Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on September 10, 2007 by CyberNet.

FileZilla 3 was just released and I have to admit that I’m pretty excited to see my favorite FTP client hit this big milestone. This version has spent several years in the making, and even though it doesn’t have many new features over the previous version there is something that is definitely worth noting: it’s now cross-platform! That’s right, it doesn’t matter whether your a Windows, Linux, or Mac user because FileZilla runs on them all.

Making FileZilla 3 cross-platform was no easy task, and it required a complete code rewrite. Unfortunately they also weren’t able to bring back all of the features from FileZilla 2, but I believe that most casual FTP users won’t notice much of a difference. The only thing I’ve found so far that FileZilla 3 is lacking is the synchronization capabilities that FileZilla 2 offered. If you never used that feature I think you should be pleased with the new version.

One of the other great things that I noticed in this version is the organization of queued, failed, and successful transfers into separate tabs at the bottom. This makes it much easier to see how your transfers are going.

Interestingly enough the developer also decided to refresh the FileZilla icon by choosing a different color scheme. It’s not a drastic change from what it was, but it’s enough to make me look twice when trying to find the program in the Start Menu.

FileZilla Homepage

Note: The Mac OS X version is currently experiencing some delays.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on March 26, 2007 by CyberNet.

Microsoft was finally able to take a step back and look at how many licenses of Vista are actually in use right now. According to their numbers, there were more than 20 million licenses sold from January 30 to February 28. That is nothing short of impressive!

That number does include upgraded versions of Vista from people who bought new computers before Vista was actually released, but CNet says that when they questioned Microsoft on how many of the 20 million licenses were from upgrades the response was:

It’s boosting the overall number, but it’s certainly not the core component of the 20 million.

To put the number in perspective Microsoft said that 17 million Windows XP licenses were sold after two-months, which means Vista more than doubled its Windows predecesor! The thing that made this number the most astonishing was that there are a reported 20 million Mac users (source) in total, and in the first year of Apple’s next OS release they are expected to sell 10 million licenses. By the end of this year Vista is expected to hit more than 100 million licenses.

Mac’s numbers are by no means shabby, but it just goes to show how widespread Windows really is. CNet also noted that Vista Ultimate sales are doing better than expected, although Microsoft has not released specific information regarding how many licenses of each version of Vista were sold:

Mannion said that Microsoft is even seeing better-than-expected sales of the pricey Ultimate edition. “We have relatively modest expectations for Ultimate, but it’s exceeding that on both new PCs and the packaged product.”

…

He likens it to car buyers who buy more horsepower than they need. “How many people buy the V8 instead of the V6?” Walker said. Or how many go with the optional towing package, “even though they have nothing to tow?”

I am a little surprised that people are picking the Ultimate Edition, but when purchasing a new PC, the upgrade to Ultimate from Home Premium is typically just $100. That is much more reasonable than spending the $400 on a retail copy of Ultimate, and the retail version can be switched to a new PC if that need should arise.

Having used the final version of Vista for nearly two months I would have to say that I am impressed with its capabilities. In the next few months I will be purchasing a new laptop that supports the Aero graphics, and I can’t wait because there are a lot of cool applications emerging that utilize Vista’s advanced graphical capabilities!

Microsoft Press Release

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on June 20, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

One thing that Microsoft did a good job of in Internet Explorer 7 was making it easy for users to read feeds. They provided a feed reader that was so simple, yet it does exactly what most casual users want, and that is to keep up on the latest news from around the Web.

Despite doing many things right, there are some things that it doesn’t do, but for those things, there are work-arounds which you might find useful. This includes adding a notifier so that you know when there are new items, and synchronizing with an online service so that your feeds are up-to-date both at work and at home. Here are some tips that you might find helpful if you use the feed reader in Internet Explorer…

–Synchronize with NewsGator Online (Homepage)–

This is one of my favorite add-ons for Internet Explorer because it focuses on the fact that not everyone sits in front of the same computer all day. Many of us go from being at home, to work, and then back home again which is where the NewsGator Desktop Sync comes in handy.

This small, lightweight program installs in a matter of seconds on your computer. Once setup, it will synchronize with an online NewsGator account to keep track of which feeds/posts that you have read. You can choose to have IE override all feed settings, have NewsGator’s online service override all settings, or have the application merge the feeds in the browser and what’s available online.

The System Tray icon gives you easy access to synchronization, and in just a few clicks you can sync up before you go to work or come home. Or, if that seems like too much of a hassle you can actually customize the duration between syncs so that you never even have to think about it.

–Feed Folder (Homepage)–

This add-on doesn’t do that much, but it does make your feeds a little more accessible outside of just Internet Explorer. By using the Feed Folder add-on all of your feeds will be placed in your Favorites bookmarks folder in addition to the normal feed location within Internet Explorer 7. This means that your feeds will quickly be accessible from Windows Explorer as well as the Start Menu (if configured to show Favorites in the Start Menu properties).

