Hasta La Gadget! Page not found

Feb 18

Recommended Tags Plugin for WordPress 2.3

Posted in: Features, Freeware, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on September 25, 2007 by CyberNet.

Many of you might have noticed in our Daily Downloads today that WordPress 2.3 has been released. One of its most acclaimed features is the built-in tagging system, but to be honest it is a overly simple as it currently stands. It has no sort of near-duplicate detection when adding tags to your posts, which can quickly create a huge mess for anyone with a few dozen tags. In no time you could have tags such as “download” and “downloads” created all because you couldn’t remember which one you originally started with.

To solve that problem we were able to take the Click Tags plugin, and derive our own from it called Recommended Tags. It uses what I consider to be an intelligent system to recommend tags to you based upon the content of each article, and in the event that a specific tag is not recommended there is always a full list of all existing tags towards the bottom of the “Write a Post” page (as seen in the screenshot below). I setup options in the code so that you can easily enable or disable the displaying of both recommended tags and the entire list of tags.

How are the recommendations “intelligent?” For starters all HTML tags are stripped from the post so that linking to a Wikipedia article won’t necessarily recommend the “Wikipedia” tag that you’ve created (since URL’s are removed before matching up tags). Take a look at an additional two features (both enabled by default) that will help match tags:

Tags can be “exploded” so that the tag name is broken up into individual words. This will let a tag called “Windows Vista” be recommended even if you only mention “Vista” (note that it is without the “Windows”) in your article.
Common plural/past endings (in English) can be trimmed off of the end of tag names. That way a tag called “downloads” will still be recommended even if you only mention “download” in the article.

We will continue to add more features to make adding WordPress 2.3 tags even easier, so keep your eyes peeled for updates to Recommended Tags plugin!

Here’s a screenshot of the plugin in-action:

Related Posts:

Feb 15

Netvibes2Go: News, Search, Weather, and More on Mobile Devices

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on February 23, 2007 by CyberNet.

Netvibes2Go As our lives continue to get more and more busy we increase our reliance on getting information sent to our fingertips. In July 2006 Google realized the importance of providing users with a mobile experience that would enhance their productivity, and therefore launched a Google Personalized Homepage for mobile devices.

Netvibes won’t be left behind because they too have created their own mobile homepage. The address for the mobile version is http://m.netvibes.com and you’ll use your normal Netvibes account information to login.

According to Unwired View you’ll then be able to do things like view your ToDo list, check the weather, and view whether you have new Gmail messages. Some of the things are read-only when being used on a mobile device, such as the ToDo list, note taking, and calendar, but one thing you can still use are the search fields. This will give you a central location to access the search engines that you use the most, which might save you from having to type in multiple URL’s to find what you’re looking for.

You can also try and use modules that do not explicitly say that they are compatible with the Netvibes2Go, but there is no guarantee that they will work. The good news is that an incompatible module will not cause an error, instead the module just won’t load. Now that is some smart thinking by the Netvibes team!

What’s one of the most important things with Netvibes though? Feeds of course. The mobile version does indeed let you read your feeds, but they will appear in a plaintext format. This means any colored text, right/left aligned images, and any other formatting will not be shown.

I’m really impressed with Netvibes2Go even though I haven’t actually played with it personally. My phone doesn’t even have Internet right now because I always found it so tedious to try and do things on it, but Netvibes2Go would make it really easy to do things like read news and do a quick search on Google. It’s almost tempting to get Internet service back on my phone.

Related Posts:

Feb 10

CyberNotes: GasBuddy.com – Your Pal for Finding the Best Price

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

This article was written on May 26, 2007 by CyberNet.

Weekend Website

Prices at the pump continue to go up, and if you’re like me, you like to find the best price in your area to save yourself a few bucks. This is where GasBuddy.com comes in, and it’ll probably be your new pal. GasBuddy.com is constantly checking the gas prices from more than 179+ different gas price information sites, and then it compiles it to give you a list of the prices from the various gas stations in your area.

Features:

Get a comparison of what the average gas prices are today, yesterday, one week ago, one month ago, and one year ago. For example, today the average price in the United States is $3.23, one week ago it was $3.14, and one month ago it was $2.87
View gas price temperature maps. The “warmer” the color, the more expensive the gas is.
Search by US Zip Code or City, State. For example, I searched for prices in Chicago, Illinois and then I got a list of the gas stations and the current price.

