This article was written on March 09, 2010 by CyberNet.
Windows only I can think of a handful of times that I’ve wanted to export a list of all the files from a particular directory so that I could share them with someone else. That kind of task sounds like it should be really easy, but there aren’t too many apps out there that are versatile enough to meet most users’ needs. One that I stumbled across, getFolder, should cover most aspects that you’re looking for in an app like this.
Aside from being both free and portable, getFolder will let you export a list of files and folders to an HTML, XML, TXT, RTF, or CSV file. All of these options mean you can create an ultra-simple list, or get a bit more complex by using a CSV file and opening it up into a spreadsheet app such as Excel.
Looking for more features? getFolder can do basic bulk renaming of files and can filter out results according to criteria you specify. It’s not exactly a ground-breaking program, but since it’s portable I’d say there’s some value in keeping it around for those one-off situations where you need to list out the contents of a folder.
This article was written on October 08, 2007 by CyberNet.
Newegg just setup the Windows Home Server product page, and they will be selling the OEM version for $190 starting October 12th. Microsoft will not be selling a retail version of this in stores, so OEM is the only way you can get it besides for buying a pre-built Home Server device. Because it is OEM there is no fancy packaging and it doesn’t include much (if any) paperwork, so don’t be disappointed if all you receive is a CD and serial number when you order it.
There’s also supposed to be a 120-day evaluation version on the horizon, but there has been no news of that yet. Here’s a list of the requirements needed if you decide to roll your own:
1.0 GHz Intel Pentium 3 (or equivalent) processor
512 MB RAM memory
80 GB internal hard drive as primary drive
100 Mbit/s wired Ethernet
Extremely positive reviews are already starting to roll in on the Newegg Home Server page from a small handful of people who had been testing the operating system. One comment in particular caught my attention:
I was lucky enough to beta this and it has become indispensible. It is a lot more than just a NAS [Network Attached Storage] box sitting on my network, the silent backup of host PCs is awesome and the simplicity of install and use is somewhat of a shock compared to most MS server products. Apple would have been proud to release something this intuitive! Amazingly for a v1 Microsoft product it has behaved flawlessly from day one and the ability to access all my host PCs and documents from anywhere in the world is something I now consider absolutely essential. I can’t wait for v2.0!
If you don’t feel like building your own then just hold out for one of the many third-party solutions that will be coming from Fujitsu-Siemens, Gateway, HP, Iomega, Lacie and Medion. The most prominently advertised has been the HP MediaSmart computer starting at $599 with 500GB of storage.
So who plans on building their own Home Server, and who’s going to pick up one of the third-party options?
This article was written on January 11, 2011 by CyberNet.
Windows; Linux A few years ago I used to keep spindles of blank CDs and DVDs next to my computer because I was frequently burning discs, but over the last year or two that has drastically changed. Now I have my discs tucked away since I barely burn one or two discs per year. Since I love playing around with different Linux distributions I went looking for a way to test them all out without needing to use CDs or DVDs.
One tool that has helped me alleviate my reliance on burning discs is UNetbootin. It’s a free utility that supports dozens of different Linux operating systems and makes them runnable off of your USB drive. What’s even better is that it can actually download the ISO file that it needs to deploy to your USB drive for most of the popular Linux variations. Here’s a list of the distributions where automatic downloading is supported, and in the list you’ll notice that there are also some utilities such as Ophcrack thrown into the mix:
Arch Linux
BackTrack – a utility used for network analysis and penetration testing.
CentOS
CloneZilla
Damn Small Linux
Debian
Dreamlinux
Dr. Web Antivirus – remove malware from Windows installs.
Elive
Fedora
FreeBSD
FreeDOS – which can run BIOS flash and other legacy DOS utilities.
FreeNAS
Frugalware
F-Secure Rescue CD – remove malware from Windows installs.
Gentoo
gNewSense
Gujin – a graphical bootloader that can also be used to boot various operating systems and media.
Kaspersky Rescue Disk – remove malware from Windows installs.
Kubuntu
LinuxConsole
Linux Mint
Mandriva
MEPIS
NetBSD
NimbleX
NTPasswd – a utility which can reset Windows passwords and edit the registry.
openSUSE
Ophcrack – a utility which can recover Windows passwords.
Parted Magic – a partition manager that can resize, repair, backup, and restore partitions.
