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Jul 18

Firefox 3 Places Gets “Smart Folders”

Posted in: Features, Firefox 3, Freeware, Mozilla, Pre-Release, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on October 11, 2007 by CyberNet.

Mozilla has been working hard to get Places into Firefox 3, and they are making some good progress. Back in September we saw a nice mockup of what to expect from the Places Organizer, and about a week after that Oropher pointed out in our forum that the first major UI change occurred.

At the time the only modification was the move away from the classic Menu Bar that resides in the current Firefox 2 bookmark organizer, but just today another new feature landed in the latest nightly build. It’s one that I have been anticipating for quite some time … “smart folders” (I made up the name). There are 6 smart folders that come with Firefox 3, and the bookmarks listed in each are generated on-the-fly like the Smart Playlists in iTunes. Here are the six folders that you’ll see in the latest nightly build:

Recently starred pages
Recently visited starred pages
Most visited starred pages
Recently used tags
Most used tags
Most visited pages

Below is a screenshot of what the smart folders and redesigned Places Organizer look like. What’s left to do in Places? They still have to add the history and downloads to it, but other than that they just need to add some polish. Oh, and they need to get the “Preview” feature working as you can see in the screenshot below. It’s supposed to show a thumbnail of the bookmark you have selected, but right now it is just a place holder.

Overall things are looking pretty good for the next milestone that’s due out on October 30th.

Firefox 3 Places

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Jul 14

Make Windows Shortcuts Open Mac-Style Stacks

Posted in: Freeware, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili, Windows

This article was written on June 30, 2009 by CyberNet.

Windows only
Remember when we wrote about the nifty Stacks docklet? Well, I received an email from a reader pointing out that you can get the same functionality without one of the Windows dock apps. All you need is a free program called StandaloneStack that adds the same functionality to any Windows shortcut you decide to create.

For the most part all you have to do is create a shortcut to the executable, and run it (FreewareGenius has screenshots of the setup process). When you do that you’ll be prompted to choose what directory you want the stack pointed to, how you want the items sorted, and whether you want the stack displayed in a grid (pictured above) or fan view.

I have to say that this can make those shortcuts in your QuickLaunch bar a lot more useful. Plus it will even work for shortcuts that are placed on your desktop. Basically you can have your whole computer littered with these things if that’s what you want. Go nuts, you have my permission.

StandaloneStack Homepage (Windows only; free)
Thank MisT for the tip!

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Jul 13

Opera 9.5 is Almost Done

Posted in: Freeware, Opera, Pre-Release, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on June 10, 2008 by CyberNet.

(Click to Enlarge)

Windows Win; Mac Mac; Linux Linux
Hot on the heels of Firefox 3, the Opera team announced today that they are preparing for the launch of Opera 9.5, and they are doing so by shooting out the first (and possibly last) Release Candidate to the public. This comes just about one week after they added a new default theme to the browser. The Mac version of the theme is depicted in the screenshot above, and the Windows version can be seen here.

Here’s what the Opera team had to say about the big news today:

You might have noticed we’ve focused on stabilizing the Opera 9.5 snapshots lately, waxing the new look and feel of Opera, improving performance, security and most of all fixing a lot of bugs. Almost two years after the release of Opera 9.0, Opera 9.5 is now (almost) ready to be released.

This will be a pretty big release for Opera since this is the first version of their desktop browser to include the new Opera Link technology. With it users can synchronize their bookmarks between both Opera 9.5 desktop and Opera Mini, which is a killer combo.

There’s no mention of a release date for Opera 9.5, but they make it sound like it’s coming very soon. Maybe we can expect to see it out in June?

P.S. If you decide to install the Release Candidate in Windows it’s important to know that it will overwrite your existing (stable) Opera installation.

Get Opera 9.5 RC
Thanks for the tip Cody!

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Jun 28

Download Nero 8 on October 1st

Posted in: Features, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili, videos, YouTube

This article was written on August 31, 2007 by CyberNet.

Nero 8 Box - Download on October 1st Nero is undoubtedly my favorite software for burning CD’s and DVD’s, and on October 1st they will be releasing Nero 8 to their worldwide audience. Seeing that Nero 7 has been around for nearly 2-years I think that a big update is well overdue.

One of the interesting things that I noticed from the press release was that they removed a sentence that talked about a video upload feature:

The new and improved Nero 8 software allows users to upload videos and share content on YouTube, MySpace and My Nero with a simple one-click solution.

