Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on January 15, 2006 by CyberNet.

Word is spreading that Microsoft is testing an add-on to Windows Media Center that would allow users to view the media content on their home computer on a mobile device. This could take away some of the hype that Slingbox has been getting especially at CES. Of course, with the Microsoft version, there are some drawbacks. The main one is that you have to have the content either recorded or recording on your computer in order to stream it. This means that there is no way to watch ‘live’ TV on your mobile device. Looks like they just won’t gain that edge over Slingbox.

News Source: BetaNews

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on May 06, 2008 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

One of the features in Mac OS X that often gets some attention is what’s called “hot corners.” It’s a simple concept that gives the user an opportunity to assign actions that are performed whenever their mouse hits a corner of the screen. With the help of some free Windows apps you too will also be able to bask in the goodness known as hot corners!

We’ve got a variety of solutions that we’re going to show you, and all of them make use of hot corners. With them you’ll be able to show your desktop, put your computer into standby, enable the screensaver, activate Vista’s Flip3D, and much more. That’s right… all of that without using any keyboard shortcuts!

–Application (Homepage)–

This is a small free app that will bring hot corners to life for your Windows computer. Once you go through the brief setup process the program will immediately start running in the System Tray. The first thing you’ll want to do is configure Hot Corners so that there are some actions associated with the corners of the screen. Here are the different actions you can assign to each of the four corners:

• Open the control panel
• Lock/Switch User
• Open “My Documents”
• Run any application or open any folder
• Start your Screensaver
• Search Google
• Show your desktop
• Put your computer into standby mode
• Disable/Enable your Screensaver
• Close the current window

Hmmm… the problem is that there are so many good choices, but only four corners to work with. See that extra tab in the configuration screen labeled “Mouse Move?” You can actually assign up to four more mouse gestures using these! To activate the mouse gesture you’ll want to hold down the Windows key+X, and then move your mouse up, left, right, or down respectively.

Here are some screenshots of what the configuration screens looks like:

(Click to Enlarge)

–Vista Gadget (Homepage)–

If you’re running Vista then the Hot Corners gadget will likely be one that you’ll love. Bundled with it is a homebrew version of Mac’s Expose so that whenever you hit a corner of the screen that you specifed all of your active applications will be tiled. Alternatively you could have it activate Vista’s native Flip3D application switcher.

One thing that I want to point out is that this gadget doesn’t really turn a corner of the screen into a mouse-activatable area… it’s more like an edge. As you can see in the screenshot to the right the edge has a customizable height, which means it can essentially become as large or small as you would like.

There are two tricks that I’ve found while using this:

• You can’t set the gadget to be 100% transparent, but you can come close. You can take the opacity down to 20% by right-clicking on the gadget. This will make it nearly invisible.
• Remember, you can have multiple “copies” of nearly all Vista gadgets. Just drag as many as you want onto your desktop, and then move them into position. That way you could use one corner/edge of the screen for Expose, and another for Flip3D!

–AutoHotkey Script (Homepage)–

This is geared for the slightly more advanced users out there that are familiar with AutoHotkey scripting. This is currently only available in a script fashion, and you’ll need to have AutoHotkey installed to compile it. The reason why I wanted to share this is that it’s one of the more powerful hot corner solutions available, and the possibilities of what you can do with the hot corners is nearly endless thanks to how extensive AutoHotkey is.

There’s just a small amount of code that you’ll need to modify located near the top. To help make this even more unique it is designed to allow up to four different actions per corner. How’s that possible? In addition to the typical mouse-over it also recognizes whether you’re holding down the Control, Alt, or Shift keys. I’d have to believe that once you get over a dozen hot corner actions assigned that it would be pretty hard to remember what each of them do.

–Overview–

So I think it’s time to give your fingers a break from all of those keyboard shortcuts. Setup some hot corners to help satisfy your need for speed!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on October 13, 2006 by CyberNet.

I just decided to try out the Remote Desktop in Windows Vista and it is actually pretty nice. I have two computers that currently have Windows Vista RC2 installed and they are both located on my local network. I made sure to specify in the Remote Desktop that I wanted all of the graphical goodies for the machine that I was connecting to which happened to be my laptop.

