Amazon Deal Finder

This article was written on December 17, 2007 by CyberNet.

Deal Locker As you witnessed earlier today with the iPod Touch, Amazon is a great source of deals. The real question is how do you find all of the deals that you’re looking for without spending hours browsing through their products each day. Deal Locker has setup a great search tool for Amazon that will help you hunt down some of the cheapest stuff being sold.

Deal Locker isn’t using any search features that aren’t already offered directly from Amazon, but the interface is a bit better. First off you can choose which Amazon site that you want to search: United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, or France. If you’d like you can enter a keyword that you want to search for, but more importantly you can choose a category and discount range to view. For example, you can have it show cheap Xbox games and accessories by entering in the following:

  • Keyword or Brand: Xbox
  • Category: Computer & Video Games
  • Discounted from: 90% – 99%

Your results will look something like this. Now you may look at some of the items and say “hey, that’s not at least 90% off.” What I noticed rather quickly is that it also takes a look at the used and new prices, which are often much cheaper than what Amazon is selling the items for.

I did do some searching around for DVD’s, and I was quite surprised at some of the new releases that it came up with at a rather reasonable price. I definitely recommend checking into the service.

Amazon Deal Finder [via Donation Coder & Lifehacker]

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Microsoft and Adobe Go Head-To-Head…Again

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.

SilverlightHere 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.

Adobe Media Player

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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IE NetRenderer – View your Site in IE 7, 6, and 5.5 Within Seconds

This article was written on February 26, 2007 by CyberNet.

We have done several posts when it comes to testing websites in other browsers, and this post pretty much sums up our findings. One of my favorite services mentioned in that article is the one called Total Validator. With it you can validate a site or take a screenshot from many different browsers, and if you’re looking for convenience then you’ll find it with their free desktop software or Firefox extension.

Sometimes the screenshots can take a few minutes though, and while that doesn’t seem like that long it really can be. Typically what happens in web development is that a site will be tested in a browser, and if an error is found the developer will try to fix it and then retest it. If you are constantly re-testing a site it can take forever if you have to wait a few minutes to see a screenshot each time (if you’re using BrowserShots it could take hours depending on how long the queue is).

NetRenderer

That’s where IE NetRenderer comes into play. It will let you see what your site looks like in IE 7, IE 6, and IE 5.5 within a matter of seconds. Just enter in the URL and it should popup in no time at all, depending of course on how fast the entire page loads. For example, I had a screenshot of Google.com up in under 2 seconds but our site took between 10 and 17 seconds since there is more content displayed.

There is one small catch about this service though. It only takes a screenshot of what’s visible without needing to scroll on a 1024 x 768 resolution browser window. Other screenshot services will normally scroll the page so that you can see what the entire page looks like. That’s a little bit of a bummer, but the “instant” results make the tradeoff worth it.

IE NetRenderer Homepage

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CyberNotes: MP3Tunes Provides Unlimited Storage for your Music

This article was written on June 26, 2007 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Time Saving Tuesday

MP3TunesThe thought of being able to backup and access your music no matter where you are is surely an appetizing thought. Just look at Flickr…people needed a way to backup and access their precious photos from anywhere and Flickr catered to those people. MP3Tunes is almost equivalent to the Flickr of Music.

I found this service after posting the article on MyBloop. Some of the commenters on that article said that they were going to upload their music so that they could listen to it while at work, but I figured there had to be a better solution available.LaLa was okay, and a cool idea, but the uploader didn’t always work for me as it was supposed to.

–Introduction–

MP3Tunes is a site that gives both free and paid users unlimited storage (read the free vs. paid section below for details) for their music. Once the music has been uploaded to the service the user is able to listen to their songs anywhere that they have access to a Web browser. The only place that you need to install an application is on the computer(s) that you want to sync your music catalog with.

When you signup for the service it creates a “Locker” for you which is where all of your music is stored. Once you have your music uploaded, this is where you’ll be able to organize and play it.

–Managing Music–

MP3Tunes shines when it comes to providing all kinds of options for putting your music on their site. Their main utility is a synchronization application that scans a folder on your computer for music and uploads it to MP3Tunes. You can designate which folder(s) it grabs the music from and it will go to work synchronizing your music.

MP3Tunes MP3Tunes MP3Tunes MP3Tunes

And don’t forget that this is a synchronization program, not just an uploader. That means you can also download your music onto your computer(s) if you feel the need to do so. I think that is awesome because what if your hard drive crashed and you lost all of your music? If you had it on MP3Tunes you would get it all back in no time:

MP3Tunes

Oh, and did I mention that the synchronization utility works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux!

–Music Playback–

Being able to play your music no matter where your at is the biggest reason that I love MP3Tunes. Once you have your music uploaded, you can quickly access it via their website. You don’t need any software installed to do this which is especially great for anyone that is frequently on multiple computers.

