Apr 24

Microsoft Posts Mac Office 2008 Videos

Posted in: Apple, Mac, Release Date, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on September 19, 2007 by CyberNet.

Office 2008 for Mac Microsoft has been good about keeping a tight leash on the information that’s been made available for Mac Office 2008, but they’ve finally splurged and posted several video demonstrations of the new version in action. We have already posted some of the Mac Office 2008 screenshots that had been making rounds across dozens of sites, but the videos give a more true representation of how the software actually works. I have to admit that the different apps look pretty slick, but that’s coming from a Windows-only user.

The real question is whether Microsoft is a bit late at delivering a new version of Office for the Mac. Apple recently released their new iWork 2008 Office Suite, and I’ve heard great things about it. Heck, it even supports Microsoft’s new Open XML filetypes, but Mossberg says that iWork is "wimpy" compared to Office.

As of right now the Mac Office 2008 release date is still scheduled for January 2008, which happens to be right around the time of Macworld. So we’ll have to sit tight until then for some of the real hands-on reviews to start pouring in.

Note: If the site seems to be slow playing the movies you can watch them all on YouTube.

Mac Office 2008 Sneak Peek [via TUAW]

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Apr 24

eBay Introduces Feedback 2.0

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on March 08, 2007 by CyberNet.

Ebay211 years after introducing the feedback system, eBay has decided to take a look at it, and make improvements. It is one of the most important elements which drives sales and helps to give sellers their credibility. Currently, their system includes positive, negative, and neutral feedback. It’s pretty cut and dry and doesn’t leave much room for some of the smaller things that potential buyers might want to know, like was the product as described? Did they ship the item promptly?

Feedback 2.0 will the the redesigned system that will still include the positive and negative options, but now it expands and will give buyers the chance to rate sellers on other aspects of the purchase. The additional ratings will be done using a 5–star system rating on the following:

  • Was the item as described?
  • How was the communication with the seller?
  • Was the item shipped promptly?
  • Were shipping and handling charges fair?

These new ratings wouldn’t affect a sellers overall feedback, but it would give buyers another way to judge a sellers credibility. Another change will be the addition of the item purchased as well as the price under each feedback rating so that people will know what the feedback was for without needing to click on the item number.

The five star rating system is called “Detailed Seller Ratings” and will debut in the United States sometime this Spring, and in Australia, Belgium, France, India, Ireland, Italy, Poland and the UK over the next few days.

Source: Daily Tech

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Apr 22

Nine Inch Nails Uploads Album to Torrent Sites

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

This article was written on March 03, 2008 by CyberNet.

nin The Band Nine Inch Nails really seems to understand where the music industry is headed. They recently released their new album called “Ghosts” on Torrent sites as a free download.  NIN isn’t contracted to any specific record label, so they have the freedom to decide how they are going to spread their music. The band was quoted as saying in their release notes for the album, “now that we’re no longer constrained by a record label, we’ve decided to personally upload Ghosts I, the first of the four volumes, to various torrent sites, because we believe BitTorrent is a revolutionary digital distribution method, and we believe in finding ways to utilize new technologies instead of fighting them.” If only the record labels thought the same way…

What’s available on Torrent sites is the first nine songs to the album.  The full 36 song album is available on their site to purchase (although their site is having serious issues right now), or from Amazon’s MP3 store for just $5.00 which is a great price for all of the songs that you get. What they’ve done here is pretty amazing and could open the door for other musicians to try the same route of distribution if they’re successful. They’re also benefiting in massive ways because of all of the publicity that they are receiving from this. It’s a new way to distribute music and people are noticing.

The only problem thus far with the method that they’re currently using is that it has become really popular really fast and their servers haven’t been able to keep up with the demand of all the people trying to purchase and download the full 36 song album from their site. A message on their site says that they’ve been adding more servers and hope to make it all more stable soon. They also took a moment to thank their supporters for “making this such an immediate success.”

Our feeling is that they’re going to have many, many supporters who end-up spending the $5 for the complete album simply to thank them for embracing new technology. And you can bet that fans will be more willing to spend money on NIN memorabilia and making donations just to give them extra support. If this method proves to be successful, we’ll probably see other musicians try to follow which can only be a good thing…

 

Mashable

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Apr 20

PdfMeNot: Online PDF Reader

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on February 13, 2008 by CyberNet.

PdfMeNot We previously wrote about a free online PDF reader called Samuraj Data that is so darn simple that it’s hard not to love it. There’s no Flash required and no fancy graphics, just point it to the PDF file you want to view and it will do the rest. Starting tomorrow there will be a new kid on the block, and it comes straight from the creators of BugMeNot.

