Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on April 27, 2007 by CyberNet.

Pretty big news was just released by MacRumors.com which mentions a recent notice that Apple sent out to all iTunes partners who sell music on the iTunes store. The message said:

Many of you have reached out to iTunes to find out how you can make your songs available higher quality and DRM-free. Starting next month, iTunes will begin offering higher-quality, DRM-free music and DRM-free music videos to all customers.

That’s right! Apple will be offering music publishers the chance to make their content DRM-free! Is this finally the momentum that is needed to fully eliminate DRM? I’m thinking that it could be since companies and artists will want to compete with each other.

All of this has started because EMI (an independent music company in London) drew up a deal to have their entire catalog of music placed on iTunes store without the DRM, and at higher quality. That is something many independent artists have requested since it will encourage users to buy their music.

Now we just have to hope that this will spark a domino effect…and that DRM will come tumbling down!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on November 07, 2007 by CyberNet.

Lifehacker’s Adam Pash just released the 6th installment of Texter, which can shave an insane amount of time off of repetitive tasks. Texter is used to make text replacements as you type. For example, you can have the “hotstring” mysig be replaced with a customized text signature each time it is typed.

Simple text replacements like the one I just mentioned are just the tip of the iceberg though. There are many advanced operations that you can perform, such as pre-formatting items on the clipboard and then inserting them somewhere. You can also simulate keystrokes like Control, Alt, and Tab. When you combine all of this stuff together you can create some pretty complex macros and text snippets.

Here are some of the new features in Texter 0.6:

• Instant Replacements: If you don’t like the Space, Tab, or Enter triggers, but would prefer instead that your hotstring executes as soon as you finish typing text, try out Texter’s new “Instant” option.
• Hotstring Renaming: You can now rename any current hotstring through the Texter Management by right-clicking it and defining a new one.
• Universal Autocorrect: If you like Microsoft Word’s automatic inline autocorrect try enabling Universal Spelling AutoCorrect in the Preferences.
• Scripting Shortcuts: If you’re big into using Texter to perform a little automated scripting, Texter now includes a simple keyboard shortcut that makes scripting tons easier: the Insert key. For example, if you want Texter to send an Enter keystroke, just hit Insert+Enter, which will automatically insert {Enter}. If you’re not familiar with scripts in Texter, these instructions (and this video) will help.

This thing would be a real goldmine for me if it supported HTML insertion into Rich Text Fields, like the one in Gmail or when writing a post in WordPress. If you need that feature checkout PhraseExpress (our review).

Download Texter (there is a portable no-install version available)

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

You may remember an application called Yod’m that we wrote about back in March. It brought the famous 3D Linux virtual desktop manager over to the Windows side, but it was pretty rough around the edges. Well, I’m proud to say that a lot of work has been done to make it a lot better, but there’s a catch.

Otaku Software, the creators of the popular TopDesk application, snatched up the Yod’m developer shortly after the free version was released. Now to get the software, renamed to DeskSpace, you’ll need to plop down $19.95 for use beyond the 14 day trial. It might be worth it after you checkout the features:

• Work and play on multiple desktops.
• Display multiple desktops in stunning 3D.
• Quickly switch between desktops using the mouse and keyboard.
• Drag windows between desktops by moving them to the sides of the screen.
• Display desktops in 3D on multiple monitors.
• Configure the hot keys and mouse buttons used to switch between desktops, and how DeskSpace displays and manages desktop.
• Use DeskSpace in multiple languages.

Personally I’ve installed virtual desktop managers before, and often times forget to use them. For that reason I didn’t even try this out, and definitely wouldn’t spend the money on it. Although I know it would impress a lot of my friends.

Here’s a quick video I grabbed that shows DeskSpace in action:

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This article was written on March 06, 2007 by CyberNet.

Just yesterday Apple launched iTunes 7.1 which had a feature that sparked a lot of conversations on the Web. The big thing that has people talking is the full-screen Cover Flow, and other than that there isn’t much new according to their site:

Using iTunes 7.1, you can now enjoy your favorite iTunes movies, TV shows, music, and more from the comfort of your living room with Apple TV. iTunes 7.1 also supports a new full screen Cover Flow and improved sorting options to let you decide how iTunes should sort your favorite artists, albums, and songs.

The Cover Flow (pictured above) is a cool feature because it lets you shuffle through all of your albums while displaying the album cover, and it does it in a way that is sure to leave you in awe. Making it fullscreen adds a lot more to it, but to be honest I was expecting to see a version of iTunes that was completely compatible with Vista.

