Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on May 12, 2007 by CyberNet.

Weekend Website

I’m a pretty big fan of Wikipedia, and I visit there at least once a week.  Sure, the information isn’t always 100% accurate, but I think they do their best at keeping it a semi-reliable encyclopedia, and the tone is usually informational.

If you want the complete opposite of Wikipedia and a good laugh, checkout Uncyclopedia.  As they describe themselves, it’s “an encyclopedia full of misinformation and utter lies.” Sounds like a tabloid magazine, doesn’t it? It’s kinda like that, except better because it’s about topics that’ll probably interest you.

The very first I had heard of Uncyclopedia was in the CyberNet forum where Pieter cautioned readers saying “Warning: this site can decrease your productivity.” He also says that they’re politically incorrect, use sarcasm, and are actually funny. I couldn’t agree more, and that’s exactly the reason it’s enjoyable to go there and look around.

With over 23,347 different articles written in English that are open for anybody to edit, and knowing that the intent of the site is to be incorrect and sarcastic, there’s a lot of funny material that will keep you glued to your computer.

If you don’t know where to start, just go to Uncyclopedia and click “Random” in the left sidebar. You’re bound to find something that will give you a good laugh eventually. Below are some technology related topics and a small sample from the topic page for your enjoyment:

– Windows XP : How to Secure Windows XP– 1.  Switch to Linux 2.  Yer…that’s it. 3. Put fireworks in your CD tray.

– 40 fun things to do at Best Buy – #1 off of this list is (you really should read the whole list, it’s pretty entertaining):

When an employee approaches you to ask if you need help finding anything as if you’re freakin’ four or something, speak extremely broken English in third person with a low voice, except when you’re saying what you need, which you should say perfectly and in your normal voice. *Tip: make the thing you need very technical-sounding.* (i.e. “Hey, need help finding anything today?” “Ya, [your name] reeeely, reeely needzerz aerh bahnd nay-ewgeegoo HP Pavilion Laptop Computer witna ahbai Intel Dual-Core Processor. Undu makey itz cumpooortibuhb wiba Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition unsdper Microsoft Windows Vista Beta dooopoabgz *snorrt*.). It’s great.

– Unnecessary iPod Accessories – examples:

• iStink: The First iPod to Double as an iDeoderant.  Be prepared for unrelenting female attention and or late nights.
• iVirus: Causes any iProduct to malfunction, displaying iSuck on the screen.
• iBlind: All your favorite songs in braille.
• iFart: What you lookin’ at?

– Evil Empire – Google’s famous phrase is “Don’t be evil,” so it makes sense that by searching for Google, the returned result is “do you mean evil empire?” And by clicking on Evil Empire, it says “You may be looking for Google and not even know it.”

The examples above came specifically from their technology section, but they have any topic imaginable just like any encyclopedia would. One of the best ways to discover the best material besides the random feature listed above, is to use their “Best of” section. It’s their list of the best of the best.

Thanks Pieter for posting this in the Forum!

Visit Uncyclopedia – Have you come across some funny pages that you think others will get a good laugh from? Include it in the comments below!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

Your Week in Review with Sunday’s SummaryHelpful Tip: Wikipedia RSS FeedsWikipedia Publishes Its Millionth Article…WOW!Your Week in Review with Sunday’s SummaryWhich is More Accurate: Wikipedia or Encyclopedia Britannica?

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

To help cope with my addiction to Flash games I have been receiving several emails with sites to checkout that offer fun games. One of the better ones that I have been playing with is wiicade.com, and the great thing is that most of the games were unique (at least to me).

The one game that really got me going was Minefields 2204 (pictured above). You start off with a battle tank that you need to direct through an obstacle course full of other tanks and mines that are all there to blow you up…if you enter their line of sight. Using the tools available you’ll need to blow up some of the tanks and try to go around others. I highly recommend that you look at the very brief instructions before getting started so that you understand how the various items work.

