May 03

TheHotFix.net Was Hacked

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on August 14, 2006 by CyberNet.

TheHotFix.net Hacked

Last night (or early this morning) I noticed that TheHotFix.net had been hacked. If you haven’t heard of the site before then it may be for the better. They often post a lot of information on warez software such as Torrent links to the most  recent Vista builds.

The site has resumed back to normal by this point and I am sure they are trying to figure out how they were hacked.

These hackers are popping up all over the place lately with Netscape being hacked and Microsoft’s France Website being overrun. So who will be next?

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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May 02

Pingdom Tools 2.0: Free Website Analysis

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

This article was written on January 17, 2008 by CyberNet.

Pingdom Tools

Pingdom Tools 2.0 just launched, and it’s a free tool that any website designer will surely love. The AJAX-powered service accepts a URL, and in return it graphs out the loading time of the website showing what files caused a slow load time.

The new version features test saving capabilities so that past results are always accessible. Initially I didn’t think this was all that impressive, but then I found out that the test history of each website is available for anyone to view anywhere in the world. That means that you could run the test for our site, and I could go and see the results. The test archive is found below the results, and looks similar to the screenshot I posted above.

Note: The same archive feature has also been extended to Pingdom’s Ping & Traceroute tests, which can be used to provide useful information on a server’s response time.

For help on using Pingdom Tools, and for an explanation of how to interpret the graph, visit the Ping Tools guide.

Pingdom Tools 2.0

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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May 01

OneLook: Amazing Online Dictionary With Reverse Lookup

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on November 16, 2006 by CyberNet.

Onelook

When Ed sent me this tip I was a little skeptical about how well a reverse dictionary would work but OneLook is absolutely amazing. The normal dictionary lookup is awesome itself and has definitely won my heart over, but then there is also the priceless “Reverse Dictionary.”

I say priceless because we have all had those moments where you just can’t think of that word and it is on the tip of your tongue. Well, OneLook is here to help you! In the search I did above I typed in “a big rock” with boulder being the word I was trying to describe. I was very impressed that the result was number 3!

Oh yeah, and don’t forget to customize your OneLook experience using the “Customize” option in the upper-right corner. Heck, they’re even kind enough to let you remove the large advertisement banner if you want a cleaner looking interface.

There is no extension for Firefox or other browsers available but they do have a bookmarklet that you can use to quickly lookup a word. Clicking on it will prompt you with a popup box and once you have entered in a word it will take you to their site and define it. This will undoubtedly be my new dictionary service!

Thanks for the tip Ed!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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May 01

Kiko Calls It Quits: Sells On eBay for $258,100.00

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

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

Kiko Calls It Quits

If you haven’t heard about the Kiko calendar calling it quits, here’s a quick summary: Kiko was/is a pretty cool online calendar. A few days ago on their blog they offered their final post, a farewell saying they were calling it quits because they couldn’t keep up the product. They decided to put the site up for sale on eBay. Good ole’ eBay to the rescue, again. It seems that it’s becoming a trend for companies that are on the fast track downwards to bail out on eBay.

On August 23rd the auction went up. With 111 bids and a few newbies fighting for the win, a user by the name of “powerjoe1998″ won the auction at $258,100.00 Not too bad of a payout for calling it quits– although according to Richard White of Kiko they won’t gain much from it as they try to ”recoup investors money”.  eBay even has a category for websites up for sale, I love it! I think it’s the new hot thing to sell on eBay.

Now of course just to stir the pot a little: If you’ve sold a few things on eBay, you’re probably aware of how easy it really is to get that final value credit fee back.  Could this have been a publicity stunt? It would have been so easy to just buy it themselves and submit to get the final value fee back and they would have been out the listing fee only. Think about how much attention they just received in the last week. Some of you probably haven’t even heard of Kiko up until now. Publicity stunt or not, what a good way to get some quick attention thrown your way!

Okay, okay, maybe that’s a little far out there. Who knows what the deal really was. I’m sure it’s played out just as they said it has. Congrats to Kinko simply for trying. I give them an ”A” for effort.  I’m sure it’s been no easy journey. Kiko may have jinxed themselves with their slogan: “Kiko is a great, dead simple calendar you can use right in your web browser.”  Kiko is now considered to be in the “deadpool” as they call it. 

