Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on June 19, 2008 by CyberNet.

Did you need another new email address? We didn’t think so, but you may be still interested to know that Yahoo has decided to add two new domains to their mail service. Today around 12:00 PM (Pacific), they will introduce Ymail and reintroduce RocketMail as new domains their users can use to register for new email accounts.

If RocketMail sounded familiar to you it’s because it was one of the first major webmail services available when email first became popular. It’s been too long, but I almost think at one point I even had a RocketMail account. Eventually Yahoo acquired them in 1997 and used their technology for Yahoo Mail. Now they’re reviving RocketMail by allowing users to sign up for an email account under the domain.

Why has Yahoo chosen now as the perfect moment to add two domains to their mail service? An article from the AFP points out how right now Yahoo is trying to prove to their followers and their investors that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Yahoo Mail is already the most popular web-based mail solution out there with millions of users, but adding new domains has it’s benefits. They say, “adding new domains is intended to let users who have outgrown or never really liked their yahoo.com email addresses to have chances at better choices.“

Isn’t it a little ironic that they chose one of their domains to be Ymail, like Gmail? At least Ymail is short and sweet unlike Rocketmail which seems a little long, doesn’t it? While Hotmail is a little long, Microsoft introduced the @live.com domain not that long ago which is short and sweet as well. It’s also worth pointing out that Yahoo has used Ymail before for an email service for mobile devices.

Remember, today at 12 PM Pacific, you’ll have a chance to scoop up the address of your choice. If your current user ID is something long with a bunch of numbers attached to it, it’ll be a great opportunity for you to get something better. They say 70% of adults prefer an email address which includes their names, so here’s your chance to get your name without a string of numbers attached.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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

 
Web Browser Wednesday

Both schools and corporate workplaces are blocking websites apparently without knowing what all of the services do. No, I’m not talking about blocking sites like MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, or Meebo…what I’m referring to are things that can help make you more productive. Just last week I read that some schools were starting to block most Google services including Google Docs, News, and even Google Calendar!

If I was in school right now I would absolutely be loving Google Docs. I could write my papers on the computer, and not have to worry about carrying around some sort of method to store the files on. I really don’t see how that deserves to be blocked, nor do I understand why Google Calendar would be banned? It’s not like these services are bandwidth hungry like YouTube, and they surely don’t deserve to be matched up to the likes of MySpace.

So I thought today I would put together a list of ways to view blocked websites. Most of them are fairly easy and require very little work on your part. Here’s how you can access blocked pages:

–Using Proxies–

I don’t think there is any arguing that free proxies are among the most common solutions to view blocked sites, and searching Google for “MySpace proxies” returns over 1.5 million results. These work by sending the request for a website through a different computer, thereby thwarting any efforts to block a site.

These proxies are normally successful in browsing blocked sites, but they can often go pretty slow or be cluttered with ads. If you’re in desperate need of finding a proxy, you should head over to Proxy.org where you can find hundreds of proxies listed. My personal favorite proxy, however, is Hujiko because it’s super fast and only has one small banner ad located at the top.

–Using Translators–

One of the new (and better) ways that I learned about while writing this article was using translators for viewing blocked websites. No, you won’t be viewing the sites in another language…instead you’ll be doing translations back into the native language. For instance, when viewing an English site you would have it “translated” back into English. It sounds pointless, but you’re essentially using the translator as a free proxy.

The easiest way to do this is to copy the URL below, and replace the “cybernetnews.com” at the end with the site you’re looking to visit:

http://google.com/translate?langpair=en|en&u=cybernetnews.com

It will load everything as expected, and you are still able to login to the sites and services just as you normally would. The best part is that Google doesn’t show any ads while using this!

–Using Mobile Browsers–

As crazy as it may sound, you can actually view blocked sites using services geared for web browsing on your mobile device. They are optimized for small screens, and don’t have any CSS applied to them, but there’s no doubt that they still work. The two most popular are probably Google and Phonifier, both of which produce similar results. Again, the sites aren’t gonna look very pretty, but they’ll work.

–Using IP Address Lookup–

Another thing you can do is lookup the IP address of the site you’re trying to access. When most websites are blocked, the admins only think about blacklisting the domains, and don’t take into account that the sites can still be accessed using their IP address.

To do this one you’ll want a service that will let you provide a host name, and have it lookup the IP address for you. Host2IP is a good example of that, and it’s extremely fast.

–Using the Anonymous Tor Network–

The Tor Network is similar to using proxies, except it distributes the load and is supposed to have slightly better performance. There are specialized versions of both Firefox and Opera that utilize Tor to access blocked sites, but I don’t think this would be one of my first resorts. It’s more for anonymity than anything else, but on the plus side portable versions of those browsers are available.

–OverView–

I’m sure there are plenty of other ways to beat the system, so feel free to drop us a comment below with your thoughts and ideas!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on December 29, 2009 by CyberNet.

Over the last five years, there has been a huge increase in the amount of data we store online. We post pictures to Flickr, bookmark sites on Delicious, keep documents in Google Docs and tweet with Twitter. But unlike with offline data, backing up your online belongings requires a different approach. Luckily, Backupify has come to the rescue.

