Dec 24

Questioning the Quality of some Firefox Extensions

Posted in: Software, Today's Chili

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

I’m always flipping through the Mozilla forum looking for interesting things to read when I came across one that was called “addons.mozilla.org recent and open issues.” It sounded interesting because I didn’t realize that there were any open issues with Mozilla’s Add-on site.

I started reading through it and quickly became aware of why the thread was started (Note: AMO stands for the Mozilla’s Add-Ons site):

The purpose of this thread is to make people aware of some tactics used in extensions considered by some people not worthy of the AMO (addons.mozilla.org) “trust” seal. It has also the purpose of discussing the AMO quality standards and the views on these and other extensions that might be considered harmful for common non-tech-savvy users.

One of the big questions is on the quality of the toolbars that are available. When I had installed the 200 Firefox extensions at one time there were several toolbars that were installed, but most of them were the more popular/unique ones since I was traversing the list with the most downloaded extensions being first. There is, however, a website called Conduit that will allow anyone to make their own Firefox toolbar extension with their own branding:

Conduit Toolbar Creator

I haven’t looked much into Conduit, but I’m guessing that they are making money through searches that are performed with the toolbars being generated for websites. They say that websites will benefit from offering the toolbars by keeping their logo in front of the user’s face, which will hopefully keep the reader coming back to your site.

The only problem is that 93 of these toolbars currently exist (listed at the end of this article) on the Mozilla Add-ons page alone, and I’m sure there are also several sites that don’t have theirs listed there. The fear is that this may jeopardize the quality of the experience new users to Firefox receive if they install them because they also collect information from users:

Those extensions were collecting data and uniquely identifying users without notifying them. This caused some stir into the community as most of the people thought that AMO had a high quality standard and sought to protect users from such tactics, things that we realized weren’t true. AMO doesn’t even have a policy for extension submitting.

As Firefox continues to grow I think a policy needs to be enforced that focuses on the quality of the extensions. Mozilla wants to ensure that new users receive the best experience possible, and one of these days they may let an extension slip through that does more damage than good. Let us know what you think of Mozilla letting extensions like this into the “trusted” Add-ons site.

Finally, I’ll close by listing the extensions that the forum members have managed to find so far that were created using Conduit:

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Dec 24

Artweaver: Free Photoshop-like Image Editor

Posted in: Features, Freeware, Photos, Software, Today's Chili, Windows

This article was written on August 18, 2008 by CyberNet.

artweaver-1.jpg

arrow Windows Windows only arrow
We always like coming across an interesting free application… especially when it sets out to accomplish a lot of what a paid application does. That’s exactly the first impression I got when using Artweaver. They don’t come out and say they are trying to emulate Photoshop, but they don’t need to. A lot of the menus are organized the same way, things like layer management all work the same, and the upper-toolbar changes based upon the tool you’re using… just like in Photoshop. The only question is how successful were they at cloning the functionality.

I was actually pretty impressed with some of the things it offered. It has a wide array of features, image adjustments, gradients, and much more. Obviously it’s not capable of doing everything Photoshop can, but I’d say it includes most of, if not everything that casual Photoshop users need:

  • Support of many different digital brushes e.g. chalk, charcoal, pencils…
  • A wide variety of adjustment settings to customize the default brushes or to create new brushes.
  • Standard image editing tools like gradient, crop, fill and selection tools.
  • Support for the most common file formats like AWD (Artweaver), BMP, GIF, JPEG, PCX, TGA, TIFF, PNG, and PSD (no layer support).
  • Transparency and Layers support.
  • Effect filters like sharpen, blur, emboss and mosaic.
  • Editable text layers.
  • Pen Tablet support for a realistic feeling.
  • History function to und/redo last editing steps.
  • Expandable by Plug-In modules (Artweaver Standard).
  • Support for many languages through language files.

This is a program that I highly recommend trying out, and that’s easy to do since there is a portable no-install version available. Just download, extract, and run it to see if it’s right for you. Plus the fact that you can throw this on a USB drive is awesome!