I was able to uncover that sentence by pulling up a version of the press release that hasn’t been edited. I’m not sure if that means this feature will not be included, or whether they are just trying to keep it under wraps for right now. At any rate here are the rest of the features that the press release outlined, but no screenshots have been made available yet:

Newly-designed Nero StartSmart user interface. Prime functions like burning and ripping audio and data discs can now be accessed directly, letting users complete projects with one-click functions.
Optimized for Vista – includes DiscCopy (a Vista sidebar gadget) that lets users copy a disc in just one click.
Edit photo slide shows and create High Definition video in both Blu-ray BD-AV and HD DVD video formats.
Nero RescueAgent allows users to restore deleted files and recover data from CDs and DVDs that may have been lost due to scratched discs, interrupted recording operations, or poor recording quality.
Multimedia, backup, and recovery features.
Live icons allows users to see what is in a file without opening it.
Rich Preview pane offers direct access to files from within the Windows Explorer browser.

When Nero 8 is released on October 1, 2007 it will cost $99.99 in stores, or you can download it for $79.99 from their website.

Source: DownloadSquad & AppScout

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Jun 22

Notepad++ 4.0 Now Available!

Posted in: Apple, Features, Freeware, Microsoft, Newly Released, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on January 29, 2007 by CyberNet.

Notepad ++

Notepad++ is definitely my favorite Notepad replacement because of the extensive features that it has built-in. A lot of applications are going to tabbed interfaces these days and Notepad++ realized the importance of this early on, which is actually why I started using it in the first place. Being able to have multiple documents open in the same window is a huge plus not to mention how much room it saves on your Taskbar.

Version 4 brings some new goodies to the table and now includes the Explorer plug-in pictured on the left-side in the screenshot above. It actually lets you navigate your hard drive so that you can easily open up the documents without fussing with a popup window. Besides for that there are a lot of bug fixes so the upgrade is highly recommended:

Fix the crash issue.
Add Docking feature for plugin dialogs.
Fix the bug that current “open” and “save as” directory are unchanged with the shortcut Ctrl+Tab.
Fix the bug that the new added languages in v3.9 can not be hidden from the language menu.
Fix the volatile search direction bug.
Fix the Tab display problem.
Add Haskell, InnoSetup languages support.
Add the option to open/save files in the last operation directory.
Enhance Document switcher (MRU and switch crossing view abilities).
Fix “Find Next” unicode bug for Find Replace Dialog.
Support Unicode in displayed result of Find in files & Find in all opened files.
Add Reload from disk feature.
Fix bug : quite (close or restart Windows) without prompt to save.
All the shortcuts of plugins commands are customizable via the shortcut mapper

If you’re a programmer then you’ll surely love Notepad++ with its syntax highlighting. It supports all kinds of languages including C++, Java, PHP, HTML, ASP, and much more. When you’re just trying to make a quick edit, whether it be to source code or any text document, there is nothing better than to have Notepad++ a click away!

Download Notepad++ 4.0 (Mirror)

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Jun 12

PC Tools Firewall Plus 3.0 – A Free Vista Firewall

Posted in: Features, Freeware, Newly Released, performance, Reviews, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on October 04, 2007 by CyberNet.

PC Tools Firewall Plus

As it stands right now there are not many Vista-compatible firewalls available. PC Tools is coming through by not only offering one, but they are even making it free! A comment by bloodsugarwilksm convinced me to try out the new Firewall Plus 3.0 that was recently released, and before I get into some of the details I want to say that this firewall works with Windows XP, 2000, and Server 2003 in addition to Vista.

We included Firewall Plus 2.0 in our list of free antivirus, anti-spyware, and firewalls post that was done back in April, and even then it was the only Vista compatible firewall available. Now they have reached another big milestone, but you won’t notice any difference in the interface.

–What’s New in Firewall Plus 3.0?–

The PC Tools developers made changes where it matters most in a firewall: under-the-hood. Here’s a list of what’s new in version 3:

New Smart Application Rules
Firewall Plus now incorporates a set of new smart application rules, designed to make it simpler and easier for you to continue working with minimal interference from your Firewall. Technically, using the Application Rules, you can create a heuristic set of rules that control how applications are allowed to connect to the Internet/network and their permissions on your PC. If an application attempts to connect to the Internet/network and there are no corresponding rules, Firewall Plus will allow you to choose how the application should behave.
Stealth Mode protection
Firewall Plus provides you with extra protection via its Stealth Mode feature which enables your system to appear invisible to other computers in the network. When in Stealth Mode, your computer is able to make connections to other computers in the network, but Firewall Plus will prevent other computers from connecting with yours.
Data Validation using SPI (Stateful Packet Inspection)
Firewall Plus validates data using SPI – stateful packet inspection – in which it performs a protocol handshake and if successful allows data transfer, otherwise all traffic is blocked – ensuring no unauthorized data is transferred onto your computer.
Application protection
Firewall Plus offers additional application protection by guarding all the applications on your PC from unauthorized access. Enabling this option will shield applications on your system from other applications attempting to take control of them and potentially use them for malicious purposes.

