Hasta La Gadget!

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

Computer geeks are often tagged as people are are unbelievably dull and have no lives. I’d like to think of myself as having a life but I have met several people that fit the stereotype of a geek. Textbooks, however, are often the last place that I thought a joke could be found but it looks like some computer geek authors have a sense of humor that is just itching to be unleashed.

This site has a great compilation of jokes that can be found throughout several textbooks and I’ll list of my 10 favorite entries:

1. In the index: “pitfalls, see traps” and “traps, see pitfalls.” [Link]
    
2. In the index: Scooby Doo, pronouncing “Windex”     166
   It is supposed to be the rindex function but we all know Scooby Doo has a hard time pronouncing his r’s. [Link]
    
3. In the index: pun, really bad     152
   On page 152 talks about Bird and Penguin classes and says “Yet we’re not finished with these fowl matters.” [Link]
    
4. In the index, which is on page 269 it has: recursion  86, 139, 141, 182, 202, 269 [Link]
    
5. At the bottom of the last page: Any inaccuracies in this index may be explained by the fact that it has been prepared with the help of a computer. [Link]
    
6. In the index: recursive loop     See recursive loop [Link]
    
7. A dedication at the beginning of the book:
   To Joanna,
   My brilliant and beautiful wife without whom I would be nothing. She always comforts and consoles, never complains or interferes, asks nothing and endures all, and writes my dedications. [Link]
    
8. In the index of a Fourier Analysis bok it says: fractals: not mentioned, 112
   Sure enough there is no mention of fractals on that page. [Link]
    
9. In the index: Fibonacci numbers, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610
   and then it goes on to give a “prime numbers” entry that lists every prime number from 1 to 826 (takes up 20 lines) which is how many pages there are in the book.[Link]
    
10. In the index: IndexOutOfBoundsException: 30, 196, 210, 596
    The book only has 595 pages. [Link]
     

You can see which book any of those entries came from by clicking on their respective links. If you are into programming then I’m sure you’ll get most of those jokes and if you don’t understand them that is why they are called “in-jokes.”

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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

Time Saving Tuesday

When I try and create a website or a document the main thing that I am always conscious of is the appearance. I want it to look professional and slick, but I don’t want to spend ages working on it if I don’t have to. So when I am looking to design something the first thing that I turn to are templates!

Templates can save you an unbelievable amount of time but you just have to know where to find them. I’m not just talking about Microsoft’s site for Office templates because there is a whole world of Photoshop templates, HTML, CSS, and so much more out there. I definitely haven’t found them all but there are several different ones that I have bookmarked along my quest to save time.

–Office Templates (Text, Spreadsheets, etc…)–

• Microsoft Office Templates – Microsoft has an amazing selection of templates that are available for Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and many other of their products. Microsoft was recently supposed to implement Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) when downloading templates but I haven’t noticed that taking effect.
• HP Online – They offer Word, Powerpoint, and Publisher templates that are professionally designed. You’ll find brochures, flyers, presentations and much more but the most useful thing that they offer are the “Business identity kits.” There are currently two of those kits put together and each gives you flyers brochures shipping labels, postcards, newsletters, presentation templates, and a few other things!
• Paper Mill Store – There aren’t many Office templates here but there are a few such as a label design. There are several other templates available but most of them are graphical and require Adobe Illustrator.

–Photoshop/Graphic Templates–

• Paper Mill Store – As I mentioned above there are a ton of templates at this site and most of them require Adobe Illustrator. That is because they are heavily graphics based but they did all of visual appeal for you so you’ll just have to change a few words. They have all kinds of things like greeting cards, calendars, wedding announcements, and a lot more.
• Zymic – There are a few different packages that Zymic offers: buttons, logos, banners, and splashes. Each one of those packages come in a single ZIP file so that you can easily flip through all of the designs to see which one you like the best, for example, the buttons package has 70 button templates inside of it.

–Website Templates (HTML, CSS, etc…)–

• Open Source Web Design – This is always the first place that I go when designing a new website. There are almost 1700 templates available which makes it pretty easy to find something that you’ll like. I normally don’t look for “what looks the best” because I really just want something that is laid out similar to what I want to design. That way I can utilize most of the CSS and just customize the graphics to what I need.
• Open Web Design – I know, a very similar name to the site above but they are a little different. Here you’ll find around 2000 high-quality templates that are sure to save you some time.  Many of the templates on this site are also on the Open Source Web Design that I listed above, so I would just pick one of these two sites to look at.
• Templates Box – There are some really unique templates here and they do offer premium ones that cost money but their selection of free downloads isn’t bad either. What really makes this site unique though is that they have free Flash templates available.
• Zymic – Back to Zymic! They may not offer the largest selection of templates but the ones they do have are very high-quality. Many of the ones that they have available include HTML pages, CSS, images, Photoshop PSD files, blank images files, and even fonts. My favorite is probably Template 72 which can be seen in this live preview. Zymic also has these templates available if the site is more for a business.
• WordPress Themes – If you’re looking to give your blog a fresh new look then this site has over 980 WordPress themes gathered into a single location. It lets you know which ones work with WordPress 2 and how many columns the design has.