Backupify is an online cloud backup service. It currently supports the following sites, with more be added soon:

• Flickr (photo sharing)
• Twitter (microblogging)
• Delicious (bookmarks sharing)
• Zoho (office suite)
• Google Docs (office suite)
• WordPress (blogging)
• Basecamp (project management)
• Gmail (e-mail)
• Facebook (social network)
• FriendFeed (social network aggregation)
• Blogger (blogging)
• Hotmail (e-mail)

To have Backupify create a daily or weekly backup of these services, you have to provide your username and password to the site. For some services such as Flickr, Backupify uses safer ways to get access to your stuff so that you don’t have to supply your password. If you have multiple accounts with one service, you can enter all of them.

Once you’ve set up your services, the backups will start appearing under the Archives tab after they are made. That brings us to the bad news: Backupify can’t restore your data automatically yet. Still, this is better than having no data at all.

Backupify is completely free forever if you sign up before January 31st 2010, so get an account while you can!

Backupify Homepage

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on October 29, 2010 by CyberNet.

Last month I covered an awesome photo sharing service called DropMocks. Unlike most photo management sites this one wasn’t looking to be the most powerful service on the web, and instead just wanted to offer a simple way for users to quickly share photos with one another. There’s a new kid on the block that copies a lot of what DropMocks offers, but also throws in a few goodies.

Min.us is the site that I’m talking about. The resemblance to DropMocks is striking, but there are quite a few things Min.us can do that DropMocks can’t. Here’s a list that I’ve managed to come up with:

• Displays a direct link for each image underneath the preview. The link is to the full-resolution image, and you can use this to hotlink to a particular image.
• In the navigation window in the upper-right corner you’ll see a “Download all” link that bundles all of the full resolution images up into a single ZIP.
• You can manage your galleries by creating an account, or through their cookie-based session. The cookie method will let you manage the galleries you’ve created until you clear out the cookies in your browser.
• When viewing a list of your galleries you can see how many people have clicked on the link to view your images.
• Drag-and-drop rearranging of images you’ve uploaded.
• Add new images to an existing gallery by dragging them into the window when you’ve got the gallery open.
• Supports more browsers (Firefox 3.6+, Google Chrome, Safari for Mac, and Internet Explorer 9).

And then there are the limitations:

• Image size is limited to 7MB each
• There can be a maximum of 50 images in a gallery
• Image types allowed: JPEG, GIF, PNG, APNG, and BMP

I have to admit that Min.us has some nice features, such as the bulk downloading, that really tips the scale for me. There’s no doubt that I’ll be using this over DropMocks for my quick photo sharing needs. Oh, and they also appear to be rolling out updates rather frequently, which I always like to see.

Min.us Homepage (Here’s a sample gallery I set up)

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on January 18, 2008 by CyberNet.

For those of you with a profile set to private on MySpace, or more importantly, those of you with kids that have a MySpace profile, you’ll want to pay attention. Despite the fact that you think a profile may be private along with the photos inside of that profile, a bug that Wired recently wrote about will make even private photos accessible to anybody – unless you do one important thing which I’ll explain in just a minute.

This all came to light in an extremely disturbing way.  Quoted from Wired news:

In an October post on the music-oriented forum sohh.com, a user asked a contingent of self-described “pedos” for help in accessing the photos of a 16-year-old girl who caught his eye online. “I got a mission for all you pedo soldiers,” he wrote, explaining that the girl’s profile was private.

“I can get them. I know a way around it,” another forum member responded. Minutes later, he posted direct links to 43 photos of the girl. By request, he posted links the next day for another 12 photos, belonging to a 15-year-old girl whose profile is also private.

So how were they able to do it? Well, all it takes is a user’s ID number. And getting that ID number is as easy has hovering over a profile picture (which of course is still shown, even when a profile is set to private) and looking for the number in the status bar of your browser (shown below).

Next you can use any one of the three URL’s below and insert the ID number where you find the X’s:

• http://lads.myspace.com/slides/photoslider.swf?u=XXXXXX
• http://lads.myspace.com/slides/slideshow_random.swf?u=XXXXXX
• http://www.myspace.com/services/media/photosXML.ashx?friendid=XXXXXX

I tried this with several profiles that I knew were private, and sure enough, it worked.  Photos appeared and I was able to sift through them all. Then I went and tried it with my own profile, except no images appeared. So what was different? Well, I found the answer and this is what you need to know to make sure that your images and/or those of your children really are private. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Log-in to your MySpace account and in your control panel – click Photos
   
2. Click on an album to open it, and then click “options”
   
3. A box will appear – make sure that your photos are Viewable By: Friends Only
   
4. Click save and now there is no way (that we know of) that people can access your photos

You see, most people just make their Album viewable by everyone because they think that if their profile is private to begin with, only their friends will be able to see the pictures anyways. If all of your photo albums say that they are viewable to “friends only” then you are good to go.

Update: It appears as though the links above no longer work which means MySpace took this seriously and fixed it. That doesn’t mean there won’t be another bug in the future so be sure to go in and make sure all of your albums are viewable by friends only if you’re wanting to keep them private.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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