, is expected sometime this month.
The Calendar project continues to progress quite nicely and there are some new features underway. The first feature that the Calendar Weblog has talked about is the new Advanced Event Dialog which is pictured above. The goal of the dialog was to make it feel like an integrated part of Thunderbird while making Outlook users feel at home when using it.
Besides for that there are several “smaller” features that are being targeted for Calendar 0.5 and those can be found here. One thing that I did really want to point out was that they are working on improving the different Calendar views. To help out they have paid artistic designers millions and millions to draw some mockup images of what the calendar should look like…and here’s the result. Okay, so it’s ASCII art that was put together by the developers, but you still get the idea. The thing that seems to be the biggest problem right now with Lighting (the Thunderbird add-on) is getting the left sidebar to not appear so cluttered. They sum it up pretty well when they refer to the current solution and say ”The problem with that solution is that 70% of the visual information is placed on 30% of the screen.“
The usability and integration of the Calendar is not quite there yet, but they are definitely taking steps in the right direction. We should see this next release sometime this month, but they seem pretty ambitious with what they want to get done for having less than two-weeks left. So don’t be surprised if the next release gets pushed back a little.
Amazon’s German branch has been a tiny bit fast on the trigger. Windows Phone 7 isn’t due to launch at least until October 11, but here we are, dazing dreamily at the first listing of a device bearing the hot new OS: LG’s Optimus 7. Or is it the E900? You can tell Amazon’s offering is way early since the e-tailer has opted to list both names — it now seems like the E900 was the codename and the Optimus branding will be what you see in stores — just to make sure snoopers like us don’t miss out on it. So what’s there to see? Not much actually, official product images are predictably missing and all we’re told is that the handset will cost €499, include a GPS chip, and be capable of filling five million pixels with photonic data and then displaying the results on a 3.5-inch touchscreen. Such teases, these online retailers are.
We knew Windows Phone 7 leaks would increase as we got closer to launch, but this is just ridiculous. LG’s E900, or what we knew as the E900 until now, has been subjected to an exhaustingly detailed hands-on overview, courtesy of some intrepid Czech investigators. Alas, the video is voiced over in that language too, so good luck with your Eastern European phonetics. But hey, at least the visuals are universal. Oh, and before we forget, the MobilMania guys are calling this the LG Optimus 7, presumably that’ll be the retail name for this handset. Follow the break to see it.
This article was written on May 01, 2008 by CyberNet.
Yahoo Messenger is the number one instant messaging service, and they are really starting to show off the talent their development team has. It’s been over a year now since we first got a glimpse of what their Vista-specific messenger looked like. And disappointingly a lot of time has passed since it was last updated causing debate as to whether the project was still alive.
About two months ago they assured us that a new version was on the way, and they weren’t lying! The Yahoo Messenger blog announced today that the app has entered the Beta stage, and is ready to be downloaded. I have to admit that they have added some really nice features to this version, and it’s definitely not lacking in the eye candy department. Here’s an overview of what’s new:
Additional features and enhancements: – New and Optimized for Vista – WPF Interface – Skin Chooser – Customizable Contact List – Vector-based – Tabbed Conversations – Windows Sidebar Gadget
So the big news would have to be the voice support and SMS messaging. The video below shows the cool visualizations that users see when they are engaged in a voice conversation, and it’s pretty slick if I may say so myself. The SMS messaging is something that I really like. When you send a message to one of your friends using SMS it will automatically direct the replies back to the messenger, which eliminates the need to grab your cellphone. Very smart!
Kudos to the Yahoo Messenger team on a job well done, and I’m thinking the only thing this lacks now is video support.
This article was written on September 03, 2007 by CyberNet.
CyberNet Exclusive Look
We’ve decided to break away from our normal CyberNotes today to take an exclusive look at the features in Opera 9.5 (codename Kestrel). Opera has done a remarkable job of keeping the specs and features of Opera 9.5 under wraps. The Opera Desktop Team wrote a post last week that detailed some of the under-the-hood work that has been going on in 9.5, but as expected, they steered clear of mentioning the most notable features. After all, they want to save the excitement for the big Alpha release tomorrow!
Luckily I was able to test drive Opera 9.5 a little bit early, and it’s only fair that I share my findings with you (and we have Opera’s permission of course). I’ve put together a 5-minute video review that details four of what I believe to be Kestrel’s most notable features. So you can start out by watching the video, or you can read through the article as I cover each feature there as well.
–Video Introduction–
I thought it would be best if I start with a video of Opera 9.5’s new features. All of these are covered in detail below, but this will give you a really good idea of what you can expect tomorrow when Opera 9.5 Alpha is released.
