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Access SkyDrive in Windows Explorer

Ryan — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:46:20 +0000

Windows only (32/64-bit)
I love the fact that Microsoft gives users a free 25GB of storage for files through SkyDrive, but I think they’re able to do that because they don’t provide an easy way for people to upload things. That way most people will never come close to hitting their 25GB limit, but that may change with the free SkyDrive Explorer app.

As the name implies this will make your SkyDrive account accessible right there in Windows Explorer… exactly what I’ve been wanting. From there you can drag-and-drop files into any of your SkyDrive directories, or copy down files that you’ve already uploaded. Once you’ve uploaded a file or folder you can then right-click on it to grab the URL that can then be used to send to other people you want to share it with. This is perfect for sharing music or photos with friends and family! It’s fast, simple, and makes it so that you never even have to visit the SkyDrive site.

Here’s what you can do with SkyDrive Explorer:

View the structure and contents of folders in SkyDrive
View files information (type, size, creation date in GMT format)
Create new root folders and subfolders
Copy files into the storage
Delete files and folders
Copy files from the storage to the computer
Copy folders and subfolders from the storage to the computer keeping their structure
Use Drag & Drop for files operations
Rename files and folders
Create links to SkyDrive folders on your computer
Copy URL of the selected object(s) to the Clipboard

The one downside is a limit of the SkyDrive service itself… and it’s that you can’t upload files larger than 50MB. What would be cool is if a future version of SkyDrive Explorer would automatically split files up into 50MB chunks! It’s an awesome app even without that functionality though.

SkyDrive Explorer Homepage (Windows only; 32-bit or 64-bit; Freeware)

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BackupURL Lets You Archive Websites

Ryan — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:56:34 +0000

I’m sure at one point or another you’ve wanted to share a link with a friend, but knew that when they went to visit the page that the content would change. Unfortunately you don’t have control over when services like the WayBack Machine make archives of a site, and often times the backups available there are at least a year old.

That’s where a service like BackupURL comes into play. With it you can create an on-demand backup of the current state of a website. You can then share the backup with anyone you want using a shortened URL that it will provide.

I tried the service on several different sites, and for the most part it was pretty fast at creating the backups. Most of the time I had a working URL in my hand within 10-seconds of clicking the “backup” button.

The one thing I don’t like is that, unlike the WayBack Machine, there’s no way to navigate past archives of sites. If you lose the URL you’re simply out of luck. I’d have to imagine that it would be simple for them to add some sort of interface to flip through the archives, but I’m guessing they have a reason for not providing this information to us yet. Hopefully that’s something that will come though.

This is another site that I’d recommend putting in the “may be useful someday” folder in your bookmarks.

BackupURL Homepage
Thanks Mark!

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How to Post Long Tweets

Ryan — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:11:35 +0000

Twitter limits users to 140 characters, but sometimes that just isn’t enough. Some Twitter applications have started to take advantage of third-party services that let users post longer messages, and then in the tweet it will provide a link to the text. In many ways this defeats the purpose of Twitter, but sometimes you just can’t fit what you want to say in a mere 140 characters.

Posterous is probably one of the more widely used services for this purpose, and it also lets you include things like images, videos, MP3’s and more. It has pretty much turned into a personal blog for a lot of Twitter users, but a.longreply.com looks to bring the simplicity back to your long tweets.

The homepage pretty much consists of a text box and a submit button. Once you submit your message it will provide you with a link you can use for your tweet that is over 140 characters. When people click through to read the message they will get a fast, lean webpage that even loads quickly on mobile devices. At the end of the message you’ll find the number of times the page has been viewed in addition to how long ago the message was posted. That’s it. No flashy videos or bulky images… just the message you wanted your readers to see.