PCLinuxOS
Puppy Linux
Sabayon Linux
Slax
SliTaz
Smart Boot Manager – which can boot off CD-ROM and floppy drives on computers with a faulty BIOS.
Super Grub Disk – a boot utility that can restore and repair overwritten and misconfigured GRUB installs or directly boot various operating systems
Super OS
SystemRescueCD – a system repair, backup and recovery tool.
Ubuntu
xPUD
Xubuntu
Zenwalk
Thanks to UNetbootin you should be able to boot any of the above Linux distros from your USB drive as long as your BIOS supports being able to use the USB drive as a boot drive. The homepage also says that it should work with just about any any Linux ISO that you have saved on your computer regardless of whether it is in the list above.
This article was written on September 10, 2007 by CyberNet.
FileZilla 3 was just released and I have to admit that I’m pretty excited to see my favorite FTP client hit this big milestone. This version has spent several years in the making, and even though it doesn’t have many new features over the previous version there is something that is definitely worth noting: it’s now cross-platform! That’s right, it doesn’t matter whether your a Windows, Linux, or Mac user because FileZilla runs on them all.
Making FileZilla 3 cross-platform was no easy task, and it required a complete code rewrite. Unfortunately they also weren’t able to bring back all of the features from FileZilla 2, but I believe that most casual FTP users won’t notice much of a difference. The only thing I’ve found so far that FileZilla 3 is lacking is the synchronization capabilities that FileZilla 2 offered. If you never used that feature I think you should be pleased with the new version.
One of the other great things that I noticed in this version is the organization of queued, failed, and successful transfers into separate tabs at the bottom. This makes it much easier to see how your transfers are going.
Interestingly enough the developer also decided to refresh the FileZilla icon by choosing a different color scheme. It’s not a drastic change from what it was, but it’s enough to make me look twice when trying to find the program in the Start Menu.
This article was written on June 11, 2007 by CyberNet.
Microsoft Monday
The popularity of digital cameras has meant that people take more pictures because they’re not held back by limited amounts of film. I love taking pictures with my digital camera, and I also love to share them whether it be through email, social networks, or my Flickr account. Another way to share photos that I recently experimented with is by using the new Windows DVD Maker. If you have Windows Vista Home Premium, or Ultimate, this feature is available to you. It’s simple to use, and filled with customization options that will allow you to put your own personal touch on the DVD to show to family and friends.
There are two different ways to access Windows DVD Maker. The first option is to go to the Start Menu and select Windows DVD Maker. Another option is to open up a photo from the photo gallery and click burn up at the top, then “Video DVD.” This is the option I chose, and the one I’ll be walking you through today.
Step 1: Select Your Photos
The first thing that you’ll want to do is select the photos that you’d like to be a part of your DVD. All you have to do is highlight (just like you’d highlight multiple files) the photos that you’d like to be included. Remember, you’re creating a DVD so there will be plenty of room for all of your pictures. If you’re taking your photos at 3 megapixels, you should have room for about 3,000 photos!
If you’ve used the tagging system that the Windows Photo Gallery offers, you can select pictures that you’d like to be included by selecting the tag. For example, if you have a tag labeled “pets” you can click on it. Only the pictures that have been tagged “pets” would be selected.
Once all of your pictures are highlighted, you’ll go up to “Burn” then click “Video DVD.”
Another option would be to select just one picture, then go to “Burn,” then “Video DVD” and from there you can add additional items to the video by clicking “Add items.”
Step 2: Menu Options
You’ll have options for deciding how the menu will look on your DVD. There are several customization options including appearance of scenes, button styles, and you can also include foreground and background video along with audio.
Step 3: DVD Settings
Want to add music to your movie? No problem! Add the songs that you’d like. What to change the slide show length to match the music length? No problem! Want to select your transition between slides or use pan and zoom effects for pictures? No problem! I was especially happy to find that they include the pan and zoom effects because that really makes a difference between a boring and interesting video.
Step 4: Finish and Burn
The last step is to burn your disc! Make sure you have a DVD in your DVD drive, and then click burn. My DVD turned out great, and hopefully yours will too. It’s such a simple, easy process that anyone can do. And it’ll be great to send out to family and friends.
Video of the process:
I’ve included a video of all the different menu options, and I removed all of the loading times associated with previewing the menu animations. Even if you have Windows DVD Maker, it’ll still be easier to watch the video if you want to see the different animations before trying it for yourself.
