Oct 04

CyberNotes: Hot Corners in Windows

Posted in: CyberNotes, Features, Freeware, Screenshots, Software, Tips and Tricks, Today's Chili, Windows

This article was written on May 06, 2008 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Time Saving Tuesday

One of the features in Mac OS X that often gets some attention is what’s called “hot corners.” It’s a simple concept that gives the user an opportunity to assign actions that are performed whenever their mouse hits a corner of the screen. With the help of some free Windows apps you too will also be able to bask in the goodness known as hot corners!

We’ve got a variety of solutions that we’re going to show you, and all of them make use of hot corners. With them you’ll be able to show your desktop, put your computer into standby, enable the screensaver, activate Vista’s Flip3D, and much more. That’s right… all of that without using any keyboard shortcuts!

–Application (Homepage)–

This is a small free app that will bring hot corners to life for your Windows computer. Once you go through the brief setup process the program will immediately start running in the System Tray. The first thing you’ll want to do is configure Hot Corners so that there are some actions associated with the corners of the screen. Here are the different actions you can assign to each of the four corners:

  • Open the control panel
  • Lock/Switch User
  • Open “My Documents”
  • Run any application or open any folder
  • Start your Screensaver
  • Search Google
  • Show your desktop
  • Put your computer into standby mode
  • Disable/Enable your Screensaver
  • Close the current window

Hmmm… the problem is that there are so many good choices, but only four corners to work with. See that extra tab in the configuration screen labeled “Mouse Move?” You can actually assign up to four more mouse gestures using these! To activate the mouse gesture you’ll want to hold down the Windows key+X, and then move your mouse up, left, right, or down respectively.

Here are some screenshots of what the configuration screens looks like:

(Click to Enlarge)
hot corners.png hot corners 2.png

–Vista Gadget (Homepage)–

vista hot corners.pngIf you’re running Vista then the Hot Corners gadget will likely be one that you’ll love. Bundled with it is a homebrew version of Mac’s Expose so that whenever you hit a corner of the screen that you specifed all of your active applications will be tiled. Alternatively you could have it activate Vista’s native Flip3D application switcher.

One thing that I want to point out is that this gadget doesn’t really turn a corner of the screen into a mouse-activatable area… it’s more like an edge. As you can see in the screenshot to the right the edge has a customizable height, which means it can essentially become as large or small as you would like.

There are two tricks that I’ve found while using this:

  • You can’t set the gadget to be 100% transparent, but you can come close. You can take the opacity down to 20% by right-clicking on the gadget. This will make it nearly invisible.
  • Remember, you can have multiple “copies” of nearly all Vista gadgets. Just drag as many as you want onto your desktop, and then move them into position. That way you could use one corner/edge of the screen for Expose, and another for Flip3D!

–AutoHotkey Script (Homepage)–

This is geared for the slightly more advanced users out there that are familiar with AutoHotkey scripting. This is currently only available in a script fashion, and you’ll need to have AutoHotkey installed to compile it. The reason why I wanted to share this is that it’s one of the more powerful hot corner solutions available, and the possibilities of what you can do with the hot corners is nearly endless thanks to how extensive AutoHotkey is.

There’s just a small amount of code that you’ll need to modify located near the top. To help make this even more unique it is designed to allow up to four different actions per corner. How’s that possible? In addition to the typical mouse-over it also recognizes whether you’re holding down the Control, Alt, or Shift keys. I’d have to believe that once you get over a dozen hot corner actions assigned that it would be pretty hard to remember what each of them do. ;)

–Overview–

So I think it’s time to give your fingers a break from all of those keyboard shortcuts. Setup some hot corners to help satisfy your need for speed!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 03

Microsoft and Adobe Go Head-To-Head…Again

Posted in: adobe, Apple, Microsoft, Pre-Release, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili, Web Sites

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

It was almost a year ago when Microsoft and Adobe went head-to-head because of the built-in PDF functionality that Office 2007 was supposed to include. Adobe was obviously afraid that by Microsoft incorporating the ability to save a document as a PDF, that they could lose out on people needing their tools. In the end Microsoft had to provide the feature as an add-on that can be downloaded at no cost.

Now they are both at it again because Microsoft is launching a new technology called Silverlight and Adobe introduced a media player. Both of the offerings aim to make the user’s media experience on the Web more feature-rich while also making the media transfer more efficient.

