CyberNet News

Browse Windows System Restore Points

Ryan — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:29:34 +0000

Windows only
If you’ve been having problems with your computer you may be contemplating using the built-in Windows System Restore utility, but what if you could browse the backed up files instead and just grab the ones you need? That’s the exact purpose of the free System Restore Explorer that works on Windows Vista and Windows 7.

To use the application all you have to do is open it, select the restore point you want to browse, and click the Mount button. You should see Windows Explorer immediately popup, and the location it is pointing to is a temporary address you can use to browse your computer’s file system at the time the System Restore point was taken. From there you can grab any files and folders you need, and then you can unmount it once you’re done.

System Restore Explorer Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)

Quickly Edit Any Content on a Website

Ryan — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:11:16 +0000

There are times where you might want to change content on a site, but doing so with Chrome’s built-in web developer tools can sometimes be a pain. With the Live Page Editor Chrome extension, however, all that changes because you can directly edit content on a site without having to dig through the source code of a page. All you have to do is click the Live Page Editor icon in the Chrome toolbar, and then click anywhere on the page to start typing. You can even remove text that you don’t want there anymore.

Keep in mind that the changes you make on any site will not be persistent, which means as soon as you refresh the page they will be gone. So why is this useful then? Well, if you ever take screenshots of a website that has personal information on it then you’ll find an extension such as this one to be very useful. Instead of blurring or blacking out your personal information you can instead change it to something more generic so that your screenshots look a little cleaner.

Live Page Editor Extension for Chrome

Multi-Purpose Online Utilities

Ryan — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:16:13 +0000

I’ve seen some websites before that try to rollup multiple utilities under a single domain, but the tools they provide are normally the things like a tip calculator that you don’t need to use very often. The 1DL.US site is different because they have a wide variety of very useful tools that all become just a click away. Plus most of the functionality is available to you without registering for a free account.

Here is a list of utilities they have available without signing up for an account:

Your IP address is shown in the upper-left corner of the screen
YouTube: Generate a link to a specific time in a video
PC Info: Information about your browser and OS
Remote Support: A utility that you and someone else can use to provide remote technical support.
News: Basic interface for RSS feeds, weather, and the top viewed YouTube video of the day
Chat: Create an IRC channel
Pastebin: Share a link to a block of text (optionally password protected)
Password Utilities: Test a password’s strength or generate a password
URL Shortener: Generate a short URL
Image Hosting: Upload and share a small number of images
Disposable Email: Get a fresh email address every 24-hours

As you can see there are some really useful utilities crammed in this site, and I highly recommend saving it to your bookmarks.

1DL.US Homepage

View Free Space and Eject Drives from the Mac Menu Bar

Ryan — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:31:40 +0000

Mac only
There is a free app in the Mac App Store called FreeSpace Tab (iTunes page link) that is pretty slick for anyone that needs to monitor how much space is left on their system or constantly eject drives. Once installed there will be an icon in your Menu Bar, and when clicked shows everything that is mounted on your system. You can eject any of the removable volumes (external drives, DMG images that are mounted, etc…) with a single click.

With FreeSpace Tab you can also add informative text next to the icon in the menu bar. That includes showing the disk space available of the primary drive or the percentage of space available.

The only thing I wish was added to the app is an action for clicking on a volume in the menu. Right now if you click on a drive/volume it doesn’t do anything. I think it should instead open up that drive in Finder, or something along those lines.

FreeSpace Tab iTunes Page (Mac only; Freeware)

WrapUp: Windows Phone 8 Preview, Get an Extra 4.5GB of Free Dropbox Space, and More

Ryan — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:01:12 +0000

Welcome to the WrapUp by CyberNet. This is a collection of news stories, downloads, and tips that we have collected over the last few days, but never got around to writing about. Don’t forget to send in your own tips, or just leave a comment on this page if you think you’ve got something we should include.

–News–

Windows Phone 8 Preview
Some information has leaked out about Windows Phone 8 that mentions Internet Explorer 10 Mobile, shared Windows 8 components, SkyDrive integration, NFC, camera improvements, and more.

Leaked Image of a BlackBerry 10 London
I don’t find BlackBerry smartphones to be all that exciting anymore, but the leaked image depicts a phone with what appears to be a very slim and sleek profile.

Firefox 10: New Dev Tools and Full-Screen API
Firefox 10 was pushed out last week, and comes equipped with a revamped set of developer tools and a new API that websites can take advantage of to let users pop-out content from the page into a nice full-screen view.