This article was written on February 11, 2009 by CyberNet.
Windows only Most of the time I use my computer’s desktop as a temporary holding place for things that I need to organize later on. It’s normally filled with attachments that have been downloaded from emails, apps I’ve downloaded to try out, and more. My goal is to always have a clear desktop because that means I’ve filed everything away, but that rarely happens.
Stardock has released a free program called Fences that focuses on de-cluttering your desktop. Basically what it does is make it possible to group the icons on your desktop into self-contained areas. You can then hide all of the groupings simply by double-clicking on your desktop. If you’ve got certain icons you always want visible (like the Recycle Bin) you can specify them within the settings, and those will never be hidden when double-clicking on the desktop.
To top it off the application will also let you take snapshots of how all your icons are organized at any given moment. These will serve as backups in case you ever want to revert back to a previous state of organization.
Stardock Fences is completely free, but they do have a professional version in the works that will add more features if you’re willing to pay for them. The free version, however, will always remain available.
This has become a must-have app for me, and I highly recommend it for anyone that has troubles managing their desktop.
This article was written on April 10, 2009 by CyberNet.
Windows only We’ve shown you some tools in the past that lets you automatically rotate your desktop backgrounds (like this one), but the sheer simplicity of Wallpaper Juggler is what makes it so great. Basically what it does is download wallpapers from InterfaceLIFT and WallpaperStock, and you can choose to have it grab only the most popular wallpapers. Then you can setup an interval so that it automatically rotates through the downloaded wallpapers. Once setup the whole process happens transparently in the background without any interaction needed from you.
Here are the features the free Wallpaper Juggler app has to offer:
Controllable from the System Tray (enabled/disable, juggle now, switch back to last wallpaper, etc…)
Can be configured to…
start with Windows
look for wallpapers in multiple folders including/excluding subfolders. Best results when used with matching resolution wallpapers
change wallpaper once every preferred duration between 1 min and 500 hrs. It will understand “000 Hrs/Mins 000 Min” format. It can interpret M/Min/Mins/Minutes and H/Hr/Hrs/Hour as Minutes and Hours respectively
confirm before changing wallpaper
adjust image positioning for odd size wallpapers
Change wallpaper manually by clicking ‘Juggle Now’ menu or double clicking the icon
Displays the last updated wallpaper and the time stamp when the next change will occur
If you hate having the same wallpaper on your computer this might be just the thing you need. Give it a whirl and let us know what you think.
This article was written on March 26, 2007 by CyberNet.
Microsoft was finally able to take a step back and look at how many licenses of Vista are actually in use right now. According to their numbers, there were more than 20 million licenses sold from January 30 to February 28. That is nothing short of impressive!
That number does include upgraded versions of Vista from people who bought new computers before Vista was actually released, but CNet says that when they questioned Microsoft on how many of the 20 million licenses were from upgrades the response was:
It’s boosting the overall number, but it’s certainly not the core component of the 20 million.
To put the number in perspective Microsoft said that 17 million Windows XP licenses were sold after two-months, which means Vista more than doubled its Windows predecesor! The thing that made this number the most astonishing was that there are a reported 20 million Mac users (source) in total, and in the first year of Apple’s next OS release they are expected to sell 10 million licenses. By the end of this year Vista is expected to hit more than 100 million licenses.
Mac’s numbers are by no means shabby, but it just goes to show how widespread Windows really is. CNet also noted that Vista Ultimate sales are doing better than expected, although Microsoft has not released specific information regarding how many licenses of each version of Vista were sold:
Mannion said that Microsoft is even seeing better-than-expected sales of the pricey Ultimate edition. “We have relatively modest expectations for Ultimate, but it’s exceeding that on both new PCs and the packaged product.”
…
He likens it to car buyers who buy more horsepower than they need. “How many people buy the V8 instead of the V6?” Walker said. Or how many go with the optional towing package, “even though they have nothing to tow?”
I am a little surprised that people are picking the Ultimate Edition, but when purchasing a new PC, the upgrade to Ultimate from Home Premium is typically just $100. That is much more reasonable than spending the $400 on a retail copy of Ultimate, and the retail version can be switched to a new PC if that need should arise.
Having used the final version of Vista for nearly two months I would have to say that I am impressed with its capabilities. In the next few months I will be purchasing a new laptop that supports the Aero graphics, and I can’t wait because there are a lot of cool applications emerging that utilize Vista’s advanced graphical capabilities!