Hopefully the new proud owner will take what they have been given.. uhh I mean purchased for a pretty penny and make it even better. I’d love to see it turn out to be a great investment for the lucky winner and see the dedicated users benefit as well.  They’ll have the opportunity to make it, or break it and if it’s the latter, we may see it up for round two on eBay.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Apr 30

Lookup Unknown Files

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

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

What Is That File

When was the last time that you checked your Task Manager for potentially dangerous files? I’ll admit that I don’t do it all that often because I put a lot of faith in my antivirus software, but I have been known to Google apps that I don’t recognize. I’m sure you’ve done your fair share of Googling filenames, right?

Today I finally decided that there had to be a good site out there that I could use to lookup unknown files, in particular I wanted something that wasn’t popup infested! I went through dozens of sites before I came across WhatIsThatFile.com. It has a somewhat slick interface that shows matching filenames as you type in the search box. It will highlight files that are potentially dangerous, such as a virus or malware, and give a brief description of each. It will even let you know if an application is a prime target for infections, such as Internet Explorer (iexplore.exe).

Right now it is home to information on over 3,000 files, which is a rather large selection. Anyone can edit the information for a particular file, or add a file themselves, but they are subject to the approval of the admin. In a way this is like the Wikipedia of filenames!

Let us know in the comments below where you go to lookup unknown files on your computer!

What Is That File Homepage

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Apr 30

Orgoo: Email and IM All in One

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

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

Orgoo1I think it’s safe to say that most people who have an email account, also have some type of instant message client, whether it be Windows Live Messenger, AIM, Google Talk, or another. A new service called Orgoo that throws Email, Text, and IM all into one platform recently peaked its way into the World of Web 2.0. It’s still in private beta, and unfortunately I haven’t gotten an invitation yet, but it sounds nifty.

There are few, if any, who have attempted to combine all of the various services that people use regularly into one. Who wouldn’t want one simple place to manage their email and instant messaging? One of the first things that I noticed was that it looks a bit like Outlook. And because it runs in your browser, it might be a good way for those who are accustomed to Outlook to transition into an online platform.

Right from the main dashboard, there’s easy access to both the email and chat clients. The image below shows what the main dashboard looks like. You’ll notice that a list of instant message friends is on the right, and email tools are on the left. It’s a simple, convenient interface.

Orgoo

As I mentioned, I haven’t been able to give it a try myself. However, I have been reading various comments around the web regarding it.  The one comment I tend to see most often is that it’s a bit on the slow side. If that is the case, I hope they’ll be able to improve on the speeds before a public launch because it sounds like a convenient service that I’d be likely to use. There’s nothing worse than dealing with slow speeds, and wouldn’t make the convenience of having everything in one worth it.

Now that it’s been available for a few weeks, has anybody gotten into the private beta for Orgoo? If you have, what do you think?

Source: Thanks for the tip Mohan!

 

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Apr 28

Facebook Moves Into The Workplace

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on April 27, 2006 by CyberNet.

Facebook Moves Into The Workplace

It appears that Facebook is moving beyond high schools and colleges and moving into the workplace. It makes sense that they are trying to expand since they are trying to sell Facebook. The $2 billion price that is stamped on it would hinder most people from purchasing it, but they have hopes that expanding Facebook will increase their revenue. They currently earn $1 million each week (these are just rumors but should be accurate) which means it would take about 38 years to earn back the cost of your purchase. Looks like they better expand globally otherwise they will need to find someone with very very deep pockets.

Only ten companies are available on Facebook right now: Accenture, Amazon, Apple, EA, Gap, Intel, Intuit, Microsoft, Pepsi, PWC and Teach for America.

Facebook Homepage
News Source: TechCrunch

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Apr 27

The Week of Million Milestones

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

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

Million Pennies It has been a pretty big week in terms of milestones. It’s not all that often that sites and applications are able to boast their millionth milestones, and so I thought it would be fun to point out all of the things that have happened in the last 7 days:

  • Firefox hit 400 million downloads – This is big news for the browser who currently has the best shot at soaking up some of Internet Explorer’s market share. They’re currently getting hundreds of thousands of downloads per day!
  • MySpace registers 200 million users – With a reported 230,000 new registrations everyday this number doesn’t come as a surprise. Of course you’ve got to ask yourself how many of these accounts were created for spamming purposes? [via Mashable]
  • Wikipedia boasts 2 millionth English article – It’s hard to believe that after the first article was published back in January 2001 we are already at the 2 millionth article! What was the lucky article? El Hormiguero! [via Digg]
  • My Opera breaks the 1 million member mark – The My Opera community site is a place with over 200,000 blogs, 3 million photos, and an extremely active forum. From what I’ve seen they’ve been doubling the number of registered users every year, and so their future is very bright. Plus the new Opera 9.5 will require a My Opera account if you want to have your data synchronized. [via Opera Watch]
  • Apple sold its 1 millionth iPhone – It took just 74 days for Apple to get 1 million of these bad boys out the door! [via Apple Press Release]

I can’t believe how many milestones there have been in the last week, but I guess that it a big indication that the Internet is booming. Hopefully these sites will continue to be successful!