SilverlightHere are some snippets from Microsoft’s press release on Silverlight:

Microsoft Silverlight, previously called Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere (WPF/E), integrates with existing Web technologies and assets to provide higher-quality experiences with lower costs for media delivery. Delivered to end users through a seamless, fast installation, Silverlight offers consistent experiences to both Macintosh and Windows users on a variety of browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.
…
Leading media companies and solution providers have announced support for Silverlight including Akamai Technologies, Brightcove, Eyeblaster, Limelight Networks, Major League Baseball, NaviSite Inc., Netflix, Pinnacle Systems Inc., Rhozet Corp., Skinkers, Sonic Solutions, Tarari Inc., Telestream Inc. and Winnov. All have indicated plans to deliver Silverlight-based experiences for their viewers and customers.
…
“Netflix is leading the way for people to rent movies for instant viewing over the Internet,” said Netflix Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt. “With 6.3 million members now and millions more in the next few years, Netflix needs rapid and reliable scalability so all members can enjoy DVD-quality movies immediately on our instant-viewing feature. We depend on Microsoft Windows Media technologies, and we’re excited about Microsoft Silverlight as a platform to enable instant watching of great content for all our members, on multiple platforms.”

Adobe plans on doing just about the same thing with their media player, and they even plan on dipping their hands in some Flash DRM! As NewTeeVee points out this will essentially be a video RSS Reader that retrieves the video listings from feeds. Here is what Adobe has to say about the media player in their press release:

For viewers, Adobe Media Player enables higher quality Flash format playback, the ability to download and view videos offline, ways to discover interesting new shows, full screen playback, one-click viewer ratings, and a powerful Favorites feature that automatically downloads new episodes of favorite TV shows or video podcasts. The player is cross-platform, based on open standards – including RSS and SMIL – and brings viewers the highly desired ability to play the Web’s most popular video format outside of their browser.

For content publishers, Adobe Media Player enables better ways to deliver, monetize, brand, track and protect video content. It provides an array of video delivery options for high-quality online and offline playback, including on-demand streaming, live streaming, progressive download, and protected download-and-play. The Adobe Media Player enables a wider selection of monetization and branding options including viewer-centric dynamic advertising and the ability to customize the look and feel of the player on the fly to match the brand or theme of the currently playing content.

Adobe Media Player

Unlike Microsoft, Adobe is yet to announce any partnerships that they have already setup. Either they don’t want to tip off Microsoft as to companies that are looking for a better online media solution, or they don’t have any big companies like Microsoft.

One thing is for sure and it’s that this will be one big cat fight. Normally when two companies compete like this, the consumer is always the winner because they are constantly updating and innovating their technology.

Source: GigaOm

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 02

ThumbGen: Batch Create Image Thumbnails

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

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

Batch Create Image Thumbnails with ThumbGen

Making image thumbnails in bulk can be a rough process. Until now I’ve used Easy Thumbnails to batch create the thumbnails on Windows, but I just found a program called ThumbGen today that is extremely simple to use.

With ThumbGen all you have to do is drag over the images from Windows Explorer that you want thumbnails for. Then you pick the constraints on the dimensions, the prefix/suffix, and the resulting file type (JPG, GIF, BMP, or PNG). That’s it!

I’ll admit that it isn’t as full-featured as it could be (can’t add a watermark, border, etc…), but it’s free and straightforward. I also think that there should be a portable version of this offered since it is a mere 451KB download, and it only adds a handful of files to your computer (It does save some settings in your Windows profile though). I’d love to carry this thing around on my USB drive.

If you’ve got a better batch thumbnail creator that’s free be sure to let us know, but ThumbGen is looking pretty darn good.

ThumbGen Homepage

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 01

Start++: Add Keyword Searches to Vista’s Start Menu

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

This article was written on February 23, 2007 by CyberNet.

Start++

I was just reading a post by Brandon Paddock regarding a new (free) tool called Start++ that he made for Windows Vista. He works on the search technology over at Microsoft, and sticking with his area of expertise he has gone and made an awesome application. It reminds me of the keyword search in Firefox and Opera where you can designate a single letter or phrase to performing a search. The example search pictured above would do a Google search for “CyberNet News” in my default browser.

