Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on December 29, 2005 by CyberNet.

A new utility released by Microsoft now allows users to take an ISO image and mount it to a virtual CD-ROM. There are other free utilities that can do the same sort of thing, but it is nice to see that Microsoft has finally stepped up to meet the needs of the users. It is called Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel v2.0.1.1 and it only works with ISO images, so it does not work with any BIN or CUE files.

Installation Instructions From SoftPedia:

1. Copy VCdRom.sys to your %systemroot%system32drivers folder.
2. Execute VCdControlTool.exe
3. Click “Driver control”
4. If the “Install Driver” button is available, click it. Navigate to the %systemroot%system32drivers folder, select VCdRom.sys, and click Open.
5. Click “Start”
6. Click OK
7. Click “Add Drive” to add a drive to the drive list. Ensure that the drive added is not a local drive. If it is, continue to click “Add Drive” until an unused drive letter is available.
8. Select an unused drive letter from the drive list and click “Mount”.
9. Navigate to the image file, select it, and click “OK”. UNC naming conventions should not be used, however mapped network drives should be OK.

You may now use the drive letter as if it were a local CD-ROM device. When you are finished you may unmount, stop, and remove the driver from memory using the driver control.

News Source: ActiveWin
Download Source: SoftPedia

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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

Special Vista Edition: Part 2

Now that Windows Vista has been released (read our review) I expect to see the number of Internet Explorer 7 users begin to increase. A majority of those users will have previously used Internet Explorer 6 as their primary browser, and I suspect that many of those people will enjoy the changes that they find. 

I prefer to use Firefox or Opera myself, but I have become accustomed to the community that surrounds those browsers and therefore find it hard to break away from either of them. One thing that wouldn’t hold me back from using IE 7 is a lack of features, because it has quite a few nice additions that take their browser to the next level. Not only that, but you can get add-ons that do even more like restoring your tab session after a crash, blocking ads, integrating mouse gestures, and adding RSS notifications.

Here are some of my favorite add-ons available for Internet Explorer 7:

–Find As You Type (Homepage / Mirror [version 1.1])–

This add-on we have actually written about before, but I find it to be such a necessary feature in other browsers that I had to include it in this list. Basically, it will let you search for words on a website instantly while you type them.

It is very similar to Firefox’s “Find as you Type” feature. In Firefox this can be initiated by pressing an apostrophe if you don’t have this feature enabled to automatically start while you type. In Opera you can use this feature by pressing the period (“.”) key and then typing your search term.

–IE7pro (Homepage / Mirror [version 0.9.8])–

If you use Internet Explorer on a regular basis then you’ll probably find this extension to be unbelievably useful. It has all of the best features that people talk about loving the most in other browsers, such as mouse gestures and ad blocking. These are just some of the customization options that you’ll find in the add-on:

The other thing that you’ll notice is that the add-on installs an icon in the Status Bar of the browser. If you click on that little icon it will offer several different things that you can do, including refreshing the current page at a given interval or saving the site to an image file (it automatically scrolls the entire site to create the screenshot). Here is what that menu looks like:

–Feeds Plus (Homepage / Mirror)–

Microsoft did a nice job of integrating RSS into Internet Explorer 7, but they could have still taken the extra step to add some features to make it even more useful. The IE RSS team must have had some things that they just couldn’t fit into the final release though, because they too have developed their own add-on.

You can group your feeds into folders and then browse all of the news contained in that folder, making it much easier if you have a large number of feeds that you read. It also adds a notification popup to notify you when there are new feed items!

–Overview–

There are actually more add-ons for Internet Explorer than you probably think. When I started looking around I was surprised to see the things available that add a lot of the features people boast about in other browsers. Of course, one of the biggest reasons that people use other browsers is because of the security vulnerabilities that are constantly being found in Internet Explorer, and unfortunately there is no add-on to fix that problem.

Internet Explorer 7 is still not my browser of choice, but it is leaps and bounds better than the previous versions that were offered. Now that Vista is shipping on all new computers it will be interesting if that impacts Internet Explorer’s market share for the better, or if it will continue to decline as people search for other browser alternatives. I can’t wait to look back in a few years to see how browsers have evolved to meet the demand of users turning to more and more online services to get things done.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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

(Click to Enlarge)

Last year MediaMonkey was among the most requested software package that we gave away, and so they were more than happy to help out with a giveaway once again this year. Over the last year they have made a lot of improvements to MediaMonkey 3.0 to make it both more stable and also add support for even more devices.

Just one month ago the MediaMonkey team announced that version 3.0.6 now supports syncing with the iPhone 3G and iPod Touch v2. This news is huge considering how many people have expressed frustrations with not being able to manage the iPhone and iPod Touch outside of iTunes. The icing on the cake would have to be the fact that you can backup/copy media from your iPhone or iPod, which is something iTunes doesn’t allow.

The free version of MediaMonkey will let you do all of the great things that you would expect from a media manager, such as organizing and renaming media in your library. The Gold version, however, takes it a step further by adding some even more awesome features.

