Ubuntu 6.10 Beta Released

This article was written on September 29, 2006 by CyberNet.

Ubuntu 6.10

The Ubuntu team is now ready to showcase the next upcoming version of their popular Linux operating system: Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft. It is currently in the Beta stage but it appears that they are progressing nicely and doing a great job of adding new features. If you are skeptical about installing a Beta release then you should hold off because the final version should be available within a month.

Here are some of the things that are new:

  • New theme and bootup splash screen
  • Tomboy – used for note-taking (pictured above)
  • F-spot – photo manager
  • Firefox 2
  • OpenOffice 2.0.4 RC2
  • GAIM 2.0 Beta 3

If you are currently running Ubuntu 6.06 then you can quickly upgrade to 6.10 if you choose to.

I haven’t tried running this version but Ubuntu hasn’t been very friendly with my laptop in the past. Luckily the wireless does work on it but that doesn’t makeup for the fact that Ubuntu can turn on my laptop’s fans. Sure it is always quiet but if you have this thing sitting on your lap then you’ll quickly notice how hot a laptop can get if it doesn’t have a fan. :)

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Windows Live Messenger 8.0.0683 Leaked

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

Windows Live Messenger 8.0.0683 Leaked

That’s right! The new build of Windows Live Messenger has been leaked to the web. It has the improved user interface that everyone couldn’t wait for as well as several new features. It also has a new icon package that is bundled with it for the installation and some visual customizations (like the option to add shadows or animations). You’ll also find calling services and the Rhapsody Music Service in this build. Go on…what are you waiting for?

Download Windows Live Messenger 8.0.0683

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Mozilla Thunderbird 2 Pre-Beta 1 Available

This article was written on September 15, 2006 by CyberNet.

Thunderbird 2 Beta 1 Mozilla has released Thunderbird 2 Pre-Beta 1 onto their FTP. I have been using the latest nightly build since before Alpha 1 was released but I have only noticed one significant change and that is with the Options screen (pictured below). I am sure a lot has been done but it is probably more “under-the-hood.”

Here are the download links for Thunderbird 2 Pre-Beta 1 which are currently only available in English:

I hunted around to look for a release date on Thunderbird 2 Beta 1 but the most specific thing that I could find was “mid-September.” Since the Pre-Beta 1 was just released today I would treat that as a Release Candidate, which will normally float around for a few days before being marked as a release.

Here is what the Options screen now looks like:

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Flock 2.0 Based on Firefox 3 – Beta Coming Soon

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

Mozilla is hard at work getting ready for the launch of Firefox 3, and another Release Candidate is scheduled to be available tomorrow. They are still planning for a June launch of the next major milestone, and there is a lot of hype and anticipation surrounding the release. One thing you don’t want to forget about is the Flock browser that is based upon Firefox!

The Flock team is working equally as hard to make sure that they update their browser with all of the Firefox 3 goodness as soon as possible. As you might recall it took them quite awhile to update their browser to Firefox 2 after its release, but it appears that they won’t be making that same mistake again. Here’s a snippet that I took from a post on the Flock blog yesterday:

Within the coming weeks Flock will release it’s first beta of Flock 2.0, which incorporates the Mozilla technology that powers Firefox 3. So get ready to have all of the latest performance (memory management), security and feature enhancements found in the latest Firefox 3 release along with the unique user experience innovations only delivered by the Flock browser.

The first thought that popped into my head was that the nightly builds of Flock must already have the Firefox 3 integration if a Beta will be available in the coming weeks. Sure enough! I downloaded the nightly build (targeted towards developers only), and as you can see from the screenshot it is definitely based on Firefox 3:

Note the oversized location bar new to Firefox 3:
flock 2 firefox 3.jpg
(Click to Enlarge)

The about screen verifies my findings, and a little snooping around will reveal some other new features that have only been introduced in Firefox 3. The most significant enhancement that I noticed would have to be the performance though. Immediately after starting up Flock it was using 66MB of memory which is a little on the high side, but it barely crawled above 100MB even after opening a dozen different tabs. Closing all of the tabs brought the memory usage back down to 82MB. This is like half the amount that the current version of Flock uses for me!

Kudos to the Flock team for jumping on the Firefox 3 bandwagon so quickly because it’s really going to pay off in the long run. I am very much anticipating the release of Flock 2.0 Beta in the coming weeks after they’ve had some time to polish-up the nightly builds, but if you’re feeling ambitious go ahead and try the latest nightly build of Flock 2.0.