–What I think about it–

I’ve always been a big fan of the Comodo Firewall because of its exceptional performance and outstanding protection, but I give a lot of credit to PC Tools for creating a very strong competing product. Firewall Plus takes up a mere 5MB of memory on my Vista machine, which I don’t feel bad dedicating to something as important as a firewall.

By default Firewall Plus is configured to show notifications that are stripped down to only the information casual users would care about. If you’re a power user that likes to see every little detail then there is an “Expert” mode in the settings. Despite being a power user myself I have found that the basic notifications are nice, clean, and setup so that you can quickly respond.

Am I going to use it myself? Actually I think that I will at least until something better comes along. My heart is still with Comodo, but I’m a bit weary running a beta build of their Vista-compatible version, which has been causing some blue screens of death for some users. I’m guessing that Comodo 3 will be out within the next month or two, and at that time I’ll reevaluate my firewall needs. Right now, however, Firewall Plus is what’s protecting my PC.

–Screenshots–

I’ll go ahead and wrap things up with several screenshots of the different areas in Firewall Plus 3:

Get PC Tools Firewall Here

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Jun 04

CyberNotes: Best Desktop Feed Reader

Posted in: CyberNotes, Features, Freeware, Reviews, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on September 11, 2007 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

I’ve come across a lot of great feed readers before, but I don’t believe any of them match up to a new one that I was introduced to by Pieter in the CyberNet Forum. It’s called Newzie (Windows-only), and it has a strong focus on making feed reading as easy as possible. I wasn’t quite sure how good this would perform when I first started using it, but I quickly fell in love with the features it offered.

Many of you may consider discarding this post simply because you’re content with the desktop feed reader that you’re currently using, or maybe all of your feeds are on an online reader. Newzie has things that I’ve never seen before in a feed reader, and I can guarantee that some of them are sure to impress you. So at the very least scroll through the article and checkout the screenshots…you won’t be disappointed.

Oh, and I should mention that the interface definitely reminds me of iTunes!

Click to Enlarge

–Feed Organization–

Newzie Organization One of the most unique things with Newzie are the various methods available to organize your feeds. Of course it has the standard tree view that most desktop feed readers have, and you can create as many folders and subfolders as you would like.

More uniquely, however, is the time-sorted view that shows the most recently updated feeds first. It groups feeds in update intervals, such as 30-minutes to 1-hour, so that you can view the most recent news first.

There are also a few "folders" that are created by default which can be used for temporary storage. These are the "My Favorites" and "My Readings," and together they let you breeze through all of your feeds quickly. You can then come back to the news of interest when you have more time.

–Viewing Feeds–

In terms of feed viewing there are three different modes available:

Report View – This is often referred to the "River of News" view because it shows one story after another in their entirety. If it becomes hard to read that way you can always contract the posts, and then expand them as needed.
List View (Top) – This is similar to what you’ll see in an email application with a subject-only view above the content of the posts.
List View (Side) – This is also like an email application, but the list is placed on the side of the content. Widescreen users would probably prefer to use this method.

And don’t worry about the oversized buttons located at the top of the application. I originally thought it was a huge waste of space, and then I saw a button that collapsed the header down to almost nothing:

Newzie Header

–Quick Read–

Newzie Hover Feed Newzie makes it extremely easy to scan your feeds without actually having to read them. One of the ways it does this is with its unique hover window that is displayed when your cursor rests over a feed in the sidebar. It shows you how many unread posts there are in that particular feed, when the last article was written, the last time it checked for updates, and the titles of the last 5 articles. I love when tooltips like this are actually made useful.

–News Bar–

This is like a stock ticker, but for your news. Anytime you hover over the News Bar, it will pause so that you have time to take action on the item(s) that are currently scrolling across.

Newzie News Bar

–Today Panel–

There is a highly configurable Today Panel available in Newzie for those of you that don’t like the News Bar. This isn’t quite as compact, but it can show more information.

Newzie Today Panel

–Search & Filters–

Newzie Filters There are several more advanced search features included with Newzie that help make it so great. Besides being able to search your feeds for text, you can also filter your subscriptions in using special commands that have been created. Here are some examples:

title:cybernet – Searches the title of feeds for matches.
updated<5day – Finds feeds updated in a specific period of time.
priority>60 – Finds feeds that are within the specified priority interval.

More information on how these work as well as more examples can be found in the Newzie help file.