I’m hoping to see some of the third-party Twitter clients integrate with a.longreply.com because I love how clean it is, but I don’t mind visiting the homepage for the few times I need to bust out of the 140 character barrier.

a.longreply.com Homepage

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7 Ways to Download Free Independent Music

Pieter — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:53:04 +0000

If you consider your music tastes a little more adventurous than FM radio, you probably already know that the internet is a gold mine for good yet rather unknown music. It has allowed independent bands to flourish and often, they’re more than happy to put out some free MP3’s to get the word out about their songs. In this article, we’ll be taking a look at a handful of sources for free and legal MP3’s across all music genres.

eMusic’s Daily Download
Every day, this page features a new free MP3 that you can download without signing up. Since eMusic is a big name in online music, you can get some good freebies here as long as you’re into the genre that’s being featured.
Link

FlyFi’s Free Music Fridays
Formerly named Goombah, this service not only brings you fifteen new MP3s every Friday but also suggests downloads based on what’s in your iTunes library. The downside is that FlyFi’s iTunes Helper is always running in the background, whether iTunes is active or not. You can opt in to FlyFi’s New Music Friday newsletter if you’d like to receive new MP3s via e-mail.
Link

Last.fm’s Free Music Downloads
Aside from tracking your listen habits and streaming music, Last.fm also has a section of their site dedicated to free MP3s. You can filter their catalog by genre and – if you’re logged in – get personalized recommendations.
Link

we7
Do you remember Spiralfrog? They offered their users free DRM’ed downloads of mainstream music that was supported by advertising. While that service is long gone, we7 is a similar site with one big difference: their downloads are DRM-free 192kbps MP3s. There’s a big buzzkill however… it’s only available in the UK.
Link

Bandcamp
Bandcamp is a music hosting service that features bands on its homepage. And although not every song on the site can be downloaded for free, there are still more than enough freebies left to grab. If you’re excited about a band you found, know that their albums are usually available for download on a pay-what-you-want basis.
Link

Amie Street
Even though Amie Street is a paid music service, their model is entirely different than iTunes’. Much like auctions, the prices of their MP3s rise when their popularity goes up. But here’s the good part: all songs start as free downloads, so if you’re fast you can get great albums absolutely free. Currently, you’re being offered a whopping 75 free songs upon signup. The site will also recommend songs to you by importing data from services such as iTunes, Last.fm, Pandora or Facebook, but of course it’s only as good as the algorithm behind it.
Link

Insomnia Radio’s Daily Dose
This is one of many podcasts dedicated to bringing you new music every day. If you like a song you heard, you can head over to the Daily Dose website to check if there’s a free download available for that song. Similar podcasts include IndieFeed’s genre-based podcasts and NPR’s The Current Song of the Day.
Link

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Free Packet Loss Test

Ryan — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:41:33 +0000

Have you ever been in the situation where you’re left wondering whether your Internet connection is messing with the quality of your VoIP calls or your online video game experience? You can sit there and test your bandwidth all you want, but the fact is that the speed of your Internet connection might not be the culprit.

The creators of SpeedTest.net, my favorite bandwidth testing site, have also created a new PingTest.net site. Its goal is to test aspects that are important to services like Vonage and Xbox Live, which need almost zero packet loss for you not to experience any stuttering, buffering, lag, and/or delays.

When you run a test on the site you’ll get three different types of information: packet loss, ping response, and jitter…

Packet Loss – Much as it sounds, if you have anything less than complete success in transmitting and receiving “packets” of data then you are experiencing this problem with your Internet connection. It can mean much slower download and upload speeds, poor quality VoIP audio, pauses with streaming media and what seems like time warping in games — your connection may even come to a total standstill! Packet loss is a metric where anything greater than 0% should cause concern.
Ping – This measurement tells how long it takes a “packet” of data to travel from your computer to a server on the Internet and back. Whenever you experience delayed responses in Internet applications – this would be due to a higher than desired ping. Similar to packet loss, lower is better when it comes to ping. A result below 100 ms should be expected from any decent broadband connection.
Jitter – Jitter is merely the variance in measuring successive ping tests. Zero jitter means the results were exactly the same every time, and anything above zero is the amount by which they varied. Like the other quality measurements, a lower jitter value is better. And while some jitter should be expected over the Internet, having it be a small fraction of the ping result is ideal.