Receive average gas prices for your city compared to the USA
Giveaways! Currently they’ve got a contest going on with four prizes consisting of $1,000 dollars worth of free gas!
View recent gas related news from around the web.

Dashboardgaswidget Besides GasBuddy.com and other websites like it, there are other ways to keep up with the gas prices. One such way is by using a dashboard widget or a desktop gadget.

Dashboard Widget (Apple)

If you’re an Apple user, check out the Gas widget (pictured to the right). You’ll receive up-to-date gas prices which are color coded by your preferred grade. You’ll also have links to Google Map so that you can easily find the gas station if you’re unsure of where it is.

It’s free for download and requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later.

Download here.

GasWatch Widget (Konfabulator)

Another widget for your desktop is called GasWatch which will show you the lowest priced gas station that lies within your zip code. And just like the Dashboard Widget for Apple Computers, you can click to view a map of where the gas station is.

The data that is used for this widget comes from http://autos.msn.com, and it’s another easy way to save yourself a few bucks.

Download here.

Gas Price Information (Vista Sidebar Gadget)

If you’re using Windows Vista, this one is for you. It’s a great addition to your sidebar gadgets and provides you with the local gas prices. The best part is that all of this helpful information is right in your sidebar.

After installing it, you just have to enter in your zip code and it will tell you the lowest price, the average price, and the highest price for your area. By clicking on any of the three numbers that are displayed, you’ll get the list of gas stations, their address, and what the gas costs.

Msngasgadget

Download here.

Between GasBuddy.com, and the use of widget’s and gadget’s, you should be prepared to save yourself a few bucks as the prices at the pump go up.

Related Posts:

Feb 08

Soashable: An Open Source Meebo Clone

Posted in: Freeware, Pre-Release, Software, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on March 25, 2008 by CyberNet.

soashable

Meebo has become an extremely popular online instant messenger, and with a status as prestigious as theirs comes clones. With Meebo you can communicate with friends and family from anywhere you have an Internet connection and a browser. And if you want to start your own similar service go checkout the open source version called Soashable (project page).

If Meebo is so great why would anyone want to use knockoff? Since Soashable is open source anyone can take their code and modify it so that it fits in well with their own site. For example, Facebook could take this, modify it a bit, and have a product that looks like their own cross-network chat client.

At this time Soashable isn’t quite up to the standard that Meebo has set because it only supports MSN Messenger, AIM, and Yahoo. They’ve got some stuff in the works to add XMPP/Google Talk support to a future release which is what I’m really looking forward to. Soashable also doesn’t do file transfers, chat rooms, or some other little things here and there.

I find this project to be cool because the only limitations users will have, such as the size of file transfers, will be what they set on their own servers. Not to mention the additional privacy you’ll get by running this yourself.

Soashable (download the code)
[via Webware]

Related Posts:

Feb 07

Is This Site Really Down?

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

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

There have been numerous occasions where I’ve been to a site and it worked just fine, but a few minutes later I go back and it appears to be down. Then I sit an wonder if it’s my computer or if the site really is down. Usually I’ll send Ryan to whichever site it was to see if it worked for him and if it doesn’t work, then I know it wasn’t just me. I’m sure you’ve been in a similar situation before and if you have, you’ll find a site called “Down For Everyone Or Just Me” pretty useful.

is it down

The site is found at http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com and when you go there, you just enter in the URL of the site you want to check and hit enter. It’ll do a quick check and come back to let you know if it was just you or if the site is really down. Nice, huh? Just note that you may have some issues today getting the site to load because they’re really getting hammered with lots of people trying it out.

Bookmarklet

Down for Everyone

The URL for the service at least makes sense, but it’s not the easiest to remember when you need it. You could bookmark it, or you could just click the button above (it’s a bookmarklet we created) and drag it up to your bookmarks and let go. This bookmarklet is great because when you go to a site that you believe is down, just click the bookmarklet and the address of the site will automatically be entered and you’ll instantly see whether it was just you or if the site really was down. You can also just right-click on the link and save it as a bookmark.

Source: Download Squad

Related Posts:

Feb 04

Non US Users Being Excluded from Pandora

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on May 03, 2007 by CyberNet.