Get Artweaver

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Dec 24

Logitech said to be halting Revue production until Google TV software revamp

Posted in: Google, GoogleTv, logitech, rumor, set-top-box, Software, speculation, Today's Chili

Oh dear. Google TV isn’t having the best of starts to its life in the internet-connected TV world and Logitech seems to have taken notice. DigiTimes‘ nameless sources today report that Gigabyte, the company charged with building Revue units for Logi, has been instructed to stop production of them for the period covering December 2010 through January 2011. The restart in manufacturing will be conditional, we’re told, either on a significant update to the current Google TV software or a whole new version rolling out. The Revue is still available to buy through Logitech — shipments are only drying up in the channel between manufacturer and vendor — but if the insiders have their story straight, this’d be a clear indication that early sales expectations have not been met. Better luck next year, we say.

Logitech said to be halting Revue production until Google TV software revamp originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Dec 2010 02:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dec 23

Ubuntu Site Crumbles After Releasing 7.04

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

This article was written on April 19, 2007 by CyberNet.

Kubuntu and Ubuntu logos

The Ubuntu website has begun to crumble from the incredible number of visitors that are visiting the site looking for the newest version of Ubuntu. The load was so bad that Ubuntu has temporarily replaced the homepage with a low-bandwidth version that only provides links to mirrors, as well as the release notes.

Even the main Ubuntu site is going a little slow when it comes to loading that page, so I made a mirror of their current homepage which lists all of the different places you can download it from. If your Internet connection can’t handle downloading the the 694MB ISO image that has to be burned to a CD, then you can just order a the latest version already on CD at no additional cost.

We have previously put together a great screenshot gallery of the Kubuntu and Ubuntu 7.04 Beta release, and nothing (besides for bug fixes) has really changed since that gallery was posted. Here is a quick overview of what’s new:

  • Networking improvements to make it even easier to connect to a wireless or wired network.
  • Disk usage analyzer lets you see where your hard drive space is going.
  • When trying to play media files, Ubuntu will try to install the necessary codecs automatically, and start playing the desired file.
  • New networking sharing makes it easy to network desktop computers without needing servers to assign IP addresses or names and allows users to automatically discover and join a wireless network and share music, find printers and exchange files.
  • 2 new games: Chess and Sudoku.
  • Some new artwork, including a new default background and splash screen.
  • New help center to find the things you want a little easier.
  • Enable some great 3D desktop effects in just one click!

If you want to try Ubuntu out yourself, but you’re not sure how to use the CD just head on over and read the article that Chris wrote. It will walk you through all the tools you’ll need to get Ubuntu up and running on your computer without even needing to install it!

Alright, here is a recap on links that will be important to you:

Thanks for the tip Cory!

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Dec 23

CyberNotes: Add Album Art in iTunes

Posted in: CyberNotes, Freeware, itunes, Music, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on January 29, 2008 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Time Saving Tuesday

Album art seems to be the hot new craze these days, and with Apple’s Cover Flow (pictured below) more people want their library of music to be filled with gorgeous artwork. Cover Flow has changed the way that I find songs to listen to, and for that reason I wanted to show how you can use iTunes to retrieve your favorite album art.

Before we jump in we want to point out that there are numerous ways that you can add album art to your music collection, including the free MediaMonkey. This article only focuses on iTunes, but we’ll likely cover other ways in the future.

Below you’ll find instructions on having iTunes automatically fetch the album artwork, how to manually add it yourself, how to add it in bulk, and forcing iTunes to store album art in the music files. The end result will be a beautiful looking library filled with flowing album art…

iTunes Cover Flow

–Automatically Adding Album Art–

Assuming that you have correctly added the tag information (artist, title, album, etc…) iTunes will be able to retrieve artwork for your songs automatically. Of course this relies on the album actually being sold on iTunes, which is currently a problem for artists such as the Beatles.

To force iTunes to grab the artwork for an album just right click on the song(s) and select the Get Album Artwork:

iTunes Get Album Artwork

One big issue I’ve had with this working is when dealing with compilation albums or soundtracks. Any albums that have various artists on them will likely be unable to download no matter what you try to do, unless you’ve actually purchased the songs from iTunes.

The album art that iTunes downloads is stored in a special folder created by the application, and is kept separate from the music itself.

–Manually Adding Album Art–

One thing that I’m impressed with is how easily you can manually add album art in iTunes. The nice thing about manually adding the album art is that iTunes will embed it into the song itself, which is actually a nice feature. That way the artwork will be available in applications other than iTunes.