We’ve got you covered: Instructions on accessing the new site *today* can be found at the end of the article.

PdfMeNot lets users specify a URL to a PDF file or upload one that is stored on their computer. It is then converted to a Flash document complete with zooming capabilities, and much like Scribd you can embed any of the PDF’s on your own site. The big difference is the PdfMeNot takes almost no time at all to do the conversion, and after that they will cache the file so that subsequent requests are nearly instantaneous.

A set of tools is also available, and many of you will likely flock to the bookmarklet that they have available. The bookmarklet will convert any PDF links on a website to PdfMeNot links. Webmasters can also add one line of code to their website(s) that will automatically convert links to PDF files.

Despite all of the good things that PdfMeNot does do, there are still some improvements that I would like to see:

  • There is no progress bar that shows you how much longer you have to wait before it’s all done. I think this is especially needed for when users are uploading files.
  • This apparently doesn’t handle some of the larger PDF files very well. When I gave PdfMeNot the URL to a 7.9MB file it would pop up saying that it was able to download about half of the file, but then timed out.
  • You have to enter in “http://” when specifying the URL. That is so 1995.
  • You have to click a button each time you want to go to the next page. Why can’t it be setup so that I can just keep scrolling?

If you want to give PdfMeNot a whirl before it launches tomorrow here is a sample PDF that I’ve already got cached on their system. The site is password protected until it launches on Thursday, but thanks to Webware the username stateless and password systems will get you in early.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Apr 18

BitTorrent Search isoHunt.com Taken Offline

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

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

If you use BitTorrent search isoHunt.com, you’ve probably noticed that the site is now offline. This happened yesterday, and  according to their website, it says “Lawyers from our primary ISP decided to pull our plug without any advance notice, as of 14:45 PST. No doubt related to our lawsuit brought by the MPAA, but we don’t have more information at this time.” And in the mean time, they were recommending using Google by searching for “Search Terms ext:torrent.”

The Motion Picture Association of America is likely the reason for isoHunt being taken down, they filed a lawsuit against them stating the reason as copyright infringement. They are also not the only ones that the MPAA are after.  It seems that if you’re in the BitTorrent business, you’ll probably need to be running and hiding for your money.

Adding a little humor to their problem, they say that no, moving servers to Sweden or Sealand isn’t going to help.  You’ll probably recall the incident last year when The Pirate Bay was taken down.  The ended up back up, but currently, their hope is to buy a country of their own, Sealand (a man-made British naval platform sitting in the sea off of Southern England) so that they wouldn’t have to worry about being taken down. So far, since January 15th, The Pirate Bay has raised $14,000 in their effort to purchase the rusting platform (sounds suitable for some servers, right?). Their alternative if they can’t get enough funds? Well, purchase another small island somewhere else to claim.

isoHunt has a new ISP, this time in Canada. For now, they say they’re “moving house, if the tubes run smoothly, we expect to be back in full swing tomorrow.” They also say, “BitTorrent was created for distribution of any large media file, and we stand by that ideal as a search engine and aggregator.”

News Source: Ars Technica

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Apr 17

New Poll: How Much is DRM-Free Music Worth to You?

Posted in: Apple, General, itunes, Microsoft, Music, Screenshots, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on April 02, 2007 by CyberNet.

DrmmusicDRM-free music will be coming your way soon! Apple and EMI (an independent music company based in London) have just announced their plans to sell songs that are DRM free to iTunes customers starting in May. EMI is taking their entire catalog of digital music and removing the DRM restrictions, giving iTunes the first opportunity to sell the music.

Not only will the music be free of the digital rights management, it will also be a better sound quality which will gives users an overall better experience.Could this be the start of the end for DRM restrictions? This issue has frustrated people for a long time because DRM places so many restrictions on what users are able to do with the songs that they’ve purchased.

Come May, iTunes will be selling each of the songs from the EMI catalog minus the DRM for $1.29 which is just 30 cents more than music with the DRM hold on them.  You’ll find songs from big names like The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Keith Urban, and many others.

Another incentive that Apple will be offering is that if you’ve purchased EMI content on iTunes before, you will be able to upgrade all of your songs for 30 cents each.  This also will include music videos.

—New Poll!—

This leads us to our next poll — Is DRM-free music worth the extra cost? People have wanted this option but are they willing to pay for it?

I think it’s great that this will be an option, not only because it gives people freedom to listen to songs on multiple devices that they own, but also because the music will be at a higher quality that was previously not available. And hopefully it will open the door to other groups willing to offer their music sans DRM as well.

Give us your vote in the left side-bar. Are you willing to pay an extra 30 cents more per song?