–Rendering Engine–
It’s been over a year since Opera’s rendering engine has seen any significant improvements, and this time around there are some significant improvements. Kestrel is now running the same rendering engine that powers the Wii Internet Channel browser as well as Opera Mini 4 Beta, and there are some astonishing differences…probably due to the thousands of bugs they’ve fixed.
I’ve been told to expect to see the rendering speed get better as further builds get released, but I have a hard time believing that they can get better than what I’ve seen. I decided to do a rather unofficial speed test to see how fast the different browsers rank in terms of loading our site (with an empty cache). I did three tests for each browser and averaged out the time it took for each to completely load our site. Here are the results with the slowest browsers first:
Internet Explorer 7: 18 seconds
Firefox 2: 15 seconds
Opera 9.23: 12 seconds
Firefox 3 Nightly: 11 seconds
Opera 9.5 Alpha: 8 seconds
Aside from speed improvements, the site compatibility has also gotten much better. They’ve fixed problems with various Google sites, some issues with the default WordPress template, and corrected a few things with some of the JavaScript libraries. Opera 9.5 can now handle many more sites…with ease!
Here are some of the other updates in Kestrel related to the rendering engine:
A lot more CSS3 support, including complete Selectors
Support for JavaScript 1.5 Getters and Setters
AJAX compatibility has been improved
New JavaScript engine that is faster and more efficient
Improved HTML table layout algorithm
–Open With… (in the video)–
Despite all of the hurdles Opera has overcome with their new rendering engine, there are still some sites that probably won’t work as they should. Opera isn’t going to deny that it happens, and they are actually going to do what they can to help the situation. You can now right-click on any site and choose to open it in another browser that is installed on your computer!
I’ve also been told that the “open with” command will work with some files as well, but complete support hasn’t been added yet. I would like to see this feature extended to things like images so that I can right-click on an image and have it open in Paint.NET without needing to save it first.
–Restore Windows (in the video)–
Opera has a little trash can on the Tab Bar that is normally used to restore tabs you’ve recently closed (which can also be done with Ctrl+Z). Kestrel has introduced a new feature that will let you restore entire windows that you have closed, which includes all of the tabs contained within that window. I don’t open multiple windows very often, but I know this feature will come in handy.
–Sync Bookmarks (in the video)–
This is one of those things that I had said Opera needs to work on the most. By this point, most Firefox users have grown accustomed to keeping their bookmarks synchronized with an online service. Now Opera users will have the same pleasure! All you need is a free My Opera account, and you’ll be able to privately synchronize your bookmarks, Speed Dial sites, and Personal Bar with their server. You’ll then be able to access that data whether you’re at work, home, or anywhere!
To setup synchronization just select the “Synchronize with My Opera” option from the File Menu.
–Full History Search (in the video)–
The search capabilities in Opera 9.23 vs. Opera 9.5 are like night and day. They have now introduced full history search that looks back over all of the pages you’ve visited. I’m not talking about just scanning the URL and title of the page either…it looks at all the text contained within each site!
There are two ways that you can take advantage of this feature, and the most common one will be straight from the address bar. As you can see in the screenshot above, I was typing in “thumb” into the address bar, and the resulting page that was returned is our homepage. That’s because I had recently visited CyberNet where “Thumbnails” was one of the words used, but it wasn’t in the title or the URL, it was just in the body of the article.
If you’re looking for a more detailed way to search your entire history, just type opera:historysearch into the address bar. The result will be a Google-like search page where you can type the keyword(s) that you are looking for. It will then return the results that matched just like in this screenshot:
–What You Don’t See–
It’s very obvious that there has been a lot of under-the-hood work in Opera 9.5, and you’ll be able to see that as soon as you start using it. There has particularly been a lot of fixing up for the built-in Mail Client. Now it has a new indexing and storage backend that doesn’t use as much memory and runs faster. IMAP also works much better, and the browser isn’t supposed to freeze anymore when checking for new mail or feeds.
Of course Opera still starts almost instantaneously, which is one of its best qualities. And memory usage has (somehow) gotten better. I’ve never seen Opera 9.2 climb over the 250MB marker, and that was when I would have 50 to 100 tabs open at the same time (hey, I go through a lot of news in a days time). Now it seems to run at about 80% of the memory usage that it used to, and for most people it will hover between 25MB and 70MB.
–And There’s More!–
I’ve covered most of the big stuff above, but that’s not everything! Here’s a list of some other things that have been improved in Opera 9.5:
The Status Bar is enabled by default…yay!
The “Save your password” dialog box does not stop the page from loading behind it. That way you can verify that the username and password you entered works before actually saving it. What a great feature!
Content blocking is better
A “drag to scroll” feature has been added that will let you scroll by “grabbing” the page, much like in a PDF reader. You can enable it by typing opera:config#UserPrefs|ScrollIsPan into the address bar.
