CyberNet News » CyberNotes

CyberNotes: Auto-hide any Firefox Toolbar

Ryan — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:00:00 +0000

Web Browser Wednesday

Having toolbars in a browser can be both frustrating and convenient. On one hand they can often cram a lot of useful functionality into a small area, but on the other hand they eat up precious space that could be used for viewing websites. After all, we know what your browser can look like when you’ve installed a few too many toolbars.

I’ve managed to find a happy medium by automatically hiding the toolbars so that they only appear when my mouse hovers over any other toolbar (ex. the navigation/address bar), and that’s what we’re going to show you today. First we’ll go ahead and demonstrate how to do this with just the bookmarks toolbar, and then we’ll walk you through the steps needed to apply this to just about any Firefox toolbar such as the Google Toolbar.

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CyberNotes: Add Shoutcast Radio Streams to iTunes

Ryan — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:00:42 +0000

Tutorial Thursday

I’ve always enjoyed listening to Internet radio stations because I don’t have to worry about putting together my own playlists of music. iTunes has a decent selection of these radio stations available, but Apple has full control over what appears in that section of the media player. Fortunately that doesn’t mean you can’t add some of your own favorite radio streams to iTunes.

There are two caveats to the trick I’m about to show you:

The radio streams that get added to iTunes won’t appear in the Radio section. Instead they’ll be showing up under the Playlist section, which may or may not be something that you want. Personally I like not having to go to the Radio section because it can be time consuming trying to find a particular radio station. This method will give you fast and easy access to your favorite stations.
In order to add online radio stations to iTunes the stream will need to be available in a playlist (.PLS) format.

This makes Shoutcast a perfect example since they use the PLS format for their radio streams. Here are the needed instructions for setting up one of those streams in iTunes:

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CyberNotes: Easily Create Panoramic Shots

Ryan — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 11:00:33 +0000

Time Saving Tuesday

Windows only
I’ve always felt like there hasn’t been a perfect tool out there for the average person who wants to shoot panoramic shots, and doesn’t want to spend ages assembling them on their machine. One of the last tools that we covered on the site was Hugin, but you could spend hours tweaking settings trying to get things just right. It just wasn’t something the most people would want to fiddle with.

Over in our forum Tony pointed out an amazing tool that Microsoft provides for free called the Image Composite Editor (ICE). Sure Microsoft has already incorporated panoramic creation capabilities in Windows Live Photo Gallery, but having this standalone app gives you a few more features.

I guess the real question is how well does it work, and how much effort will you have to put into stitching your photos together. I tried the program on several different panoramic shots that I’ve taken over the years, and it turned out some of the best results. Ironically enough it’s also one of the easiest programs I’ve ever used for this type of task.

When you first get Microsoft ICE up and running you should see something like this:

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CyberNotes: Google Chrome Tips

Ryan — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 11:00:25 +0000

Web Browser Wednesday

Google Chrome has taken the browser market by storm ever since its release a few weeks ago. The only complaint that I’ve really heard about the browser is that it doesn’t support add-ons like Firefox does, but Google has already said that a future version will be covering those bases. It’s already been downloaded over 2 million times, and that number is destined to grow very rapidly once developers are able to create add-ons for it.

If you’ve decided to stick it out with Chrome then we’ve got a few tips and tricks for you that we’ve come across over the last few weeks.

–Keyboard Shortcuts–

Keyboard shortcuts can really help make you more productive when using a web browser, and as expected Google Chrome has plenty of them for you to learn. A full list of keyboard shortcuts can be found here, but these are a few handy ones:

Ctrl+[1-8]: Switches to the tab in that position on your tab bar
Shift+Esc: Opens the browser’s task manager
Ctrl+Shift+N: Opens an incognito window that can be used for private browsing

–About Pages–

Google Chrome has several different “about” pages that can be used to access various information. For example, entering about:memory in the address bar will show you a list of running browsers along with how much memory each one is using.

One of the really interesting pages is about:stats that will show you a list of timers and counters used by the browser. It tracks things like how long it takes (in milliseconds) for your browser window to close, the load time of Google Gears, and more. Google OS has a more comprehensive list of the “about” pages available in Google Chrome.

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CyberNotes: Do Not Touch!

Ryan — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:14:24 +0000

Fun Friday

And now, a shortened, sweet and condensed Fun Friday! We came across this and couldn’t help but laugh. You’ve gotta love when someone has a sense of humor..

