Hasta La Gadget!

Ah, the games that grown-ups play. It’s a situation that’s beginning to feel an awful lot like the Google Voice fiasco that made the rounds in mid-2009, but if it ends in a similar fashion, you won’t find us kvetching about the teases. As the story goes, a bona fine Google Latitude app made its appearance in Japan’s App Store hours ago, only to be yanked before it could sashay over to any other nation. TechCrunch reckons that it was El Goog doing the pulling — it’s quite possible that the folks in Mountain View weren’t quite ready to publicly reveal it, and with all that Chrome action going down yesterday, it’s not hard to imagine how an impending launch was overlooked. At any rate, the description of the app as well as most of the screenshots were in English, so we’re cautiously optimistic that it’ll resurface in the near future once a few Is are dotted and Ts crossed. With iOS 4 supporting background location, there’s hardly a reason to wait any longer, right?

Google Latitude makes brief appearance in App Store, gets yanked post-haste originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Dec 2010 09:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on October 29, 2007 by CyberNet.

Microsoft Monday

One of Vista’s shining points that often gets looked over is the amazing parental controls that are included with it.  Microsoft certainly spent some time thinking this feature through because it’s thorough and gives parents control over nearly every aspect of their child’s computer use. If you’re running any version of Vista besides the Business edition, you already have this feature at your fingertips just waiting to be configured. Today we’re going to take an in-depth look at parental controls and how to set them up and configure them best for your children.

What is the purpose of Parental Controls?

It’s rather self explanatory, but parental controls help parents manage what their kids are doing on the computer.  Children are much more tech savvy these days and use computers regularly.  Parents aren’t always able to be monitoring their children while they’re on the computer at all times which is where this comes in handy. There is so much that you can control like which web sites a child can and cannot visit, and controlling which programs they can open.  If there’s a game that has been issued a rating that you don’t approve of, you can block them from playing it. There’s a lot to it and it’s worth taking the time to set it up so that you can make the most out of it.

Finding Parental Controls

Remember, parental controls is not available if you’re using the business version of Vista.  Any other version has it, and to find it, just click on the start menu and start typing “parental controls” in the search box.  It will pull it up from there, otherwise you can go to the “control panel” and then “user accounts” to access it.  Once you’re there, you’ll begin configuring all of your options. One thing I recommend doing is to leave the “Activity Reporting” turned on.  It’s on by default and with it you can get reports and collect information about computer usage. We’ll explain more about this a little later…

Web Restrictions

If your children are going to be on the Internet, you’ll likely want to visit the web limits section.  Here you add web sites to the block/allow list. If you don’t want to create a manual list, you can block web content automatically and choose a setting like high, medium, or none.  Selecting the medium level, Vista would block “unratable” content and web content in categories like mature content, pornography, drugs, hate speech, and weapons.  You can also block your children from downloading files.

Time Limits

This is a great feature where a graph is displayed and you can click and drag the hours that you want to block or allow your children from using the computer. For example, between the hours of 4 and 6 each day, your children are to work on their homework in which case you don’t want them using the computer.  You can block this time out each day so that your children can’t use the computer. The blocks will turn blue to signify that the time has been blocked.  If your child is using the computer and they’re approaching a blocked time, they’ll get a 15 minute warning followed by a 1 minute warning letting them know that their time is almost up. Once time is up and they’re still using the computer, Vista will automatically go back to the login screen.

Game Ratings

Under the game ratings section, you first determine whether or not the child can play games at all. If you decide that they can, you can choose which ratings are suitable for the child to play. More specifically, you can block games based upon certain type of content like reference to alcohol, depictions of blood, crude humor, and more. If there are specific games on your computer that you know you don’t want your child to play, you can block those by name.

Program Controls

Perhaps there are some programs on your computer that you’d prefer your child not use. If you decide that your child can only use the programs that you allow, you’ll be able to manually check the programs on your computer that can be used.

Activity Report

The activity report is great for filling you in on what your child has been doing.  You’ll be able to see the top 10 web sites they visit, the most recent 10 web sites that you blocked, whether or not they downloaded files, when they logged on to the computer, the applications that they ran, and more. It gives you a great overall glimpse at what they are doing and if there are any parental controls that you need to modify like adding a website that they frequently visit to the blocked list. There are also options to see the media that they’ve played, and even instant messaging statistics.

Wrapping it up

I told you this feature was thorough, didn’t I? Parental Controls covers nearly everything imaginable and helps parents do their job of protecting their children from harm, all while allowing them to experience all that a computer and the Internet has to offer.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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

Microsoft has closed the door on the deal for their Windows Vista and Office 2007 giveaway. CNet is reporting that the magical download number was 30,000 and earlier today Vista was the first to “sell” out but Office 2007 was soon to follow.