The screenshot above was taken when I was on level 9, but one of my friends (thanks Mike) made it a little further by pointing out that blocks can be “reused” if you run your tank back over them. I would say that you can get up to level 9 rather quickly (less than 10 minutes) so here are the passwords for tail end of the levels in case you get frustrated and want to move on:

Level 09: KALU
Level 10: VAKA
Level 11: UA33
Level 12: M3LK
Level 13: SYS4
Level 14: BTB7
Level 15: DR66
Level 16: GAL3
Level 17: PS69
Level 18: 55BJ
Level 19: There is no level 19, 18 was the last one

Those aren’t exactly walkthroughs, which might be more helpful for some people, but we can say from experience that all of the levels are doable…despite what you might begin to think. After the last level was completed my friend had a score of 463,490!

Another great game that I found there was PaintBall. It isn’t exactly what you expect it to be…because I thought it would have paintball guns and it is far from that. The game is as easy as you decide to make it. You can draw direct paths to the destination, but it is much more fun if you try to minimize the number and size of lines that you draw.

I deleted the email before checking who sent this tip in, but I’m pretty sure it was CoryC. Thanks!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

Ping Pong Flash Game Overly AddictingOptical Illusion: Are you Right or Left Brained?Several Fun, Simple, And Addicting Online GamesCyberNotes: A Few More Games For FridayUSA Today Online Offers a Variety of Puzzles

This article was written on July 31, 2008 by CyberNet.

The famed social bookmarking service Delicious uncovered a new design today that is supposed to be faster, include more powerful searching, and be flat out easier on the eyes. Sound exciting? Well, we first got a glimpse of the new design nearly a year ago, but there were some bumps in the road that kept them from getting it released.

One other thing that heavy Delicious users will notice is that the domain is no longer Del.icio.us like we’re all used to. Instead they’ve moved the site to Delicious.com, which will probably be easier for new members to remember. It’s just sad to see one of the first web 2.0-style domain names get retired.

The new site is already live, and you can start playing with the great new features:

• Speed: We’ve moved to a new infrastructure that makes every page faster. This new platform will enable us to keep up with traffic growth while ensuring Delicious is responsive and reliable. You may not have noticed, but the old back-end was getting creaky under the load of five million users.
• Search: We’ve completely overhauled our search engine to make it faster and more powerful. Searches used to take ages to return results; now they’re very quick. The new search engine is also smarter, and more social: you can search within one of your tags, another user’s public bookmarks, or your social network. Now it’s easier to take advantage of the expertise and interests of your friends, not to mention the Delicious community at large.
• Design: Finally, we’ve updated the user interface to improve usability and add a few often-requested features (such as selectable detail levels and alphabetical sorting of bookmarks). Our goal has been to keep the new design similar in spirit to the old one, so all of you veterans should be able to jump in without any confusion. At the same time, we’re hoping that newcomers to Delicious will find it easier to learn. Check out the What’s New page for an overview of the changes, or watch this animation that sums it up nicely:

Personally I’ve never used Delicious very much, and so I’m curious what the Delicious users out there think of the new design. Is it everything you hoped for?

Delicious Homepage

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

Delicious 2.0 Preview Shows Off New NameA Better Mac OS X Leopard Theme for Firefox 3Import Your Del.icio.us Bookmarks To Google BookmarksDel.icio.us for Firefox 3 ReleasedYahoo Acquires del.icio.us

This article was written on May 15, 2008 by CyberNet.

Google actually made an interesting move yesterday in terms of how people can collaborate on the spreadsheets they create. If you take a look at the Share tab in one of your Google Spreadsheets you’ll notice a new option towards the bottom that’s new. With it you can share a spreadsheet that can be edited by anyone and everyone which, as Google OS points out, essentially makes this a wiki.

A feature like this is nice because users don’t need an account to collaborate on a spreadsheet. Unfortunately that also means that the URL for the document can easily be shared, and you could quickly start finding unwanted information popping up. I guess it’s fortunate that Google provides a rather extensive revision history so that in a single click you can go back to before the unwanted changes were made.

What I would really like to see from Google is a way to password protect a document without needing a username. That way you could distribute a password to, for example coworkers, without having to worry about the public stumbling across the document. And then you could also change the password at your own leisure. Now that would be perfect for some of the things that I’m working on.