Amazon Sales Up 35%, Profit Down 58%
Amazon announced that for Q4 2011 their sales were up over the previous year, but their profits were down. This is likely do to them selling Kindle Fire units below cost, but they will recoup the money by selling content.

Microsoft Office 15 Technical Preview Begins
A select number of lucky testers will get a chance to put the next version of Microsoft Office through its paces, and a more widespread Beta program is expected in the late summer.

–Tips, Tutorials, and Reviews–

Get an Extra 4.5GB on Dropbox for Testing Photo Importing
If you want to snag an extra 4.5GB of space on your Dropbox account you can do so by testing out the latest experimental release of the Dropbox software (for Windows, Mac, and Linux). Once installed you’ll have to set the app to import 4.5GB of photos to your account, and Dropbox will credit you with that much storage once it has all been uploaded.

Best Start Page for Your Browser
Lifehacker takes a look at some of the various start pages available for Chrome and Firefox.

–Downloads–

Adobe Air 3.2.0.1830 ^{Beta 5} [Homepage] [Mirror]
Dexpot 1.6.1805 ^Beta [Homepage] [Mirror]
Dropbox 1.3.12 ^Experimental [Homepage] [Mirror]
Firefox 10.0 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Firefox 11.0 ^{Beta 1} [Homepage] [Mirror]
Flash Player 11.2.202.197 ^{Beta 5} [Homepage] [Mirror]
Google Chrome 18.0.1025.3 ^Beta [Homepage] [Mirror]
Miro 4.0.6 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Opera 12.00.1272 ^Beta [Homepage] [Mirror]
PeaZip 4.4.0 [Homepage] [Mirror]
SeaMonkey 2.7 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Skype 5.8.0.154 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Thunderbird 10.0 [Homepage] [Mirror]
uTorrent 3.1.2 ^RC1 [Homepage] [Mirror]

Free Log File Viewer for Windows/Linux

Ryan — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:05:17 +0000

Windows; Linux
We covered a log file viewer awhile back that served as an excellent way to open extremely large files. There’s another app called Glogg that I found recently though that also does a greg job of handling large files, and comes equipped with some really nice features.

Glogg has a really strong focus on searching, which is good because a lot of times that’s exactly what you want to do in a log file. It supports regular expression search queries, and the results are show in the bottom pane. Next to the scroll bar you’ll also see blue lines indicated where results were found, and the two black lines represent the area of the log file you are currently viewing.

In the screenshot above you can also see the little blue arrows along the left side of some of the lines. Those appear when you click on the white circles, and kind of serve as a way to bookmark/flag important lines. Once the line is flagged it will appear in the bottom pane just like with search results. That makes it a little easier to compare important lines from the log file.

There is another nice feature tucked away in the Tools menu as well, and that is Filters. With the Filters you can provide multiple search patterns that you want to find in the log file, and for each one you can specify a different background and text color. That way when you’re simply scrolling through the log file the specific lines you are looking for will really stand out.

Glogg Homepage (Windows/Linux; Freeware)

Free Office-Style WYSIWYG HTML Editor

Ryan — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:06:21 +0000

Windows only
There aren’t a lot of free WYSIWYG editors out, and the ones that are available normally have terrible interfaces with limited functionality. I’m not a huge fan of WYSIWYG editors myself, but they can serve as a good starting point if you’re just learning how to code HTML.

The free Trellian WebPage app is nice because it makes use of the Microsoft Office-style Ribbon interface to provide an easy-to-use interface. As you’d expect from an app like this you can edit the content of a page through the WYSIWYG editor, the source code, or a split screen showing both. This program is also helpful if you are working with a free HTML template that you’ve downloaded, which are rather plentiful online.

The only thing I should mention is that when installing the program it tries to install an “SEO toolbar” on your computer, but uncheck the corresponding boxes or choose the “Compact Installation” option it will only install the app.

Trellian WebPage Homepage (Windows only; Freeweare)

Get a Free Wake-Up Call

Ryan — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:50:28 +0000

You know how some hotels will give you a wakeup call if you’re worried that you won’t wake-up in time? Well, you can get the same kind of service using a site such as Wakerupper or WakeupDialer. Both services will call you at an exact time you specify, but each have their own benefits. And both don’t even require an account for you to start using them.

