Hasta La Gadget!

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

Microsoft briefly announced in one of their press releases today that they hired on the developer of the popular WebGuide software for Windows Media Center (both XP and Vista). This software lets Media Center users manage all of their recordings from any browser, as well as stream content from your Media Center computer. You can also stream music, pictures, and videos that are stored on the PC all from the comfort of your browser.

I’ve actually been using this software for months, and there was both free and paid versions available. The free version did just about everything except for the streaming media, and I liked the software so much that I decided to buy it for the $10 or $15 that it was. Now, however, Microsoft has decided to make the software available at no cost.

The creator of WebGuide, Doug Berrett, made this announcement yesterday afternoon in his forum. Here’s a summary of what he had to say:

I’m excited to announce that I recently finalized a business deal with Microsoft to make WebGuide available to users for free and to become a member of the Media Center team.
…
For those of you who feel I’ve sold out, given in to "the man" or crossed over to the dark side, you don’t need to send me a nasty email.  I hear yah.  Go play a round of Halo to get it out of your system.  At the end of the day, my passion is for developing cool software, and this is an opportunity to do just that.  I’d be a fool not to take advantage of it.

Honestly the interface on this program is amazing, and it even includes a mobile version for phones and PDA’s that make scheduling a piece of cake. There’s also a Vista Sidebar Gadget available so that you can manage your recordings, view scheduled shows, or search and browse the TV guide without ever opening your browser.

Another interesting part of the website is the Top List which collects anonymous television recording stats. You can then view the most recorded shows for your country, and it’s pretty interesting to see what tops off the list for different parts of the world.

I highly recommend installing this software if you’re using either XP or Vista Media Center. It will handle almost all of the configuration itself, and you can create multiple users each with customized access restrictions.

WebGuide Homepage
WebGuide Screenshots

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This article was written on August 25, 2008 by CyberNet.

Microsoft/Mac Monday

Several months ago for one of our CyberNotes, we talked about Vista’s Parental Controls and how it’s one of Vista’s shining points. It gives parents control over nearly every aspect of their child’s computer use. Parental Controls help parents do their job of protecting their children from harm while allowing them to experience all that a computer can offer. Since we have already covered Vista’s parental controls, we thought we should take a look at the parental controls that are offered if you are using Mac OS X.

How to enable Parental Controls

1. Open System Preferences
2. Under “System” click Parental Controls
3. Choose the accounts you would like to attach parental controls to
4. Begin configuring the options

Manage Parental Controls from another Computer

If you would like to manage the parental controls from another computer (for example, if your child has their own computer), you can check a box that will allow you to do so. Just note that the computer has to be on the local network in order to be able to use this feature.

Setting Up Parental Controls

Below is a screenshot of the interface you’ll see when you are configuring parental controls. Notice that to the left will be the list of accounts on the computer set-up with parent controls and on the right are all of your options. Configuration options include:

• System
• Content
• Mail & iChat
• Time Limits
• Logs

System Controls

Under system controls, you can determine whether you want your child to be able to access printers, or be able to burn CDs and DVDs. You can also deny them the option to change their password or modify the Dock.

If there are only certain applications you want your child to be able to access, you can select them. For those applications that they aren’t supposed to have access to, it’ll take an administrator’s password to open it. You can also choose to have your child view a simplified Finder which is great for younger kids.

Content

There’s not a whole lot you can configure under the content section, but the important thing here is going to be Website Restrictions. These days there are all kinds of inappropriate websites that children could easily come across so this is an important feature. You can either allow your children to have full access of any website, or click the option to try and limit access to adult websites. You can also create a customized list of sites that are always allowed, and sites that are never allowed.

Mail and iChat

If you would like to have control over who your children are emailing and chatting with, you can do so under the “Mail and iChat” section. They give you the option to limit either mail or iChat, or both. Once you decide what you want to limit, you begin by adding names, email and instant message addresses.

Should the child attempt to email someone who is not on the list, you can enter in an email address and you’ll be notified so that you can determine whether to give permission or not. You’ll also receive a message if someone tries to contact the child, who is not on the approved list.

Time Limits

For some kids, if their parents didn’t set limitations on how long they could be on the computer, they’d be on it all day. The time limits section allows you to specify how many hours you want your child on the computer each day, and you can also prevent access to the computer during specific hours.

For this particular section, Vista’s configuration options are better because you can choose multiple times during the day that you’d want blocked. Using the Mac OS X controls, you can only choose a starting time and an ending time, although you can have two different time blocks, one for school nights, and one for the weekend.

Logs

This is where you’ll want to go to see what your children have been up to. It’s a collection of logs which shows you the websites your child has visited, and which applications they’ve used, among other things. You can show activity for one day, one week, one months, three months, six months, or one year.