I started browsing around Apple’s site and found a page that had a list of things that still doesn’t work right with Vista. They do, however, say that they are actively working with Microsoft to fix these issues:

• Ejecting an iPod from Windows Explorer or the Windows notification area (system tray) using the “Safely Remove Hardware” feature may corrupt your iPod. To always safely eject an iPod, choose Eject iPod from the Controls menu within iTunes. If your iPod becomes corrupt, selecting your iPod in iTunes and clicking Restore in the iPod’s Summary panel should return your iPod to a working condition.
• iTunes may display text or graphics incorrectly on your screen. Resizing the iTunes window should correct this issue.
• Contacts from Windows Address Book may not sync with iPod.
• iTunes remains unsupported on 64 bit editions of Windows, including Windows Vista and Windows XP x64.

The first item was what really caught my attention because I have always used the “Safely Remove Hardware” to disconnect my iPod. I haven’t tried this version of iTunes on my Vista machine yet because of the problems it still has, so I’m running it on my one and only remaining XP machine. It’s not that big of a deal because I normally don’t do much with iTunes other than sync my songs and podcasts, but it would be nice to get this up and running on my primary PC which has Vista installed.

So now I’ll cross my fingers that Vista will be added to the list of operating systems that are currently supported for the next release. While I understand that Apple is going to cater to the Mac operating system more than Windows, I would have thought that a Vista-compatible version of iTunes would have been ready when the OS launched over a month ago. I’m a little disappointed with Apple from that standpoint.

Download iTunes 7.1

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This article was written on February 26, 2008 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

One of the reasons Adobe Photoshop has become so popular is because of all the advanced photo affects that can be applied to images. Over the last few years I’ve seen a lot of free alternatives emerge onto the scene saving users hundreds of dollars, but many of them don’t have the effects and control that I’m looking for.

The tool that we found for you today is called PhotoFiltre, and it is completely free just like most of the software we write about. It’s far from becoming a Photoshop replacement, but I’ve found that it is extremely handy at applying effects and touching up the digital photos that you have lying around. Lets look at some of the things that it can do…

 
(Click to Enlarge)

–Features–

• There are over 100 filters available including ones for standard adjustments (brightness, saturation, etc…) and even artistic ones (watercolor, puzzle effect, etc…). We’ll get into these more in the next section of the article.
• You can select portions of an image with an automatic shape (rectangle, ellipse, triangle, rhombus, rounded rectangle) or with the lasso, magic wand, and polygon tools.
• Well-organized toolbars make it easy to switch between the most used tools.
• PhotoMasque lets you create advanced effects of contour and transparency on your images by using preset masks. These masks are grayscale images, where white is the transparancy color, while opacity increases as the shades of gray become darker. Black means complete opacity. There are several basic masks included.
• The Automatisation module lets you apply basic functions/corrections (conversion, image size, framing) to a group of images.
• Advanced text effects are available including rotation, shading, and bevel.
• Assemble and blend multiple images.
• Automatic photo corrections that enhance your images so that they look the best.
• Free plug-ins add even more functionality including red eye removal, animated GIF importing, page curl effect, gradients, screen capture, and much more.

–Effects–

One of my favorite things with the PhotoFiltre application is the wide array of special filters that’s available. I wanted demonstrate what some of the filters can do, so here are some examples using the image pictured in the screenshot above as the starting ground:

• I cropped the image so that the mountains were removed, and then I applied the Lake reflection filter (in the Deform menu). It really does look like a reflection in a lake, doesn’t it?
  
• This is the Puzzle effect (in the Stylize menu)… you could really create your own puzzle if you had a steady hand with the scissors.
  
• This is the Trapezoid/Perspective filter (in the Deform menu) which can be used to angle your photos:
  
• Here I used the Lasso tool to select just the grass area, and then I applied the Fog filter (in the Visual effect menu) to the selected area.
  
• In a single click I was able to turn this wonderful afternoon photo into what appears to be a night shot. This was done using the Night effect filter (in the Color menu):
  

Those are just a handful of the filters available. Here’s a quick list of some of my other favorites that you might find useful:

• Blurring (several different types of blurs)
• Antialias
• Dust reduction
• Revive colors
• Sunset effect
• Colored pencil
• Comic strip
• Ripple
• Glass
• Mosiac
• Frames
• and dozens more…

–Overview–

PhotoFiltre has become a beloved application of mine over the last month simply because I do a lot of photo corrections and enhancements on a regular basis. If you want to edit your images this is a great solution, and once you throw a couple of the plug-ins into the app it will become a really powerful photo editor.

PhotoFiltre Homepage

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