Jan 27

CyberNotes: How To Customize Firefox’s Toolbars

Posted in: CyberNotes, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on June 22, 2006 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Tutorial Thursday
 

Some people go crazy with Firefox extensions and install them left and right. Extensions help to drive Firefox’s popularity but they can also start to clutter up your toolbars:

100 Extensions
 
Now I know that picture is a little dramatic because that guy installed 100 Firefox extensions, but it gives you a good idea of what may eventually happen if you never try and clean up your toolbars.

I limit myself to just one toolbar and the tab-bar. I say “if it isn’t something that you use each day then you don’t need it on a toolbar.” Now let’s get started on customizing Firefox’s toolbars.

You can move items, like the bookmarks found on your Bookmarks Toolbar, from one toolbar to another toolbar:

  1. Install the Tiny Menu Firefox extension so that the Menu Toolbar takes up very little room (you can customize which Menu items are hidden and which ones are shown).
  2. Right-click on a toolbar in Firefox.
  3. Select Customize….
  4. From the drop-down list on the Customize screen select “Icons.” Also check the box that says “Use Small Icons.”
    Icons
     
  5. Now start dragging items from one toolbar to another.
    • I drag all of my navigation buttons, search box, and address box up to the Menu Toolbar. Once I have those items on the Menu bar I can eliminate the Navigation Toolbar.
    • Next I target the Bookmarks Toolbar. Your bookmarks that are found on the Bookmarks Toolbar will show up as “Bookmarks Toolbar Items.” If you don’t have a lot of bookmarks on the toolbar then you can move this up to the Menu Toolbar as well. I only have two bookmarks that I use on the toolbar: GMail and Google Calendar. You don’t have to supply a name for your bookmarks and not supplying a name will save you a lot of room on your toolbar. It will only show the icon for the page and no text, much like how the Home button doesn’t say “Home” next to the icon.
      Bookmarks Toolbar Items
       
    • NOTE: If you want to remove something from a toolbar you just have to left-click on the item and drag it into the Customize window. Items can always be added by dragging them from the Customize windows onto a toolbar.

Now that we have finished all of the customizations why don’t we see what kind of improvements we have made:

Before:
Before Toolbar
 
 
After:
After Toolbar
 

There are two things that still might differ from my toolbars compared to yours. I am running Firefox 2.0 Alpha 3 which has a different search box. It is still about the same size as the one in Firefox 1.5 but does look a little different. Also, instead of using the built-in Firefox Bookmarks manager I have started using Google Bookmarks. I don’t use the Google Bookmarks because it is a space-saver, instead I use it because of the portability and privacy it gives my bookmarks.

I hope this has either helped you or has given you some ideas on how you can reclaim your toolbar space.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Jan 26

Apple Tablet Will Likely Support 2 Kinds of Apps

Posted in: Apple, apps, developers, iPhone, Phones, rumors, Software, speculation, Today's Chili


In addition to launching its tablet Wednesday, Apple will likely introduce a new programming solution for iPhone developers to easily tablet-enable their apps.

Developers polled by Wired said they expected additions to Apple’s software-development kit that would help make iPhone apps work at any resolution, for full-screen support on the rumored device.

But how will that work? The tablet will likely support all iPhone apps out of the box in their current 480-by-320 resolution. These apps will probably be able to run in the background, perhaps in separate windows. It’s unlikely they’re going to automatically maximize to fill up the tablet’s screen, which is rumored to be 10 inches diagonally, developers polled by Wired.com agreed, because that would result in a blurry, pixelated mess — not Apple’s style.

Therefore, it’s likely that Apple will offer a quick workaround for developers to rescale their apps for full-screen tablet support.

For people who buy the tablet, that means we’ll see a slightly bifurcated world of apps. We’ll be able to access all iPhone apps in small windows, and some of those apps will be resizable to fit the tablet’s larger screen.

“It’s easy to imagine how Apple might offer tools to make it easy for me to not have to make all my graphics from scratch,” said Bart Decrem, CEO of Tapulous, developer of the popular iPhone rhythm game Tap Tap Revenge. “That’s one of the things I’d be on the lookout for.”

“We’ve made a big investment,” he continued. “People have made huge investments in their games. I’d expect Apple to accelerate the process of having lots and lots of apps that feel native and migrate from a fixed-resolution world to resolution independent.”

Decrem said he could not comment on whether Tapulous would be appearing as a presenter at Apple’s Jan. 27 event in San Francisco, where the Cupertino, California, company is rumored to be launching a tablet. Tapulous appeared in the recent September iPod event to present a new game, Riddim Ribbon.