Here’s what you have to do:

  1. Find the image that you want to use as the album art. I recommend doing a Google image search for the album name, looking on Wikipedia, or pulling up the Amazon page.
  2. Once you’ve found a good quality image just right-click on it and copy the image. No, you don’t have to save it to your hard drive.
    Copy Image
  3. Now go find the song you want to add the artwork to, right-click on it, and select Get Info. Switch to the Artwork tab, click in the blank box, and press Ctrl+V to paste the artwork in that you copied.
    Paste Album Art
  4. Hit the OK button on the window, and you’re done. The album art has been embedded in that particular song.

–Bulk Adding Album Art–

If you have a ton of songs from the same album there is an easier way to add the same artwork in bulk. This isn’t entirely necessary to do since iTunes only requires one song in a particular album to have artwork associated with it, but other applications may like to have each individual song tagged with artwork.

In iTunes select all of the songs that pertain to the same album, which can be done using the standard Control and Shift keys while clicking on songs with your mouse. After that you’ll pretty much follow the same instructions for manually adding the artwork above, but the area for you to paste the album art into is in a different spot:

Bulk Album Art

–Embedding iTunes Album Art–

The album art that iTunes automatically retrieves is not embedded in the songs, which means that it will not be available outside of iTunes. Some of you may not mind that, but if you enjoy having the artwork no matter what application you’re using then you’ll want to go through these steps for each of the albums:

Note: This is unnecessary for any album art that you’ve manually added yourself.

  1. Right-click on a song and click Get Info.
  2. Go to the Artwork tab and press Ctrl+C to copy the artwork.
  3. Now press Ctrl+V to paste it back in.
  4. Hit the OK button.

When you copy and paste the album art in steps 2 & 3 you won’t really see anything happen, but you can easily verify that it worked by monitoring the date modified and/or filesize of the song. If you can see an increase in the filesize then the album art has been added.

It might take some time to get your library just the way you like it, but once you’re done the result will look great… especially for those using Cover Flow.

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Dec 23

AT&T, Verizon, RIM get serious about security for mobile devices

Posted in: Android, att, BlackBerry, cellphones, mobile, RIM, security, Software, Today's Chili, verizon, vzw, Windows Mobile, WindowsMobile

As commonplace as smartphones have become, it’s about time that carriers and manufacturers start getting serious about mobile security (and no, we don’t mean iPhone tethers). According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, Verizon is currently working with Lookout, a San Francisco-based company known for remote backup and geolocation apps for BlackBerry, Android, and Windows Mobile devices, while RIM has recently announced a little something called BlackBerry Protect, which promises to lock or even wipe a misplaced phone, pinpoint the thing on a map, and make regularly-scheduled wireless backups. By far the most ambitious plans in the article, however, belong to AT&T, which — aside from recent deals with MobileIron and McAfee — is currently opening a new mobile security lab in New York City. From here, the company will research malware, worms, viruses, and other threats as they develop in the mobile sphere. “Everyone is realizing that this is an uncontrolled environment,” said AT&T chief security officer Edward G. Amoroso. “We don’t want to have the same problems that we had with PCs.”

AT&T, Verizon, RIM get serious about security for mobile devices originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Dec 2010 13:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dec 23

Become an ASCII Art Pro Overnight

Posted in: Firefox Extensions, Freeware, Photos, Software, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on July 15, 2007 by CyberNet.

CyberNet ASCII

I’m sure that you’ve seen ASCII art similar to the image pictured above. It’s where someone takes a photo and arranges characters in a precise way to accurately represent the original image. Take our logo for example, in the above image a bunch of characters and spaces were placed next to each other until they created something that looked right.

Doing this can be a painstaking process, and frankly it is something that I would never want to do myself. The logo that I created above was done using a service called Photo2Text, where all you have to do is input an image and it will spit out a text file for you to download. You just open that file up in Notepad (with wordwrap turned off) and you’ll see a masterpiece.

I was actually having some fun with this after downloading the Firefox extension, which lets you right-click on any image on the Internet and have it converted to ASCII art. I found a few images to convert and here are the results:

Note: I reduced the font size to 4 so that the images could easily be seen. The larger the font size you pick in Notepad the further away you’ll need to be to recognize the image.

Eiffel Tower:

ASCII Eiffel Tower

2009 Camaro:

ASCII 2009 Camaro

Michael Jordan:

ASCII Michael Jordan

See how easy it was for me to become an ASCII art pro? Go ahead and grab some photos to do this with and head on over to the Photo2Text site. You’ll be impressing your friends in no time, and if you find yourself using it more than you thought it might be beneficial to install the Firefox extension.

