Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on May 21, 2008 by CyberNet.

In about another month Windows XP will no longer be an option for people and businesses looking to buy a new computer, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of people have signed a petition wanting to keep XP alive. In Israel today Steve Ballmer told the press that Vista is selling very well, and that it is the operating system of choice for nearly 100% of new consumer PC’s. Well, duh! Trying to find retailers that are still selling computers with XP is rather tricky, but you would expect that after a new operating system has been available for a year and a half.

The real dagger for Microsoft has got to be the fact that, according to Ballmer, 45% of businesses are buying new computers with Vista on them. It doesn’t sound all that bad when it’s worded that way, but it means a majority still find comfort in running a more mature operating system. He cited application compatibility as the main reason Vista has had a bit of a rough start, but went on to say that’s changing as the programs are getting upgraded.

What will be interesting to see is whether there is a surge in computer purchases as the end of June 2008 rolls around. Are businesses going to push to get new computers before the looming XP deadline is reached? Should we all be stocking up on retail licenses of XP to sell on eBay after the deadline hits?

In my eyes this is all a natural progression of technology. If everyone always had the chance to stick with using XP then they would probably never upgrade, and ten years down the road we may not be any better off than we are right now. Hopefully the move to end XP sales will get the Windows community to unite and find solutions to the problems some Vista users are having, and we’ll be able to live in peace… until the next version of Windows is released.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on July 10, 2008 by CyberNet.

The next 24 hours is going to be pure chaos for Apple fans, and the madness started early this morning when Apple released iTunes 7.7. That was then followed by the App Store launch, then a “leaked” iPhone 2.0 firmware, and more. It’s madness I tell you.

I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of Apple news on the gadget sites already, and so we wanted to throw all of the news into one convenient post. Here’s a roundup of the events from this morning:

–Download the iPhone 2.0 Firmware-–

MacRumors somehow grabbed a direct download link for the new iPhone 2.0 firmware on Apple’s servers so that you don’t have to wait until tomorrow to make use of the new App Store. The first thing you’ll need to do is grab the download, and then perform a little trickery:

In order to install the firmware, you will have to do it manually by pressing the Option key when pressing the “Check for Update” button in iTunes. Then select the .ipsw file manually. If for some reason your download is a “.zip” file, rename it to “.ipsw” before proceeding.

Be careful though… this update apparently erases all of the data on your iPhone. Unfortunately this does not work on the iPod Touch.

–iTunes 7.7–

Apple has released iTunes 7.7 today which is a requirement for anyone planning on picking up an iPhone 3G tomorrow. This version also includes support for the App Store, but we’ll get into that a little bit more in a minute.

One thing that jkOnTheRun has already noticed is that there’s now an option to sync your contacts with Google from within the iTunes settings. Apple also added remote control functionality so that you can use your iPod Touch or iPhone to control your iTunes. This will, however, require that you install a free app Apple provides called Remote.

–App Store–

The new iTunes also includes support for the long awaited App Store where developers can share and sell applications that they’ve made for the iPod Touch and iPhone. There are over 500 apps available right now broken up into over a dozen categories, and about 25% of them are free downloads. Of those that do cost money over 90% are under $9.99, which is actually a reasonable price. The most expensive is one called ForeFlight that provides weather and data for pilots. The cost? It’s $69.99.

What’s nice is that Apple has made it easy to browse through the App Store and have it show only those programs that are free. I’ve already skimmed through all of the free offerings, and currently have about 15 that are ready to be installed on my iPhone. These include eBay Mobile, Facebook (not that I’ll really use it), NetNewsWire, Pandora Radio, SportsTap (for sports scores), Twitterrific, WeatherBug, and the Yellow Pages. You can see all of the ones I’ve downloaded in this screenshot:

Note: To get the Applications section in my Library I had to enable it in the preferences. Then to browse through the available apps just click the Get More Applications link shown in the bottom-right corner of the screenshot. Or you can just click here to open iTunes and be taken directly to the top free apps.

The application that I’m the most excited about would have to be NetNewsWire because I felt that Newsgator’s mobile interface wasn’t as slick as what Google Reader offered for the iPhone. This free feed reader will synchronize all of your feeds across all of your computers (both Windows and Mac) which is very nice. I haven’t been able to try it out yet, but judging by the screenshot it should be just what the doctor ordered.

Any iTunes user can start downloading the programs that are currently available in the App Store, but you obviously won’t be able to load them onto your device until you get the new firmware 2.0 upgrade.

–App Store on the iPhone–

Apple hasn’t officially released the new 2.0 firmware yet, but Gizmodo has been posting videos of how the App Store works on the iPhone. I have to say that it’s pretty slick how you uninstall an application the same way that you remove a web bookmark that you’ve added to your home screen (pictured to the right).

Overall Gizmodo seems to be really impressed with how smooth the whole process is. Apple might have really knocked one out of the park with the new App Store.

–MobileMe–

Apple is also preparing for their full scale launch of MobileMe, which is the rebranding process of .Mac. As TUAW noticed there is already an update for both the Mac operating system and Apple TV that switches over the branding to MobileMe.

–AT&T Gets iPhone 3G Shipments–

This is a video of an AT&T store receiving and stocking the new iPhone 3G’s for tomorrow’s big release. There’s really nothing that interesting with the video other than the fact that the white 16GB iPhone 3G’s come in a white box.

