Google Apps to start Charging for Services

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

Google Apps for domains in Beta has provided thousands of small businesses and organizations a way to offload their email systems while keeping their own email addresses, as well as other ways to stay connected and communicate. The benefits of web-based applications continue to increase as these web services become more capable and reliable each year.

Last year, Forbes crowned Google as the leader in web-based applications for small businesses, crowning Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Notebook, and Google Spreadsheets as the best in their class. As they continue to expand, they’ve made the decision to start charging a subscription fee of “a few dollars per month,” for Google Apps, according to a recent Business Week article. As they continue to expand, they’re attempting to take on larger corporations, even Universities who will pay for all of the benefits.

One example of this is the Walt Disney Company.  They’re in the process of finding a good replacement for their homegrown e-mail system that they’ve used for quite some time.  The Senior Vice- President for technology at Disney, Greg Brandeau says that Microsoft with Outlook ,Exchange, etc. isn’t what they’re looking for.  Instead, they’re looking towards Google Apps.

Part of the expansion of Google Apps includes adding in a word-processing and spreadsheet service to the suite.  Brandeau says, “We’re dying to use something like this.” So is Google capable of handling a company as large as Walt Disney, and should Google be considered competition for Microsoft?

Well, according to Google they’re perfectly capable of handling something as large as Walt Disney, and no, they don’t consider themselves competition for Microsoft.  In fact, Google themselves agree that they don’t have all of the bells and whistles that you’d find with some of Microsoft’s products like email backups. What they do have though, is simplicity and ease of use.

Douglass Merrill who is Google’s vice president for engineering says, “For the first time, consumer-grade applications are good enough that they can be used by enterprises.” Google says it’s not an us vs. them type of a deal because their goals are very different from Microsoft’s.

Another example? Arizona State University is switching their students over to Gmail, Google Calendar, and a customized start page this month.  This could easily start a trend among universities as they look for email solutions that are more affordable and easy to use for their students.

Microsoft isn’t totally out of the loop as far as the online applications go.  Microsoft Office Live is a pack of services offered for$39.95 per month for businesses which includes email, calendar, and other services.  Here in Iowa, there’s rumor of Iowa State switching to Microsoft Office Live.  Students would get addresses with no advertisements while in school, and after graduation they get to keep the address, but with the addition of advertisements in the inbox.

Clearly, web-based applications are the next big thing. For a few dollars a month, Google will offer their application services for domains. The good news if you’re wanting it for free? Digital Inspiration points out that “Organizations accepted by Google during the Google Apps for Your Domain beta period are eligible for free service for their approved beta users even beyond the end of the beta period, as described in the Terms of Service.”

Source: Business Week

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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HTC Magic / T-Mobile G1 gets Honeycomb port, Android past and future fused together (video)

The original gangster of Android, T-Mobile’s G1, just refuses to quietly fade into the annals of history. Even in spite of its long overdue end of retail life last summer, the handset continues to see support from grassroots modders and tweakers, with the latest project being the most ambitious of them all: an Android Honeycomb port. A pair of xda members have succeeded in splicing Android’s most senior hardware with its very latest software and the results are available to see on video after the break. As usual with these builds, half of the phone’s functions have still to be enabled and the UI lag seems like it’ll be a permanent feature whatever happens, but still — it’s Honeycomb on the G1!

Continue reading HTC Magic / T-Mobile G1 gets Honeycomb port, Android past and future fused together (video)

HTC Magic / T-Mobile G1 gets Honeycomb port, Android past and future fused together (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Mar 2011 04:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Skype 2.0.0.90 Released For Download

This article was written on March 01, 2006 by CyberNet.

Skype 2.0.0.90 Released For Download Today

Just three weeks after their previous release, Skype has put out another release with only one notable change and one notable fix. The change is that they “added a SkypeOut promotion button” and the fix was “relayed Skype-2-Skype call quality improvements”. The call quality improvements were a definite necessity with the increasing popularity of Google Talk and the clear voice communications with other Google Talk users.