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Apr 15

CyberNotes: Download, Convert, and Play YouTube Videos on your PC

Posted in: Apple, CyberNotes, Freeware, Microsoft, Reviews, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili, Web Sites

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

CyberNotes
Time Saving Tuesday

Online video is the latest rage on the Internet, and it is almost mind boggling how much of a household name YouTube has become. Some people, such as lonelygirl15, have become YouTube SuperStars. In fact, lonleygirl15 even appeared on the Jay Leno show!

PeekVid That is just one side of what the video sharing sites are used for. Besides for personal use, many sites (especially DailyMotion) are becoming a hub for copyrighted video content. Ashley recently covered a site called PeekVid which brings television shows and movies into a central location so that they can easily be viewed. Alluc is another site similar in nature to PeekVid, and between those two sites you can surely find something good to watch.

So what can you do if you don’t want to watch the videos while being connected to the Internet? Simple! You can download them and play them at your leisure. I’m going to give you a bunch of tips on how to get the videos onto your computer.

–Download a Video–

Downloading the videos that you want is probably just about the easiest part of the video process. There are so many tools out there to get the job done and they are so easy to find. Depending on what you’re looking to do these three tools will get the job done fast:

  • VideoDownloader – This is a Firefox extension that works with all kinds of sites and content. Not only can you download videos from YouTube, Google, MetaCafe, iFilm, and DailyMotion but it will also let you save MP3′s and QuickTime videos that are embedded in sites. The list of sites that it supports is quite extensive so I’m not going to list them all here, but rest assured that this extension should get the job done.
  • KeepVid – This is my personal favorite because it doesn’t require you to install any extension or application to download the videos. You can simply enter a URL into the site or you can use the bookmarklet that they have available for even faster conversions.
  • GrabYouTubes – I wanted to include this service because it will surely come in handy when downloading videos from the PeekVid service that I mentioned above. All you have to do is provide the URL to the PeekVid movie or TV show that you want and it will quickly provide download links for all of the parts listed on that page. This is a lot easier than retrieving the download links one at a time. For more information on how to use the GrabYouTubes read Ashley’s post on PeekVid.

 

–Convert a Video–

If you didn’t notice most of the videos that you will download will be in the file format FLV. This isn’t something that most computers will recognize immediately and let you start playing, so you might want to convert it into a more recognizable format. Here are two ways that you can do the conversion:

  • Online FLV Converter – This service is free and the great thing is that you don’t have to install a single application on your computer to have it converte videos. It can take a FLV file and transform it into an AVI, MOV, MP4, or 3GP so that you can watch the video on just about any device. This service is primarily geared towards YouTube since it does allow you to directly enter in a YouTube URL, but you can also enter in the URL to a FLV file (found using one of the utilities mentioned above). After giving it that information the service will download the video from the site and re-encode it into the format that you want. I tried it out and on smaller files (1MB or so) it works great, but I also tried a 10MB file that ended up error out. So if you’re trying to convert a large movie try the next solution.
    FLV Converter
  • Super Video Converter – This video conversion utility is by far the most popular and happens to be one of the most CyberMarked articles on our site. This free application will let you convert a FLV file into a large array of other file formats, including AVI, MOV, iPod, Pocket PC, WMV, and PSP. It also allows you to customize various options so that the resulting video is exactly what you want.
    Super Video Converter

 

–Play/Watch a Video–

You don’t have to convert a video just to watch it, though. If you have the right tool you can actually watch the FLV file right on your PC bypassing the whole conversion process. I looked around for at least an hour trying to find a nice player that was not only simple but offered what I thought was some very necessary features. I wanted to be able to play from a file that I downloaded and most importantly I wanted a fullscreen mode. Actually, the most important thing was that the application be freeware that wasn’t bloated with things that I didn’t want to use, but the fullscreen mode was still a critical deciding factor.

nFLVPlayer

The result that I came up with was nFLVPlayer (download mirror). The application takes just seconds to install and it is simple enough for anyone to understand. The configuration options are minimal so power users may not get much joy from it, but you can still adjust the brightness, contrast, and a few other things. This program definitely gets my stamp of approval!

Download nFLVPlayer from our mirror

 

–Overview–

Now you’re going to be all set the next time that you want to take your videos with you on the go, which is great for those of us who don’t have access to the Internet 24/7. There are so many tools out there that can replace any of the ones that I listed above, but I covered the ones that I had experience with. With that being said we want to hear what you’re using to download, convert, and watch videos.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Apr 13

Yahoo! Acquires MyBlogLog (along with their statistics program too!)

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

This article was written on January 09, 2007 by CyberNet.