And as a fun fact I had thrown in the image of what one million pennies would look like when stacked up against an average person. I got the image from the MegaPenny Project where they compare huge numbers of pennies to everyday items. See what one quintillion pennies look like when stacked up alongside the Sears Tower.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Apr 26

Can you Pirate Music using LaLa?

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

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

A website called LaLa is hoping to spark a new interest in music by taking a different approach to selling and managing your existing albums. After forking out $140 million in royalties, there is little doubt that they have re-launched with a bang! Before getting into the concerns I have (mainly being able to “pirate” music with the service), let’s take a look at what it offers.

Before being able to signup for LaLa, you’ll need to download a small app that will manage all of your music. Or you can just browse around their site looking for the CD’s with the red play button next to them, which symbolizes that you can listen to the full-length tracks online.

LaLa Music
Click to Enlarge

I gave in and downloaded LaLa to see what it was all about. As seen above, the interface is fairly simple and does support syncing with your iPod. That’s not all though, there is a lot of stuff that I have found while using LaLa all this morning:

  • You can listen to full-length tracks of select artists. A red play button next to the CD means that it has full-length "preview" tracks available for you to listen to.
  • You can listen to playlists that other people have made. There are currently about 500 playlists available, which are categorized by genre. Some of them contain hundreds of songs, and you can even search for playlists that contain a certain artist.
  • It took me a minute to notice that the music player was located in the top grey bar. It will show up after you start playing a song, and that’s where you can skip songs or pause the music.
  • Managing your music requires that you install a small application. This process took just 30-seconds for me, and after it finished a small LaLa icon sits in your System Tray. I thought that it was it’s own full-featured audio program, but it actually uses your browser to display your music library.
  • You can synchronize the music with your iPod, but it will wipe it clean and you won’t be able to use iTunes with it. Well, you could use iTunes but you would have to format the iPod again and resynchronize.
  • When your purchase a song it is put directly on your iPod, and does not need to store itself on your computer’s hard drive first.
  • You can synchronize your music with their server so that you can listen to all of your songs no matter where you are. In the unlikely event that they don’t have a song available on their site they will have it uploaded to their servers so that you can still listen to it. The big downfall is that it requires you to install the LaLa application even on computers where you just want to listen to your music.
  • You can listen to all of your friends’ music, and not just a small 30-second clip. You actually get to listen to the full song! Time to find a lot of friends that have a lot of music. :)

Now all of that is great, but before getting involved into a service like this the main concern that I have is whether it will be sticking around. Here are the thoughts I have regarding that:

  • Sure they paid out $140 million in royalties to compensate for the next two-years, but lawyers will still probably be all over them like gum on a sidewalk.
  • When LaLa scans your computer for music it marks on their website which music you already own. So how does LaLa scan for music? Does it actually "listen" to the song to determine what it is or is it just looking for the metadata embedded in the song? In any case it is probably easy to "forge" a purchase by creating fake metadata, or you can possibly save a low-quality copy from a YouTube video so that you can get the higher quality version from LaLa.

So what do you think? Is LaLa just going to be a music service that can’t stand its own ground, or is it something that will revolutionize the way we listen and manage our music?

LaLa Homepage

News Source: Wall Street Journal

Thanks for the tip CoryC!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Apr 25

eBay Denies Users The Ability To Use Google Checkout

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

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

eBay Denies Users The Ability To Use Google Checkout

It looks like eBay has now done everything that they can to prevent Google from stepping onto their turf. Just yesterday eBay added the Google Checkout system in their Acceptable Payments Policy terms under “Payment Services not permitted on eBay.” If you violate the policy you could get your eBay account suspended.

While I understand where eBay is coming from, it is funny because Google Checkout doesn’t allow users to transfer money between each other. If you want to perform a transaction it has to be completed at an Online store that accepts Google Checkout. There is a pretty nice list of merchants that are already using the Google Checkout system and some even offer a discount for paying with Google. Maybe someday Google will decide to let users send money to eachother, but for right now PayPal still owns that world.

News Source: BetaNews

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