I am surprised this update didn’t come earlier than three weeks because their previous update schedules were on one to two week intervals. It is nice to see that they are still persistent with frequent updates even after being released for a two and a half years.

Download Skype 2.0.0.90

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Create Site Shortcuts in Firefox

This article was written on July 16, 2009 by CyberNet.

sitelauncher.png

In Firefox you’ve always been able to assign a keyword to any bookmark, which would take you to that particular site if you type the keyword in the address bar and press Enter. That’s nice and all, but once you get a large number of shortcuts it can be tough to remember them all.

That’s where the SiteLauncher extension comes into play. You can setup all of your favorite sites and assign single-letter shortcuts to them. Then with a quick press of a hotkey (such as Ctrl+Space) you’re presented with a visually appealing list of shortcuts that is laid on top of the site you’re viewing. It serves as a good reminder of what letter you assigned to what site.

Want to know more? Here’s a quick rundown on the features:

  • Create super quick keyboard shortcuts to URLs and bookmarklets you need access to often.
  • Instant visual feedback from the Launcher panel means no need to actually memorize anything but the one hotkey.
  • Just about any character key can be associated with a site, you’re not limited to a-z and 0-9.
  • Highly customizable appearance – change colors, sizes, transparency, etc.
  • Make use of shortcuts with visual feedback, using the Launcher hotkey; or without, using the Direct-to-Site hotkey.
  • Arrange and group related shortcuts to have them appear together in a visually meaningful way.
  • Set the Launcher to open sites in current or new tab
  • Optionally set the Launcher to appear on startup instead of a regular homepage

If you’re feeling adventurous there’s an Alpha version available that also lets you choose the icon size, and to accommodate the mouse-centric users you no longer have to assign a letter to a shortcut.

SiteLauncher Homepage [Firefox only; free]

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Download Winamp 5.5: New Skin, New Features

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

Winamp 5.5 Bento Skin
Click to Enlarge

It’s hard to believe that Winamp will be celebrating its 10th anniversary next month, and they plan to do it in style! To mark the occasion they will be releasing Winamp 5.5 on 10/10 at 10:10AM, but a Beta version of the application has already been made available to testers.

Winamp 5.5 has been in the works for over a year, and I have to admit that the new Bento skin (pictured above) is among the best that I’ve ever seen for the media player. What makes this skin more unique is that it’s a single interface instead of being composed of several individual windows. I was a little skeptical of how nice that would be over the standard skin, but I quickly fell in love with Bento.

Here’s a list of the new features in Winamp 5.5:

  • Winamp Bento (SingleUI Skin)
  • Winamp Remote lets you access your media from anywhere via the web
  • Unified File Editor, with Album Art tab (for mp3, m4a, wma, ogg, flac)
  • Album Art window for Winamp Modern skin
  • Global ‘playback thread priority’ setting for decoders
  • Option to not show playlist item number in classic songticker
  • Version History drop-down selector and Search (in About dialog)
  • Multi-channel mp3surround support
  • Tree Options tab in Media Library Preferences
  • 3 pane view options in ‘Add/Edit View’ dialog
  • Smart View Presets
  • Album Art support/pane and retrieval service
  • Toolbar buttons to control view options
  • Winamp Playlist Generator (powered by Gracenote MusicID)
  • New fields, configurable filter panes & columns, 3 pane view
  • Album Art view & support for iPod and P4S Devices
  • Separate view for video files

That’s not even the half of what’s changed since the last stable version. The list goes on and on with dozens of bug fixes and enhancements all of which will make your Winamp experience that much better.

Original Winamp 0.2 And in case you’ve forgotten what started it all we thought it was time to open the vault to Winamp 0.2 (pictured to the right), which was released back in 1997. Here’s what Wikipedia had to say about that fine release:

Its windowless menubar-only interface showed only play(open), stop, pause, and unpause functions. A file specified on the command line or dropped onto its icon would be played.

The acronym "AMP" stood for "Advanced Multimedia Products".

