Oct 18

Microsoft Office 2010 Web Apps for IE, Firefox, & Safari

Posted in: Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on July 13, 2009 by CyberNet.

When Google made the announcement of Chrome OS last week we knew that Microsoft had something planned for toady, and they did. At the Worldwide Partner Conference 2009 (WDC) they unveiled Office 2010 along with a web-based solution that offers a lot of basic editing capabilities for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote files.

The thing that I was the most interested in was browser compatibility. I didn’t see anything about it in their press release, but then I came across the video that I embedded below. In the video they say that the Web Apps work in IE, Firefox, and Safari.

Now what about hosting? Here’s what their press release says in regards to that:

Office Web applications will be available in three ways: through Windows Live, where more than 400 million consumers will have access to Office Web applications at no cost; on-premises for all Office volume licensing customers including more than 90 million Office annuity customers; and via Microsoft Online Services, where customers will be able to purchase a subscription as part of a hosted offering.

Right now Office 2010 is only available to select testers, but all of this will be released in the first half of 2010. Below I’ve embedded the video (a little boring) that Microsoft published in regards to the Web Apps as well as some screenshots I grabbed from the video.

Microsoft Word 2010 Web:
word 2010 web app.png

Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 Web:
powerpoint 2010 web app.png

Microsoft Excel 2010 Web:
excel 2010 web app.png

Microsoft OneNote 2010 Web:
onenote 2010 web app.png

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 18

“Complete My Album” with iTunes

Posted in: Apple, itunes, Microsoft, Screenshots, Today's Chili, Web Sites

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

CompletemyalbumToday Apple iTunes introduced a new feature to the iTunes store called “Complete my Album.” This is for those times when you’ve purchased individual songs, and then later on you decide to buy the entire album which the song(s) came from.  For each song that you’ve bought that’s on an album that you end up buying, you’ll get a 99 cent credit.

That means that you will no longer have to pay for the same song twice! And because songs are typically 99 cents to begin with (albums are usually $9.99), you’re essentially getting a refund in the form of credit for the purchase that you made. 

After reading several comments, I’ve seen a few people say that this is pretty much useless and they won’t use it. However, often times only certain songs from an album are released, and then months later the full album is available for purchase.

iTunes will give you 180 days after purchasing an individual song to get the credit for songs that are on an album that you purchase. And don’t worry, they’re not leaving out the millions of people who have purchased songs previously, and want the full album now because of this new offer. During this initial introduction, you will have until June 26th to “complete albums” for songs that you have already purchased at any point from iTunes and get the “discount”.

When you go to the “Complete My Albums” page at the iTunes store, you’ll see the songs that you’ve purchased, the albums that they correspond with, and what the cost of the album would be with the credit applied for your previous a-la-carte purchases. Nice move Apple, I can see a boost in Album sales coming already!

Source: News.com (Thanks CoryC!)
Image Source: Gizmodo

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 16

Free Kaspersky AntiVirus after $50 Rebates!

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

This article was written on March 30, 2007 by CyberNet.

KasperskyAmazon (only in the United States) is currently offering the Kaspersky Antivirus for free (actually $-0.01) after you mail in two rebates that are each worth $25. I know, rebates are a pain but it might just be worth it knowing that you are using one of the highest rated antivirus applications available. Amazon also offers free shipping on this item and you’ll actually be receiving a boxed version of it…not just a download link.

The rebates from Amazon will both be valid on purchases until April 7, 2007 so you still have a little bit of time to think about it. They’ll need to be postmarked (a.k.a. mailed out) within 30 days of your purchase which means you can’t just put it on the backburner and forget about it for a few months.

If you don’t mind having a limited feature set you could always download the always free AOL Active Virus Shield which is powered by Kaspersky Antivirus. That will give you great protection, but you will have to find a way to survive knowing you have an application by sponsored by AOL on your computer. :)

Note: There is an update available on Kaspersky’s website so that the antivirus software works with Windows Vista. The version that Amazon is offering only says that it is XP compatible but the update will also make it compatible with Vista.

Get Kaspersky Antivirus for free from Amazon

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 16

Best Buy Gets Two Weeks of Apple TV all to Themselves

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

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

BestbuyappleSomehow, Best Buy managed to persuade Apple into giving them two weeks of the Apple TV all to themselves! As we mentioned yesterday, Apple TVs just started shipping. The deal that Best Buy formed with Apple gives them two weeks to sell the unit before any other retailer (other than the Apple store of course)!

