Jul 19

Meebo Brings IM to Firefox Web Browser

Posted in: Firefox Extensions, Software, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on October 18, 2007 by CyberNet.

meebo messages Meebo has just launched a new Firefox extension so that you can instant message right from the sidebar of your browser. While this makes it convenient to have access to your favorite IM clients like AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, Google Talk, ICQ, and Jabber, there are a few things that could be improved to make this extension even better. Seeing as this is their first extension though, I think you’ll be impressed with what it offers.

Once you install the extension (download here), you’ll be able to select which chat client you’d like to sign into.  Once you sign-in, a new Meebo tab will automatically open in your browser. This is where all of your chat windows will be. When I mentioned that Meebo could certainly improve on a few things, this is one of them.  It would be nice if you could keep the chat window open in the sidebar, or maybe even have your conversations tabbed right along with your other opened tabs in the browser instead of having all your conversations opened in the one Meebo tab. The current setup is almost like just going to their site to chat, but you have the convenience of being able to view all of your contacts in the sidebar which is always open.

meebo extension

While there are some improvements that need to be made, it does have some great features, so lets take a look. Using the Meebo extension, you can chat with a group of people, send a file, view chat logs, and view a user’s profile. There’s also an automatic sign-on feature that will sign you in when you open the browser.  Meebo alerts will let you know when you have a new message if you’re viewing another tab. If you’re on a different tab and you receive a message, the tab will flash, but you’ll also see a red bubble next to the persons name in the sidebar displaying how many new messages you have from them.

Overall it’s a really great extension, and a nice addition from Meebo to make chatting easy no matter where you are.

Thanks for the tip Radu!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Jul 19

Finding a Cheat Sheet for…Everything

Posted in: Software, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on June 14, 2007 by CyberNet.

PHP Cheat SheetI love cheat sheets because my memory, well, sucks. If I’m programming I often need to look up information, but most of the time all I need is something to get the juices flowing in my head. That’s where cheat sheets come in.

The first place that I always look for the cheat sheets is at ILoveJackDaniels.com who, despite the odd name, has some of the most comprehensive cheat sheets available. Unfortunately they only have about 15 available, but they are on the most important topics including HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, and even World of Warcraft.

Thanks to TechTarget, it is now easy to find cheat sheets for nearly anything. Actually "anything" is an understatement because their list is extremely long. They’ve got cheat sheets for DOS, Linux, browsers, and almost all programming languages. Unfortunately the cheat sheets aren’t all in the nice printing format that you would expect, but that doesn’t mean they are not useful. You’ll also notice that any cheat sheet in PDF format is specified next to the title, and that is normally a good thing because it will retain the nice formatting when printing (as opposed to some of the sloppy HTML cheat sheets listed).

If you find any cheat sheets that are really useful let me know in the comments, because I like having them around for when I need them.

Source: Lifehacker

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Jul 14

CyberNotes: Joost Review – Get your invite here!

Posted in: CyberNotes, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on April 06, 2007 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Fun Friday

You’ve probably heard of Joost by now. It was started by the brains behind both Kazaa and Skype, and it seems to have exploded into popularity out of nowhere, particularly after Viacom turned on YouTube and greeted Joost with open arms. Joost is the newest way to distribute TV shows and video using interactive software. Development began in 2006, and was code named “The VeniceProject.”

Currently they’re in the invitation only beta process, so if you want to try it out, you’ll have to have an invitation. Because this is our “Fun Friday” feature, we wanted you to get in on the fun too.  The first five people to leave a message in the comments below will get an invite! :)

—Setup—

After you get an invitation, you’ll be able to download Joost and complete the setup. It supports both Windows and Intel Macs, and the setup is quick and easy. Within minutes you’ll be on your way to watching one of their 26 channels.

Joostsetup

—Using Joost—

Joost will automatically start in a full screen mode which may surprise you initially.  You can switch between full-screen mode and window mode with just one click. The image below shows what the screen looks like when you first start a show.

Joost_userinterface

The user interface uses big buttons that are easy to use.  You’ll notice basic controls like play, pause, and volume controls, as well as an “information” button which will give you info about the program you are watching.

There’s also a standby button which will minimize the program into your system tray, and a search feature that will allow you to search for a particular program. 

