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!

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
BackupURL Lets You Archive Websites

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For those of you using CyberSearch I thought I’d let you know that I just released version 2.0.2 that resolves almost all of the issues users were reporting with Firefox 3.6 Beta 1. The main reason I wanted to let everyone know is that Mozilla hasn’t approved CyberSearch 2.0 yet, which means you won’t receive an update notification in the browser. If you want to update to the latest version you’ll need to head on over to the CyberSearch homepage and install it from there.

I’ve also rolled up several bug fixes in this release, and one simple feature that I meant to include with the original release but never got around to fully implementing it. It’s so simple that I wouldn’t be surprised if you used it without even realizing it. What is it? Pressing the Escape key when you have a result selected should repopulate the address bar with your search phrase. This should be natural for most people… you use the keyboard to highlight a few results, decide they aren’t want you want, and press the Escape key to “cancel” the selection.

I’m trying to make this as user-friendly as possible, and since the release I’ve received over 300 emails that include feature requests, bugs (mostly reports from Firefox 3.6 Beta users… thanks everyone!), and a lot of “thank you” messages. A majority of the feature requests I’ve gotten are great ideas, but won’t be implemented because they stray from my original vision. For example, I’ve received numerous requests to offer the same search functionality in the search box instead of the address bar. The whole goal of CyberSearch is giving you the tools you need to drop the search box all together. So don’t be offended if I don’t agree with your ideas… right now I feel as though I’m teetering on the edge of having something so complicated that no one will want to use it. For that reason I’m very selective with what gets added, and also because CyberSearch currently has over 100,000 users (123,000 at its peak) that I have to take into consideration.

I think I’ve been able to personally respond to every email, but if I haven’t by now feel free to shoot me another one.

CyberSearch Homepage

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
CyberSearch 2.0.2 Released

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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

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
How to Post Long Tweets

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Windows only
You may not know this if you haven’t used Windows XP (or earlier) in a while, but all Windows versions have a killer feature that lets you launch applications quickly without having to install memory-eating launcher apps. Read on to see how you can start typing away in Microsoft Word faster than ever before, and more.

The principle
To launch applications quickly, we’re gonna use Windows’ Run feature. You can bring it up by pressing Windows key + R. Alternatively, you can hit the Start button and click Run (in Vista or Windows 7 you may need to enable this through the Start Menu properties) but I recommend using the hotkey to save time.

The commands
Here are a couple of frequently used commands to get to applications like Firefox, Paint, the Command Prompt and so on. It takes a while to learn these but believe me, it’s worth it.

Arguments
Most of the applications mentioned above take arguments so that you can pass along a file to open. This comes in very handy when I have a URL of a video I want to open in Media Player Classic. To do this, I can type mplayerc http://this/is/a/pasted/url to open the specified URL in my media player immediately.

Creating your own launchers
Of course, this list of commands is non-exhaustive. You can create as many launchers as you want for just about anything including files, folders and URLs. This can be done in two ways. The easiest way is to put shortcuts in C:\Windows\. Whatever the name of your shortcut is will be the command to launch it from the Run window. So if I create a shortcut named ‘prf’ in C:\Windows\ to the Program Files folder, typing the command ‘prf’ in the Run window will bring up that folder.

Now, I can imagine you not wanting to put truckloads of shortcuts in the Windows folder. There is an alternative method involving some Registry Editor witchcraft where you create new registry keys in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths, but doing that is a lot more complicated than creating plain old shortcuts.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
Speed Tricks: Launching Programs Quickly With Windows’ Run Command

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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

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
7 Ways to Download Free Independent Music

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Is your desktop the digital equivalent of a gigantic stack of unsorted stuff? Perhaps it’s time then to cut through the clutter once and for all and get everything cleaned up. In this article, we’ll help you make it look organized again step by step and advise you on how to keep it that way.

Click to Enlarge

Step 1: delete files you don’t need
Although this is an obvious step, it is essential to the process of cleaning up your desktop. If you’re a big software downloader, chances are that you’ve piled up quite a bit of installers. Go through all of your files and delete the ones you no longer need. Do the same with your shortcuts. A lot of applications drop a shortcut on your desktop you don’t use anyway. If you find yourself using the Start Menu or the Quick Launch bar instead of clicking shortcuts on your desktop, just get rid of them.

Click to Enlarge

Step 2: group files that belong together in folders
Try to put files that have something to do with each other in folders as much as you can. You may discover that some of the folders you’ve created can be grouped together in a folder of themselves. Using folders, you can drastically lower the amount of icons on your desktop.

Click to Enlarge

Step 3: move the folders you’ve just created to My Documents
Storing documents on your desktop is not a good idea if you want to keep the number of icons down. An exception to this rule are temporary documents. In some cases it’s better to leave them on your desktop to remind you that they have yet to be processed. As for the rest of your files: move your newly created folders off your desktop and into My Documents. If you need quick access to some folders, optionally create a shortcut to them but remember to keep the amount of shortcuts to a minimum.