Start++

The thing that I really like about Start++ is that you can assign both keyword searches that open in your default web browser, or you can have it open a program/file. The only catch is that right now there is no “Browse” command to browse for the program or file that you want to open. I also noticed that it doesn’t support spaces in the file path even if you put quotes around it, and looking through the comments I see that someone else was having a similar problem. Brandon said that he should be able to work on it this weekend so I’ll be anxiously awaiting a new version.

It is probably important for me to mention that this does not work with Vista’s “global search field” and only works with things entered in Vista’s Start Menu search box. Initially I was bummed about that, but I don’t think I would ever use it anywhere but the Start Menu.

While you’re waiting along with me for the new release you can still take advantage of performing a quick search for your favorite sites. I can’t wait for this to work with spaces in document names and applications because it will become really useful to me then. Thanks for a great tool Brandon!

Vista tip: If you didn’t notice, as soon as you click on the Start Orb the search box is focused. I didn’t realize that initially and found myself clicking in the search field before I started typing, when in reality all I had to do was click the Start Orb (or press the Windows Key) and start typing. Props to Microsoft for thinking about focusing on the search box!

Download Start++

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 01

Joomla 1.5 Features & Screenshots

Posted in: Features, Freeware, Newly Released, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on January 22, 2008 by CyberNet.

Joomla 15

Joomla 1.5 was just released earlier today, and it is a huge milestone for the content management system. There was so much excitement that this morning I had troubles even getting to their site to retrieve some information about the new version. Once we got in we grabbed several screenshots of the improved admin interface and posted them below.

It’s possible that you haven’t heard of Joomla before. It can be compared to blogging software such as WordPress or MovableType, but it includes many more features out-of-the-box. It’s completely open source, and also has an incredible community surrounding them who have helped build thousands of plug-ins. In all it is packed with features that will help manage whatever kind of content you’re looking to post.

–Features Overview (View)–

Administrators:

  • Simplified administrative interface
  • Improved media manager (multi-delete, batch uploads, etc…)
  • Browse media folders and insert images as you write
  • More control over pagination
  • Search engine friendly URL’s

Designers:

  • Codebase is better organized giving designers 100% control over layouts
  • Create a custom module chrome
  • Creating templates doesn’t require editing of variables making it simpler to work with

Developers:

  • Now separated into a three tiered stack to keep the internal structure clean and allow developers to leverage the different layers
  • Backwards compatible with PHP 4.3, and does support PHP 5
  • Document package gives extension develpers control over the entire document rendered on any given page load

–Screenshots–

(Click to Enlarge)
Joomla - 1 Joomla - 2 Joomla - 3 Joomla - 4 Joomla - 5 Joomla - 6 Joomla - 7 Joomla - 8 Joomla - 9

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Sep 30

Windows 7 User Interface to be a Drastic Change?

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

This article was written on July 24, 2007 by CyberNet.

Julie Larsen-GreenThe next Windows milestone, currently dubbed Windows 7, could very well be sporting a huge user interface overhaul. Now what makes me think that? Julie Larsen-Green (pictured to the right) is leading the Windows 7 area that is focused on "end-user interaction design and overall experience." You may not have heard of Julie before, but she is the one who pushed for the Office 2007 interface redesign which was a drastic move away from the menus and toolbars we had been familiar with for nearly 20-years.

I think that Microsoft would be smart for making a big change in the Windows user interface because Linux is quickly catching up. It’s just like how OpenOffice was on the verge of being a clone of Microsoft Office, but when Office 2007 was released there was a strong difference established between the interface of the two office suites. As users become more familiar with how Office 2007 operates it will be increasingly difficult for people to switch to the free OpenOffice.

So what could Microsoft do to drastically distinguish themselves from competing products? I’ve been wondering that for awhile now, and I’m sure Julie has some great ideas up her sleeve. One thing that I would really like to see is an efficient an customizable implementation of pie menus. I’ve talked about this before, but I think that using pie menus would offer increased productivity over the traditional right-click menu.

The other idea that is floating around the Internet is that the Taskbar will be replaced with a sidebar. This is seen in almost all of the Windows 7 concepts drawn up including the nice set by OSBeta. Here is a preview of one of their concepts:

Windows 7 Mockup / Concept

It’s actually kind of fun to see what people come up with, but in the end it is Microsoft’s decision as to what the consumers will receive. Do you think Microsoft’s vision of Windows in 2010 is a little far fetched from where we currently stand? Is it time to ditch the Taskbar?