This article was written on June 25, 2007 by CyberNet.
Microsoft Monday
When Microsoft released a DreamScene Preview for Vista Ultimate users, I couldn’t wait to try it out. Once I got it installed I was indeed impressed, but I still felt like I was missing out on the full capabilities of what DreamScene could really do.
Now being more than 4-months after the preview version was released, there is still no final version, but that’s a whole other story. Shortly after the Vista release, Stardock picked up some of Microsoft’s slack by extending the feature set that Dreamscene had. They made a free add-on called Deskscapes which once installed, lets you choose from their vast collection of user-uploaded “Dreams.”
Almost all of them are offered for free, and so I thought I would take a look at several that I have personally tested out. And since there are no videos of them available on the site I also felt the need to demonstrate to you what each of them looks like.
Note: None of the videos have sound because I was trying to keep the size of the video to a minimum, but its not like they would have sound on your desktop anyway. You can also look for the little white dots on the timeline to quickly skip to the next Dream demo:
–The City–
These three Dreamscapes are all based on cities, and one of them has a special place in my heart since it is of the Chicago skyline!
Everyone loves water when it comes to desktop backgrounds, so I thought I would devote an entire section just to that! We’ve got waterfalls, lakes, and tropical paradise that will help prepare you for a vacation.
Note: Some of the effects that some of the Dreams have are more subtle than others, particularly the two Island ones. I threw these in because they look good, and some people don’t like too much motion on their desktop.
This is kind of a conglomeration of odds and ends that I found. A few of them put you in space, some are related to movies, and others just don’t belong anywhere.
The hot one in this group is no doubt the Shark Pit, which is what I have my current Vista desktop set to. When other people have seen me using it they think it is the coolest thing ever. Kudos to the Stardock team for developing it and not charging a dime!
Besides for producing free Dreams such as the Shark Pit, Stardock also works hard to create dynamic ones. Unlike other Dreams, the content that these show are not just a looping movie, and are instead created on-the-fly for your viewing pleasure.
Since these will cost you money, I decided to point out the features that each has a little bit more in detail so that you have a better idea of what you’ll receive. All of them, except the first one, also have options that you can configure to your liking and I made sure to demonstrate some of the different things you can do with those settings.
Blissful Dream ($8.95) This one is pretty cool because it adjusts with your computer’s clock. From what I gather, there are just a few transitions that it has (sun rise, afternoon, sunset, night) which I try to demonstrate in the video by manually adjusting the clock.
Desktop Earth ($8.95) I think the NASA-addicts out there will really get a kick out of this one. It is a rotating globe that shows where it is currently daytime and where it is nighttime. You can customize the speed of the rotation, or just make the globe stationary and have the light revolve around it as the day goes on.
Desktop Collage ($8.95) I really thought at first that this was going to be my favorite. I consider myself a photo guru and take pictures of almost anything, and looking through the options there was all kinds of stuff to love. At certain time intervals, it places a picture on your desktop (essentially forming a collage), and you can control the size of the pictures as well as the delay between adding photos. The downside is in choosing the location of the photos to use because it didn’t let me use a folder that only contained sub-folders. Instead I had to pick a folder that had pictures directly in it, which takes away a little bit from the beauty of this Dream.
Liquid Dream ($9.95) I think this ended up being my favorite out of the bunch because of how realistic it is. At first glance it doesn’t look like anything amazing, but the power lies in the configuration. You can adjust the rain drop frequency, the drop size, the background (rocks, sand, etc…) and the reflective image (night sky or clouds). If you sit there and play with the different options you are sure to find some cool settings, which I try to demonstrate in the video.
While all of the cool dynamic Dreams currently cost money, in the near future that could be changing. Stardock told me that they are working on an SDK (Software Development Kit) for the dynamic Dreams so that anyone could create ones just like these. So keep your eyes open because there could be some cool things on the horizon!
This article was written on December 17, 2005 by CyberNet.
Microsoft Windows Vista 5270, which is going to be the December CTP, is expected to be released on Monday or Tuesday. Unfortunately, this is not going to be the Beta 2 that was expected to be released. I guess we will have to settle with what we can get. Check back soon for news on the December CTP release.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
Windows only 
Newegg just setup the 
Linux 
Microsoft was finally able to take a 
When Microsoft 