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FoxyTunes Planet: The Web 2.0 Version of Music Searching

This article was written on January 22, 2007 by CyberNet.

FoxyTunes Planet Beta

One of the most used Firefox extensions has to be FoxyTunes. It is designed to control a large range of media players right from your browser, and it is compatible with both Firefox and Internet Explorer. Just when you thought the best couldn’t get better…

They are currently testing FoxyTunes Planet which is a music aggregation service. They have a nice search engine (pictured above) that will let you search for artists or you can browse for them by genre. Once you find the artist/group you’re looking for it will take you to a customizable page featuring videos, photos, news, bios, and much more.

They also offer a version of the FoxyTunes add-on/extension that works seamlessly with FoxyTunes Planet. While you’re playing a song all you have to do is click on the “planet” icon in the Status Bar to have it retrieve that artist’s page:

FoxyTunes Planet

As you can see from the screenshot above a wealth of information is presented to you in just seconds…and the best thing is that you can customize how much stuff is shown. One of the planned features is to let users add widgets that aren’t already pre-designed, but until that happens you’ll be limited to these:

  • Amazon.com
  • Last FM
  • Flickr
  • Google
  • iTunes Music Store
  • eMusic
  • Hype Machine
  • Rhapsody
  • Pandora
  • YouTube
  • Yahoo! Images
  • Yahoo! Music

So…one thing that is important for you to know is that the service is currently in a private Beta and you’ll have to request an invite to get in. “Jack of all Trades” is the one who sent me information on this and he told me that I should request an invite myself…so I did. The only thing that he said the service lacks is a widget to retrieve the lyrics for a particular song, and I’m sure that will get added very soon because a lot of people would love to have that.

Here is some more information on the FoxyTunes Planet:
Frequently Asked Questions
FoxyTunes Planet announcement

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Microsoft Office 2007 Goes Artistic

This article was written on May 21, 2006 by CyberNet.

Microsoft Office 2007 Goes Artistic
 

It looks like Microsoft is going to try and jazz up the way bulleted lists can be formatted in Excel by providing SmartArt. It is considered “smart” because it will adjust the appearance of the bulleted list based on the theme you choose for your spreadsheet. There are several different 2-D effects and 3-D effects that you can play with until your heart is content.

This looks nice but I hope they will be adding in more new features into the future releases. The whole redesign is nice but I like to see a lot of new features with new releases.

News Source: Microsoft Excel Blog

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Flock 2.0 Beta Released, Based on Firefox 3

This article was written on June 16, 2008 by CyberNet.

flock 2 firefox 3.jpg
(Click to Enlarge)

About two weeks ago we gave you a heads up that Flock 2.0 Beta was coming, and there was a lot of excitement surrounding the release since it’s based on Firefox 3.0. With that you get all of the Firefox 3 goodness including performance enhancements, advanced bookmarking, new address bar, and much more.

The Flock team has done a tremendous job of integrating Firefox 3 with all of the social features we’ve come to know and love in Flock. A good example of that is with the new bookmarking system which you can access by pressing the star located to the left of the address bar. You’ll notice that it looks incredibly similar to Firefox 3’s bookmarking system, but it also has the section dedicated to the online bookmarking services Del.icio.us and Ma.gnolia:

flock bookmark.jpg

The most important improvements come in the way of performance, and that is largely due to the better memory management that Firefox 3 has brings to the table. Personally I opened up over a dozen tabs in the new Flock 2.0 Beta, and it just barely broke 100MB of memory usage on Windows. That’s definitely not too shabby, but they wanted to point out that it will likely still use more memory than Firefox 3:

As you probably already know, Flock has a number of powerful features built on top of the Firefox architecture that allow you to have a truly unique browsing experience. These features come with a price, and that price is a slightly larger memory footprint. Comparing Flock to Firefox with no extensions installed is like comparing apples with oranges. In order to enjoy any advanced functionality in Firefox you need to install extensions, unlike Flock which has lots of advanced features built right in. Firefox extensions will increase both the memory footprint, and the risk of memory leaks over time. That said, all of the memory improvements in Firefox 3 (including many memory leak fixes and much better memory management ‘housekeeping’ practices) apply to Flock 2, so you should experience notably improved browsing performance with Flock 2 than you’ve experienced in prior versions.

Here’s some more information that Flock has posted in regards to enhancements for the new version:

If you’re a social media addict then I highly recommend you take Flock 2.0 for a spin. I’m not sure if I’ll use this over Firefox 3, but I’ll definitely give it a real shot now that the performance isn’t unbearable.