The “Power Together” site that Microsoft created to promote this giveaway is now just a site that will have little to no value for most of the people who have already visited it. I’m sure the 30,000 people who got involved in this giveaway will say that the site had a lot value though, and probably not because they learned something from the webcasts.

One thing that I’m not quite sure about from CNet’s article is whether there were 30,000 people total that will receive the products or if there are 30,000 for Office 2007 and 30,000 for Vista. Either way, with 15,000 people for each and at a retail price of $299 for Vista Business and $499 for Office 2007 Professional you are talking $11.97 million in giveaways from Microsoft. I would say that is pretty impressive.

Where’s the catch? Well…despite the believe that this was a no-strings attached there is one small little detail that some people may not be aware of. CNet mentions that anyone who receives the products will have to pay takes on them:

Those who are getting both the free Office and Vista copies will have to fill out an IRS tax form–and eventually pay Uncle Sam–to get both titles.

“Since the combined retail value of the products is above $600 retail for developers who chose to participate in both offers, the IRS requires Microsoft to have the developers send back a signed W9 form before they receive the second item,” a Microsoft representative said.

I’m not sure what kind of cost it will be for the taxes but I can’t imagine it would be very much. After all, you will be getting more than $800 in free software…so most people probably won’t complain.

On a side note Microsoft also made the trial versions of Office 2007 available today and they are good for 60-days after installation. Thanks for the tip on that one Jeff!

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on June 27, 2007 by CyberNet.

Microsoft has finally come forward with information regarding their Windows Live Folder service, as well as announcing a new Windows Live Photo Gallery for both Windows Vista and XP SP2. In early May Liveside was able to gain access to Windows Live Folders momentarily, but Microsoft quickly pulled access to the service.

Windows Live Folders is simply an online storage solution for people to upload their documents, photos, and videos to so that they can be shared with your friends, family, or even the world. Initially it only offered 250MB of storage, but the private Beta has 500MB and I’m sure once it is actually released it will be significantly more. If it is anything below 2GB I would be greatly disappointed.

The thing that interested me a little bit more was the Windows Live Photo Gallery which will be available for both Windows Vista and XP SP2. I love the new photo gallery in Vista because I can organize all of my photos as well as fix things (red eye, cropping, etc…) in it. With the new Windows Live Photo Gallery XP users would also be able to benefit from those features, along with a few new things that they added:

• Improved image editing features like Panoramic stitch, histogram, and sharpen image.
• Improved tagging and organization including the ability to quickly sort by name, file type, tag or date.
• Publish photos directly to your photo galleries on Windows Live Spaces.
• Auto event grouping and tagging when importing photos (and video) from your camera to PC.
• Improved Photo Import Tool.

Click to Enlarge
This demonstrates two different features that I put into one screenshot. It shows both the gallery and the new sidebar with the histogram. [screenshot credit: Vista Blog]

The coolest thing from that list of features is the Panoramic stitching which can assemble multiple images together. Photoshop has a similar feature for this and actually goes beyond doing just the typical Panoramic view, but having a free application that can do this with just a few clicks is sure to be a hit with people looking to have some fun.

Unfortunately this is also in the private Beta stage, and there isn’t even a signup site available for those of us who want to get our name on the list. So for right now we have to sit tight and twiddle our thumbs as they hammer away at getting a public Beta out for both of these services later this summer.

Source: LiveSide and Vista Blog

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on September 08, 2007 by CyberNet.

It had just occurred to me that I had never written about one of my favorite free file renamer applications for Windows. It’s called ReNamer, and I’ll warn you that it’s not a program for the weak at heart. It’s loaded with powerful features, and that’s one of the reasons I love it!

ReNamer lets you add a series of rules that it will follow for renaming files in bulk. I use this on a regular basis for renaming photos so that all of the file names don’t look like the generic DSC0000018.JPG or IMG0002388.JPG. With ReNamer I can sequentially rename the photos so that they all actually have a descriptive name.

This is the most powerful free file renamer that I’ve come across, and I’m sure you can find ways to rename just about anything using the different types of rules that are available:

I had thought about putting together a guide on how to use the software, but I was already beaten to it. There is a Quick Start Guide (2 pages) and a Beginner’s Guide (27 pages) available in PDF format on the file ReNamer download page. The Beginner’s Guide covers just about everything you would want to know, and it has a bunch of screenshots to walk you through the all the steps.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention one of ReNamer’s best features. You can download it with an installer or as a standalone 2.3MB program. I’ve thrown this on my USB drive, and carry it around with me wherever I go!

Download File ReNamer

Windows Tip: You can sequentially rename files in Windows Explorer by highlighting the respect files and pressing the F2 key. While this is convenient it doesn’t offer any sort of customizability.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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