Get Winamp 5.5 Beta – "it really whips the llama’s ass!" :)

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Vista Transformation Pack 6 RC1 Released

This article was written on November 24, 2006 by CyberNet.

Vista Transformation Pack

The next version of the Vista Transformation Pack (VTP) should be coming up in the next month or so but testing is now underway. If you haven’t used the VTP on your XP machine then you are surely missing out. Once installed it will make XP  look like Windows Vista by applying a transparency to the border of the windows as well a skin that is unbelievably similar to what is included with Vista.

One thing that everyone always complains about with the VTP is that it has problems uninstalling and returning your PC to the previous state (icon restoration is the biggest problem I hear about). With that being said the new VTP 6 RC1 is a test release and isn’t exactly something that I would install on my primary system, but that is my personal preference.

You can view the full changelog and join in a discussion about VTP 6 at JCXP.net. Reading through some of the posts that are already there show that there have been some problems with the installation but the developer has already fixed that problem. If you are feeling like your PC needs a change then go ahead and give it a whirl.

Download Vista Transformation Pack 6.0 RC1

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Windows Live Local Virtual Earth Gives You A Cars View

This article was written on March 07, 2006 by CyberNet.

Windows Live Local Virtual Earth Gives You A Cars View

We have all seen the bird’s eye view perspective that some mapping applications have, but have you ever see mapping software that will actually show you what it is like while you are driving? This is definitely a first for me and surprising it was Microsoft that has brought it to us and not Google.

The image above was actually taken when I was ‘walking’ through the San Francisco, California area. Currently, the only two cities that have been imaged are San Francisco, California and Seattle, Washington. The only difference between the walking mode and driving modes is that each has a different skin that is applied to the window. I like the walking mode the best because it is a cleaner interface.

Overall I am very impressed with this feature and it must have taken quite some time for them to complete. They appear to have been driving around with four different cameras attached to the top of a vehicle that was constantly taking pictures. The Web interface was designed to always show you what the view would be in front of you, to the right of you, and to the left of you. The image above was cropped to fit this site so you don’t get the full effects of the different views.

Microsoft did a really nice job on this and it is something that you really have to experience for yourself. Check it out by following the link below.

Preview The New Windows Live Local Car/Walking View

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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RegexRenamer: Bulk File and Folder Renaming Using Regex

This article was written on June 17, 2010 by CyberNet.

regexrenamer.png

arrow Windows Windows only arrow
We have covered all kinds of bulk file renaming tools here, but the free RegexRenamer is one of my new favorites. As you can see in the screenshot above it has a very clean interface, but that is largely because it relies on you understanding how regular expressions (a.k.a. regex) work. I’m confident that you’ll enjoy this little tool as much as I do if you’ve used regular expressions enough to know how to form them.

Can’t remember all the regex syntax? No problem. Hold down the Shift key and right-click anywhere in the “Match” or “Replace” boxes. You’ll then be prompted with a menu that can be used to get some of the syntax you may have otherwise forgotten.

The one thing that everyone always asks about these file renamers… “does it show live previews of what the output will be?” Yes, it does. As you adjust any of the renaming fields the preview column will update accordingly. Aside from that it also includes a bunch of other features:

  • Realtime regex validation, filename preview, conflict detection
  • File filtering by glob or regex (operate on a subset of files in a directory)
  • Flexible case-changing (change entire filename, or just the section matched by a regex)
  • Customizable sequential numbering (set start, padding, interval, reset)
  • Rename files in place, move & rename, copy & rename, backup before renaming
  • Support for network drives & network paths, renaming folders
  • Options to preserve file extension (only operate on filename), show/hide hidden files
  • Rename into subfolders (replace “file.txt” with “subdir\file.txt”)
  • Complete documentation including examples, regex tutorial & quick reference guide

RegexRenamer Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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HTC Incredible S, Desire HD, Desire Z and original Desire will all be eating Gingerbread by the end of June