–MS Feed Icon (Homepage)–

This is simply a notification system and System Tray icon for the feed reader in IE7. Basically, it adds the most critical thing that Microsoft never put into their browser, but this one does a terrific job of going above and beyond the call of duty. Check out everything it can do:

• Icon in the system tray indicating status of you feed subscriptions
• Displays notifications when a feed contains new posts, and you can customize which feeds receive the notification.
• Can automatically marks a feed as read
• Force an update on all feeds
• Star a notification for later reading (essentially pinning it so that the notification doesn’t close)
• Mark as read without viewing the feed
• Unsubscribe from a feed within the notification window
• Search new posts for specific Tags so you can select which posts are interesting to you. Then any matching posts can be starred to ensure that the notification window does not close until you manually close it.
• Feed statistics
• Presentation mode aware (Windows Vista only)
• Customizable background color

–Feeds Plus (Homepage)–

Feeds Plus makes it possible to read all of your feeds on the same page. This is a really nice feature as long as you don’t have a large number of feeds, but you can always organize your feeds into folders. That way you can just read all of the items on a folder by folder basis.

It also has a built-in notifier that pops up near the System Tray when a feed has new posts, but it isn’t nearly as extensive as what the MS Feed Icon has to offer. Luckily you can disable this notifier so that it doesn’t conflict with MS Feed Icon.

–Summary–

As you can see, there are several tools available that all enhance IE7’s Feed Reader. None of them really make it a full-fledged application like FeedDemon or RSS Bandit, but they help make it a lot more useful.

If you have any other tools that you use with Internet Explorer 7’s feed reader be sure to let us know. We’ve also written two other posts, here and here, on other great add-ons for Internet Explorer 7.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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

Mozilla has just released the English version of Firefox 3 Alpha 2 (codename Gran Paradiso) and it is the first release of Firefox that passes the Acid 2 test. Well, it is still a pre-release version but it is on its way to be the final version that will be released later this year. If you haven’t heard by this point, the big thing with Firefox 3 is replacing the rendering engine with Cairo…which has improved a lot of things including how it scales images. Here is a list of what’s new from the Firefox 3 Alpha 2 release notes:

• Core layout code affecting the calculation of widths in tables, floats, and absolutely positioned elements has been rewritten. The code for handling incremental layout of pages (as data arrives over the network, as images load, or as dynamic changes are made) has also been changed extensively.
• Resolved remaining issues with ACID2 test compliance.
• Support for the Web Apps 1.0 API for changing stylesheets.
• The inline-block and inline-table values of CSS 2.1’s display property are now implemented.
• XML documents can now be rendered as they’re downloaded instead of only after the full document has been loaded.
• Greatly improved Mac widgets support since Alpha 1.
• Improvements in the Cairo graphics layer.

I’m definitely excited about this release, but I just can’t bring myself to switch to this as my primary browser at this point because my GMarks extension doesn’t work. I know that I could just use the built-in bookmarking system but it is always nice to have my bookmarks available wherever I go. I’ve contacted the extension developer and he is currently looking into it, and once that gets fixed I plan on permanently switching over.

So what does the future look like for Firefox 3? As of right now the Alpha releases will be every 6 weeks or so, but they do not mention exactly how many of them they plan on doing. That puts us at the End of March before we see the next Alpha release and my estimation for the final release date is sometime this summer (probably the June/July timeframe). It will definitely be fun to see what the future has in store for us!

Note: In case anyone is wondering Places has not been put back in yet.

Portable Firefox 3 Alpha 2 for Windows
Windows: Gran Paradiso Alpha 2 exe
Mac OS X: Gran Paradiso Alpha 2 dmg
Linux: Gran Paradiso Alpha 2 tar.gz

Thanks to natmaster for the tip!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Hello there, Ice Cream Sandwich! Google and Samsung just took the wraps off of the former’s newest mobile operating system here in Hong Kong, and boy — she’s a beauty. Of course, we’ve known about ICS for months now, but outside of a few sneak peeks courtesy of Mr. Blurrycam, we didn’t know precisely what to expect. Strangely, Motorola’s recent introduction of the Droid RAZR only delivered the freshest offering of Gingerbread, but the Galaxy Nexus is oh-ficially the first smartphone in the world to launch with Android 4.0. Our test unit was actually running 4.0.1 for reasons unknown, but as we mentioned in our Galaxy Nexus hands-on, it was as smooth as ever. Without question, this is easily the slickest, most polished version of Android yet, and we invite you to take a tour yourself via the hands-on gallery below. Apologies for the quantity, but we wanted to explore every nook and cranny while we had the chance.

Google Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0): a hands-on screenshot gallery originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Oct 2011 01:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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