It supposedly looks better on a Mac, and conforms to the Apple Human Interface Guidelines. Unfortunately I don’t have a Mac to try that out on.
–Making it Better–
There are some things that I believe Opera can do to make the final product even better, but one of the most important is inline spell checking. This is often the first complaint I hear from existing Firefox users who try Opera, and I think it is an extremely useful feature.
–Overview–
There’s no doubt in my mind that Opera 9.5 is going to be a truly amazing browser once it is released, and it will likely raise the bar for other browsers. However, the build being released tomorrow is an Alpha, and it will have issues at first. There might be sites that don’t work properly with it, and if you decide to try this out, make sure to install it in a separate location from your stable Opera installation.
For more details on some of the backend work done to Kestrel, read this article posted by the Opera Desktop Team.
This article was written on November 29, 2007 by CyberNet.
Tutorial Thursday
Have you ever wondered how you can get more information on your laptop’s battery? That’s a question that many people wonder, especially when they start experiencing shortened battery life. There is a quick and free way for you to get all of this info and more!
Battery Status (or BattStat) is a small program that only takes a second to install. After the installation is done you’ll see a new icon in your System Tray, and double-clicking on that icon will open the door for mounds of information about your battery. You’ll even be able to find out the capacity of your battery compared to when it shipped out of the factory!
One of the most prominent features that Battery Status has is an adaptive battery life estimate. It will watch how you use your computer to more accurately estimate how much time you really have left on your computer. Check it all out…
–The Main Window–
The main Battery Status window provides a colorful chart with many of your system’s specs: runtime (battery life left), charge, power, CPU speed, CPU load, CPU temperature, and hard drive temperature:
Aside from the pretty graphs, the main window provides a lot of critical functionality:
In Vista you can switch power plans and XP/2000 you can change power schemes.
You can set a keyboard shortcut (hotkey) that will turn off your monitor. This is really awesome, and can definitely save some power if you’re going to be away from your computer for a little while.
A batch file can be created, and run each time the power status changes (a.k.a. switching from AC power to battery).
–Battery Toolbar–
Sometimes it is nice to have a condensed, yet more detailed view of how much battery power you have left on your computer. That’s why Battery Status provides a toolbar, which can be set to always be on top of other windows to serve as your floating information bank. Here’s what you’ll get with the toolbar:
–Battery Condition & Details–
One of the most informative areas of Battery Status is the detailed battery information it provides, which is shown by pressing the Batteries button on the main window. Towards the bottom of the screen it displays your battery’s capacity, which is the maximum amount that you’ll be able to charge it. Next to that value it also displays what the original maximum was, and it can therefore compute the “wear” on your battery. As seen below my battery has 8% wear, which means in the 6-months that I’ve owned my laptop, I’ve lost 8% of my battery’s capacity.
–Summary–
This is one of those programs that I believe everyone should tryout on their battery-powered computers. I found the battery estimates to be extremely accurate, and it was also nice being able to see my processor’s temperature as well as the wear on my battery. Remember, Battery Status is free and only takes a few seconds to install, so there really isn’t anything to lose.
Aha! The phone you heard about here first has made its second document-based appearance, this time crossing the Atlantic and showing up on a T-Mobile inventory sheet. We can apparently look forward to accessorizing our HD7s with a leather sleeve, a “charge shell,” a pair of different screen protectors, and two flexible protective covers made by Speck. Most of these parts are expected to arrive on November 1, and since accessories aren’t much good without something to put them on, we can probably expect that to mean the HD7 will be dropping some time before November. It’s expected on October 18 in the UK, which dovetails neatly with the idea of it being a headline Windows Phone 7 device from HTC — that’s about the time Microsoft promised WP7’s European launch.
As to that “Dell Claire” you see near the top, we’re hearing it’s the T-Mo version of the Dell Streak.
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.
With all the hype focused on Firefox 3 and Thunderbird 2, we tend to forget about some of Mozilla’s other great applications. One of them is their calendar application that they offer in two different flavors: 
The thing that seems to be the biggest problem right now with Lighting (the Thunderbird add-on) is getting the left sidebar to not appear so cluttered. They sum it up pretty well when they refer to the current solution and say ”The problem with that solution is that 70% of the visual information is placed on 30% of the screen.“
It’s very obvious that there has been a lot of under-the-hood work in Opera 9.5, and you’ll be able to see that as soon as you start using it. There has particularly been a lot of fixing up for the built-in Mail Client. Now it has a new indexing and storage backend that doesn’t use as much memory and runs faster. IMAP also works much better, and the browser isn’t supposed to freeze anymore when checking for new mail or feeds.