Click to Enlarge

Step 4: download Fences to create groups of files
Back in February, Ryan wrote about a useful little tool from Stardock that allows you to group files on your desktop together. What’s even cooler about this nifty piece of freeware is that it will let you double-click your desktop (or press Escape) to hide all your icons. My advice is to always have this so-called quick-hide mode enabled, except for one or two essential groups that contain stuff like the Recycle Bin or shortcuts to folders you use often. To prevent Fences from hiding a group you’d like to be visible in quick-hide mode, right-click it, go to View and click ‘Exclude this Fence from quick-hide’.

Click to Enlarge

Done!
There you go, your desktop should look a lot cleaner now. In the future, remember to move or delete files on your desktop asap to keep it as clean as possible. Not only does it give you the chance to rediscover your wallpaper, but your files will be more organized too.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
How to Clean Up Your Desktop

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Windows only
One of the new features in Windows 7 is Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) 7, and Microsoft decided to also offer the most of the same functionality to Windows XP and Vista users. Many of you will probably shrug this off as a pointless update, but it has something that is really useful to me. What is it?

Sometimes I Remote Desktop into one machine, and from there I have to Remote Desktop into other machines. A good example of when this might happen is if you have multiple machines in your house… you may only open one of those machines up so that it can be accessed from outside of your network. If you want to connect to other machines you simply RD into the primary one, and then from there you can access any of the other computers on your network.

The problem? If you use one Remote Desktop session inside of another that yellow/tan connection bar along the top can become tedious to use when juggling your various sessions. The more machines you connect to the more those connection bars overlay each other, and can therefore make it extremely difficult to disconnect or minimize some of the connections. You’ll often find yourself sitting there playing with the pin/unpin until the correct connection bar appears.

In Remote Desktop 7 the connection bar is now an attractive transparent blue, but what’s important is that you can slide it back and forth along the top of the window. That basically means you can stagger the connection bars for multiple sessions so that they aren’t completely overlapping each other. I’m demonstrating this in the screenshot above where I connected to one machine using RD7, and then from there connected to another machine running an older version of Remote Desktop. I’ve cropped the screenshot, but the yellow connection bar is actually in the center of the screen. I then dragged the blue bar off to the side so that it could clearly be seen.

Unfortunately the bar can still only be placed along the top of the screen (you can’t move it to the side or to the bottom), but this is still a welcomed addition. There are also a bunch of other features I’m sure some of you will love in RD7:

• Web Single Sign-On (SSO) and Web forms-based authentication
• Access to personal virtual desktops by using RD Connection Broker
• Access to virtual desktop pools by using RD Connection Broker
• Status & disconnect system tray icon
• RD Gateway-based device redirection enforcement
• RD Gateway system and logon messages
• RD Gateway background authorization & authentication
• RD Gateway idle & session time-outs
• NAP remediation with RD Gateway
• Windows Media Player redirection
• Bidirectional audio
• Multiple monitor support
• Enhanced video playback

New features available only to users connecting from a Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2 machine:

• Language Bar docking
• Remote application task scheduler
• Aero Glass support
• Start applications and desktops from ‘RemoteApp and Desktop Connections’

Here are the download links for XP and Vista users:

• Windows XP SP3
• Vista SP1/SP2 32-bit
• Vista SP1/SP2 64-bit

Remote Desktop Connection 7 Homepage

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
Remote Desktop 7 Download for XP & Vista

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Last week I purchased a car interface kit that gives me the ability to hook my iPhone up to the audio system that I have installed in my car. The install went fairly smooth, but I was rather disappointed with the level of control I had over my iPhone using the audio controls on my car. I thought to myself “hey, no biggie… I’ll just control the audio through my iPhone.” Apple, however, didn’t agree with that idea.

When I went to pull up the iPod portion of my phone I received the pretty little icon that you see to the right. It told me that I had an “accessory connected,” and there was basically no way for me to control the audio using the native iPod app. If I used a third party app, such as something that provided streaming Internet radio, there were no issues. So I knew it was possible to control the audio using my iPhone, and then I started to see how many other people had the same complaint.

Apparently there were quite a few users that were just as upset by this, and that’s when I happily came across a Cydia package for my jailbroken iPhone. Just do a search for “NoAccessorySplash” on the ModMyi repository and you’ll be ready to roll. Once installed it will bypass this screen so that you can control your audio through the device connected to the dock port or on the iPhone or iPod Touch itself.

I had found other hacks out there that did something similar, but they require you to SSH into your device, modify a file using a hex editor, and pray that it will actually work. This, however, is a quick 10-second solution (assuming you’ve already jailbroken your device). I’m currently using it on the 3.1.2 firmware, and it works flawlessly. It’s little things like this that make me happy I’ve jailbroken my device.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
Remove “Accessory Connected” Screen from Jailbroken iPhone or iPod Touch

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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

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
Free Packet Loss Test

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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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