Hasta La Gadget!

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

Microsoft Monday

Most of you have probably at least heard of Windows Photo Gallery in Windows Vista. It’s a great tool built-in to Vista that helps you organize photos, add ratings and captions, as well as metadata tags to photos. It’s not only for photos, it’s also for videos as well, but today we’re going to focus on the photo part of it. In particular, we’re going to show you how to use the Windows Photo Gallery tools to “fix” or edit your photos.

Digital cameras have become one of those essential items to own, much like a cellphone. Because of this, people are taking many more photos these days than years prior, and not all of those photos turn out perfect. This is when it’s handy to have a simple program to use for the basic editing like red-eye removal and cropping. These are exactly the types of tools you’ll find in Windows Photo Gallery which makes editing your photos a quick and easy process.

Getting Started

The first thing you’ll want to do is open up Windows Photo Gallery. Find the picture that you’re wanting to edit and click on it once. You’ll now notice that it’s highlighted. From there, look towards the top of the window to find the toolbar.  One of the options will be “Fix” – click it.

Five Editing Options

Once you click “fix,” you’ll notice five different options for editing your photos.  They include:

1. Auto Adjust
2. Adjust Exposure
3. Adjust Color
4. Crop Picture
5. Fix Red Eye

Using Auto Adjust

If your pictures were taken with inaccurate exposure, you’ll find that your photos are either too bright or too dark.  This is where the “Auto Adjust” and the “Adjust Exposure” comes into play.

When you click “auto adjust” to apply the changes to your photo, you’ll need to wait a few seconds for the changes to take place. It will make the changes that it thinks need to be made, but you may not always like the changes that it made. This is where you’ll want to use “Adjust Exposure.”

Adjust Exposure

Using the Adjust Exposure feature, you’ll be able to manually change the brightness and the contrast using the sliders like what’s pictured in the image to the right. You can also use the arrow keys to move the slider along to either increase or decrease both brightness and contrast.

Once the exposure of the image looks right to you, click “back to gallery” and the changes will be saved to your picture.  If by chance you don’t like the changes that you made while adjusting the exposure, you can click “Undo.”

Adjust Color

You’ll have three different options for adjusting the color of your image.   They include the color temperature, tint, and saturation.  By adjusting the color temperature, you’ll notice changes in the overall tone of the image.  This means that with your changes, your red tones or blue tones will be altered.

Adjusting the tint of an image will remove the “color cast” from an image by either adding or removing green, and adjusting the saturation will make the colors in your image more or less vivid. Once again, by clicking “back to gallery,” you’ll save the changes that you made.

Crop an Image

I don’t know about you, but the cropping feature in any photo editing program has become a tool I use regularly.  There’s almost always extra “stuff” in the picture I’d like to cut out. You’re able to crop your pictures right from Windows Photo Gallery by clicking “Crop Picture.” From there you can either choose to select your own dimensions of your image (custom), or you can select one of the standard sizes that they offer.

When you select one of the proportions you’d like, you can click on the corners of the crop frame and drag it to make it larger or smaller. You can drag the “crop frame” all around the image to select the section you’d like. Once you’ve selected the area you want to crop, click “apply.”

Remove Red Eye

Any time you use a flash, there’s a chance that the people in the image are going to have red eyes. To use the red eye removal option in Windows Photo Gallery, click “Fix Red Eye” and then use your mouse to draw a rectangle around the eye that you’re wanting to fix. Be sure to draw the rectangle from the top left-corner of the eye down to the bottom-right corner of the eye.

If most of the red-eye was removed but there was still a tint of red, you can select the eye again and follow the same process for a second time. Once you’re done with one eye, move to the second eye and follow the same process.

Verdict

If you’re using Windows Vista and you have some light photo editing that you need to do, I’d recommend giving the “fix” features in Windows Photo Gallery a try. They’re simple to use, and the get the job done quickly. I’ve used it on a few occasions and I really have no complaints! Of course if you’ve got some more complicated editing that needs to be done, this isn’t your solution.

Another thing to keep in mind if you’re satisfied with Windows Photo Gallery but wished it had something more is that Microsoft is working on a Windows Live Photo Gallery which will be available for both Windows Vista and XP SP2. Features you can expect to see added include:

• 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.

The Windows Live Photo Gallery is set to be released into a public beta at the end of Summer, which would mean hopefully we’ll see it within the next few weeks!

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on January 01, 2007 by CyberNet.

You may have seen the article we posted showing what kind of artistic work can be done simply using Microsoft Paint. It’s amazing! I wouldn’t have ever thought such complex work was possible using Microsoft Paint only, but it is, and here are some of the best thanks to a list that TechEBlog has composed.

–Supercar–

This is the original piece of work that we showed you back in December. The video shows the entire process from start to finish. You’ll appreciate the final drawing much more after watching exactly how it was done.