Flock 2.0 Beta [via Download Squad]

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Download Windows Mobile Device Center Beta 3

This article was written on October 07, 2006 by CyberNet.

Windows Mobile Device Center

Have you started playing around with Windows Vista yet? I couldn’t imagine going back to XP at this point but it does get a little frustrating when you come across some incompatible programs…and there are still plenty of them.

You can now get your Windows Mobile powered devices synchronized as long as you are running any version of Vista beyond RC1. The new Windows Mobile Device Center Beta 3 will let you synchronize your Windows Mobile 2003 or 5.0 device and you can even setup Windows Media Player to sync some of your music!

Here is a more complete list of included features:

  • Streamlined setup – A simplified new partnership wizard and improved partnership management.
  • Robust synchronization – Synchronization of business-critical data such as e-mail, calendars, contacts, tasks, favorites, and files.
  • Photo management – Picture management helps you detect new photos on your Windows Mobile powered device, tag and import them to the Windows Vista Photo Gallery.
  • Media synchronization – Use Microsoft Windows Media Player to synchronize and shuffle music files on your device.
  • File browsing – A new device browsing experience enables you more quickly browse files and folders and open documents on your device directly from your PC.
  • Enhanced user interface – A simple and compelling user interface helps you to quickly access critical tasks and configure your device.

Non-WGA download links:
Download Windows Mobile Device Center (x86)
Download Windows Mobile Device Center (x64)

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First Ubuntu 7.04 Milestone (Feisty Fawn Herd 1)

This article was written on December 07, 2006 by CyberNet.

Ubuntu 7.04

It is hard to believe that Ubuntu is already releasing another milestone but that is pretty much how Linux works…every few weeks there is something new. This version, named Feisty Fawn Herd 1, is just a pre-release to test out some of the new things that will be integrated in Ubuntu 7.04 when it is available in April of 2007. I just love the names that they pick for their releases…they are pretty, um, unique.

The changes aren’t that noticeable but there are two new games (chess and sodoku) along with a cool hard drive visualization utility that are all pictured above. Other than that there is a lot of under-the-hood work that you won’t notice while using this release.

Similarly there are “Herd 1″ versions of Kubuntu and Edubuntu available for download.

The Herd images are known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD build or installer bugs, while representing very current snapshots of Feisty. You can download it here, for Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Edubuntu respectively:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/feisty/herd-1/ (Ubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/feisty/herd-1/ (Kubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/feisty/herd-1/ (Edubuntu)

With most Linux Distributions I am a fan of the KDE interface but choosing between Ubuntu/Kubuntu makes me lean toward Ubuntu. There is something about the brown interface, simple layout, and enormous number of guides that really makes me love using it. Kubuntu doesn’t have the same sense of warmth but overall I am still partial to the OpenSuse distribution. It is a little disappointing that there hasn’t been many versions of Linux that try to make it easy for users to activate the XGL/Compiz but I’m sure that will come with time.

You can find out more about the changes in Ubuntu here and the changes in Kubuntu here in case you want to know about the nitty gritty.

News Source: Ubuntu Email List (subscribe here)

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Vista DreamScene Content Pack Available

This article was written on March 14, 2007 by CyberNet.

The video above demonstrates four new videos that Microsoft just posted for use with the Windows Vista DreamScene preview that they made available in the middle of February. If you’re a Vista Ultimate user you can play around with DreamScene and the new videos by performing a Windows Update. After you’ve got it installed you’ll be able to start using videos as your desktop background much the same way as you would use a wallpaper.

The four new videos in the demo above are:

  • A field of thistle, with a bee gathering pollen (10 seconds long)
  • A streetlamp reflected in a puddle, with softly falling rain (8 seconds long)
  • The rushing water of a forest stream (12 seconds long)
  • Orange wisps flowing in a computer-generated scene (14 seconds long)

You can actually use any video with DreamScene, even home movies, but they work best if they loop smoothly from the end to the beginning. I was shocked to see that last video that they provided with the “orange wisps” because that looks like something that would only be tolerable if you had a few too many drinks. Maybe it’s just me, but my eyes surely wouldn’t like to see that when I’m looking at the icons on my desktop.

So if you’re using Windows Vista Ultimate you can check out the latest DreamScenes, and there are also some more great videos available from WinCustomize if you decide you don’t like those.

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