Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on May 27, 2008 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

It’s crazy to think about how unpopular encyclopedias have become thanks to the various references found online, and the same thing is happening to dictionaries. These days word processors (and other apps) are integrating dictionaries so that they are even more useful to the end user. The next logical step for dictionaries is a system-wide integration, which gives the user access to definitions from within any application.

What we’ve got in store for you today is how you can maximize the convenience factor of system-wide dictionaries for both Mac OS X and Windows. You can literally retrieve definitions and synonyms within seconds if you know the right keys to press.

–Mac Dictionary–

Mac only
If you’re a Mac user you probably know about the built-in dictionary/thesaurus that you can pull up at a moments notice. What you may not know, however, is that in Cocoa applications such as Safari, iChat, and Mail you can also get in-place definitions. Just hover your mouse over a word and press Command+Control+D to bring up the definition:

The menu in the bottom-left corner will let you switch between viewing a dictionary definition and synonyms from the thesaurus. Unfortunately this doesn’t work in non-Cocoa applications such as Firefox.

–WordWeb for Windows–

Windows only
Last week one of our commenters, “skh.pcola,” pointed out a fabulous application called WordWeb. It operates much like the built-in dictionary on the Mac, except that it is compatible with nearly all Windows applications. The simplicity of WordWeb is really what makes this an indispensable app for any Windows user. Just Control+Click as you hover over a word and you’ll instantly see a definition appear:

If you don’t know how to pronounce a word just click the speaker button towards the upper-right corner. This only uses the built-in Windows text-to-speech engine to speak the word, but it will give you some idea as to how it’s actually pronounced.

WordWeb comes with 150,000 words and 120,000 synonym sets making it ideal even when you’re not connected to the Internet. It offers definitions, synonyms, antonyms, and more all in one place.

One thing that I want to point out is that there will sometimes be plus/minus signs when viewing different tabs, such as the antonyms pictured to the right. Clicking the plus sign will add more results by making the search criteria less restrictive, and the minus sign will do just the opposite.

There is support for viewing Wikipedia articles from within the application, but it’s nothing to really jump up and down over. It doesn’t modify the layout of the page at all, and is really no different than viewing the actual article in your browser:

Interestingly the free version of WordWeb has a license unlike any other that I’ve seen. They are actually trying to help the environment with the restrictions they’ve imposed:

WordWeb free version may be used indefinitely only by people who take at most two commercial flights (not more than one return flight) in any 12 month period. People who fly more than this need to purchase the Pro version if they wish to continue use it after a 30-day trial period.

–Overview–

Now if those aren’t two fast ways to get dictionary definitions then I don’t know what is. Drop a comment below with the tools you use to lookup words, whether it be a site like Dictionary.com or an application.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

On-the-Go Dictionary Definitions in Your BrowserYour Week In Review with Sunday’s SummaryCyberNotes: The Free DictionaryGet Social with Word Source DictionaryCyberNotes: Hold Your Horses, I’m Just Chilaxin!

Consider the rumors quelled. Despite whispers that Apple would be starting up the Mac App Store in the final year of this decade (or the first of the next, depending on perspective), the Cupertino giant has just affirmed that it’ll be 2011 before the general populace gets to dig their hands into it. January 6th is the opening date for the Mac App Store, and unfortunately for those still humming along on OS X 10.5, it’ll be a Snow Leopard-only affair. Smack dab in the middle of CES, Apple plans to unleash the store in 90 countries, and it’ll feature “paid and free apps in categories like Education, Games, Graphics & Design, Lifestyle, Productivity and Utilities.” Naturally, it’ll be a free update, and it’ll work more or less exactly like the App Store does on your iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. As with those outlets, developers are able to set their own prices and then keep 70 percent of the revenue (provided it’s a paid app). So, who’s ready to blow a little Santa cash to ring in the new year?

Continue reading Apple Mac App Store: open for business starting January 6th

Apple Mac App Store: open for business starting January 6th originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Dec 2010 08:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Apple  | Email this | Comments

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

Now before I get started I want to say that I use openSUSE as my choice of Linux distribution and couldn’t be happier with it. They always seem to be on top of implementing new technologies that are easy-to-use and really appealing to those who want the latest and greatest. For example, the latest version of openSUSE includes a new KDE Start Menu that is unlike anything you’ll find in other Linux distributions.