Multiple independent reports agree on the physical description of Apple’s tablet: a blown-up iPhone or iPod Touch with a 10-inch screen. But the software experience has remained a mystery. Offering a glimmer of insight, The New York Times just a day before Apple’s product event has published a bold report claiming the tablet would support all 100,000 iPhone and iPod Touch apps currently in the App Store.

“It will run all the applications of the iPhone and iPod touch, have a persistent wireless connection over 3G cellphone networks and Wi-Fi, and will be built with a 10-inch color display, allowing newspapers, magazines and book publishers to deliver their products with an eye to the design that had grabbed readers in print,” NY Times wrote.

Corroborating NY Times‘ report, McGraw-Hill CEO Terry McGraw said in a live TV interview that McGraw was developing e-book content for the Apple tablet. He explained that the tablet’s OS was based on the iPhone OS, meaning McGraw’s e-book iPhone apps will be easily portable to the tablet.

Other iPhone developers polled by Wired agreed that Decrem’s theory was solid. They said the SDK needed to be updated with new tools streamlining migration to the upcoming tablet. Jeff Meininger, iPhone developer of Snaptic, said Decrem’s proposed solution regarding resolution-independence would work.

“It would be the simplest and most effective way to be able to support all iPhone apps,” Meininger said. “It’s absolutely technically feasible.”

David Castelnuovo, developer of the immensely popular iPhone game Pocket God, said it was likely Apple would offer some new sizability code in the iPhone SDK with the tablet in mind. But he said it wouldn’t be a blanket solution for all 100,000 apps in the App Store.

Pocket God, for example, is game that involves torturing pygmies on an island, and it would have to be redesigned for a tablet with a bigger island and more pygmies, Castelnuovo said. So, some quick and easy sizability code will likely accelerate full-screen tablet support for form-based apps such as Facebook. For games or apps with more complex interfaces, it could take more thoughtful tweaking.

“Ideally we wouldn’t want to just scale [Pocket God],” Castelnuovo said. “We’d want to make the world bigger.”

Just how big a portion of the App Store will support full-screen tablet resolution will be up to the developers. Appcelerator, a company that helps developers build cross-platform mobile apps, polled 554 developers on their interest in coding for the tablet. 51 percent of respondents said it would be “very important” for them to port iPhone apps for the tablet “in a simple, easy fashion without too much cost or delay.” Thirty percent responded “Somewhat important” and 19 percent responded “Not important.”

It remains a question whether Apple will launch an entire section in its App Store for tablet apps. Decrem said he doubts that, because all iPhone apps will work with the tablet. He said it’s realistic that developers will state in their apps’ descriptions whether they feature full tablet support.

We’ll find out soon. Stay tuned on Gadget Lab for full, live coverage of Apple’s tablet event, which kicks off 10 a.m. PDT Wednesday.

See Also:

A mockup of an imaginary Apple tablet: Stephen Lewis Simmonds


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Jan 26

Will Vista Bust The Bank?

Posted in: Software, Today's Chili, Windows

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

Will Vista Bust The Bank?

If these prices are true, then it looks like Vista will cost as much as a computer does. We all knew Vista wasn’t going to be cheap, but $1K for an operating system? Here are the rumored retail prices:

Windows Vista Home Basic
200€ or 255.55$ or 135.95£
 
Windows Vista Home Premium
400€ or 511.10$ or 271.90£
 
Windows Vista Ultimate Edition
500€ or 638.88$ or 339.87£
 
Windows Vista Business
650€ or 830.54$ or 441.84£
 
Windows Vista Enterprise
800€ or 1,022.20$ or 543.80£

Everyone is saying that these prices are very unlikely because the Ultimate Edition is supposed to be the most expensive version.

The retail prices for XP are already high and now we are looking at some versions that cost 2 to 3 times more that Windows XP Professional does? Boy would that push hackers to get a crack out within hours of Vista’s release :) .

News Source: MSBlog

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Jan 25

New Digsby Getting Huge Performance Boost

Posted in: Freeware, Pre-Release, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili, Windows

This article was written on August 11, 2008 by CyberNet.

digsby performance-1.png

arrow Windows Windows only arrow
A few months ago we tried out Digsby, and our verdict was that it’s one of the best cross-network messenger clients available. The only downside was that when it came to the performance of Digsby things weren’t so pleasant. Some of the commenters on our article noticed RAM usage spiking to 70MB and above as they were using the program, and this disappointed a lot of people since they liked the appearance and functionality of the messenger.

I’ve been closely following the Digsby blog, and they posted some great news last Friday night. Right now they are preparing for a major new release that has both performance and RAM optimizations that should solve the remaining qualms. This all comes due to a reworking of the application’s architecture, which I’m very grateful for!