To the person who wrote the message, thanks for your brutal honesty buddy:

Source

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CyberNotes: How To Easily Build Your Own Website

Ashley — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 14:48:02 +0000

Time-Saving Tuesday

If you’ve ever attempted to build your own website and your related skill level isn’t very high, you know that it can be a big headache. There are so many things you have to know if you truly want to build your own site from scratch. It’s definitely not something that anybody can do … unless SynthaSite is being used. SynthaSite takes the hassle out of building a website by providing a website builder to you, at no cost. Today for our Time-Saving Tuesday article we’ll be taking a look at how you can save yourself time creating a website of your own, by using SynthaSite.

What is SynthaSite

SynthaSite as mentioned, provides a hassle-free way for just about anybody, even your semi-computer illiterate parent or grandparent, to build a website for free. All you have to do is sign-up for an account and then you’ll be guided through the process of creating a site of your own. SynthaSite uses an AJAX-based editor for the bulk of the site creation process, and the editor is very easy to use.

In no time you’ll have a great looking site, one that you can be proud of, with the help and guidance of SynthaSite.

Creating a Site

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CyberNotes: “Push” Email Using SMS Text Messages

Ryan — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:00:07 +0000

Tutorial Thursday

So many people have unlimited SMS text messaging plans on their phones these days that a lot of services, such as Twitter, are using them as a way to notify users of updates. By doing this users get a simulated push notification experience without needing to have a push-compatible device.

The good news is that you can also use this type of system for emails, well, assuming your email service supports forwarding (such as Gmail). That’s because most cellphone carriers provide an email address that can be given out, and when an email is received they’ll convert it to a text message which is then sent to your device. We’ve got a list of common carriers that support this towards the end of the article.

Why is this so great? I’m a Gmail user that owns an iPhone, and instead of having my phone go out and check for new emails every 15 to 60 minutes I can just get a text message. If you’ve got an unlimited text message plan with your carrier you’ll likely enjoy the convenience of getting instant notifications of emails.

Setting it up is fairly easy as long as your email service supports forwarding. Since Gmail offers this feature for free we’re going to use that in our example…

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CyberNotes: Free Alarm Clocks for Windows & Mac

Ryan — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:00:11 +0000

Time Saving Tuesday

Windows; Mac
Finding a good alarm clock to help get you up in the wee hours of the morning can be tough. I have a tendency of placing the clock out of arms reach so that I have to get out of bed in order to turn it off. What I use as an alarm varies from things like my cellphone or TV all the way to my computer.

For some odd reason it seems as though free alarm clocks for computers are tough to come by these days. A few years ago we covered a decent alarm clock called Citrus that offered a lot of the functionality people would expect, and the best part was that it was free. Unfortunately the freeware stage didn’t last long, and it’s now a $13 program. Similarly Aurora for Mac used to be free, but it now bears a $22 price tag.

So today we’re showing our appreciation to the developers who’ve taken the time to build powerful alarm clock applications, and are currently offering them for free!

–College Alarm Clock (Homepage)–

Windows only
This alarm clock is particularly useful for people that have different schedules each day of the week, and as the name implies the target audience is college students. Using it is simple: download and run the program… there’s nothing to install. After that you can start tinkering around with the different configuration options.

You’ll quickly notice that there are 7 tabs spread out across the top for each day of the week. For each day you can designate a different time that coincides with your schedule, which for college students works out perfectly. It doesn’t exactly have a fancy interface, but it can be rather handy if your schedule varies throughout the week.

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CyberNotes: Services Offered By Remember the Milk

Ashley — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:00:47 +0000

Weekend Website

Over the last couple of years, Remember the Milk has done a great job of making a name for themselves. We wrote about them for the first time almost exactly two years ago and described them as a free, simple task manager. At that point they were still in beta and even then they had come a long way. As they approach their three year anniversary which is coming up in October, we thought we’d take another look at the service which has made a big difference in how people manage their task lists.

Remember the Milk has a whole list of official services which you can view here. Those services range from Remember the Milk (RtM) for Twitter to a Mobile Version which makes for easy management of your tasks on the go. Today we’ll be covering four official RtM services available including the Mobile Version, RtM for Netvibes, Gmail, and Twitter.

Mobile Version

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CyberNotes: Humorous Office Pranks and Practical Jokes

Ashley — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:00:42 +0000

Fun Friday

Earlier this week I received a forwarded email that was titled “Budget Cuts.” Upon opening it, there were a handful of pictures depicting an office cubicle made almost entirely out of cardboard. After looking at the images with one including a note reading “You R No Prank King”, it was clear that someone had created a cardboard cubicle as a prank, and what a funny and time-consuming prank it must have been. Once you see the pictures, you’ll understand what I mean.

This gave me the idea to put together a list of the best office pranks I could find. I’m sure we have some pranksters among us, so feel free to share the best prank you’ve pulled on someone in the comments below.

Happy Friday!

Cardboard Cubicle (click to enlarge)

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