With that being said I think Novell, the company that develops SUSE, might be taking things a little far now. They have started a website that compares their Enterprise operating system with Windows Vista, in hopes of attracting more customers. Sure, that sounds like normal competition at first but the only comparisons that they make are the ones that favor them…with the most obvious being pricing.

Novell provides a table (pictured below) that demonstrates the pricing difference between the two major versions of Vista and SUSE Linux Enterprise. They then go on to show you what the total cost (with maintenance) would be over the next year and three years, but they conveniently don’t have maintenance cost information available for their operating system, so they leave that number out of the total.

It is definitely fair for them to do such a comparison because I could have seen Microsoft doing the same thing is the situation was reversed, but this was the part that really caught my attention:

The license costs for Windows Vista Ultimate with Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 reaches a whopping $1,078. With SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, you receive over 90 percent of the functionality of Vista and Office for less than 10 percent of the price.

90 percent of the functionality? That sounds a little high especially if you think about the applications businesses run on their machines that probably won’t work right on Linux. I guess they are probably talking about general features, like managing photos, but that still irks me a little bit.

As far as maintenance goes I would say that the cost to maintain SUSE would be much higher than it would be for Vista. Unless you’re able to get a staff that completely understands Linux the cost for supporting the system and paying IT professionals to do training would probably total more than upgrading to Vista.

I guess that is the end of my rant, which I try not to do very often, but it seems like they are misleading people a little bit. I agree that almost all versions of Linux are probably more secure than Windows, which is probably the area that Novell should have tried to focus the attention on.

What does everyone else think about this? Is Novell going about this the wrong way or are they smart for pursuing the marketing so aggressively?

News Source: Desktop Linux

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

OpenSUSE 10.2 Review And ScreenshotsVista And Suse 10.1 Go Head-To-HeadMicrosoft to Support XP 2 Years Longer Than VistaDownload Link For Adobe Reader Enterprise EditionGoogle Releases Picasa For Linux Machines

Google’s famous penchant for keeping things in beta doesn’t seem to have changed lately, as the company’s App Inventor for Android is still keeping its Greek lettering, but at least access has now been opened up for everyone to enjoy. The switch from private to public beta isn’t the most significant thing in the world — up until now you just had to ask for an invite to get one — but we’re sure amateur Android coders and experimenters will appreciate not having to go through that extra step. The App Inventor’s sitting in Google Labs right this minute, waiting for you to magic up (no coding skills required!) a finely crafted solution to modern living of your own. Hit the source link to get your mouse pointer dirty.

Google App Inventor opens up access to everyone, clings on to beta tag originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Dec 2010 05:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  App Inventor  | Email this | Comments

This article was written on September 05, 2007 by CyberNet.

It looks like Microsoft is pulling a Google and offering their most popular apps in a unified package. Well, it’s not exactly like the Google Pack because Microsoft is only including their own homegrown programs, whereas Google also includes some third-party software (such as Norton and Skype).

The site you’ll need to visit for the unified installer is http://get.live.com/wl/all. It is currently available (for me at least) with several new releases of their applications, such as Live Messenger 8.5, Live Writer, and Live Photo Gallery. Here’s everything that’s included:

• Windows Live Mail (email)
• NEW Windows Live Photo Gallery (photo management) – This is similar to the built-in Vista Photo Gallery, but it has some new enhancements. The great thing is that it is available on versions of Windows prior to Vista as well.
• NEW Windows Live Writer (desktop blog publisher) – I haven’t been able to tell much of what’s new in this release, but the build number is 12.0.1277.816 and it’s labeled as “Version 2008″ instead of “1.0″. The only thing I’ve seen new so far is a built-in “Insert Video” option and the ability to justify text. I’ll make a separate post regarding this app when I get more information on the changes. UPDATE: Here’s a list of what’s new
• Windows Live OneCare Family Safety (parental controls)
• NEW Windows Live Messenger 8.5 (instant messenger)
• Windows Live Toolbar (for your browser)

And here’s a video of how the entire process works:

Source: Vista Blog

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

Download Windows Live Apps EarlyWindows Live Writer now has XHTML SupportWindows Live Photo Gallery Will Get Facial Recognition SoonNew Windows Live Photo Gallery Includes Flickr UploaderWindows Live Gallery Released