My first-hand experience is that the new version cut my memory usage by over 50% as seen in the screenshot above. I use Google Talk, Windows Live, and Twitter services with Digsby, and overall it only used about 27MB of my memory. That’s not bad considering the previous release ate up over 50MB with the same accounts.

Before we tell you how you can get this pre-release version checkout what the developers had to say about this big milestone:

  • RAM Optimization: Many people have reported that Digsby is taking 70MB – 110MB during normal use. If you leave Digsby running for a while, the memory leaks caused RAM usage to climb to 150MB+ on some systems. We completely reworked the architecture to use less memory and also improved the memory management by releasing objects when they are no longer needed. We also hunted down and eliminated numerous memory leaks. All in all, these changes lower Digsby’s RAM usage by over 50%. It should now hover in the 20MB – 50MB range depending on how many accounts you have and what you are doing at the moment. There is still more we can do and our goal is to get RAM utilization down even further!
  • Performance: The changes in architecture improved the performance of simple user interface elements like buttons and menus; they now draw 2x – 3x faster! Digsby should be much more responsive now than ever before. However, while this build focused on RAM optimization, the next 1-2 builds will have a strong focus on improving “perceived performance” even more, including things like GUI response time, CPU utilization, etc.
  • Firewalls and Proxy Servers: Those who have not been able to use MSN or other IM protocols due to firewall/proxy restrictions should now be able to connect without any issues.
  • Crash Reporter: The new release includes a crash reporter that will ask you whether you want to send a crash log to us if Digsby should crash.
  • Bug Fixes + Enhancements: Over the past two months we have added a large number of bug fixes and enhancements. There are too many to list here but we will include a full Change Log when the release is pushed to everyone.

You can grab a “testers only” version of the new Digsby from their forum, but be aware that it might not be stable (I didn’t have any problems with it though). They plan to have a full public release soon, but I’m sure some of you won’t want to wait. ;)

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Jan 25

Touchgrind Multi Touch Skateboard Game Shown on Mac

Posted in: Games, iPhone, Mac, Media Players, Software, Today's Chili

Touchgrind, the iPhone skateboarding game I briefly loved last February, could be coming to the Mac. Normally Mac games are cause for disappointment, but this one has a new angle: multi touch.

The oversized MacBook trackpad can recognize up to eleven fingers at once (we’ll leave the precise positioning of those fingers to your imagination). So far we have seem little more than fancy swipes and pinch-to-zoom, but gaming seems an obvious use for all that detection power, especially as we’re far more willing to learn new input methods for games than we are for word processors.

The Touchgrind demo, like the iPhone game, lets you ollie and kickflip your way around a course using some very intuitive finger movements. The big advantage of the MacBook is that it has a much larger screen: the lack of warning of upcoming obstacles is what made the iPhone game get frustrating very quickly. Here’s the video, with the exact same music as the iPhone demo video of the game.

To be clear, this is just a tech demo at the moment, but we’d love to see it as a cheap pick-up-and-play title for the Mac. And you know where else this game would be welcome? The Apple Tablet.

Multi-Touch Trackpad Gaming Demonstrated on MacBook [Mac Rumors]

Touchgrind for iPhone [Touchgrind/Illusion Labs]


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Jan 25

DoubleTwist partnering with T-Mobile for Android music management

Posted in: amazon, Android, Music, rumor, Software, t-mobile, t-mobile usa, T-mobileUsa, Today's Chili

As the late, great Rodney Dangerfield would attest, DoubleTwist has been jonesing for some respect for quite some time. For those unaware, said software essentially acts as an iTunes for everything else, giving users of all those non-Apple devices a somewhat familiar interface and portal to sync media, playlists, etc (video demonstration is after the break). Up until now, Android users have been forced to figure out content management on their own, and while geeks have obviously had no issue, those expecting iTunes to take the wheel have found themselves in an uncomfortable position. Reportedly, T-Mobile USA has decided to partner with the company and pre-load the software onto a number of new Android devices — not just the Fender myTouch 3G. The only real pitfall here is that Amazon’s MP3 Store integration is missing, but we should learn more as T-Mob goes official with the details later today. Is this the big break DoubleTwist has been waiting for? Time shall tell.

Continue reading DoubleTwist partnering with T-Mobile for Android music management

DoubleTwist partnering with T-Mobile for Android music management originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jan 2010 08:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceTechCrunch  | Email this | Comments

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Jan 23

Roxio Beats Nero To Vista Compatibility

Posted in: Newly Released, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on September 05, 2006 by CyberNet.

Roxio Easy Media Creator 9 I’ve tried numerous times to install Nero on Vista and I just can’t seem to get it to work. Unfortunately the developers know that it isn’t currently compatible but I am still waiting for a version that works.