Thanks to everyone who sent in the tips!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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

Have you been itching to get your hands on a Media Center computer that lets you record all of your shows? Both Vista Home Premium and Vista Ultimate include these capabilities, but you can download Mythbuntu if you’re looking for an open source alternative to put an extra PC to work.

As the name implies, Mythbuntu is based on the ever-popular Ubuntu Linux operating system. It makes it extremely easy to setup MythTV so that you can quickly begin recording your favorite shows. Here are some of the features you’ll get with Mythbuntu/MythTV:

• Basic ’live-tv’ functionality. Pause/Fast Forward/Rewind "live" TV.
• Support for multiple tuner cards and multiple simultaneous recordings.
• Distributed architecture allowing multiple recording machines and multiple playback machines on the same network, completely transparent to the user.
• Completely automatic commercial detection/skipping
• Grabs program information using xmltv.
• Displays basic program information on channel change using a themeable semi-transparent on-screen display.
• Electronic Program Guide that lets you change channels and select programs to record.
• Scheduled recordings of TV programs, and playback and deletion of those programs, all through a themeable UI.
• A nice web interface to let you select programs to record remotely.
• Rip, categorize, play, and visualize MP3/Ogg/FLAC/CD Audio files. (FLAC, Vorbis, and MP3 encoding). Create complex playlists (and playlists containing playlists) through a simple UI.
• An emulator frontend. (MAME, NES, SNES, generic PC games)
• An image viewer/slideshow application.
• A weather module.
• A generic video player module, with automatic metadata lookups
• A DVD player / ripper module. Make perfect backups, or transcode down to smaller file sizes.
• An RSS news feed reader module.

MythTV is also well known for the selection of plugins that are available, as well as some themes. With nearly 300,000 downloads it’s looking like the MythTV project is doing pretty well for itself.

Even though MythTV is stable for you to use, Mythbuntu is still in the Alpha stage so you have to be willing to cope with some bugs and known issues. I’m sure it will continue to get better as future versions are released, and I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful thing!

Although lazy people will probably buy a pre-configured MythTV computer.

If you want some screenshots of Mythbuntu you can visit this page, or screenshots of MythTV can be found here.

Source: Download Squad

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on April 24, 2008 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

Microsoft has made some good efforts to make Vista a lot more secure than previous versions of Windows by locking down files and folders on your system. They must have figured if it’s verging on painful for you to move or delete the files then it would probably be difficult for viruses to do the same. What if you wanted to modify or delete a system file for one reason or another?

This can be done by taking ownership of the file or folder. Taking ownership will not only let you manage the file or folder, but it can also be used as a way to avoid the User Account Control (UAC) prompt. For example, if you take ownership of the “Mozilla Firefox” folder in the “Program Files” you’ll never see the UAC prompt when dealing with that particular folder.

Important: It should be noted that whatever files you take ownership of could become more vulnerable to attacks.

–Manual Steps–

There are two ways to do this manually, and neither are much fun. The next section of this article offers a one-click solution, but I’m sure many of you are curious as to what taking ownership of a file or folder actually entails.

• GUI (Graphical User Interface) – As expected being able to take ownership of a file can be done through the file properties window. We’ve already put together instructions on how to do this before, but it can be a rather daunting 5-step process if you have to do it repeatedly.
• Command line – The How-To Geek has a great set of instructions as to how you can use the command line to take ownership of a file. It’s pretty much a two-line job, but it’s not the easiest thing in the world to remember.

–XdN Tweaker (Homepage)–

So how can we make taking ownership a little easier? There are all kinds of registry hacks floating around out there, but I’m going to point you to one of my favorite tweaking utilities for Vista. It’s called XdN Tweaker, and not only is it free but there is also a version that requires absolutely no installation.

After you get the program up and running the first thing you’ll want to do is jump to the Files & Folders section in the sidebar. In the lower-half of the screen you should see the Take Ownership option, and all you have to do is click the Add Option button:

(Click to Enlarge)

There’s no need to restart your computer once the option has been enabled. You can see the new menu item that was added whenever you right-click on a file or folder:

Clicking on the Take Ownership option will essentially duplicate the tedious manual steps that we mentioned above, but it is a lot faster than going through it all yourself. If for some reason you decide that you don’t want the Take Ownership option to show up anymore it can be removed by simply running XdN Tweaker again and choosing the Remove Option button.

Now if only Microsoft would fine tune UAC so that it is a little easier to use, but that won’t be happening anytime soon. I guess it’s a tradeoff you have to make for the added security.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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You can toss it on a plane. You can toss it on a train. You can toss it in a car. You can toss it near and far.

Kiloo’s new Frisbee(R) app for iOS gives geeks a safe environment to toss the disc (so no more broken windows or dents in the lawn). We managed to keep that little blue saucer parallel to the ground for several seconds during our hands-on. It even flew through one or two of those enormous black and white hoops (enormous relative to the finger-nail-size frisbee). Many of the interface elements feel like they were borrowed from Angry Birds, from buttons and other graphics, to the way you progress through levels. This brought a certain familiarity to the game, though gently sliding a Frisbee(R) across the screen is arguably much less addictive than catapulting feathered fowl to their explosive deaths. We tossed (or flicked) the disc on an iPhone, but if you’re ready to step up to the big leagues, the free app is available for iPad (and iPod touch) as well. Jump up and catch it at the source link.

Frisbee Forever app hits your iPhone screen, doesn’t crack it originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 07 May 2011 02:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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