However, during this initial two weeks of exclusivity, Best Buy will be given a limited number, only 3,000 units. With over 800 stores and only 3,000 units? Hmm… I’ll let you do the math with this one. If you’re really wanting an Apple TV, and you don’t have an Apple Store nearby (most people don’t), you’re probably better off purchasing online. Chances are, your Best Buy will only be given one or two, if any.

Source: News.com

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 16

Windows Live Writer Beta 2: New Inline Spell Checking & Tables

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

This article was written on May 30, 2007 by CyberNet.

Windows Live WriterThe Windows Live Writer team just posted the Beta 2 which is now available for you to download. It has a handsome list of new features, but nothing I hadn’t really seen in a blog editor before:

  • Inline spell checking
  • Table editing
  • Ability to add categories
  • Page authoring for WordPress and TypePad
  • Support for excerpts and extended entries
  • Improved hyperlinking and image insertion
  • Paste Special
  • Automatic synchronization of local and online edits
  • Integration with Windows Live Gallery
  • Support for Blogger Labels
  • New look and feel
  • Available in 6 languages
  • Improved accessibility and keyboard support

My first impression of the new Live Writer was…wow! It looks amazing, and if appearance counts for anything it blows the other blog editors out of the water. It is sharp, sophisticated, and most of all, usable.

Windows Live Writer
Click to Enlarge

The inline spell checking and table manager are awesome features that will surely come in handy. Unfortunately it still doesn’t appear to support the XHTML standards, but I’m sure many of the Live Writer users don’t know what that is.

I played with it a little more, and two things I thought you might like to see is the appearance of the right-click menu for the spell checker, and what you can actually do with the tables. Here are two screenshots that will sum that up well:

Windows Live Writer Windows Live Writer

When creating the table, it asks you for all of the basic information just as if you were creating it in a word processor:

Windows Live Writer

As you can see there are a lot of great things available with the new Live Writer, and you should consider giving it a shot. Personally, I’m a huge fan of Post2Blog which coincidentally turned to freeware the other day. It is a great application that has a ton of features, but I would have to say that Live Writer looks better and is a little simpler to use.

So what’s it missing? Despite Live Writer supporting plug-ins, I still think there are some things that should be built-in. Some of these things might be available via a plug-in, but this is what I would like to see Live Writer shipped with:

  • XHTML standards compliance
  • Table options (a.k.a. the stuff from the Table Menu) should open in the sidebar like they do when you click on an image.
  • Customize the order of the categories (I don’t know of any blogging software that does this though).
  • Enable Auto-saving by default. I don’t know who wouldn’t like the assurance that their documents are constantly being saved?
  • Align buttons! If I want to center some text, I shouldn’t be going to the Format -> Align menu. That takes way to long. There should be buttons to do this. Also, what about the shortcut keys for aligning things, such as Ctrl+E for centering?
  • I’m not sure about this one, but maybe make the sidebar expand/contract when you hover over it? That way it saves space and is still extremely easy to get to.
  • I would like to create snippets as well. That way some of the repetitive things aren’t so…well, repetitive. This is great for people who guest blog and always conclude each post with a short summary of who they are.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 15

Create YouTube Playlists in the Firefox Sidebar

Posted in: Firefox Extensions, Freeware, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili, videos, YouTube

This article was written on October 03, 2007 by CyberNet.

YouPlayer for Firefox I’m sure many of you are YouTube addicts, and you probably can’t get enough of people jumping off roofs or watching those sonic booms. Now there is a Firefox extension to help match your crazy addiction!

YouPlayer appears as a sidebar item in your Firefox browser once it is installed. With it you can drag and drop YouTube video URL’s into the player to have it create a playlist.

One of the reasons I found this extremely useful was that I could drag and drop YouTube search results right into the player, and then watch them all without leaving the page that I was currently on. The only downside about doing it that way was that it didn’t retrieve the title of the video, and would have to be manually renamed if you wanted an easy-to-understand playlist. If you go to each videos standalone page, and then drag the tab over the naming convention is similar to what you see in the screenshot I took to the right.