MP3Tunes

There’s even a mini-player that you can open in a popup window:

MP3Tunes

If you take a look at the preferences you can actually adjust the bitrate at which the songs are streamed to your computer as well. By default, MP3Tunes will automatically manage the bitrate based upon your connection speed, but some of you might be confident that your Internet service can handle the original bitrate that the song was encoded in. That means that you will be listening to it at the same quality as you would be on your computer.

–Playlists–

Yep, MP3Tunes does playlists! It will synchronize the playlists on your computer along with the songs. If that’s not enough for you there is always the option to create your own playlists after the songs have been uploaded. Simply hover your mouse over the “Play” button next to a song and choose which playlist you want to add it to:

MP3Tunes

–Download Individual Songs–

This is a pretty cool feature, and something I didn’t notice initially. The menu that pops up when you hover your mouse over the play button also has a “Download Track” option:

MP3Tunes

That means you could setup a “shared” account with your friends where you all upload your music to the service using a username and password that you all agree upon. Then you can download each others songs! :)

–Plugins for iTunes and WinAmp–

Some of you probably have your own dedicated media players for home, so why not take advantage of them? There are plugins available for both iTunes and WinAmp that let you listen to songs from your MP3Tunes account:

MP3Tunes MP3Tunes

–Free Accounts vs. Paid Accounts–

Okay, so this is the section where I present both some good and bad news. The bad news is that right now not all free accounts will get unlimited storage right away. They have a limited number of free accounts that they give away each day with the unlimited storage, but everyone is guaranteed to receive at least 1GB. When I signed up, I didn’t get one of the unlimited accounts but they said then when my account was upgraded to an unlimited one, they would email me to let me know. They say that the wait for the unlimited storage is “short,” but who knows what they mean by that.

If you desperately need the unlimited storage, you could always signup for the premium account which includes everything the free account has plus:

  • Guaranteed unlimited music storage and listening
  • Store music files up to 50MB each (free account is 10MB)
  • Back up your DRM tracks (iTunes)
  • Unrestricted album art viewing
  • Full access to customer support
  • Ad-free (although I didn’t really see ads on my free account)

I would say to just hold-out for the unlimited storage in the free account, unless you have a lot of iTunes music that has a DRM on it.

–Conclusion–

MP3Tunes is an amazing service once you get going with it, and the convenience is surely a great thing. I’ve just begun using MP3Tunes, and it is proving to be very worthwhile. If you haven’t already tried it, I recommend giving it a go. If you have tried it, let us know what you think!

MP3Tunes Homepage

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Ping Pong Flash Game Overly Addicting

This article was written on November 07, 2006 by CyberNet.

Ping Pong

I was looking for a fun game to play on the Internet today when I stumbled upon this Flash-based ping pong game. It sounds like such a simple concept but I was surprised at how difficult it was for me to even score a single point. I have started to gain some skill but I am yet to win a game. Once I do win I may actually be able to stop playing. ;)

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Save Yourself Big Bucks On eBay With TypoTracker

This article was written on April 30, 2006 by CyberNet.

Save Yourself Big Bucks On eBay With TypoTrackerA friend just informed me of this nice tool called TypoTracker that will allow you to search for an item on eBay. Searching with this is a little sneaky because it will allow you to search for misspellings of the item you are looking for. How will that benefit you? This means that you can search for items and find listings that normal people searching on eBay can’t find. You can save yourself big money by using this tool.

An example of a misspelling would be “Compq” instead of “Compaq”. Oh the possibilities! :D

You will find that misspellings are not that frequent on eBay (compared to the number of listings) but you just might find that item you are looking for and get it at a drastically reduced price.

TypoTracker Homepage

UPDATE: I have also been informed that Fat Fingers has a nice searching tool similar to TypoTracker. Play with them both and see which one you like the best.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Joomla 1.5 Features & Screenshots

This article was written on January 22, 2008 by CyberNet.

Joomla 15

Joomla 1.5 was just released earlier today, and it is a huge milestone for the content management system. There was so much excitement that this morning I had troubles even getting to their site to retrieve some information about the new version. Once we got in we grabbed several screenshots of the improved admin interface and posted them below.

It’s possible that you haven’t heard of Joomla before. It can be compared to blogging software such as WordPress or MovableType, but it includes many more features out-of-the-box. It’s completely open source, and also has an incredible community surrounding them who have helped build thousands of plug-ins. In all it is packed with features that will help manage whatever kind of content you’re looking to post.

–Features Overview (View)–

Administrators:

  • Simplified administrative interface
  • Improved media manager (multi-delete, batch uploads, etc…)
  • Browse media folders and insert images as you write
  • More control over pagination
  • Search engine friendly URL’s

Designers:

  • Codebase is better organized giving designers 100% control over layouts
  • Create a custom module chrome
  • Creating templates doesn’t require editing of variables making it simpler to work with

Developers:

  • Now separated into a three tiered stack to keep the internal structure clean and allow developers to leverage the different layers
  • Backwards compatible with PHP 4.3, and does support PHP 5
  • Document package gives extension develpers control over the entire document rendered on any given page load

–Screenshots–

(Click to Enlarge)
Joomla - 1 Joomla - 2 Joomla - 3 Joomla - 4 Joomla - 5 Joomla - 6 Joomla - 7 Joomla - 8 Joomla - 9

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AllofMP3.com Responds to the $1.64 Trillion Lawsuit

This article was written on December 28, 2006 by CyberNet.