–Monitor Sites, too–

Newzie Website Monitor Just when you thought Newzie already did everything, it goes and does even more! Not only can it aggregate all of your feeds into one central location, but it can also check websites to see if there have been any changes made.

There are several different options for choosing how the websites are monitored, such as looking for the addition of keywords, text being inserted, hyperlinks being added, or new images appearing. Or you can just go the old fashion route of monitoring every aspect of the website to see if it changes.

When you view a site that has been changed, Newzie will automatically highlight the changed portions so that you don’t have to try and figure out what’s new. Now how cool is that?

–Stats–

Newzie tracks what you read and how many items it brings in each day. It then puts it all together in a pretty bar graph so that you can realize just how addicted you are to the feeds (obviously my stats aren’t all that extravagant in the screenshot since I started with a fresh profile for the review):

Newzie Stats

–And More–

I think that I touched on almost everything that Newzie can do, but there are still some other things that might appeal to you. For the sake of being thorough I’ve included those additional features here:

I found it to be one of the fastest-updating feed readers available (in terms of checking feeds for new content).
Browse your feed items in a slideshow fashion. This is cool, but not something I can see myself using.
Minimize to the System Tray
Keyboard shortcut customization
Assign priorities to feeds
Change the rendering engine (uses IE by default)
Setup keyword watches on your feeds
You can monitor IE favorites for new feeds
You can add feeds from a Bloglines account

Some of you may still prefer the online feed readers such as Bloglines or Google Reader, but I have to say that this is hands-down the best desktop feed reader that I’ve used. It’s packed with features and focuses heavily on making reading feeds an effortless process. I highly recommend this desktop feed reader to all the news junkies out there!

Newzie Homepage

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May 13

CyberNotes: Google Talk Add-ons, Shortcuts, and Chat Themes

Posted in: Apple, CyberNotes, Freeware, Google, Microsoft, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on February 08, 2007 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

//cybernetnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/GoogleTalk Google Talk is undoubtedly my favorite chat client because it is a wonderful little application that offers all of the right features. Well, it doesn’t quite offer everything because a lot of people would like to see the application interact with other messenger services, such as AIM. I, however, have somehow managed to convert a large majority of my friends to using Google Talk so the interoperability isn’t necessary for me.

The first thing I want to mention is that Google offers a survey that asks you what features you would like to see the most in an upcoming release of Google Talk. It looks like the survey has gotten some new options such as Google Calendar integration and a built-in spellchecker since the last time I mentioned it. I’m actually surprised that there hasn’t been another release in nearly 6 months which is when they added the file sharing option. At the time, it was the most requested feature. Once file sharing was introduced, they said: "Now, we’re off to the next version. I can’t tell you what your #2 and 3 suggestions were, but I do know that they’re on the way." I have copied what options are currently available on the survey, and I put an asterisk (*) next to the survey items that were available when the Google employee said they were working on the #2 and #3 feature:

———-
Personalization:
*Rich text for outgoing chats
*Additional smilies or emoticons
*User profiles
*Friend groups

Communication:
*Multi-user chats
*Conference calls
*Video conferencing
Appear invisible or offline

Additional functionalities:
~~Offline message delivery~~ (already implemented)
*Mac or Linux versions
*Call and message encryption
*Calls to regular phone numbers
Google Calendar & Personalized Homepage integration
Sign in to multiple accounts simultaneously on the same computer
Spellchecker
———-

My guess is that they are working on video conferencing and calling landline phones as the #2 and #3 features, but some of the new options look appetizing as well. Post which features you think will make the cut on the next release in the comments below.

Alright, now we’ll move onto what you came for. The other day I was thinking to myself that other messenger clients have all kinds of add-ons and themes available to do more with the application. I knew there had to be a way to do similar stuff with Google Talk, but I just had to find the right place.

ExtendedTalk The best site that I found was CustomizeTalk.com which has everything from skins, themes, tweaks, and tricks. The first thing that I’m going to point out is Extended Talk Beta (download mirror) pictured to the right. It adds a few features to Google Talk that are kinda nice such as making windows transparent. The software actually has its own file transfer utility built-in because the last time it was updated was before Google released that feature themselves. There is only one bug that I did mange to notice: the button on the chat screen overlaps with the "Send Voicemail" button since that wasn’t there when this program was developed. If you can cope with that little flaw then you’ll probably enjoy the rest of the things this offers:

Dynamic statuses
Send custom images (or emoticons)
Graphical smilies
/slash commands
Floating desktop contacts
Boss protection
Locking
Font color and chat window color (visible locally)
Fast text input (example: automatically insert IP address)
Change your text while typing (example: to 1337)
Transparency
Text recall
Underline text (visible locally)
Bold and italic hotkey
Run at startup

One of the other cool things about that little add-on is that it is a completely separate program that integrates itself into Google Talk. That means you can close that program or uninstall it and your Google Talk will be back to normal.