You’ll have the option of selecting a channel from their channel catalog, and from there you can use the arrows on the right side of the screen (pictured below) to scroll through the offerings for each channel.

Joost_selectingchannels

—Improvements—

One of the biggest improvements that they can, and probably will make is more content.  There are currently 26 channels of content, but many of them you probably wouldn’t find much interest in. They do have a few big names like MTV, and Comedy Central.  You’ll find other channels like Poker Heaven, The Soccer Channel, Guinness World Records TV, and Warner Brothers Records.

—Quality—

While it’s not like watching TV on your high definition TV, it’s certainly a step up from the quality that YouTube offers, and I’ll take that.  And of course they have to make money somehow, and they do that via commercials and ads.  In a way this does take away from the experience, but they have to make their money somehow. Because it’s a free service, there’s really no room to complain.

If they can add quality content to their list of current offerings, Joost will definitely be a big hit. It’s free, and easy to use.  If you want to have some fun and try it out, the first five people to leave a comment (be sure to include your email address in the email field) will get an invite!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Jul 14

YouTube Gaining in the Ranks

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on January 11, 2007 by CyberNet.

YouTube is continuing their growth, and according to Alexa, they are now ranked #4 on the web. Ahead of them ranked numbers one, two, and three are Yahoo, Google, and MSN respectively. Back in November there was talk of YouTube statistics going flat after Google acquired them. After looking at the Alexa chart, it appears they’ve had some pretty steady growth all along. Despite there being a big difference between #3 (MSN), and YouTube, their growth is still exceptional.

According to Read/Write Web, around 6 months ago, YouTube had broken into the top 10 on Alexa.  They’ve had quite a bit of growth since then to overcome MySpace and Baidu (China’s popular search engine) to get to their #4 spot at present. These results were compared with Compete as well as comScore, although both of those services only measure the U.S. data.

Also remarkable is that looking at a graph with other top sites such as YouTube, MySpace, Orkut, and Baidu– YouTube is the only one that continues to climb the ranks.  The others have shown to level off, giving the impression that they are entirely saturated.

I also thought I’d take a look at some of the other competitors in the world of online video.  The graph above compares metacafe.com with revver.com and dailymotion.com.  What is most impressive is the steady climb that DailyMotion has had over the last 6 months. Despite this, neither of those services come close to where YouTube stands.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Jul 13

A Hint At What The New Froogle Will Look Like?

Posted in: Google, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on October 29, 2006 by CyberNet.

New Froogle?

Garett Rogers is always digging through code and files on Google’s websites to try and figure out what upcoming services they might be offering. He is at it again by taking a peak at Google’s robots.txt file which identifies directories that should not be indexed. A recent addition to that file gives us some insight with what to expect in the new Froogle that is supposed to be available before the holiday season starts.

His newest find (this is the example pictured above) is what may end up being the new layout of Froogle. This site is obviously using the Google Base database because the search results are unrelated to the product that you are looking for, and that is very common with Google Base in my experience. I know that Google has had plans of eliminating Froogle and replacing it with Google Base, but it is so much harder to find what you are looking for.

Overall, I like the new interface since it is loaded with AJAX and the new filters are really nice but I would like to see the search tied to Froogle’s database. Check out the search results for “apple ipod” on the new search that uses Google Base and then on Froogle, then you will probably see what I’m talking about.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Jul 09

Ubuntu Website Redesign, and Linux Now Needs Windows to Run…duh!

Posted in: Linux, Today's Chili, ubuntu, Web Sites

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

Ubuntu New SiteI was just browsing through some of the Digg articles and two Linux-related posts caught my attention. The first being that both the Ubuntu homepage and forum has received a very nice looking redesign. It not only looks classy but the layout is much better in my opinion.

For those of you who have short-term memories and can’t remember what it looked like, this archive of the Ubuntu homepage may get the gears turning in your head. Similarly you can pull up an archive of the Ubuntu Forums which used a lot more brown before. While the brownish color is the central scheme of Ubuntu, I think they were smart to use it a little more moderately throughout the entire site.

Now onto the next story I saw on Digg. I’ve used Linux in the past, but apparently I never knew how it worked. In order to use Linux you actually need to run Windows behind it, or so one commenter on a ZDNet blog thinks:

I dont see how this will happen at all.