–Bugatti Veyron–

Apparently this was done using just a normal mouse. Another great drawing of a car, the Bugatti Veyron.

–Ultimate MS Paint–

This one was done using a Logitech laser mouse, and nothing else.It’s one awesome skyline painting, and of course, it was done using Microsoft Paint.

– Venice –

My favorite out of all of them, Venice! I wish a video that showed what happened from start to finish was available. It would be amazing to see how this painting got started.  The detail is amazing, and I wonder how many countless hours this took! Who knew you could produce such amazing work from Microsoft Paint?

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Apple is planning an announcement Tuesday morning regarding iTunes.

Count us among the cautiously optimistic. ITunes is one of the most successful software packages in history, installed on more than 125 million computers worldwide and used for about 70 percent of all digital-music purchases. (Exact numbers are hard to find, but it’s huge.) Its reach would seem to make iTunes a terrific platform for transforming the media landscape — if it weren’t such a bloated, hard-to-use, overloaded mess.

We don’t know what Apple will be announcing Tuesday morning (7 a.m. Pacific/10 a.m. Eastern). The Wall Street Journal, citing “people familiar with the situation,” says it will include the long-awaited coming of the Beatles catalog to the iTunes Music Store. It could be the addition of a streaming-media subscription service to iTunes. It might be an overhaul of Apple’s abortive attempt at a social network, Ping. Or it could be something completely different.

Regardless of what Apple does announce, here’s what we’re hoping for.

Subscription Music

Already iTunes lets you rent TV shows. The company is building a billion-dollar, 500,000-square-foot data center, and has yet to do anything really interesting with LaLa, the streaming-music startup it acquired in late 2009 and shut down earlier this year. Isn’t it about time that Apple offered an all-you-can-eat subscription music service, similar to Rdio or Spotify or Rhapsody, that lets you listen to whatever you want?

It’s surprising the company hasn’t already done this (and a little bit embarrassing to us, given the number of times we’ve called for this). Still, if we were going to put our money on a bet about tomorrow’s announcement, it’d be this: The signs all point toward an imminent subscription streaming-music service. If it doesn’t happen this week, it’ll happen soon. We hope.

Make It a Cloud-Based Service

“Cloud” services are this year’s hot marketing trend, but for a good reason. Saying that a service lives “in the cloud” is shorthand for saying that it’s stored on a server somewhere out there in the internet, and don’t you trouble your pretty little head about where or how. It’s the internet equivalent of “and then a miracle occurs.”

But with an increasing amount of our lives lived through portable gadgets, cloud services meet a need: Letting us get to our stuff from wherever its, wherever we are, no matter what device we’re using.

And that billion-dollar data center? Once you’re using it to deliver subscription music, why not let it deliver all of a customer’s music library?

In other words, to hell with syncing. We want our iTunes music streamed to us in real time — on our phones, tablets, notebooks, netbooks and work computers.

And there are millions of us who would pay for a service like that.

Photo: Jonathan Snyder/Wired.com

This article was written on October 18, 2007 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

The right-click menu (a.k.a. context menu) is one area in Windows that Microsoft refuses to let users customize out-of-the-box. There should be some sort of utility that lets people choose what’s included, and the order that the items are placed in. I don’t think I even use half of the options that are often located in the menu!

And then there is the command that I use the most often which is idiotically buried within a submenu, and lives without a keyboard shortcut: create a new folder. I’ve walked through ways for setting up a hotkey or context menu entry for making a new folder, but this should be an easier way to more prominently display the commands you use the most often.

What you really need is a utility so that you can customize the right-click menu to make it exactly what you want. FileMenu Tools (Download Mirror – version 5.2) might very well be exactly what you’re looking for!

As you can see from the screenshot above there are several commands in the right-click menu that are not ordinarily there. That’s all because of FileMenu, which is a free utility that can help you add and remove items from the right-click menu.

–Features–

Once you get FileMenu installed it is pretty self explanatory what you have to do. In the main content area of the program you’ll see a bunch of commands that you can add or remove from the context menu. They can also be reordered by dragging and dropping them around, or by using the arrows in the left sidebar.

The sidebar also has options to add a separator/divider and submenus, which will both help to declutter the right-click menu. In the screenshot above I have added a separator as well as a submenu to show how they work.

Tip: You won’t see any changes to the right-click menu until you hit the green “Commit” button on the top toolbar.

As you’ll find out in a moment there are a lot of different things that you can configure in FileMenu. It’s important that you use the import/export options in the File menu of the program for saving your settings. This makes it a lot easier to duplicate your settings across multiple computers, or to restore the commands in the event that you need to format your computer.

–Specialized Tools–

FileMenu comes with several specialized tools that help make it an indispensable tool. Each of the features I mention below are all accessible through the right-click menu thanks to the program. In reality each of these features are essentially their own little mini applications.

• Split/join files – This type of thing was a little more useful back in the days of floppies, but there are still some reasons that you may want to split up files.
   