Source: APC

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Sep 30

CyberNotes: Delay Startup Programs

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

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

CyberNotes
Time Saving Tuesday

Do you find Windows starting up slow because of all the applications that are set to automatically run at the beginning? If you consult anyone tech savvy they will say to cut back on the number of applications that start with your computer, but that’s hard for some people to do. Most of the time those programs serve a purpose, and people want them to be running when they need them.

If you delete the items you’ll probably end up manually starting them later on. So how about we delay the startup programs for a few minutes until after Windows has had time to run all of your most important applications? That’s where the free Startup Delayer comes into play (for Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP/Vista). With it you can designate which applications you want to start with Windows, and you can associate a delay for each one. For example, your instant messenger programs probably aren’t of immediate importance so why not have them start a few minutes after Windows has done its thing?

Lets take a look at how to make Startup Delayer work for you…

–Adding Startup Items–

The heart and soul of Startup Delayer is the central management screen. That’s where you can specify what programs you want to startup, assign each one a delay in seconds, and move them around so that each app starts in the order that you want it to.

Delayer - Manage Startup Sequence
Click to Enlarge

You would think that being able to assign a delay to a startup program is enough, but Startup Delayer does even more than that. You can also choose the process priority (low, below normal, normal, above normal, high, or realtime) and the initial window size (maximized, minimized, hidden, or normal) of each application.

–Import Startup Items–

Sure you could sit there manually adding all of the programs to Startup Delayer, but why go through the hassle? In the File menu there is an import option which will list all of the existing applications that are scheduled to startup with Windows. Check the boxes of the apps that you want Startup Delayer to handle, and click the Import button. Startup Delayer will import them, and it will remove the options from the Windows Registry/Startup folder to ensure that there are no duplicates!

Delayer - Import Startup Items

Tip: There is a Create Backup button at the bottom that I highly suggest you use before importing any of the entries. This will backup all of your startup entries in case you decide to revert back to the traditional startup method.

–Make Your Sequence Start with Windows–

Entering in startup entries isn’t enough though. After you get the order and delays of your applications just right you’ll need to tell Windows to run your sequence when it starts up. Here’s what you have to do (see the corresponding diagram below):

  1. Save the sequence to your computer. It doesn’t really matter where you save it just as long as it will always be accessible (tip: don’t put it on a USB drive).
  2. Choose the display method (make sure to press the Save button if you make changes):
    • This Window – At startup it shows the same management screen that you use to configure the startup entries.
    • Report – At startup it shows a small window that lists which programs have already been initiated and which ones still need to run (screenshot in the next section)
    • None – At startup no information is shown on the progress of your startup items. It’s all done “behind-the-scenes”.
  3. Click the Execute with Windows link and find the file that you saved in Step 1. After completing this step your sequence will be scheduled to start with Windows.

Delayer - Start With Windows 

–Enjoy the Fruits of Your Labor–

So you have all of that done? There is nothing left to do other than enjoy the faster startup of Windows! Here’s what the report view looks like when starting the computer:

Delayer - Startup List

Ahh, it’s nice being able to fully control and delay startup programs!

Download Startup Delayer

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Sep 30

CyberWare: 3D Desktop for Windows is Sure to Impress Friends

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

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

CyberNet's CyberWare
Tracking Down Great Software For You!

There is no doubt that 3D is going to be the way of the future when it comes to software as we have already seen with XGL in Linux. Windows seems to be falling behind in that respect, but there is a free program available to Windows users that offers a unique minimizing effect to the programs currently running on your computer.

The free program that I’m talking about is called Mandotate, and is found over in the Neowin forums (download mirror). The program, which was made available nearly 3 years ago, has begun to resurface as a popular freeware application. One thing that you should note before trying it out is that there is no installation of the program required, however, it does need you to install a registry key by double-clicking on the install.reg file that’s included. This registry setting is used to save your settings for the program.

So what does Mandotate do? It is similar to the Project Looking Glass in some sense, and is essentially another alternative to minimizing your computer. When you have it running there will be a button with a trapezoidal shape next to a window’s minimize button:

3D Desktop

After you press that button is when the magic happens. Windows will begin to angle themselves so that you can easily see what lies behind them. You can then drag them around and reposition them so that they are exactly where you want them:

3D Desktop

As you drag windows closer to the middle of the screen they will get thinner and thinner until they essentially disappear. You can kinda see this happening in the screenshot I took above, where the bottom Firefox window is “thicker” than the one located above it. Even though the windows may disappear there will still be the little tabs that stick out which make it easy to identify which windows are which.