There are a few things that came to my mind which would make this extension a must-have:

  • It would be awesome if I could add videos from multiple video sites. Sadly it only supports YouTube right now.
  • A bulk video adder seems like a necessity. Think about being able to drag a YouTube search results tab over into the playlist, and then having it automatically add all the videos from that page.
  • What about searching YouTube from within the sidebar? Then you could setup “smart” playlists like iTunes has.
  • A one-click option to have a playlist generated for the day’s most viewed videos would be nice.

Source: Lifehacker & Mozilla Links

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 15

Apple Error Reveals 8-core Mac Pro

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

This article was written on March 13, 2007 by CyberNet.

A nice surprise recently appeared on the online UK Apple Store that confirms what people have been saying all along. Late last night and early today while searching for “Mac Pro,” the first result displayed an option that said “Now quad-core or 8–core processing power.”The image below is a screenshot of the listing from Tuaw.com who managed to get there before it was taken down.

Applequad

Not too long after the buzz started to get around the Web, the entire UK store went down which tells us this wasn’t intentional, and when it came back up the listing was gone. When Intel announced their quad core processor, it was clear that at some point someone would make the move and introduce computers with 8–core processing power.

Apple is probably really close to releasing the 8–core as expected. It was just last month that MacScoop reported that along with the black 24–inch iMac, there would also be the 8–core Mac Pro coming in March sometime.

People have been waiting for this option for months, and soon they’ll be able to get all 8 cores.

Just for fun I decided to configure the most expensive Mac Pro possible, and it turned out one seriously loaded computer at a grand total of $18,125.00. Once the 8–core is available, I wonder if we can push it over $20,000? :) (Specs below)

  • Two 3.0GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
  • (4) 750GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drives
  • 16GB (8 x 2GB) of memory
  • NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 512MB, Stereo 3D (2 x dual-link DVI)
  • (2) Apple Cinema HD Display (30″ flat panel)
  • Plus general accessories that they offer like keyboard/wireless mighty mouse

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Oct 14

CyberNotes: PhraseExpress 4 Officially the Ultimate Time Saver?

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

This article was written on May 01, 2007 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Time Saving Tuesday

We have raved about the free PhraseExpress software before, and we are going to do it again! They recently released version 4 of their application, and the enhancements it has will make you so much more productive that you’ll be wondering how you got by without using it!

The concept behind PhraseExpress is extremely simple: you type some text in an application and PhraseExpress will automatically replace that text with something else. When would that be useful? Well, I’m sure you use abbreviations all of the time without even thinking about it. Take for example a chat conversation where you type messages like BRB (be right back) or TTYL (talk to you later). You probably use those abbreviations because they are faster to type, but you can setup PhraseExpress to automatically kick the habit of sending abbreviated phrases!

The newest version of PhraseExpress has all sorts of enhancements that take the program beyond just being a simple text replacement utility:

  • Formatted text and bitmaps: This is great news for people who have signatures that they automatically want inserted when composing an email or document. I’ll explain more about this below.
    PhraseExpress
  • Automatic spelling corrections: This is just like Microsoft Word because PhraseExpress will automatically correct misspellings of thousands of the most common words. Having this feature when composing emails or typing comments in a browser is extremely handy!
  • Assign multiple phrases to an Autotext: With this feature you can essentially have multiple phrases assigned to a single “keyword.” Whenever you type that keyword you will be presented with a drop-down menu for you to select which phrase you would like inserted:
    PhraseExpress
  • Assign multiple Autotexts to a phrase: This is the opposite of the previous bullet because this lets you setup multiple Autotexts (or keywords as I like to call them) for a single phrase. This is useful if you have a hard time remembering what Autotext you assigned to a phrase. An example of this is seen below with the default “.com” auto replacement that is setup. If you mistype “.com” with any of the variations listed it will automatically correct it for you.
    PhraseExpress

There is a whole lot more that is new in PhraseExpress 4, but what I have listed above are the most beneficial for me. There are a few kinks that I have noticed with the formatted text and bitmaps addition though:

  • To copy a Bitmap image or formatted text into a signature you actually need to highlight it in either a browser or in a document. Then click on the PhraseExpress icon in the System Tray and select the “Create new phrase” option. This will prompt you with a dialog box to save the highlighted text, but you need to make sure the “Save text formatting” box is checked. Click here for more detailed instructions.
  • Saving formatting in Firefox doesn’t seem to work, so you’ll either need to use Internet Explorer or an application that supports text formatting/bitmaps if you want to save anything besides for a plain text phrase.
  • When originally seeing the image support feature I must have bypassed the word “Bitmap” in the description. I spent about 15 minutes trying to get a JPEG image to be saved in an email signature, but it just wouldn’t work. I’m guessing that the image must be saved in the Bitmap format for this feature to work properly.