When it launched the Incredible S at MWC a couple of weeks ago, HTC promised the new 4-inch device would be quick to get a Gingerbread update and now it’s giving us a definitive schedule for it by saying that Android 2.3 will be distributed to its new flagship phone by the end of Q2 2011. We’re not sure four months of sitting by the window waiting for the OTA update to float in necessarily matches up to our definition of “quick,” but there are much better news for owners of HTC’s older devices. The Desire HD and Desire Z — both released in September 2010 — will also be leaping away from Froyo and up to Gingerbread and will be joined by the original Desire, which was announced way back at last year’s MWC. That handset was essentially HTC’s own-brand Nexus One, so we already knew it was capable of running Gingerbread, but it’s still rare to see a device go through two significant Android updates (the Desire began life with Android 2.1). All these old Desires are placed on the same update schedule as the Incredible S, whereas the newly announced Desire S and Wildfire S will ship with Gingerbread preloaded.

[Thanks, Johannes]

HTC Incredible S, Desire HD, Desire Z and original Desire will all be eating Gingerbread by the end of June originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 27 Feb 2011 08:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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CyberNotes: How to Sync Sunbird & Lightning with Google Calendar

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

CyberNotes
Tutorial Thursday

We knew that there was a new method coming that would let you sync Mozilla Sunbird and Lightning with Google Calendar, but we weren’t sure what form it was going to come in. It was thought that this would be a built-in feature but it looks like they took an alternative route by delivering the synchronization capabilities in the form of an extension called Provider for Google Calendar.

This way of synchronization is much easier than using the GCALDaemon which we explained a few months back. In fact, you can have this up and running in just a few minutes…

  1. Download and install Sunbird (the stand-alone calendar application) or Lightning (the Thunderbird add-on) if you haven’t already done so. You will, however, need to be running a pre-release version of the calendar software (version 0.4 or higher). You can find the latest nightly of Sunbird here and the latest nightly of Lightning here (the extension is located in the linux-xpi, mac-xpi, and windows-xpi folders).
  2. Download the Provider for Google Calendar extension by left-clicking on the Install Now link, then right-clicking on the Accept and Install link, and choose the “Save as” option.
  3. Now open up Sunbird or Thunderbird, go to the Tools Menu, and select the Add-ons option. Then press the Install button and browse for where you saved the extension that you just downloaded. Restart the application to complete the installation.
    Sunbird & Google Calendar
  4. Now pull up your Google Calendar, go to the Settings page, and then click on the Calendars tab.
    Sunbird & Google Calendar
  5. Click on one of the calendars that you want to remotely access:
    Sunbrid and Google Calendar
  6. Copy the private XML address to the clipboard by right-clicking on it and choosing the Copy Link Location option.
    Sunbird and Google Calendar
  7. Now go back to Sunbird or Lightning and create a new Calendar. You should be prompted with a dialog box asking whether the calendar is on your computer or on the network, choose the On the Network option. Then on the next screen choose the Google Calendar option and paste in the URL you copied from step 6.
    Sunbird & Google Calendar
  8. You’ll be prompted to enter in your username and password for your Google Calendar account:
    Sunbird & Google Calendar
  9. Now give your calendar a name and press the Next button. Then press Finish. Your calendar will now periodically synchronize itself with the Google servers.

As you can see that is pretty easy to setup, but it does have its drawbacks which you should be aware of:

  • Recurring events can only be viewed, and not created or modified. I’m sure this will be a deal breaker for many people.
  • The newest version (released April 30, 2007) of the extension does support alarms, but it has to use a workaround to do so.
  • You cannot add attendees to your calendar.

Hopefully those remaining bugs will eventually get fixed because that will make this extension a lot more useful. In the meantime though, it is giving me an easy way to add release dates to our CyberNet calendar located in the sidebar!

Alternately you can also try using the newest version of Calgoo which also has several improvements. It does require Java in order to run which is something I’m not too fond of, but it does do a pretty good job of synchronizing the recurring events and reminders.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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