Wrapping it up

It’s nice to see operating systems incorporate parental controls so that parents can feel more at ease with their children using the Internet. Like Vista’s parental controls, Mac OS X’s are great too and give parents control over nearly every aspect of their child’s computer experience.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on December 31, 2005 by CyberNet.

Now, instead of carrying around maps on a piece of paper or trying to view them on your phone, you can store them on your iPod Photo! Yahoo recently released this service to compete with the overwhelming popularity Google has been receiving from their mapping services.

Yahoo Maps and the popular iPod Photo portable MP3 player are used together to bring you an exciting online service called iPod-iWay. What is iPod-iWay? iPod-iWay is a powerful step-by-step directions saving tool that will export online driving directions from results by Yahoo Maps and import them into your iPod Photo. It’s an easy solution for getting Yahoo Map directions saved and displayed onto any iPod Photo or Nano, and without the need of additional software!

Put Maps On Your iPod: iPodiWay

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This article was written on June 12, 2006 by CyberNet.

For those people who have downloaded the new Ubuntu and have started tweaking it then you might find this of interest as well. This guide, by Monkeyblog.org, will walk you through the steps to get just about any software installed that you would want to. It is very well put together with a number of screenshots to help ensure that you won’t get confused.

I recently started using Kubuntu because I am more of a KDE interface person than the Gnome interface. I also have the KDE of Suse 10.1 installed on my system and the two are very similar. I would say that Kubuntu runs applications a little faster than Suse does but it seems like Suse is more customizable.

Kubuntu, however, does remind me very much of Windows. The System Settings is very close to what you would see if you opened up the Control Panel. Heck, I think that if you slapped a Windows XP skin on Kubuntu then you almost wouldn’t be able to tell a difference between the two systems (there is also a skin for Mac fans).

I will probably stick with Kubuntu because of the high number of guides on the Web to help me figure out how to do stuff, after all, I am still new to Linux.

View The Guide On Installing Software In Ubuntu

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This article was written on January 07, 2008 by CyberNet.

Microsoft Monday

Many of our Microsoft Monday posts over the last several months have focused on Windows Vista — after all, it is the latest operating system from Microsoft. While it’s the “latest and greatest” as they say, we know many of you still use and prefer Windows XP. Today we thought we’d spend some time going over a few Windows XP tips. Some of the tips you may be well familiar with while others will be completely new to you. This will be the first in a two part series, so stay tuned for the 2nd edition.

Many of these tricks use the Windows Registry Editor, which you can start by pressing WinKey+R and type regedit into the box.

Note: Some of these tips may work in Vista, but we have not tested them in Vista.

–Rename the Recycle Bin–

Want to rename the Recycle Bin? Here’s what you gotta do:

1. Run the Registry Editor and navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ CLSID\ {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}
2. Double-click on (Default), and change the name of the Recycle Bin. Close the Registry, and press F5 on the desktop to refresh the icon.

–Network Sharing–

When you’re looking at files on a network drive you might have noticed that it can take a rather long time (up to 30 seconds). What happens is XP checks to see if the other PC has any scheduled tasks. You can disable that by:

1. Run the Registry Editor and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_Machine\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Explorer\RemoteComputer\NameSpace.
2. Delete the {D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF} key. Close the Registry.
3. While you’re there you can also delete the {2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D} key if you don’t use printer sharing.
4. Reboot your computer.

–Excessive Printing–

This probably isn’t for home users, but for all the people out there that do a lot or printing this is something you should consider doing. By tweaking this Registry setting the printing process will have a higher priority. Here’s the details:

1. Run the Registry Editor and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHING\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print.
2. Create a new DWORD called SpoolerPriority, and give it a value of 1.
3. Reboot your computer.

–Disable Last Access Time Stamp–

This small little tweak is a great one, because it disables a feature that most people never even use. By default Windows always keeps track of the “Last Accessed” date in the file or folder’s properties. If you’re constantly opening and closing files you’re causing some additional work for Windows since it has to update the last accessed date each time. If you never use that property feel free to disable it:

1. Run the Registry Editor and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ FileSystem.
2. Create a new DWORD called NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate, and give it a value of 1.
3. Reboot your computer.

–Remove Text from Icons–

I would have to put this trick up near the top of my favorites list. With it you can prevent the text from appearing below icons on the desktop. If you’re looking to clean up your desktop a bit this could be the perfect way:

1. Right-click on an icon, and choose the Rename option. Delete all of the text.
2. Hold down the Alt key and type 0160 (note: you shouldn’t see any text being typed). That will essentially make a space character the file name. Press Enter to save the results.
3. You can repeat this for several icons, but there is one catch. You probably know that you can’t have multiple icons in the same folder (or on the desktop) with the same name. To get around that for a second shortcut you can do Alt+0160 + Alt+0160. That will essentially create two spaces for the filename, and for a third shortcut you could do Alt+0160 + Alt+0160 + Alt+0160. As you can see this would get tedious rather quickly, but for a handful of shortcuts it is pretty nice.

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