There’s a lot more that you can do in PhraseExpress, which are all explained more in the manual. Here are a few of the tips that might be the most helpful for you:

Download PhraseExpress 4

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 14

Executor – Another Free Application Launcher

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

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

Executer Application Launcher A few days ago we put together a list of the best application launchers, and as it turns out there were some that were mentioned by commenters which we had never heard of. FMsaziri mentioned one in particular, called Executor, that really caught my eye when I checked it out.

The main thing that I was really impressed with was the Keyword creation utility (screenshots are below). You can setup a keyword to do things like restart your computer, launch a program, open a website, or even have a single keyword perform multiple tasks (such as opening several sites and/or programs). Vista users will also like the fact that you can designate a keyword to always run a program as an administrator.

–Installation–

The download site has two different versions of executor available. One will install Executor onto your computer just like many other programs, but there is also a version available that doesn’t require any installation. I wanted to point out that this might appear to be a portable version at first glance, but it’s actually not. Your settings are stored in the Windows Profile, so your configuration will not carry over from one computer to another without copying the profile.

–Features–

  • Fully skinnable
  • Keywords have properties like shortcuts, and you can for example drag-drop a shortcut/file/folder/favorite to add it as a keyword
  • Auto-completion for keywords, file system and history
  • Enter URLs directly (for example, www.google.com)
  • Keywords support parameters (for example, “google [SEARCH PHRASE]“)
  • Executor can dynamically add matching start-menu items and control panel items to the drop-down/list
  • Keyword “find [TEXT]” for using Windows Instant Search (Vista) feature or Windows Desktop Search (WDS for XP)
  • Each keyword can be assigned a hotkey, so Executor can also perform like many popular hotkey managers
  • One keyword or text input can start multiple keywords, urls, programs, documents, and files (for example, one keyword opens three websites and/or programs)
  • All file-paths can be auto-completed
  • Option to override windows run hotkey (Win-R)

–Settings–

There are a ton of different options that you can configure in the application. At first the number of settings might be overwhelming, but just take a deep breathe and you’ll be okay. :)

The keyword configuration screen (pictured on the left) is extremely powerful. You should pay a visit to the Executor help site for more information on making the most of the keywords.

Executer Keywords Executer Settings

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 14

Halo 3 Multiplayer Beta Coming May 16th (Video)

Posted in: Apple, gaming, Microsoft, Screenshots, Today's Chili, xbox

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

Microsoft made an announcement this morning that the Halo 3 Multiplayer Beta will debut on Xbox Live May 16th and will run through June 6th. This is a big moment for any Halo fan, and here is what Bungie says the Beta will include:

  • The Beta itself consists of three maps – Valhalla, High Ground and Snowbound – graphically improved since our first MP screenshots – and all three will be playable in Matchmaking only (that is after all, what we’re Beta testing here). All three maps are suitable for a wide variety of gameplay types, and you will have the chance to try all manner of game types, familiar and new.
  • There are a number of new features you’ll get to test out – including a new grenade type, a completely different class of weapon and some of the enhanced online functionality we plan to bring to the game – but it should be noted, a lot of secret features are hidden in this Beta. We’re keeping a lot of our powder dry for Fall. In May, when your firing the Spiker, sniping vehicles with the Spartan Laser and sticking fools with the Brute Spike grenade, remember that it’s just a peek-a-boo fraction of what’s to come.
  • There will also be new guns, vehicles and gameplay features to try – including the mysterious “X-Button” functionality. But you don’t have to wait to find out what that is, since you can now view part of its functionality in our latest Vidoc, “Is Quisnam Protero Damno!” a long look at the making of Halo 3’s Multiplayer game.

If that isn’t enough info to grab your attention, then maybe this 7–minute video on the making of Halo 3 will strike your interest:

There is a lot of interesting stuff that they demonstrate in the video, such as the “Man Cannon” which replaces the teleportation devices from Halo 1 and 2. At first I thought it would be a little weird, but I was sold when they showed a person shooting someone else coming out of the Man Cannon (check it out about 3 minutes and 35 seconds into the video).

It’s going to be tough to make it better than Halo 1 and 2, but I think they are definitely on the right track!

Source: Kotaku

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