The next time you’re having performance problems with Xbox Live, Vonage, Skype, or any other service hopefully PingTest.net will be there to help pinpoint whether it’s a bandwidth problem, slow response times, or packet loss.

PingTest.net Homepage

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How to Get Free and Legal MP3 Downloads from… Universal Music!?

Pieter — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:09:43 +0000

Universal Music Australia is currently giving away un-DRM’ed music from some of their artists, including Akon and Colbie Caillat. Although the music that’s on offer consists mostly of lesser known artists, this represents a major step in Universal Music’s way of thinking about artist promotion. Where’s the catch, you ask? You have to give them your e-mail address, but using tools such as Spamgourmet, Jetable or Mailinator you can easily circumvent that.

Although downloading their songs outside Australia seems to violate their Terms of Service, they currently don’t do anything to block out foreigners. I also had to fill in my country, but the site didn’t complain I didn’t fill in Australia. Take it or leave it.

[via The Freebies Blog]

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
How to Get Free and Legal MP3 Downloads from… Universal Music!?

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How to Stop Google, Yahoo & Bing from Tracking Your Clicks

Pieter — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:40:47 +0000

In 2008, Google said there’s no such thing as complete privacy. You’re being tracked all over the web by their AdSense ads, by sites that use Google Analytics and – probably the most important – their search engine. But Google Search isn’t the only search engine that tracks your behavior. Concerned about your privacy? In this article, we’ll show you how you can get rid of click tracking in search engines.

The secret redirect

Google

Whenever you click a link in Google Search, your click is redirected through a secret URL. If the site you’re going to is http://www.cybernetnews.com/, Google will do a secret redirect through a URL that looks similar to http://www.google.com/url?url=http://www.cybernetnews.com/. In some cases, you can reveal the secret redirect by right-clicking on a linked search result. If that doesn’t work, your last resort is an HTTP sniffer.

There are several Firefox add-ons that claim to get rid of Google Search’s click tracking. CustomizeGoogle is one of them. Among other tweaks, it promises to remove click tracking and disable Google Analytics cookies. If you just want the anti-tracking feature without the bells and whistles, there’s a Greasemonkey script you can download called Google Tracking B-Gone. To use Greasemonkey scripts, you need to install the Greasemonkey add-on for Firefox. Also, if you use an international version of Google such as google.co.uk, you have to change the script’s URL range from http://*.google.com/* to http://*.google.*/* to ensure that the script is allowed to operate on your local Google site.

Yahoo

Unlike Google’s redirect, the one Yahoo uses is always easy to find. Right-click on a link and look at your status bar to reveal an intimidating garglemesh of strange characters originating from rds.yahoo.com. You can get rid of that by installing this Greasemonkey script. However, my HTTP sniffer revealed that Yahoo does some additional click tracking from a URL that starts with http://search.yahoo.com/ra/click?. To disable this, add http://search.yahoo.com/ra/click?* as a filter to Adblock Plus.

Bing

Bing seems to have a very subtle click tracking mechanism. The only fishy thing Bing does is call some URL’s that start with http://www.bing.com/fd/ls/ whenever you click a search result. Again, Adblock Plus can help you deal with this if you add http://www.bing.com/fd/ls/* to its filter list. Turning off JavaScript on bing.com seems to help too.

Shutting off the HTTP referrer

Although the tips listed above can help you stop search engines from tracking your clicks, it does not keep websites from gathering information about your web search. This is done through the HTTP referrer. Any page on the web can retrieve information on how you stumbled upon it, i.e. which URL referred to their web page.