• Manage Multiple Music Collections
  Filters and views allow large music libraries to be segmented into sub-collections such as Classical Music, Kids Music, or Contemporary Music, each configured with custom views and playback rules.
• Automatic Library Monitoring
  Use the File Monitor to automatically update your music library to reflect any changes on your hard drive. Additions, deletions, and changes to your music made by other applications are all automatically reflected in your library.
• Advanced Auto-Playlists
  Create advanced Auto-Playlists which automatically generate a music mix to suit your mood, which can then be synchronized with Portable Devices. For example, you can choose to sync a random subset totalling 256 MB of music that match a defined set of criteria. This will help keep the media on your device fresh when you’re not able to fit your entire library on it.
• Auto-Conversion and Volume Leveling
  Auto-conversion allows you to automatically sync or burn tracks no matter what format they’re in, converting tracks on-the-fly to a format that is supported by your iPod/iPhone or other portable device or CD/DVD player, while retaining all metadata. Auto-conversion can also convert tracks to lower bitrates to make more effective use of the limited storage capacity on a portable device.
• Advanced Search Functionality
  Find tracks according to almost any criteria that you can think of. Search for Composer, Year, Beats per minute; find Lyrics, etc.
• Sleep Timer
  Use a Sleep Timer to play your music, gradually fade it over a set period of time, and then turn off your PC.

MediaMonkey Homepage

–The Giveaway–

We have 5 licenses to MediaMonkey 3.0 Gold (valued at $19.95 each) to giveaway today! All you have to do is drop a comment below providing both your name and email address in the appropriate fields. We obviously need your email address for contacting you in the event that you should win. Believe it or not we’ve actually had winners in previous giveaways get randomly selected, but since they didn’t provide an email address we had to pick someone else.

Just as with all of our giveaways we will be using a random number generator to determine the winners. For this round here is how we’re going to give out the licenses:

• 1 winner will be picked from comment numbers 1 through 5
• 4 winners will be picked from comment numbers 1 through however many comments there are.

Entries for the giveaway will be accepted up until December 11th at 7:00PM Central Time.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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In this week’s app roundup: TV, Shazam’d!; translations, made convenient; Rdio, redesigned; The Dark Knight, appified; music releases, predicted; Star Craft II, approximated; security tripwires, evaded; and more! More »

This article was written on May 20, 2008 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

I enjoy taking digital pictures, but the part that I don’t like is copying them over to the computer. The file names are always such a mess, and are typically along the lines of DSC000022.JPG which doesn’t help at all when trying to identify a photo. One of the first things that I do after transferring the photos over to the computer is rename them in bulk. After all, when you get back from a vacation you don’t want to rename hundreds of photos one at a time.

There are all kinds of different ways that you can do this on both a Windows or Mac computer. Both operating systems have ways to batch rename files, such as the F2 key in Windows or Automator on a Mac, but there are free apps out there that can make the task as simple as pointing and clicking. So today we’re going to show you four bulk file renaming programs (2 for Windows and 2 for Mac) that are all free, but pack some powerful features.

One thing I noticed when searching around for file renaming tools on a Mac was that there weren’t an abundance of free solutions available. The paid versions greatly overshadowed any of the free apps, and that is disappointing considering how nice some of the free ones actually are.

–ReNamer (Homepage / Full Review)–

Windows only
This is definitely my favorite renaming utility on Windows. I’m not quite sure why that’s the case considering the variety of free bulk renaming tools, but it has a sense of simplicity that I haven’t found in any other app. Maybe the fact that you can download a no-install version is what appeals the most to me, because I’m able to keep it on my USB drive for quick use.

Just don’t let the interface deceive you! On the outside it may look overly simple, but it has a wide variety of options for renaming files. If you really want to live on the edge you can use Regular Expressions or Pascal scripts to really customize how the files are renamed, but most users will probably never have to take it that far.

–Name Mangler (Homepage)–

Mac only
This tiny little app really takes the cake when it comes to bulk file renaming on a Mac. It has a slick and simple interface that shines well above any of the other file renaming programs that I’ve come across (even compared to those on Windows). The interface really threw me for a curve ball at first because I didn’t think there were many ways you could rename files in bulk, but that wasn’t the case at all.

Name Mangler supports Regular Expressions which is often a requirement for any renamer, but it even includes it’s own Name Conversion Description Language (NCDL). That’s a custom scripting language that any programmer will be able to pick up in seconds, and gives you the opportunity to create outrageously complex file renaming conditions if that’s what you need.

To make things even easier Name Mangler lets you create Droplets, which saves your renaming rules to a file. Then you can drag and drop files onto a Droplet to have them renamed accordingly.

–Flexible Renamer (Homepage / Full Review)–

Windows only
This is a slightly more complex file renamer for Windows, but one of the nice things is that it does include a live preview feature. With that you’ll be able to see what the resulting file names will look like as you make the changes, which can save some time in the long run.

At times the interface can feel a little cluttered, but I’m guessing that is due to the built-in file explorer which makes it a bit easier to navigate for the files you want to work with. Things can really start to get messy if you switch to the advanced interface, which adds even more configuration and customizability options. If you’re looking for sheer power and live previews, this is the Windows file renamer for you.

(Click to Enlarge)

–Filewrangler (Homepage)–

Mac only
This was the first free file renamer that I had come across for a Mac, and I was pretty excited to try it out. The interface is a little oversized, and I’m not so sure that all of the fields need to be displayed at all times. Granted some of the advanced features are tucked away at the bottom, and will slide out when needed.

Renaming the files seemed a little bit clunky, and all I was trying to do was numerically order them by adding an incremental number onto the end of the filename. The reason why I had such a problem was that the “Numbering” option was disabled until I enabled the “Suffix” option, which took me a minute to realize since they aren’t located next to each other. It might not be the most intuitive, but I was still able to get the job done.

(Click to Enlarge)

–Overview–

In the end my two favorite file renaming tools are ReNamer and Name Mangler, depending on which operating system I am using. Now I’d love to hear what you use to bulk rename your files!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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