Pandora Pandora has become a pretty popular way to find and listen to the music on the web. Their music discovery service helps users find other songs that they might liked based upon a song that they know they already like. After naming that song, the service goes to work and creates a station that is filled with music that is analyzed to be similar to the song that you entered.

Up until now, most people worldwide were able to access this service. Unfortunately from now on, Pandora will be checking the IP address to determine the country that the user is connecting from. Pandora had always been considered a US service only, however the only method for determining that the user was in the United States was a zip code. Anybody could enter in a United States zip code and then they’d easily have access to the service.

The reason behind all of this is that the music people listen to is licensed under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In order for Pandora to stream music around the World, the licenses must be agreed upon and approved by those who hold the rights to the music. Right now it has only been approved for the United States.

Until they are able to obtain international licenses, only US users will be able to use this service. Canada and the UK will probably be first on the list to gain access to the service because Pandora has already been working on deals for those countries. Hopefully from here on out, it will only be good news as more countries are added to the list.

Source: BBC

Related Posts:

Feb 03

NBC Wants iTunes to be a Piracy Detector

Posted in: Apple, ipod, itunes, Software, Today's Chili, Web Sites

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

piracy detector

The ad:tech conference is currently going on at the Moscone Center in San Francisco and one of the most interesting things to come out of it came from the mouth of NBC’s Chief Digital Officer George Kliavkoff. In a nutshell, he said he wanted Apple to build a piracy detecting iTunes and to offer flexible pricing before NBC would allow their content to return to iTunes. Here’s what he said:

If you look at studies about MP3 players, especially leading MP3 players and what portion of that content is pirated, and think about how that content gets onto that device, it has to go through a gate-keeping piece of software, which would be a convenient place to put some anti-piracy measures.

When he says “leading MP3 players” of course he’s thinking Apple’s iPod devices and when he mentioned a gate-keeping piece of software, he was obviously thinking of iTunes. Kliavkoff went on to talk about how piracy really hurts NBC and that they’re not able to invest as much as they’d like into the next generation of film and TV products. So would Apple ever take such drastic measures and incorporate anti-piracy technology into iTunes? We’re doubtful.

Pricing of the shows came up as well and Kliavkoff went on to talk about how they’d love to be on iTunes but he says “It’s really difficult for us to work with any distribution partner who says ‘Here’s the wholesale price and the retail price,’ especially when the price doesn’t reflect the full value of the product.” Apple will not budge on pricing and they would be stupid if they tried to incorporate anti-piracy technology, so it looks like we won’t be seeing NBC shows on iTunes any time soon.

Source: News.com

Related Posts:

Feb 02

BitLet – The Online BitTorrent Downloader

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on July 31, 2007 by CyberNet.

One of the things that I’ve never liked about the BitTorrent files is that they can be such a pain to download. Often times you need a separate application, such as uTorrent, to download any of the files. I have found that it is something that most people just don’t understand.

BitLet might very well be the thing that breaks the learning curve when it comes to BitTorrent files because they’ve got the easiest downloader that I’ve ever seen, and it works in all browsers. The service uses Java to begin the file transfer process on your computer, and it doesn’t require that you setup port forwarding or configure a ton of settings.

All you have to do is go to BitLet.org and paste in the URL to the torrent file that you want to download. BitLet will instantly pop open a new window, and the process will begin by having you pick the download directory. The BitLet homepage will keep a list of downloads that you have been performing, and any of them can be resumed in case you accidentally close the download window or need to restart your browser.

BitLet BitTorrent Downloader

There are a few downfalls that I see with this. The first being that it uses Java…which is an application that I truly despise. I always have it disabled, and hate running it because it consumes a lot of my system’s resources.

The other problem that I see is that there is no mention of full sharing going on. By that I mean you are downloading the file, but you’re not uploading it to other people. That may seem great because it will save on your bandwidth, but it will probably end up being something that many services block. The downloads might be fast now, but if BitLet starts to get blocked you can count on excruciatingly slow speeds.

Of course BitLet does have something that will tremendously help them…a code generator for torrent links. If you paste the URL of a torrent file into the box, BitLet will spit out some code for you to use on your own site. When a user clicks on the resulting link like this one:
Ubuntu 7.04 Torrent (x86)
the download will start immediately in a new window. This makes the BitTorrent download process extremely painless for anyone.