So what have I noticed bad about the program? I have had it crash on “minimizing” certain programs which kinda sucks, but it doesn’t crash my whole computer or anything. I just see an error box popup in some other language and I press OK which closes the application. The other thing that I have noticed which is very annoying is a shadow box that shows up around the title box for the “minimized” window. Sometimes even after returning the window back to normal the shadow still appears, and I haven’t figured out a way to get rid of it besides restarting the computer. Those little tags can be disabled though, which is what I have done. I am running this on Vista which isn’t mentioned as a supported operating system and could be my problem, but it is still really cool.

I am hoping that a similar application will eventually emerge that uses Vista’s Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). If that happened then we would probably be able to see live previews of applications as they were angled, such as watching a movie play. In order to take advantage of any program using WPF will require that you have a graphics card capable of running Aero. As Vista gets more popular we will surely see WPF applications popping up left and right, and I am anxious to see what ideas developers can come up with that really showcase the power Vista harnesses.

Download Mirror

Source: Neowin [via Digg]

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Sep 29

How to Quickly Share Screenshots

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

This article was written on July 07, 2011 by CyberNet.

Puush screenshots

arrow Windows Windows; Mac Mac arrow
There are a multitude of screenshot utilities out there, but the nice thing with Puush is that it really only focuses on one thing: sharing screenshots. This is your kind of app if you’re the type of person that merely snaps a screenshot and immediately sends it to someone.

What Puush does is take a screenshot of the current window, your desktop, or a manually selected area of your desktop. It will then automatically upload the file to the Puush site, display a popup with the URL, and copy the link to your clipboard so that it can immediately be shared. What’s awesome is that the link you send out points directly to the screenshot rather than a page where the screenshot is just a small thumbnail.

So where do they make their money? The app requires that you sign up for a free account, and with that you get 200MB worth of storage. That amounts to a lot of screenshots, but the good news is that it’s extremely easy to clear out all of the screenshots you’ve taken to make room for new ones from the account management section on their site. For that reason most of you won’t have to worry about upgrading once you’ve hit the quota.

Puush Screenshots Homepage (Windows/Mac; Freeware)

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Sep 29

Video of iPhone Settings and Ringtones

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

This article was written on June 25, 2007 by CyberNet.

Despite the fact that the iPhone will be released in just a few short days, we still really haven’t heard much about the details of the phone in regards to settings, and even some of its features. A recent video floating around the web gives us a glimpse at some of the settings that you can expect, including a sample of a few ringtones.

There’s a whole list of new details here, I’ll just point out some of the ones that stood out for me. From the movie, we learn:

  • Included with the iPhone is an in-line viewer for PDFs, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Excel documents in email.
  • Want to listen to a portion of a voicemail again? Rewind it like a sound file.
  • iPhone headphones include volume and call control.
  • Limited ringtone selection available in the start menu, and Gizmodo points out that it doesn’t look like songs can be used.
  • Confirmed IMAP/POP support

Cost

Now, another thing we haven’t heard any official announcement on is the price of the service plan. While there is still no word yet, using the current prices that AT&T charges for their BlackBerry users, we can get an estimate of what you might expect.  Currently, BlackBerry users are charged between $34.99 and $79.99 per month for data, and between $49.99 to $99.99 for voice. Assuming that iPhone pricing will be similar, we can expect the range of prices to be between $84.98 and $179.98.

Remember, if you decide to purchase an iPhone, you will be required to sign a two year service contract.  Should you decide that you don’t want the phone/service anymore, you will incur a $175 cancellation fee.

iPhone Shortcomings?

Engadget is reporting that a “trusted source” of theirs has been fooling around with an iPhone, and not all of their reactions were positive.For example, they pointed out that the keyboard was “disappointing,” and often times registers multiple keys because of the two-fingered nature of the keyboard. If you plan on doing a lot of typing, it’s possible that you’re better off sticking with your BlackBerry. Another shortcoming mentioned was that the touchscreen took some rough-handling at times before it would register the input, which is certainly something that would take getting used to.

When you head into an Apple store or AT&T store on Friday, be sure you play around with the phone before you commit to buying it, and make sure that it’s something you’d want for two years.  I’d hate for anyone to have to shell out the $175 required in cancellation fees.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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