WakeupDialer is convenient because it is fast and completely free. Just enter in your phone number and the time you want a call to come in the next day (you can’t schedule a call for the same day). It even appears to automatically select your timezone, but you can confirm that it will be calling you at the correct time by looking at the “Click here to call …” button which tells you the amount of time it will be before your call will come in.

Wakerupper is nice because you can specify the message you want played back when the call comes through. You can also schedule calls for the same day which is convenient for using this as a reminder service rather than just for a wake-up call. The downside is that the service only appears to be free for the first 10 calls to your phone, which means frequent users will have to sign up for a plan to continue using it.

So you can use the service that sounds right for you, but remember that both of these only work in the US and Canada.

Wakerupper Homepage
WakeupDialer Homepage

View Video File Info (Container, Codec, Aspect Ratio, FPS, Bitrate)

Ryan — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:27:20 +0000

Windows; Mac; Linux
If you’re trying to figure out why a video won’t play on your machine it might help if you knew exactly what format you were dealing with. For example, if you’re watching a video but can’t hear any audio it may have to do with the format the audio was encoded in (OGG, MP3, AC3, DTS, AAC, etc…). With MediaInfo you can extract a lot of this pertinent information from your media files.

Here is a list of information you’re able to extract using MediaInfo:

General: title, author, director, album, track number, date, duration
Video: codec, aspect, FPS, bitrate
Audio: codec, sample rate, channels, language, nitrate
Text: language of subtitle
Chapters: number of chapters, list of chapters

There are a lot of different video formats out there, and I can say first-hand that tools like MeidaInfo are a great help with troubleshooting problems playing back videos. It makes it easy to compare multiple files so that you can see what is working, and what’s not working.

MediaInfo Homepage (Windows/Mac/Linux; Freeware)

WrapUp: Gmail Logo Uses Two Different Fonts, Download Your Songs From Google Music, and More

Ryan — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 07:28:50 +0000

–News–

You Can Download All Your Songs From Google Music
A new option is being rolled out to Google Music users that will let you download all of your uploaded/purchased songs, which means this is a great way to backup your music library.

Gmail Logo Uses Two Different Fonts
Some interesting info about the Gmail logo emerged last week, including the fact that it was created the night before Gmail launched and that they use two different fonts in the logo. Once you realize it uses two different fonts you’ll never be able to shake it from your head.

MegaUpload Alternatives See Surge in Traffic After Shutdown
After MegaUpload was shutdown last week several other services, such as Fileserve and Filesonic, removed their reward programs and public sharing options. All of this has caused a surge of traffic to get directed to the remaining alternatives.

Xbox 720 Will Be Six Times More Powerful as Current Console
Rumors are twirling that the next Xbox will ship in November 2013, and will be six times more powerful than the existing console.

YouTube Streams 4 Billion Videos Each Day
It’s pretty incredible that YouTube is streaming 4 billion videos each day, but users are also uploading 60-hours worth of content every minute.

–Tips, Tutorials, and Reviews–

Google Docs Can Be Exported Through Google Takeout
Google recently added an option to their “Takeout” service so that you can export your Google Docs data as well. That means it is even easier to pull all of your data away from Google.

Installing a BitTorrent Client on Your DD-WRT Router
This guide walks you through how to get Transmission up and running on a DD-WRT router.

Shortcut to Reopen Recently Closed Folders and Apps
UndoClose is a free Windows app that lets you assign a keyboard shortcut to quickly reopen folders and apps you recently closed.

–Downloads–

BurnAware Free 4.5 [Homepage] [Mirror]
CCleaner 3.15.1643 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Defraggler 2.09.391 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Evernote 4.5.3.6131 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Firefox 10.0 ^{Beta 6} [Homepage] [Mirror]
Foobar2000 1.1.11 ^{Beta 4} [Homepage] [Mirror]
Google Chrome 18.0.1017.2 ^Beta [Homepage] [Mirror]
Google Earth 6.2.0.5905 ^Beta [Homepage] [Mirror]
Greenshot 0.8.1.1486 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Miranda 0.9.42 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Miro 4.0.5 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Opera 11.61 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Picasa 3.9.1.135.83 [Homepage] [Mirror]
SeaMonkey 2.7 ^{Beta 4} [Homepage] [Mirror]
Songbird 1.10.2 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Thunderbird 10.0 ^{Beta 5} [Homepage] [Mirror]
uTorrent 3.1.26671 [Homepage] [Mirror]
VLC 2.0.0 ^RC1 [Homepage] [Mirror]