Hasta La Gadget!

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

Microsoft just launched Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta 2, and just like the previous version it is available for both Windows XP SP2 and Vista. In order to get the update you must have the first Beta already installed, and then you must perform a Windows Update with the Microsoft Updates enabled. In the available updates you should see a “Critical Update for Windows Live Photo Gallery (KB943550)” listed.

On my Vista machine the update process took about 3 minutes for it to download and install itself, and then I got all of the new features! Well, really there only appears to be one feature, but it is BIG. I think you better sit down for this one … Microsoft actually added support for uploading photos to the Yahoo!-owned Flickr photo service. Here’s how it works (click any thumbnail for a fullsize view):

1. You highlight the photos that you want to upload in the Windows Live Photo Gallery, and then go to Publish -> More Services -> Publish on Flickr.
   
2. You’ll have to give the program access to your Flickr account just like you would with any other Flickr uploader.
   
3. Now you’ll be able to select the properties for all of the photos that you are about to upload. You can create a new set or choose an existing one, select the maximum photo size, and choose a privacy option.
   
4. Sit back and enjoy a cup of coffee while it finishes things up.
   

When you upload the photos it will grab the description and tags that you have given your photos on your computer, so you don’t have to worry about doing that on Flickr! Honestly, I have to admit that Microsoft really stepped up their game with the new Windows Live Photo Gallery by adding support for Flickr. And the “Publish on Flickr” option is located under the “More Services” menu, which seemingly implies that support for more services will be coming in the future. Or, at the very least, they will let users create plugins for other photo services.

One thing that really bothers me with the Windows Live Photo Gallery is that it has the blue-colored bar that stretches along the top. I’m not a big fan of that color, and in other “Live” programs such as Live Writer and Messenger I’m able to change it to any color I want. I have no idea why I can’t do that in Windows Live Photo Gallery, but I would like to get it back to the black color that ships with Vista.

And remember, this is available for both Windows XP SP2 and Vista. After you download and install Windows Live Photo Gallery you’ll just have to do a Windows Update to get the latest Beta.

[via LiveSide]

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on November 27, 2007 by CyberNet.

One of the games that I’ve always enjoyed doing on the computer are the image puzzles, where you provide an image and it scrambles it all up for you to reorganize. Often times the puzzle only has one blank spot that you can use for sliding around the different puzzle pieces, kind of like this game.

A new site, called Befuddlr, is almost the same thing except you do it with Flickr photos! They have several different galleries of images you can choose from, some of which are particularly challenging. Once you pick an image to work with you’ll want to try and memorize it, and then hit the “Befuddle it!” button. That will scramble the image so that you can begin rearranging the different pieces in the correct order.

It’s a little easier than the sliding puzzles since you’re not restricted to sliding pieces around, but at the same time all of the pieces have to remain in the image making it nearly impossible to try and organize them. If you find yourself in a bind go ahead and click the “View original on Flickr” link located above the image to see what you started with. Once you get all of the pieces in the correct order Befuddlr will let you know, and it will tell you how long it took to complete the puzzle.

Beware: This will quickly consume large amounts of your time without any warning. Play at your own risk!

Befuddlr Homepage

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on August 27, 2007 by CyberNet.

I learned a new term over the weekend, and it’s called Bacn! What is Bacn? No, it’s not the delectable bacon that you eat for breakfast, instead it’s the new term for emails that are a cross between spam and personal mail. Here’s a message regarding Bacn from the people who coined the new word:

Bacn is a new problem now plaguing our email inboxes. Putting it simply, Bacn is email you receive that isn’t spam… And isn’t personal mail. It’s the middle class of email. It’s notifications of a new post to your Facebook wall or a new follower on Twitter. It’s the Google alert for your name and the newsletter from your favorite company.

We are a group of like-minded individuals who have realized the problem of bacn, and are out to find a solution. You can now join the discussion in our forum and help us further define bacn as we begin our efforts to manage our bacn. Bacn was first used during an impromptu discussion about email and spam during Podcamp Pittsburgh.

The slogan for Bacn might give you some more insight as to what it actually is: "Email you want, but not right now." I agree that this really is a problem, and the closest thing I’ve found for solving this problem is to use Gmail filters. Even still there has got to be a better way to manage it, and I’ve come up with one solution thus far.

–A Possible Solution–

A pattern that I’ve noticed between all of my Bacn is that all I really care about is the subject line and possibly one hyperlink inside of the body. For example, I’ll see a notification of a new message popup on my computer when I receive an email, and if it’s Bacn I often know what the contents of the email are without even opening it.

For that reason there has got to be a way to display Bacn in a more condensed fashion. Maybe within a sidebar in your email account that shows recent "headlines" from addresses you’ve tagged as Bacn? And then you can select what the headlines hyperlink to, such as the third hyperlink in the message. Because let’s face it…most Bacn only has one hyperlink that is important to us and it’s typically in the same position every time (thanks to the use of email templates).