Vista is far more powerful than windows XP, and runs twice as fast. It is also much harder to pirate, and this point more than anything else has the Linux crowd in a panic.

It wont be long until Windows XP is no longer supported, and when that happens, what is Linux going to do ?

Linux will have to find a way to work under Vista from here on, since it wont be able to rely on XP being readily available anymore.

Linux may seem like a good alternative to Office, but all that is happening in linux is that the windows interface is cleverly hidden away. It still needs the drivers and software services in order to run, and in most cases – that happens WITHOUT a valid windows licence.

This is just plain piracy.

Vista will finally put an end to this blatant abuse of intellectual property, and linux should decline, taking the pirates with it.

Anyone that supports the continuation of Windows XP in place of Vista surely has a hidden agenda .. and you will surely be caught out.

And he didn’t stop there, he then went on to say…

Are you saying that this linux can run on a computer without windows underneath it, at all ? As in, without a boot disk, without any drivers, and without any services ?

That sounds preposterous to me.

If it were true (and I doubt it), then companies would be selling computers without a windows. This clearly is not happening, so there must be some error in your calculations. I hope you realise that windows is more than just Office ? Its a whole system that runs the computer from start to finish, and that is a very difficult thing to acheive. A lot of people dont realise this.

Microsoft just spent $9 billion and many years to create Vista, so it does not sound reasonable that some new alternative could just snap into existence overnight like that. It would take billions of dollars and a massive effort to achieve. IBM tried, and spent a huge amount of money developing OS/2 but could never keep up with Windows. Apple tried to create their own system for years, but finally gave up recently and moved to Intel and Microsoft.

Its just not possible that a freeware like the Linux could be extended to the point where it runs the entire computer fron start to finish, without using some of the more critical parts of windows. Not possible.

I think you need to re-examine your assumptions.

Now I normally don’t laugh about things other people are not knowledgeable about, because even I have a lot to learn. However, this person took it a little too far. Had he stopped after one sentence it wouldn’t have been as big of a deal, but he kept going on and on. About 5 minutes of research on Linux would have told him everything that he needs to know.

In the comments above I put a few things in bold that really sent me to the floor laughing, and the fact that he said Apple gave up and moved to “Intel and Microsoft”? Uh, they just switched processors and some hardware…but the last I heard they aren’t in any kind of agreement with Microsoft.

Of course, I don’t read the news very often so maybe I am just completely off the ball? ;)

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Jul 08

Flickr Stats for Pro Users

Posted in: Photos, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on December 13, 2007 by CyberNet.

Flickr Pro Stats

Flickr just announced that Pro members ($25 a year) are now able to keep track of stats for their photos! That’s right, you can actually see what photos are popular for today, this week, or over all time. You’ll also be able to view where people are coming from that are viewing your photos (what search engines, websites, etc…), and a handy graph will plot your traffic in an easy-to-read fashion.

Flickr says that this was one of their most requested features, and I definitely believe that. With all of the professional photographers on the site I’m sure they will enjoy the thorough tracking that this offers.

You’ll need to enable the stats before you can start using them, and then read up on some good facts about how the service works:

  • It will take up to 24 hours for the stats to appear after you enable them
  • Stats are updated once a day
  • Immediately after enabling the stats you’ll receive the previous 28-days worth of traffic history, and then it will continue to keep stats for all-time
  • Viewing your own photos doesn’t count in your stats
  • External views, such as those on a blog, are not counted (only people who view the photo on Flickr are counted)
  • Yahoo!, Google, AOL, MSN, ASK, and Live.com are the only search engines it detects
  • When viewing the search engine stats you’ll be able to see what people were searching for

I’ve been a Flickr Pro user for several months now, and I don’t regret it one bit. Because of the advanced privacy features I can easily share my 6,000+ photos (7.5GB worth) with friends and family. My photos obviously don’t get many hits because of the privacy restrictions I place on them, but I’ll still enjoy seeing what photos are being viewed. Thanks Flickr, you never cease to amaze me!

Flickr Stats

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Jul 08

What Would a Google Homepage Look Like with Yahoo’s Layout?