Source: Firefox Facts

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Dec 23

Use a Text Box to Spruce Up Your Document

Posted in: CyberNotes, Microsoft, Software, Today's Chili

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

As the title suggests, today I’m going to show you how to use a text box to spruce up your document.  Yes, I said a text box.  I’m sure you’re familiar with using a plain ole’ text box, there’s nothing to it, right? In Microsoft Word 2007, there’s no reason to be plain with a nice selection of options to use when you’re needing to insert text with a text box. The looks of your document will make others think you spent lots of time to create a box that looks so nice, but all it takes is just a minute or two. Let’s get started…

  1. Open up Microsoft Word 2007
  2. Click the Insert Tab, and then look to the “Text” section for the option to add a text box.
    Text box
  3. Click on the Text Box Icon and you’ll notice a drop down menu that has 36 different options to choose from! You can always just draw your own text box, which is still an option as well.
    Text box 1

  4. Choose a style that suits the document you’re working on best. Here are some of the text boxes I created. The first example is an “Alphabet Quote.” You can use it “as-is,” or you can play around with shadow and 3–D effects which I recommend doing. The second example is “Austere Quote.”
    Alphabet quoteText box 3
  5. Remember to play around with the colors as well. You can select the color you’d like for the text, as well as the “text-box.” With the image below, I played around with font color, text box color, and even the color of the shadow. It’s hard to tell, but there’s a light green shadow around the text box.
    Text box 4 Text box 6
  6. Another tip is to play around with gradients which can also add a lot (pictured above).  You can find the options to use a gradient under “Shape-Fill” in the Text Box Styles section.
  7. I played around with several different options, and below is an example of what a document would look like with a text box inserted:
    Text box 5

Did you ever think you could create a great-looking text box in just one click? Microsoft has added so many options in Microsoft Word 2007 that can really add a lot to your documents, with one of them being the text box options. There’s no need for a dull looking text box anymore!

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Dec 22

What You Need To Know Before Installing Linux

Posted in: Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on August 21, 2006 by CyberNet.

Linux Inside Most of us have a Microsoft Windows machine not because we necessarily think it is the best operating system, instead it is because we are afraid to try anything different. If you knew someone else that had the exact same computer then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, right?

TuxMobil.org hooks you up with information you need to know before you dive into installing Linux on your laptop. This is a really nice compatibility list that was put together but I surprisingly didn’t see my laptop on their. I’ll definitely be putting this site in my bookmark list though.

If you are installing Ubuntu then you can checkout their hardware compatibility list that they have assembled. I found that to be really useful because it also breaks down the compatibility by device. That makes it easy to see if certain things, such as your wireless card, will work with flawlessly with Ubuntu.

News Source: Digg

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Dec 22

Vista SP1 and XP SP3 in Testing

Posted in: Features, Microsoft, Release Date, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili, Windows, Windows Vista, Windows XP

This article was written on August 07, 2007 by CyberNet.

There has been a lot of talk lately regarding the status of Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1), but Microsoft has stayed clear from confirming both the expected features and release date. Several different sources have confirmed that Vista SP1 is indeed being tested by a small group of people, but it’s not in the form of an update yet. Testers reportedly have to use an installation disc that contains the full Vista operating system in order to test Vista SP1, which is probably why they haven’t made it available to the public yet. In fact, the screenshot below even shows that the current SP1 is treated as an evaluation copy that expires in April 2008.

Vista isn’t the only one with a new Service Pack in the works though. Windows XP SP3 has also been spotted in the hands of testers, and it weighs in at 350MB. It includes over 900 fixes for the operating system, some of which have already been provided to XP users via Windows Updates. With XP SP3 being tested at the same time as Vista SP1 it is expected that the two will have the same release date.

Below are the build ID’s and screenshots from the XP SP3 About screen and Vista SP1 About screen. By reading those ID’s you are able to extract the date of the builds, with Vista SP1’s being June 28, 2007 and XP SP3’s being July 18, 2007.

  • XP SP3 ID: 5.1.2600.3180 (xpsp.070718-2058)
  • Vista SP1 ID: 6001.16549(longhorn_sp1beta1.070628-1825)

Vista SP1 & XP SP3

Source: WinBeta & AeroXP

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