–Overview–

The thing you have to remember with templates is that they may not exactly be what you are looking for, but they will hopefully save you some time from having to start from scratch. The website templates are especially useful if there are live examples so that you can see what would be the easiest for visitors to use on your site. Just dig around a little bit and I’m sure you can find a template to give you a helping hand.

There are probably other sites that offer free templates that I may not have mentioned, so please let me know so that I can add them to the list.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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

Recently, a new content sharing service called Egnyte launched their public beta, and their file management system is great for personal or business use.

To use Egnyte, you’ll have to install an uploader first.  What’s nice about this is that it supports both Windows and Macs.  From there, you can select the folders (activate) on your computer that you will want to upload to your Egnyte workspace.

Anything that you upload is tagged so that it makes for easy searching later on.  The uploader works with Outlook, Thunderbird, Gmail and POP enabled email accounts if you want to back them up.

Egnyte allows you to designate the files, folders, or emails you want others to see. You designate these files by placing them into a “view” and then people can be invited in to see the view.

Another nice feature is the continuous synchronization which automatically synchronizes the files that you have selected. Any time you make a change to an activated file, it will get updated on your workspace This means it’s one less thing for you to worry about, and your important information is always being backed-up. At any point, you can export the data that you’ve got stored to any computer.

The free version available to everybody allows 1GB of storage.  They also have plans available for corporate work space, however it seems highly over-priced. For example, a corporate account is $30 per month but the user is capped at 30 GB of storage. I wouldn’t say that a corporate account is worth it,  but a free account is definitely worth a try, especially if you’re working on a group project that frequently gets modified. It’s also a great solution for backing up your email.

Sign up for Egnyte

Thanks for the tip Chris!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on February 07, 2007 by CyberNet.

Remember the partnership that was announced between TiVo and Netflix which fell through? Now TiVo has entered into another partnership, this time with Amazon to bring movies to TiVo users. This announcement was made yesterday, several hours after Wal-Mart released their version of Video Downloads. 

While TiVo and Amazon aren’t at the point where they can release the service to everyone, a test version begins today.  It’s called Amazon Unbox on Tivo, which an unspecified amount of testers will be able to try-out. Although a final date hasn’t been given, the service will be available to everybody later this year to those who have TiVo digital recorders with broadband Internet capability.

I think it’s a great idea for TiVo to grab the market that they already have, and give them the option to get movies right to their TVs. After purchasing the shows by placing your order through the existing Unbox Video service from Amazon, movies will be delivered right to the TiVo box. This is definitely a big difference from the Wal-Mart download service, because you’ll be able to view the movies on your TV with no extra hassle. The movies would appear in the “Now Playing” list with all of your additional TiVo content.

Another nice feature is that Amazon will store all of your purchased videos in your Media Library (online) so that you can always go back and re-download a movie if you decide to delete it off of your TiVo.  This will ensure that you always have room to download new movies.

Now on to the prices.  The talk yesterday with Wal-Mart’s service is that the prices are too high for a movie that can’t even be downloaded to DVD. The prices for the TiVo and Amazon deal have been set at TV episodes for $1.99, and movies between $9.99 and $14.99.  Movie rentals would be $1.99.  So far, thousands of movies will be available from Lionsgate, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios, Paramount, and Warner Brothers. TV shows will be offered from CBS, and Fox.

Other agreements from additional studios are expected in the future, and no additional subscription fees will be charged to TiVo users. According to Adams Media Research, Internet downloading is expected to bring in $4 billion in annual sales in five years compared to $27 billion from DVD rentals and sales.  If you’re a TiVo subscriber, this is good news! If you’re not, well, just hold out. I’m sure other (perhaps even better) options will be peeking out soon!

More information can be found here.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on July 28, 2010 by CyberNet.

One of my favorite online services is undoubtedly VirusTotal. The fact that I can get an on-demand scan of any file from over 35 different antivirus apps (for free) is incredible. If I ever have any doubts about the credibility of a file the first thing I do is jump on over to VirusTotal, and see what kind of results it comes back with. In a 24-hour period the service receives about 75,000 uploads, and about half of the files uploaded are actually infected… which is telling as to how important VirusTotal is to its users.

The problem is that uploading a smaller file is fine, but when you get into larger uploads it can be tedious to have to wait for the results. What most people overlook is the “Hash Search” that is offered by VirusTotal. If you enter in a valid file hash you’ll instantly be shown the results of the last file scan that was performed, assuming that someone else has previously uploaded the same file. Hashes have been used for awhile to determine the validity of the file being downloaded, and so this method of identification is highly trusted.

How to you calculate the MD5 of a file? Awhile back we wrote about some Windows tools that integrate into Windows Explorer for calculating both the MD5 and SHA-1 of any file. On a Mac you can open the Terminal, and type “openssl md5 <file>” for the MD5 hash or “openssl sha1 <file>” for the SHA-1 hash:

VirusTotal Hash Scan

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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