Yahoo! has announced their first acquisition of 2007, MyBlogLog! Yahoo swept up MyBlogLog after only 3-4 months of release to the public.  The estimated purchase price was $10-12 million. At the beginning of December, we decided we wanted to get in on the popular community for blogger’s. You’ll notice our BlogLog in the right column, it shows a list of recent visitors, and users of BlogLog can become members of Blogging communities, like our CyberNet community.

MyBlogLog gives people the chance to put a face to the name with pictures, avatars, etc. It’s great, and has gained a lot of popularity from the blogosphere. So far, Yahoo has acquired some pretty big names in social networking and media like Flickr, and Del.icio.us. I think that with Yahoo! acquiring ByBlogLog, they’ll be able to spread this service to a variety of different types of blogs instead of the technology blogs where it seems to be the most popular.

On the official Yahoo blog, in talking about connecting people of a community, Chad Dickerson says, “If blogging was originally about building a community and having a conversation with people in that community, then MyBlogLog provides the missing link that makes those connections more real.” The Yahoo blog also notes that they’re not planning on making any immediate changes quite yet.

Another important part of this acquisition is the Stat Tracking that MyBlogLog is offering for $3.00 per month.  Yahoo hasn’t gotten into stat tracking yet, so this officially gets them involved. The stat program has real-time tracking capabilities, so I could see Yahoo potentially taking this stat program and offering it for no additional cost.  It will give people more incentive to use it on their site, which will give Yahoo that much more statistical information at their disposal.

Nice buy, Yahoo and Congrats ByBlogLog! I wonder if/how they’ll integrate all of these newly acquired services together!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Apr 11

Taskforce Websites Target OS Inconsistencies

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites, Windows Vista

This article was written on August 11, 2008 by CyberNet.

There are a lot of things that are often overlooked when designing a new operating system whether it be Windows, the Mac operating system, or any of the various distributions of Linux. For example, have you noticed that the Internet Explorer image placeholder icon has remained the same for a LONG time or that the icon for an Internet Connection in Vista is designed for Windows XP? When using Mac OS X, have you noticed that there is no cut option in the Finder or that moving files in Finder displays a copy dialog? The examples we listed may seem frivolous, but they are the little things that get overlooked.

What is a user supposed to do when they notice some of these things? Thanks to Long Zheng of istartedsomething.com, users can go to either the Aqua Taskforce to “find, publish and rate user experience quirks in Mac OS X” or the Aero Taskforce to do the same for user experience quirks in Windows Vista. Istartesomething.com has been a popular place to go for news about Microsoft and Windows, and the author, Long Zheng found that it might be helpful to have a place where people can go to point out some of the quirks in Vista. Once that became a hit, people requested something similar for Mac OS X.

aero taskforce.png

It’s a great idea he had, and now there are two Taskforce sites available:

Mashable points out how these Taskforce sites could mean accidental success for Long Zheng. He reengineered his code once he added the Aqua Taskforce so that log-ins would work for both sites, and any other Taskforce sites in the future. Mashable says, “With this re-engineering he has created a backend to a system that will allow him to deploy any new taskforce site in literally minutes. So any company that would find something like this useful could be up and running wiht their own task-force site minutes after contacting Long“. It’s a simple idea, yet one that could turn out to be a huge success.

Now speaking of quirks, what are some other quirks that you have found in Windows, Mac OS X, or even Linux?

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Apr 10

Bloglines New Save, Photo Widget, and Blog View Features!

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

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

Three new features were introduced to Bloglines Beta last night that will make the experience just a bit better. As most of you know, Bloglines is one of the most popular web-based news aggregator services used by many. The folks over at Bloglines have said that they’ve been working hard to get “stocking stuffers” out to everybody for the holiday season. Just in time, stockings have been filled and this is what you’ll find:

  1. Save – want to easily save articles for later reference? Now you can, and if the publisher makes graphics available in the feed (like CyberNet), those will be saved as well. These articles will go to your “saved” folder so that you can go back and access them later.
  2. Photo Widget – This will come in handy for those of you who subscribe to Flickr feeds. This photo widget will provide you with large thumbnails of images from the Flickr feeds you’re subscribed to. This sure beats only being able to view the text description!
  3. Blog View – Want to view the full blog instead of just the feed article? Now you can with the 3-pane view. This full blog view will essentially show you everything including comments, ads, and anything else that might be in left or right sidebars.

If you’d like to take advantage of the new “save” feature, here’s how it will work:

  • Look for the “save” button at the bottom of an article and click it
    bloglines save
  • A new inline window will appear where you can leave a comment about the article and select a folder that you’d like it to be saved to. Click save, and you’re all set to go!
    bloglines save 2

Nice, huh?

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