• Change file time – Modify the creation time, last write time, or last access time.
  
• Find and replace – Use this to find and replace text in files.
  
• Advanced renamer – This is actually one of my favorite parts of the program. With this you can quickly rename photos, music, and any type of file. It’s not the best file renamer, but it is super nice for quick tasks.
  
• Advanced delete – Recursively delete a certain type of file from a folder and subfolders. You can use it to get rid of the pesky thumbs.db files from your computer.
  
• Synchronize – You can sync the contents of two different folders with this utility. It’s not packed with features, but it’s nice if you’re just looking to do it quickly.
  
• Create a new folder – A pretty straightforward way to create a new folder. It prompts you to enter the name of the folder before it is created.
   

–Remove Existing Items–

One thing you may notice in Windows is that the right-click menu is different depending on what type of thing your clicking on. FileMenu takes that into account, and lets you remove existing commands based upon those parameters. For example, I can have the “BriefcaseMenu” option (pictured below) show up when I right-click on files, but turn it off for when I right-click on folders.

With FileMenu you can enable or disable several of the existing commands that have been added by Windows or by other applications:

–Roll Your Own Commands–

FileMenu even lets you create customized commands that will only work for certain types of files (according to extension) or just for folders. I can think of a lot of reasons why this would be useful, and the first that comes to my mind is specifying an image editor to show up only for files that have an image-related extension. Then you won’t have to go to the “Open With” command to have a photo open up in your favorite editor.

Tip: To pass parameters to a program just click in the “Arguments” box and press the “…” button to see a list of available parameters.

Or you could use this to simply add shortcuts to your favorite programs. Why not create a submenu that has all of your most used programs in it? That’s what I just got done doing. FileMenu was able to automatically pick up the icons for all of the apps I created shortcuts for, so don’t worry about filling in the icon field.

FileMenu Tools Homepage for Windows (Download Mirror – version 5.2)
Thanks to PCWorld for pointing out this great app!

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on July 23, 2007 by CyberNet.

The IE-based Maxthon browser released a much anticipated version 2 today. This comes just 3-months after Google invested an astounding $1 million into the browser, and that raised a lot of eyebrows because of the close relationship Google has with Firefox. I’m guessing that Google saw it as a way to gain more popularity in China since 17% of people there use it to search sites like Google and Yahoo. Why? Because users can set it up to use proxies that will bypass any filtering techniques employed by the government.

We actually took a look at Maxthon 2 starting in August 2006 (yes, it’s been in development for over a year now). There hasn’t been many new features since then, but there have been quite a few bug fixes. For those of you thinking about trying it out here’s what you’ll find in Maxthon 2:

• New Look & Optimized Layout – The default skin of Maxthon Browser has been completely redesigned and polished to provide a clear and smooth user experience.
• Fully Customizable Interface – Almost all elements of Maxthon Browser are customizable. You can create layout to fit your browsing habit and have a different look of Maxthon Browser by applying skins.
• Quick Search – Type the keywords you want to search in the address bar and press Enter, Maxthon will search them with the Default Search Engine. You can also do a search by drag & drop selected text in page.
• Mouse Gestures – Hold down right mouse button and move in different directions, you can perform a lot of common operations with it.
• Super Drag & Drop – Drag & Drop a Link to open it in new Tab. Drag & Drop to Perform a search on selected text. With key combinations, you can perform even more operations with this feature.
• Feed Reader – Maxthon Browser has integrated a powerful and easy to use Feed Reader sidebar which supports all RSS and Atom feed formats.
• Popup Blocker – Prevent unwanted popup windows to show up unless it’s triggered by your interaction.
• Content Filter – Remove Ad Images & Flash Movies from your view.
• Anti-Freeze – Maxthon has developed a new technology to prevent freezing due to AJAX while browsing websites.
• Web Sniffer – Helps you find the real URL’s of FLV video files on sites like YouTube.
• Screen Capture – Capture Full Screen, Selected Area, Selected Window and Page Content as an image. Then copy it to the clipboard or save it to a file.

Of course there are two features that disappointingly don’t seem to work. One is the tab manager which I mentioned in my early review, and the other is Aero Glass support on Vista. The tab manager is equivalent to Internet Explorer 7’s thumbnail view of all your open tabs, and the Aero Glass support is supposed to add transparency to things like the address bar (for those of you running Vista).

Another disappointing thing is that you can no longer use the Gecko engine in Maxthon, which is a feature the previous version had. In Maxthon 1.5 you could choose whether you wanted tabs to render using Gecko (the same thing Firefox uses), or have it use the IE rendering engine. The benefit of using Gecko is that sites will typically load faster, but as it turns out most people only use Maxthon because it uses IE to render sites.

Maxthon 2 Tour
Maxthon 2 Features
Maxthon 2 Homepage
Maxthon 2 Download

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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