In the mean time Roxio beat Nero to the punch and released Easy Media Creator 9 which boasts Vista compatibility:

Microsoft® Windows Vista Home/Business/Ultimate, Windows XP Home/Pro/MCE (Service Pack 2), Windows XP Pro x64 Edition, Windows 2000 (Service Pack 4 or later)

I was hoping that they would have a demo that I could use while I wait for Nero but I didn’t see a download link for it. I also don’t feel like forking out the $100 for the software because, at least in previous versions, it seems to lack the power and customizability that Nero has…which is probably why it is called Easy Media Creator.

It is great to see these software companies developing their products to work with Vista already. Back in the day when I was testing Windows XP RC1 it seemed like no on was creating software that worked with it. Onward and upward.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Jan 22

Microsoft Gains Messenger Users with “I’m” Initiative

Posted in: Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on August 03, 2007 by CyberNet.

Back in May, we wrote about Microsoft’s latest way of getting involved and giving back to important organizations globally with their “I’m Making a Difference” campaign. Ever since March, anyone who uses Windows Live Messenger has the opportunity to participate, and it costs nothing to get involved. The whole point is giving back, so there are a handful of organizations that end up receiving a portion of the revenue that Microsoft makes off of messenger.

Now the whole idea behind this campaign was to give to charities, however, Microsoft is actually gaining something too. LiveSide reported that the number of people using Windows Live Messenger has increased ever since the program was launched. More specifically, usage was up almost 25%. The graph below gives you a good idea of how Microsoft is doing with their Windows Live Messenger because it compares their growth alone with that of Yahoo, AIM and AOL combined. Messenger users are indicated in green.

Windows live messenger

Who knew that an effort to help out charities would provide benefits in return? Microsoft has already raised $35,000 for the I’m imitative, however they’ve got a lot more money to make to meet the guaranteed $100,000 that each charity will receive after the first year is over.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Jan 21

Windows 7 way hotter than Vista off the line, now more popular than all OS X versions

Posted in: Apple, Mac, Microsoft, os x, OsX, Software, Today's Chili, Windows, windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows7

We learned back in November that Windows 7 was having a much (much!) better first few days in retail than Vista did when it launched, but now that the system has had a full quarter and change to make an impression, it looks as if that growth isn’t slowing down. According to new figures from Net Application, Win7 is achieving a higher level of market penetration in a faster amount of time than Vista did; after a month, Vista was stuck at 0.93 percent, while Win7 nailed the 4 percent mark. After two months, Win7 jumped to 5.71 percent, while Vista was barely over 2 percent after the same amount of time. ‘Course, the newest version of Windows had a holiday season to help it out right from the get-go, but there’s still no denying that people are flocking to the system even now. What’s most interesting, however, is that the overall market share of Windows 7 alone has now surpassed all OS X versions that are being tracked (10.4, 10.5 and 10.6), so put that in your pipe and smoke it. Smoke it long and hard.

Windows 7 way hotter than Vista off the line, now more popular than all OS X versions originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceArs Technica  | Email this | Comments

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Jan 21

Nokia Gives Away Free, Lifetime Navigation App

Posted in: gps, Phones, Software, Today's Chili

on-your-mobileNokia’s own headline sums this story up pretty well: “Navigation on your Nokia. For free. Forever.”

That’s right. If anyone thought that Garmin, TomTom and any other standalone GPS makers were already in trouble after Apple allowed turn-by-turn navigation on the iPhone, now the world’s No. 1 phone maker is giving away a full suite for any compatible Nokia handset, anywhere in the world. And not only is the application itself free: so are those usually lucrative maps and updates.

Free is fantastic and all, but what’s really important here is the fact that the maps are stored on the phone, not trickled to your device from a network. See, when you download Google maps on an iPhone or Android device, you’re at the mercy of of your cell signal. No bars, no map. But Nokia’s model is the same as a dedicated GPS unit: The maps are pre-loaded onto the phone and reside there permanently. In a place where the network doesn’t reach? No problem, maps are available. Don’t want to squander your data plan? No problem, maps don’t suck up kilobytes.

If you have Nokia smartphone, you can grab the download today from the Ovi store (not every handset is supported — the N900 is not on the list, for instance). Along with AGPS support, you get driving and walking directions, Lonely Planet and Michelin guides, weather updates and companion desktop (browser-based) software to manage and search routes form the comfort of a big keyboard. Best of all, the maps are available offline, unlike Google Maps on the iPhone.

Seriously, who would want to be in the satnav-selling game right now? If I had TomTom or Garmin shares (and I don’t), I would be selling them right now.

Ovi Maps [Nokia]


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