My desktop is able to handle the Aero theme which allows for the cool transparent effects but my laptop, which was the machine I was connecting to, doesn’t have the WDDM compatible drivers so I’m forced to use the Vista Basic theme. To my surprise the remote connection let my desktop computer do the graphical processing so that I could see the Aero theme “on my laptop.” You can see a screenshot that I took above of this in action.

One thing that is still disappointing is that the computer being controlled will still log the user off in order to give you full control. I really like being able to connect to machines without logging a user off, especially if I want to show someone how to do something. Oh well, maybe in the next version of Windows.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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

Tutorial Thursday

The biggest hassle with Web development is that different browsers have a tendency to display sites a little differently. Our site is typically verified in the latest two versions of Firefox, Flock, Opera, and Internet Explorer. I have machines that run two versions of each of those browsers, but if you didn’t, notice Safari isn’t on that list. First I’m going to walk you through where I find old versions of all the different browsers (standalone and installable versions) and then I’ll cover a couple websites that do the dirty work for you.

–Firefox–

Firefox is the Web browser that is beginning to capture a large percentage of the market share from Internet Explorer. Developers typically rejoice at this because there are normally far less problems designing websites that work with Firefox than with Internet Explorer. The best part is that it is a piece of cake to get your hands on any version of Firefox, even all the way back to Firefox (Phoenix) 0.1!

• Homepage for current version
• Install: Firefox 0.1 to the current release
• Standalone/Portable: Firefox 2, Firefox 1.5, Firefox 1.0

–Flock–

 Flock is a branch off of Firefox and is currently based on Firefox 1.5. Technically speaking if your site works in Firefox 1.5 then it shouldn’t have any problems in Flock, but it is always better to be safe by testing it in Flock as well.

• Homepage for current version
• Install: Flock 0.4.9 to the current release
• Standalone/Portable: Flock 0.7

–Internet Explorer–

The most popular browser used on the Internet is indisputably Internet Explorer, but other alternatives are starting to creep up and take over its’ market share. To make things a little more difficult, Microsoft does not allow more than one instance of IE to be installed at the same time. Therefore you will find the standalone versions below to be extremely useful. Note: Internet Explorer is much more standards compliant than previous versions and coding a website to work with it is much easier, but it isn’t quite as nice as other browsers yet.

• Homepage for current version
• Standalone: Internet Explorer 3 to Internet Explorer 6
• Standalone: Internet Explorer 7

–Opera–

Opera is often referred to as the most standards compliant browser that is available and when they started to offer their desktop browser at no cost, it attracted a lot of new users. At that time, standalone and portable versions started to emerge which makes it even easier for Web developers to test their sites against Opera.

• Homepage for current version
• Install: Opera 8 and 9
• Install: Opera 3.21 to Opera 8
• Standalone/Portable: Opera 8 and 9

–Safari–

Safari is Apple’s claim-to-fame browser that is based off of Konquerer for Linux. To the surprise of many people this is probably the most standards compliant browser, but Windows users are left out in the dark when it comes to testing a site using it. The Swift browser is supposed to render sites similarly to Safari except you can use it in Windows, but my experience with Swift is that it does not render things the same way as Safari.

• Homepage for current version
• Standalone/Portable: Safari (costs $0.99)

–Websites–

Alright, so we went through where you can find the most popular browsers so that you can install them, but what if you want to keep your computer clutter free and just want to do a quick check? The most popular website that will do many of the browsers you want is called BrowserShots. They recently trimmed down their selection of browsers eliminating Safari and Internet Explorer editions, but they still offer multiple versions of Dillo, Epiphany, Firebird, Firefox, Flock, Galeon, Konqueror, Mozilla, Navigator, Opera, Phoenix, and SeaMonkey. One thing that always eliminated the usefulness of the site, however, was that the screenshots can take up to 4 hours to be generated based upon how many people are waiting for their own websites to get processed.