The referrer is also known to be used by site owners to retrieve information about the search engine you used and what your search query was. On rare occasions, some sites alter themselves if you found them through web search. For example, I’ve seen sites display “Welcome, Googler!”-esque messages and even sites that highlight your Google search terms on the page you landed on. Although this rather creepy practice is not widespread, it just shows how much a site really knows about you.

Fortunately, you can disable the sending of the HTTP referrer to the websites you visit. While it is possible to disable the HTTP referrer entirely in Firefox’s about:config, this can break certain functionality on some sites. There’s a Firefox add-on called RefControl that does away with this issue by allowing you to add exceptions for sites that need the referrer.

Other browsers

It is possible to use the Google Tracking B-Gone and Yahoo Click-Tracking Disabler scripts in other browsers. So if you’re really serious about extending your tinfoil hat protection to other browsers, you can check out these resources:

Internet Explorer: Greasemonkey for IE
Opera: How To: Greasemonkey in Opera
Safari: GreaseKit
Chrome: Greasemetal

To disable the HTTP referrer, follow these instructions:

IE/Opera: How do I Disable Sending Referrers?
Safari: Is there a way to disable header referrals in Safari?
Chrome: currently really difficult

Since I’ve only tested this with Firefox, I cannot guarantee that the content from these resources is accurate.

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Get Your Five-Minute Multiplayer Game Fix with OMGPOP

Pieter — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:51:55 +0000

Have a few minutes to spare for a quick online game? OMGPOP has over ten different multiplayer games (and counting) that have one thing in common: they’re excellent at getting your productivity down a notch! And thanks to the site’s obligatory social networking features, it’s really easy to challenge your friends to a Bomberman game over the internet. Here’s a selection of some of their best games.

Hover Kart Racing is a 3D racing game. Even if you’re not good at its more advanced counterparts such as Need for Speed, it’s pretty easy to get the hang of this game. Watch out for mines, bombs and other Super Mario Kart-ish dangers. Expert tip: to cut corners, use the Shift key to drift.
How to play it: Up accelerates, Down brakes, Left/Right steers, Shift jumps or drifts, Space activates power-up.

Balloono is an excellent Bomberman clone, with a small difference. Instead of dropping bombs to blow up your opponents, you have to use water balloons. On the plus side, you no longer need to share your keyboard with your friends to play against them.
How to play it: use the arrow keys, hit the spacebar to drop bombs.

Ballracer is a 2D racing game. Every time you play it, you’ll be dropped in a random level from Ballracer’s large level set. There are plenty of speed powerups, hidden shortcuts and pitfalls to separate the men from the boys.
How to play it: use the arrow keys, press Up to jump.

If you consider yourself a button masher, you might like Hit Machine. The concept is no different from Guitar Hero or Tap Tap Revenge: when a note hits the bottom of the screen, you have to hit the appropriate button. The music in Hit Machine is limited to unknown songs, so if you’re looking for Lady Gaga’s newest hits or that old Beatles classic, you’re out of luck. The multiplayer element of this game is limited to a leaderboard.
How to play it: use the letters ASDJKL on your keyboard.

In the early days of OMGPOP, their games were largely cool adaptations of popular games. You used to be able to play a killer Tetris clone with power-ups called Blockles on OMGPOP but – you guessed it – the lawyers from The Tetris Company weren’t too happy with that, so OMGPOP had to kill it. The current version of Blockles is a Dr. Mario clone. A few other “clone” games such as Tracism (Pacman with a fun twist) seem to have shared that same fate.

Fortunately though, most games that are worth playing are still available so play ‘em while you still can! Be careful though… don’t get caught visiting this site at work.

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Compare Text Files Online

Ryan — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:02:14 +0000

On a pretty regular basis I’ve found myself comparing two text files, and WinMerge is typically the Windows application I use for the job. It’s free, fast, and does a pretty good job of pulling out the differences between two text files. The problem is that, well, it’s yet another application you must have installed on your computer.