–My Bacn–

I thought it would be fun if we all shared the various types of Bacn that we get. I receive about a dozen or so Bacn messages per day, and they are often from the following list:

• Pownce notifications
• Twitter notifications
• Facebook notifications
• Signup confirmations
• Welcome to…
• Bank alerts
• eBay notifications
• Status reports
• Newsletters
• Google Blog Search alerts
• SlickDeals alerts

So hit us up in the comments with how much and what type of Bacn you receive!

Source: Boing Boing

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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

It’s always easier to blame someone else, especially someone like Microsoft. This is exactly what Skype is doing, at least so it seems,  explaining to their users that the massive outage that occurred last week was “triggered by a massive restart of our users’ computers across the globe within a very short time-frame as they re-booted after receiving a routine set of patches through Windows Update.”

Now, if Windows Updates are really to blame, why hasn’t this outage occurred before? This was certainly not the first time that massive amounts of people had their computers restarted because of the updates – Microsoft releases patches on the second Tuesday of every month. Also interesting is that Windows Update by default will restart your computer automatically at 3AM local time. This means that computers around the World were restarted at different times unless users manually changed the setting.

Skype went on to say that “The high number of restarts affected Skype’s network resources.  This caused a flood of log-in requests, which, combined with the lack of peer-to-peer network resources, prompted a chain reaction that had a critical impact. The issues have now been identified explicitly within Skype.

Hopefully everybody learned a few lessons in this situation.  One of the first lessons Skype needs to learn is communication. They never bothered to email all of their users to let them know what was going on. While they updated their blog, they could have made communicating with their users a top priority. People like to be clued-in on what’s going on.

And for the outraged users who felt completely lost without their primary method of communication, perhaps they need to realize that interruptions can happen. While there are some users who do pay for a SkypeIn number and pre-paid Skype calls out (they should get compensated for the time they were without the service), most are using Skype’s service for free. And because it’s free, I don’t think people can really complain too much when something does go wrong, assuming a service maintains good communication and explains when there is a problem.

I guess the third lesson is – when all else fails, blame Microsoft?

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on July 05, 2008 by CyberNet.

Weekend Website

In the past we’ve written about a few different “How-To” sites on the web that offer tutorials on how to do something. So far we have covered WonderHowTo and Expert Village, both sites which have excellent guides. Today we’re taking a look at another solution called Howcast. It’s got a great interface and professional videos, and we think it’s one of the best how-to sites available. You can never have too many resources on the Internet for learning how to do various things, can you?

About Howcast

Howcast was actually created by former Google and YouTube employees who wanted to create professional how-to videos for consumers. On their About page, they say, “Howcast brings together the personality of user-generated content with the quality of a professional video studio to create engaging, informative, and free how-to videos for consumers. It also offers emerging filmmakers an opportunity to gain experience, exposure, and income.”

The topics that they cover really varies, but the one thing that they all have in common is the professional nature of the how-to videos. Every video I watched while exploring Howcast was very professional and engaging which makes a difference.

Using Wiki Guides (link)

One of the unique aspects to Howcast is their Wiki Guides Section. This is where people are able to write various how-to guides that others can contribute to. Those who want to edit content must have a Howcast account, otherwise they won’t be able to make changes. Another nice feature is the option for people to comment of various Wiki Guides.

When you are viewing a Wiki Guide, you’ll notice options up at the top of the page like “older” and “newer” or “changes” and “rollback.” Users are given access to previous versions of a Wiki which is why those navigation buttons are available. By clicking “Changes”, everything that was added or deleted from the previous version is highlighted so that a user will know what has changed.

There’s also a Print button up at the top. Clicking on it will format the page nicely for your printer, and then you’ll be able to print something you found that was helpful.

Several sort and filter options are available when you’re looking through Wiki Guides and they include options to sort by most viewed, most recently added, top rated, top favorites, most emailed and most discussed. You can also filter down the Wikis by selecting only certain categories. There’s also the option to view only those written by Howcast writers, or those written by the community.

Searching Through Categories (link)

Multiple categories of how-to guides are available at Howcast. Just look for the “Categories” tab at the top of the page. There you’ll find a list of categories ranging from Arts and Media to Travel. You know what? We’ll just go ahead and list the categories right here so that you’ll know what’s available:

Howcast Community (link)

Once you sign-up for an account, you can become part of the Howcast community. One way to do this is to upload your own how-to videos, while another way is to write your own Wiki Guide. If you decide to write-up a guide of your own, the Howcast community will be able to edit it. It can also be made into a video as well.

Each member has a profile page that they can edit and add information to. It also acts as a “dashboard” and will show you how many videos you’ve added, how many wiki guides you created, and how many comments and subscribers you have. And yes, you can subscribe to someone’s profile so that you’ll be updated when they add new content.

Wrapping it up

One of the features that we failed to mention is that you can create playlists of how-to videos that you want to watch, but you must have a Howcast account to be able to do it.

Looking through the videos, here are a few videos that might interest you:

• How to fix a wet cell phone
• How to take great pictures with your cell phone
• How to fix a scratched CD
• How to use your iPod as a backup hard drive
• How to setup a custom WordPress blog

If you’re trying to figure out how to do something, checkout Howcast. We think you’ll be impressed with the quality of the videos, the interface, and the opportunities that they provide for the community to get involved.

Thanks for the tip Pieter!

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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