Okay… drum roll please! Total Validator is my favorite website because it snaps screenshots of your site within minutes, and if you don’t feel like waiting around you can have it email you the results. Besides for checking screenshots it can also validate your HTML, look for broken links, and a bunch of other stuff, too. Oh yeah, and I almost forgot to mention that the browsers they do have available are also available on multiple operating systems, for example, Firefox 2 can be tested on Windows, Linux, and OS/X! Where else are you going to find a service that is able to do all of these:

• Windows XP
  • Internet Explorer 7
  • Internet Explorer 6
  • Internet Explorer 5.5
  • Internet Explorer 5
  • Internet Explorer 4
  • Netscape 6.2
• Windows 2000
  • Lynx 2.8
  • Firefox 2.0
  • Firefox 1.5
  • Firefox 1.0
  • Mozilla 1.7
  • Netscape 4.8
  • Netscape 3.0
  • Opera 9
  • Opera 8
  • Opera 7
• Linux
  • Lynx 2.8
  • Firefox 2.0
  • Firefox 1.5
  • Firefox 1.0
  • Mozilla 1.7
  • Konqueror 3
  • Epiphany/Gnome 2
• Apple Mac (OS/X)
  • Safari 2.0
  • Firefox 2.0
  • Mozilla 1.7
  • Opera 9

 I would recommend that you install at least one version of each primary browser mentioned above, and then you can use an online solution to test the rest. From the images you should be able to see if the HTML code is being displayed properly, and whether there were any serious errors by a malfunctioning script that you might be using. If you have a better solution for testing a website in another browser feel free to let us know in the comments below!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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

It was almost a year ago when Microsoft and Adobe went head-to-head because of the built-in PDF functionality that Office 2007 was supposed to include. Adobe was obviously afraid that by Microsoft incorporating the ability to save a document as a PDF, that they could lose out on people needing their tools. In the end Microsoft had to provide the feature as an add-on that can be downloaded at no cost.

Now they are both at it again because Microsoft is launching a new technology called Silverlight and Adobe introduced a media player. Both of the offerings aim to make the user’s media experience on the Web more feature-rich while also making the media transfer more efficient.

Here are some snippets from Microsoft’s press release on Silverlight:

Microsoft Silverlight, previously called Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere (WPF/E), integrates with existing Web technologies and assets to provide higher-quality experiences with lower costs for media delivery. Delivered to end users through a seamless, fast installation, Silverlight offers consistent experiences to both Macintosh and Windows users on a variety of browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.
…
Leading media companies and solution providers have announced support for Silverlight including Akamai Technologies, Brightcove, Eyeblaster, Limelight Networks, Major League Baseball, NaviSite Inc., Netflix, Pinnacle Systems Inc., Rhozet Corp., Skinkers, Sonic Solutions, Tarari Inc., Telestream Inc. and Winnov. All have indicated plans to deliver Silverlight-based experiences for their viewers and customers.
…
“Netflix is leading the way for people to rent movies for instant viewing over the Internet,” said Netflix Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt. “With 6.3 million members now and millions more in the next few years, Netflix needs rapid and reliable scalability so all members can enjoy DVD-quality movies immediately on our instant-viewing feature. We depend on Microsoft Windows Media technologies, and we’re excited about Microsoft Silverlight as a platform to enable instant watching of great content for all our members, on multiple platforms.”

Adobe plans on doing just about the same thing with their media player, and they even plan on dipping their hands in some Flash DRM! As NewTeeVee points out this will essentially be a video RSS Reader that retrieves the video listings from feeds. Here is what Adobe has to say about the media player in their press release:

For viewers, Adobe Media Player enables higher quality Flash format playback, the ability to download and view videos offline, ways to discover interesting new shows, full screen playback, one-click viewer ratings, and a powerful Favorites feature that automatically downloads new episodes of favorite TV shows or video podcasts. The player is cross-platform, based on open standards – including RSS and SMIL – and brings viewers the highly desired ability to play the Web’s most popular video format outside of their browser.

For content publishers, Adobe Media Player enables better ways to deliver, monetize, brand, track and protect video content. It provides an array of video delivery options for high-quality online and offline playback, including on-demand streaming, live streaming, progressive download, and protected download-and-play. The Adobe Media Player enables a wider selection of monetization and branding options including viewer-centric dynamic advertising and the ability to customize the look and feel of the player on the fly to match the brand or theme of the currently playing content.

Unlike Microsoft, Adobe is yet to announce any partnerships that they have already setup. Either they don’t want to tip off Microsoft as to companies that are looking for a better online media solution, or they don’t have any big companies like Microsoft.

One thing is for sure and it’s that this will be one big cat fight. Normally when two companies compete like this, the consumer is always the winner because they are constantly updating and innovating their technology.

Source: GigaOm

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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