Posted in: Google, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on January 10, 2007 by CyberNet.

Google/Yahoo Homepage

When Yahoo redesigned their homepage I have to say that they did a lot of things right. They made it so that their news and services were brought to your fingertips without having to traverse a lot of pages to find what you were looking for. They did it in a fashion that looks not only slick, but also unique.

So what would happen if Google was the one who created the homepage with that exact same layout? You don’t have to wonder anymore because GoogleWatch made a mockup of the homepage that has been Googleized (pictured above). It has everything from quick access to your email all the way to featured movies from Google Video and YouTube.

Now we also can’t forget the quick access to your Google Reader items at the bottom or a nice listing of the popular Google services on the left side. After I saw this mockup it actually made me wish that Google really created something like this. Sure they have their Personalized Homepage where people can add Google Reader news and their Gmail Inbox, but it doesn’t look nearly as nice as this. Something like this could be a nice step in the right direction for bringing all of the Google services together.

Am I the only one who thinks the layout and design of the items above is pretty nice? Throw some pictures up there from your own (and your friends) Picasa Web Albums and I think it would be all set!

View larger screenshot of the Google homepage with Yahoo’s layout

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Jul 06

Zuckerberg’s Facebook Status Indicates 100 Million Users

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on August 26, 2008 by CyberNet.

Recently Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, updated his status on the social network site to “100 Million people on Facebook!”. No need for a press release or something fancy when all it takes is a one-liner status update to let the World know that the site you founded just reached a major milestone. That’s 100 million active users that are using Facebook regularly. This number tells us that Facebook is growing, and pretty rapidly too. It was about two years ago that MySpace hit their 100 million users, but at that time they included inactive users in the number as well.

100 million users.png

When I first signed-up for Facebook, back when it was “The Facebook”, I wouldn’t have ever imagined that it would grow to be as large as it is today. Back then, I believe it was late 2004, Facebook was only available to those who had an email address from a certain list of colleges and universities. Granted, they continued to add schools pretty regularly, but not every college student had access. Now they have opened up to nearly everybody around the Globe which has really helped contribute to the 100 million milestone they recently reached.

Source: Mashable

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Jul 06

Dell’s Most Requested Features Focus on Open Source Software

Posted in: Freeware, Software, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on February 20, 2007 by CyberNet.

Dell IdeaStorm LinuxDell’s IdeaStorm website has only been available for a few days and the votes are already pouring in. With users from sites like Slashdot and Digg there is no doubt that many of the requested features would be related to open source software. Looking through the most popular suggestions list makes me wonder whether Dell will actually listen to user feedback:

  1. Pre-Installed Linux | Ubuntu | Fedora | OpenSUSE | Multi-Boot (42,165 votes)
  2. Pre-Installed OpenOffice | alternative to MS Works & MS Office (22,528 votes)
  3. NO EXTRA SOFTWARE OPTION (17,547 votes)
  4. Linux laptop (15,423 votes)
  5. No OS Preloaded (12,250 votes)
  6. Have Firefox pre-installed as default browser (10,766 votes)
  7. Build computers not loaded with extra software (10,304 votes)

Note: Each time a person votes it actually counts as 3. That means the number one suggestion currently has 14,055 unique people who have voted for it.

Those are the top 7 suggestions available on the site right now, and with the big tech sites writing about the new IdeaStorm site I would imagine that the open-source related ones will continue to grow in popularity. I am really impressed because the person who wrote the top two stories took some time to think out what they were going to say. They reference several applications, such as Firefox and GAIM, that should be offered to customers when purchasing a new computer.

If Dell starts to take some action on these requests you’ll find out about it on this page. That’s where they post about suggestions that they are actively working on to meet the consumer’s request. Right now, however, there is nothing available since Dell still has to “analyze” which requests are feasible.

I think it would be great if Dell started offering Linux PC’s with a variety of options, but I have a hard time seeing that happen. Right now Dell is able to offer their PC’s at such a discounted price because of the software companies who pay to put their “junk” on PC’s that new users purchase (with AOL probably being one of the most common). The Linux-only computers would probably be more expensive so Linux users would still buy a Windows machine (with all of the bloat) and just format it themselves.

News Source: Slashdot

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