On Download Squad I saw a pretty cool website called Quick Diff that lets you perform comparisons of two blocks of text right from your web browser. I’ve used it a few times since I first found out about it, and while it’s not as robust as WinMerge I’d say it does a decent job for those quick comparisons you want to perform. Here’s an example of what the output looks like:

Then I started wondering what other kind of online text comparison tools were out there. Maybe there’s a better one I’m missing out on? I searched a bit, and that’s when I came across Text_Diff. The results of the same body of text were much more along the lines of what I was expecting:

The main difference between the two services is that Text_Diff actually recognized when just portions of words had changed rather than thinking that the entire word had changed. Another thing that can be both a positive and negative is that the result is provided to you as an HTML file that has to be saved to your computer in order to view the results. That kinda sucks because it’s an extra step you have to take, but at the same time it can be useful if you needed to send the results to someone. There is also a “text” output mode that you can select which doesn’t require you to download the results, but that doesn’t do all of the pretty highlighting.

Still not happy with either of these tools? You can always jump over to Digital Inspiration who walks you through how to use Google Docs to compare text files online. Let us know in the comments what you use to compare two text files.

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How to Make Facebook Worth Your Time Again

Pieter — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 02:28:10 +0000

If Simon was a color, he’d be green. When Amanda reincarnates, she’ll be a dog. If Max was a Friends character, he’d be Ross. If this sounds familiar, chances are that your Facebook home page is filled with random quiz results from your friends. While these apps may entertain some people, for most of us it is one of the major reasons to leave the quiz-flooded Facebook. Let’s take a look at some ways to make Facebook less of a waste of time and more into what it was intended to be: a tool to keep in touch with friends.

1. The “I don’t care” button
If you’re ever annoyed by a viral yet pointless Facebook app, you can easily hide it from your Facebook home page. Hover over a news item that was created by that app, click ‘Hide’ and choose the second option. Note that you can also use the first option to hide this person’s activities from your news feed without removing them as a friend. To unhide apps, people or pages, click ‘Edit Options’ at the bottom of the home page.

2. Stop unwanted applications from sending you notifications
Your notification list can end up looking quite dramatic if you don’t open it for a week. If you’ve added a lot of apps, you can pile up over 30 notifications in a week without much effort. The solution is simple: block unwanted apps from sending you notifications. To do this, open the notifications pop-up and click ‘See All’. On the right, you’ll see a list of approved apps. Uncheck apps you don’t want to receive notifications from and it’s all settled. From now on, you’ll actually be able to keep track of comments on your status updates again.

(Click to Enlarge)

3. Keep tabs on your friend list
Don’t add friends recklessly. A big friends list implies that you have to be very careful when sharing thoughts or photos on Facebook. You may want to keep your friends list down to a maximum of 100 people with whom you’re comfortable sharing your life with. Alternatively, you can create lists of people that you want to share different things with. I have a list called ‘No status updates’, in which I put people I kinda sorta know but with whom I don’t want to share my status updates. For a full list of permissions you can grant or deny to groups of friends, go to Settings > Privacy Options and click on Profile.

4. No more friend requests from people you don’t know
It seems that no matter how much Facebook friends you have, there are always people – including ones you don’t even know – that want to add you. To stop this stream of friend requests, you should consider hiding yourself from Facebook’s search engine. You can enable this feature in Settings > Privacy Options. Once you’re on that page, choose Search and select ‘Only Friends’ from the Search Visibility drop-down menu. You’re now hidden from public searches on Facebook.

5. Consider switching to Facebook Lite
If you just want to keep Facebook around to occasionally check what your friends are doing, Facebook Lite may be the thing for you. It’s basically Facebook without the bells and whistles, so you won’t be bothered with stupid applications and quizzes.

Hopefully, these tips helped turn your Facebook into a much more enjoyable place. Enjoy your optimized Facebook!

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