BitLet Homepage [via TorrentFreak]

Related Posts:

Feb 02

Reader’s Digest, Popular Science, PC Magazine, and More, Free Online

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

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

Mygazines is a site that could turn out to be too good to be true. It allows users to share magazine articles by uploading them to the site. This then allows for anyone to view those magazine articles free of charge. It is very easy, and possible, to read an entire magazine right on the site. The folks running Mygazines say that they, “take great pride in providing a platform for people and businesses to share articles and magazines in an interactive and fun format.”

If you thought for a moment that this doesn’t sound like it’s particularly legal, that’s because it’s not. They are encouraging their users to infringe on copyrights. There are all kinds of issues involved here and magazine companies like Time Warner, who publish Time Magazine, are looking into having the site shut down.

When you visit Mygazines.com, you can can view a drop-down list of all of the different topics that they cover. Essentially any popular magazine is available, plus some not-so-popular ones as well. Remember, it’s the users that provide the content so they may not have every article from every issue available on the site.

Despite the legal issues that surround the site, it may be hard for anyone to shut them down. CNET points out that the site is registered in Anguilla, down in the Caribbean, and that it is hosted in Sweden by PRQ. PRQ happens to be owned by the same crew that runs The Pirate Bay . Given this, we imagine Mygazines could potentially be around for a while.

Thanks for the tip Omar!

Related Posts:

Jan 30

Microsoft Offers Yahoo $44.6 Billion! What Does This Mean?

Posted in: Microsoft, Today's Chili, Web Sites, Yahoo

This article was written on February 01, 2008 by CyberNet.

Microsoft Yahoo We’d be surprised if you haven’t heard by now that Microsoft has made an offer to Yahoo to acquire them for about $44.6 billion in cash! It’s all over the news (for good reason), and there are all kinds of ideas regarding this acquisition floating around the Internet. Instead of talking in length about each of them, we thought we’d sum everything up into an easy-to-read bulleted list.

Microsoft proposes the acquisition of Yahoo for $44.6 billion dollars which translates to about $31 a share (read)
Before the announcement yesterday, Yahoo stock was trading at about $19 – it is now up to $27.91 after word of the offer (read)
What would a combined Microsoft-Yahoo look like? TechCrunch compares the revenues of a combined Microsoft/Yahoo with Google
Combining the two would be a long and tedious process because there are more duplicate services (e.g., yahoo.com/msn.com, Yahoo Games/MSN Games, Yahoo Maps/Live Maps, Yahoo Messenger/Live Messenger, etc.) than you might imagine and I Started Something points out what a mess this could be
Could a combined Microsoft and Yahoo turn out to be a strong competitor to Google?
Yahoo acknowledges the offer and says that their “Board of Directors will evaluate this proposal carefully and promptly in the context of Yahoo’s strategic plans and pursue the best course of action to maximize long-term value for shareholders” (read)
Longtime Yahoo Director Terry Semel is stepping down from the Board of Directors, could this affect the decision? (read)
Think the online advertising market has anything to do with Microsoft’s desire to snatch up Yahoo? We do. The online advertising market is expected to grow from $40 billion in 2007 to $80 billion by 2010… wow!
The Department of Justice is already “interested” in looking into this deal for possible antitrust issues, no surprise there (read)

Thanks to everybody who sent this in!

Related Posts:

Hasta La Gadget!

Recommended Tags Plugin for WordPress 2.3

Netvibes2Go: News, Search, Weather, and More on Mobile Devices

CyberNotes: GasBuddy.com – Your Pal for Finding the Best Price

Soashable: An Open Source Meebo Clone

Is This Site Really Down?

Bookmarklet

Non US Users Being Excluded from Pandora

NBC Wants iTunes to be a Piracy Detector

BitLet – The Online BitTorrent Downloader

Reader’s Digest, Popular Science, PC Magazine, and More, Free Online

Microsoft Offers Yahoo $44.6 Billion! What Does This Mean?

Who's in charge here?

Quick and dirty links!

Search

Archives

Blogroll

Recent Posts

Meta

Just one more ad block...

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Bookmarklet

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Who's in charge here?

Quick and dirty links!

Search

Archives

Blogroll

Recent Posts

Meta

Just one more ad block...