The RIAA says AllofMP3.com is operating illegally and slapped a 1.64 TRILLION dollar lawsuit on them. AllofMP3.com says that they are operating legally in Russia, complying with all Russian laws. So, where does it go from here? Filed on December 21st, the RIAA is claiming that 11 million songs were pirated. At a mere $150,000 per violation, that’s one heck of a lawsuit with… count them…. 12 zeroes. This lawsuit has caused quite the stir among our readers with comments like…

  • $150,000 a song is just bull and they know it. – Nate The Great
  • Wow, company sued for more then the entire gross domestic product of the country it is located in.- BJW
  • Ask yourself this question; are the contributions entertainers make to society worth the monetary compensation they receive? – Anonymous
  • Wow, I say we just boycott these people. – Denver Computer Consulting

This lawsuit is quite possibly the largest of its’ kind in the world of file sharing. AllofMP3.com also says that they forward all of the necessary fees to a Russian royalty collection firm (ROMS), and from there the ROMS is responsible for getting the Royalties to the proper copyright holders. As of now, the site is still up and running AND they’re offering a 20% bonus when you add money to your account. What a deal.

Whether they show up for the legal battle in New York is yet another question waiting to be answered.  According to Slyck News, a senior company official from AllofMP3 had this to say:

“AllofMP3 understands that several U.S. record label companies filed a lawsuit against Media Services in New York. This suit is unjustified as AllofMP3 does not operate in New York. Certainly the labels are free to file any suit they wish, despite knowing full well that AllofMP3 operates legally in Russia. In the mean time, AllofMP3 plans to continue to operate legally and comply with all Russian laws.”

We’ll surely be following this to see how AllofMP3.com is able to stand up to the big bully… a.k.a The RIAA!

News Source: Slyck News

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Will Pandora Still Be Around by the End of the Year?

This article was written on August 18, 2008 by CyberNet.

pandora radio.pngPandora is a service that thousands of people enjoy every day, yet there’s a chance that they may not be around for very long. Why you ask? In short, it’s because of the royalty fees that they are required to pay which traditional radio stations don’t have to worry about. Pandora co-founder Tim Westergren recently spoke to the Washington Post saying, “We’re approaching a pull-the-plug kind of decision. This is like a last stand for webcasting.”

Royalty fees that they pay amount to around 70% of their revenue which is simply too much. This is all due to a decision a federal panel made last year about how much services like Pandora need to pay. If Pandora is forced to shutdown, we imagine other services like it, including Last.fm, will have no choice but to shutdown as well. Westergren sounds frustrated, to say the least, and it’s not hard to blame him.

There may be a chance for them to survive, if a State Representative from California is able work a last-minute deal. Westergren is put in a position where he can hope for the best, but he has to be prepared to shut-down if no deal is worked out. He says, “The moment we think this problem in Washington is not going to get solved, we have to pull the plug because all we’re doing is wasting money.”

The numbers below should help put things into perspective as to how much Pandora is expected to pay:

  • Traditional Radio: they are not required to pay a penny in royalty fees
  • Satellite stations: they pay 1.6 cents per hour per listener
  • Pandora/Other Internet Radio Stations: by 2010 they will pay 2.91 cents per hour per listener

Obviously the recording industry wants to maximize the amount of money that they can make, but at what point will they realize the value that Pandora and other Internet radio stations bring to their business. They are an amazing marketing tool for artists and likely contribute to more sales of songs and albums, just as traditional radio stations do.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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WebSketch – The Online Drawing Tool

This article was written on October 20, 2006 by CyberNet.

WebSketch

The usefulness of this site is definitely questionable but I think it is a cool concept as to what can be done using Flash and a web browser. Yep, WebSketch is almost a clone of the Microsoft Paint that comes with Windows. Okay, maybe not quite yet but it has several features that I was surprised to see.

You can do everything from changing the size of the tip of your pencil all the way to saving your beautiful creation. It doesn’t save the drawing to your computer though, instead it must be saving it to a database so that it is quick to retrieve. You will, however, have to remember the name that you saved it as because there is no “file browser” available.

As you can see in my screenshot above the color selector lets you also utilize transparency in the colors you choose. The thing that frustrated me the most was the inaccuracy of the color sliders. I actually wrote “CyberNet” in the blue color that you see selected, but it turned out to be more purple. Oh well, it’s not like this was going to be replacing Photoshop for me…but it is still cool to show people. 🙂

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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