GmailChatSkin The other thing that I wanted to point out was using skins with Google Talk. Google has a nice variety of different skins for your chat conversations but none of them really seem to grab me. Then I found one that looked really great and is far better than any that Google offers themselves.

The theme I’m talking about is called Digital Ecstacy (download mirror) and is one of the 8 conversation window themes that they have available. They even have one that mimicks the Blue Screen of Death, (BSoD) but I thought the Digital Ecstacy one looked nice. It has a smaller avatar than normal for the person that your chatting with, which is nice to have. Normally, I choose themes that don’t have an avatar at all because of the amount of room they take up, but this one is well done.

All you have to do to install that theme is download the file and install it. During the installation process it will add the necessary files to your Google Talk profile so that you can go to the Settings and select the new theme. You should probably restart Google Talk before applying the theme because none of the theme’s images would show up until you do. Now that I have this classy look, it will be hard for me to go back to anything else.

So, those are two ways that answered my own question of how I can do more with Google Talk. I knew there had to be things available, but I just never went looking for them. You might even be content with the way Google Talk is right now, and in that case these things might not be for you. I’m not sure if I’ll keep using the Extended Talk add-on but the theme is definitely a keeper!

Download Extended Talk
Download the Google Talk Theme (mentioned above)

Google Talk Themes

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May 12

Microsoft says “not so fast” on DoubleClick Deal

Posted in: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Screenshots, Today's Chili

This article was written on April 16, 2007 by CyberNet.

Google may be purchasing DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, but Microsoft is saying “not so fast.” They too were in on the bidding for DoubleClick and lost, which had to have stung pretty bad. Now Microsoft is protesting the proposed sale, and they also expect other companies like Yahoo and AT&T to join them.

The New York Times is reporting that Microsoft is claiming that the deal would “hurt competition in the fast-growing market for advertising on the Web and raise questions about how much personal information would be collected by Google.”

Microsoft is usually the target of these antitrust battles, and now they find themselves on the other side. AT&T is already saying that antritrust authorities really need to take a look at this deal, and Microsoft is saying that if this deal goes through, Google would be master of 85 percent of the market for ad distributing and they need to be stopped.

Google’s response to all of this is that they’ve taken a look at their claims and it’s not true. Along with Microsoft, Yahoo was also in on the bidding for DoubleClick, and they’re expected to step up and express their concerns over this deal as well.

So here we are with Microsoft, the king of anti-trust, hoping to stop Google in their tracks before they become a monopoly. Ironic, isn’t it? Although, maybe Microsoft does have a point here?

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May 09

Schedule Computer Shutdown or Restart

Posted in: Features, Freeware, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili

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

The other day we wrote about an application called Local Cooling who’s goal was to save energy by teaching you to hibernate your computer when it’s not being used. It didn’t really present any useful features, but it showed you cool stats to let you know how much energy you have saved.

Today I have a program that is actually useful: WinOFF (Download Mirror). This is a free program that doesn’t require any installation. The best part is that you can have it automatically shutdown, hibernate, and restart your computer at anytime throughout the day. Just tell it when, and WinOFF will make sure the job gets done when it is supposed to.

Here are some screenshots of WinOFF (click the thumbnails for fullsize versions):

And here is everything that you can do with it:

Shut down the computer at certain hour (e.g. at 12:00).
Shut down the computer in several minutes (e.g. in 15 minutes).
Shut down the computer when the CPU becomes idle.
Several types of shut down (shut down, restart, log off, power off, suspend, hibernate and lock computer).
Option for hang up the modem instead of doing a shut down.
Option for set a password to protect the access to the configuration.
Complete command line support for batch process.
Option for capture the desktop and/or execute a program before the shut down.
Option for run the program when starting Windows session, for daily programmed shut down.
Immediate shut down and computer lock from the traybar icon menu.
Option for show an alert window, which allow the cancellation of the shut down.

This free program is also a great solution for anyone who forgets to shutdown their computer at night. After all, you can have an alert shown before the action is executed. That way if you’re in the middle of doing something you can bypass shutdown process.

WinOff Homepage (Download Mirror)

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Hasta La Gadget!

Firefox 3 Places Gets “Smart Folders”

Make Windows Shortcuts Open Mac-Style Stacks

Opera 9.5 is Almost Done

Download Nero 8 on October 1st

Notepad++ 4.0 Now Available!