Recent events make it seem as though Google has been showing some love to the Spreadsheets, because in the last few months they added offline support, introduced gadgets, and developed a sweet form system. I can’t wait to see what else they have in store for us!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

Google Spreadsheets Form Feature is Fantastic!Google Spreadsheets Gets An UpdateGoogle Spreadsheets To Get A Chart Creator SoonWritely Will Be Switching To Google Authentication SoonGoogle Docs Goes Offline, Finally

This article was written on August 30, 2008 by CyberNet.

Weekend Website

Over the last couple of years, Remember the Milk has done a great job of making a name for themselves. We wrote about them for the first time almost exactly two years ago and described them as a free, simple task manager. At that point they were still in beta and even then they had come a long way. As they approach their three year anniversary which is coming up in October, we thought we’d take another look at the service which has made a big difference in how people manage their task lists.

Remember the Milk has a whole list of official services which you can view here. Those services range from Remember the Milk (RtM) for Twitter to a Mobile Version which makes for easy management of your tasks on the go. Today we’ll be covering four official RtM services available including the Mobile Version, RtM for Netvibes, Gmail, and Twitter.

Mobile Version

Many people who have mobile phones also use them for browsing the Internet. RtM has a fairly nice mobile version available, for free by visiting m.rememberthemilk.com.

We decided to put the mobile version to the test, and it’s pretty nice. As an iPhone user, one of the first downsides I noticed is that they use numbers as shortcuts for accessing the various menus. Because a key pad isn’t available to me, I’m not able to, for example, press 1 to view today’s tasks.

If you have a phone with a physical key-pad, the mobile version of Remember the Milk will benefit you the most.

Here are a few features accessible to you:

• Add new tasks and notes
• Edit existing tasks and notes
• Search your tasks
• View tasks by list or tag

Netvibes

Netvibes has become a pretty popular personalized start page, similar in purpose to iGoogle and My Yahoo!. Remember the Milk has created a Netvibes module so that users can manage their tasks right from their Netvibes start page.

All you have to do to add the Netvibes module to your page is click here.

Like the mobile version, it is pretty full-featured with the option to add and edit tasks, review your overdue tasks, and search for them as well. Above is a screenshot which shows you what the module looks like on your page.

For Gmail...

With the help of a Firefox extension, Remember the Milk can be viewed right from Gmail. Ryan wrote about this back in December when it was first introduced and said it made RtM the task manager service on the Internet.

This Remember the Milk extension takes advantage of the Greasemonkey functionality that Google introduced in Gmail 2 and will allow you to manage all of your tasks in a sidebar to the right of your Inbox. You can add, remove, and organize your tasks, without ever leaving Gmail.

Another nice feature is that you can connect tasks with your mail. RtM can automatically create a task when you star a message or apply a specific label to it. This is something you can enable in your settings.

For Twitter…

Remember the Milk for Twitter is actually more amazing than it seems at first glance. If you regularly use Twitter, you can very easily, with the help of commands, update and maintain your entire list of to-do’s. And because Twitter can be updated via SMS, you can keep your to-do list up-to-date with the help of your mobile phone.

To use this feature, follow these steps:

1. Sign up for Twitter if you haven’t already
2. Add RtM as your friend on Twitter, this is essential
3. From there interact with your task list using commands

This is one of those features that can really increase your productivity, and it’s nice because you can also receive task reminders as direct messages to your Twitter account if you so choose.

Here’s an example of a command you can use. Say you’re getting ready to leave for work, but before you do, you’d like to see the tasks that you need to complete. From the direct message page on Twitter, you can send the following command: !today. Once the command has been sent, you’ll get a Twitter message with the tasks that need to be completed. If you were on your mobile phone, the command you would enter would be d rtm !today.

Wrapping it up…

Today we talked about just four of many services that Remember The Milk Offers. If you are in need of a way to keep yourself organized, we’d suggest trying out RtM, and then taking a look at a list of services they offer. They can’t be beat!

Remember The Milk

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

WOW! Remember the Milk in GmailRemember the Milk gets some Google Gears LoveRemember the Milk in ThunderbirdGiveaway: Remember The Milk Pro AccountsCyberNotes: Remember the Milk – Free Simple Task Manager