CyberNet News

Create a Real-Time Photo Stream with LiveShare

Ryan — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:21:11 +0000

There are all kinds of photo sharing websites out there, but the concept behind LiveShare is really interesting. It all starts with a photo stream that is created by you or a friend, and then gets shared out among anyone you want. These streams can be private so that only the people you invite can view/post to the stream, or they can be public so that anyone can view/post to the stream. In order to post photos, however, you’ll still need a LiveShare account.

Any photos that get added are instantly pushed out to everyone viewing the stream on the web or with one of the mobile apps. The thing that some people may not realize is that no one is able to delete a photo stream from the site, but you can remove individual images that you’ve uploaded. The creators of the service consider a photo stream a “living document” which is why they don’t let you delete it.

The service is really easy to use, and with the iPhone/Android apps almost everyone in your photo stream should be able to upload photos they take on their phones. If you like the idea of a real-time photo stream then LiveShare is definitely something you should checkout.

LiveShare Homepage

Distraction Free Writing with FocusWriter

Ryan — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:37:01 +0000

Windows; Mac; Linux
Being able to focus on writing can be a tough task, but there are apps that try to help draw your attention to the task at hand. One such free program is FocusWriter that, despite it’s simplistic interface, has a wealth of features and settings available to help you hit your writing goals.

Out-of-the-box FocusWriter will appear as though it’s no more advance than Notepad, but that’s because they tuck away the toolbars into the upper and lower portions of the screen. Just hover your mouse towards the top or bottom of FocusWriter to reveal formatting options, settings, tabs, stats, and much more. Here’s a rundown on some of the features available:

TXT, basic RTF, and basic ODT file support
Timers and alarms
Daily goals
Fully customizable themes
Typewriter sound effects (optional)
Auto-save (optional)
Live statistics (optional)
Spell-checking (optional)
Multi-document support
Sessions
Portable mode (optional)

It should be noted that this runs in fullscreen mode by default, but you can always use it like any other app in a window if that’s what you want.

FocusWriter Homepage (Windows/Mac/Linux; Freeware)

Quickly Manipulate Text in Any Windows App

Ryan — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:48:17 +0000

Windows only
Programs like Notepad++ have features that let you quickly manipulate bodies of text, which is something that can be really useful. Unfortunately these features are always restricted to the app you’re using making them only marginally useful compared to what they could be.

Dolphin Text Editor Menu is a great app that bridges the gap by providing a lot of text manipulation features in any program or website where you can type text. After you launch the app you’ll probably want to jump over to the System Tray icon where you can pull up the settings to configure the keyboard shortcut that displays the menu. By default the shortcut is set to Control+Numpad0.

After you’ve got it ready just highlight some text and press the keyboard shortcut. From the menu that appears you’ll be able to sort the text, remove blank lines, change text case, align text, remove HTML, and more. I’ve found this to be a great utility to have, but the challenge is remembering that it’s always there for you to use.

Dolphin Text Editor Menu Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)

Create HDR Photos with Picturenaut

Ryan — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:24:11 +0000

Windows only
HDR is the process of combining multiple photos with the hope that the resulting image is clear in both the light and dark areas. Getting good free HDR software that is capable of merging the photos together can be a little tricky since there are a lot of things it has to take into account, such as perfectly aligning each image.

Picturenaut is a free HDR app for Windows that has done a wonderful job with my photos. The program has been in the works for over 4 years, and you can tell that a lot of sweat has been put into making it. Merging your images will generally take just a few seconds, and with the settings available you are able to tweak the resulting photo to look exactly how you want it to.

Here are some of the high-level features offered by Picturenaut:

Automatic image alignment
Exposure correction
Color balancing
Ghost removal
RAW support
Noise level compensation
Full control over camera curve

Picturenaut Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)
[Images used for HDR example are from Wikipedia]

WrapUp: Screenshot an Entire Webpage with Skitch, iPhone 4S Jailbreak, and More

Ryan — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 07:58:02 +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–

Megaupload Shutdown, Anonymous Retaliates
Megaupload was shutdown last week by the FBI, and as a result the group Anonymous initiated a DOS attack that brought down sites for both the Department of Justice and Universal Music.

Apple’s New iBooks for iPad Adds Textbook Support
Apple released an array of iPad-centric apps last week that focus on creating and reading textbooks, as well as course management for teachers.

Wolfram Education Portal is Live
Wolfram unveiled an education portal that currently contains learning materials for algebra and calculus.

Zappos Gets Hacked
Last week Zappos was hacked, and personal information including each customer’s name, email, address, last four digits of their credit card, and a hash of their password may have all been among the data compromised.

–Tips, Tutorials, and Reviews–

Screenshot an Entire Webpage with Skitch
Skitch for Mac has a feature tucked away that you may not know about, and it’s that dragging a URL into the app will trigger it to take a screenshot of the full website.

iPhone 4S and iPad 2 Untethered Jailbreak Available
If you’ve been waiting to jailbreak your new iOS device this jailbreak release will give you the full untethered experience many users were waiting for.

Transfer Your Spotify Playlists to Grooveshark
ToGrooveshark is a web service that helps you quickly migrate all of your Spotify playlists over to Grooveshark.

Cross-Platform App Renames TV Shows
This free cross-platform app hooks up to EPGuide or TheTVDB.com, and will use that information to rename files for television shows you download.

–Downloads–

Adobe Air 3.2.0.1720 Beta 4 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Dexpot 1.5.15 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Dropbox 1.3.7 Experimental [Homepage] [Mirror]
Firefox 10.0 Beta 5 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Flash Player 11.2.202.183 Beta 4 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Foobar2000 1.1.11 Beta 1 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Google Chrome 18.0.1010.1 Beta [Homepage] [Mirror]
iTunes 10.5.3 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Screenshot Captor 2.105.01 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Thunderbird 10.0 Beta 4 [Homepage] [Mirror]

Forward a Temp Email Address to Your Real Email Address

Ryan — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:06:26 +0000

Last month we wrote about a cool website that would let you generate a temporary email address that gets forwarded to your real email address. After a period of time that you specify that temporary address would expire so that you don’t have to worry about getting spammed later on down the road. Unfortunately that service isn’t available any longer, but we have found another that accomplishes almost the exact same thing.

MeltMail lets you generate a temp email address that forwards to any address you specify, and you can choose whether it remains valid for 3, 6, 12, or 24 hours. This is a great way to keep your real email address anonymous without having to monitor another Inbox. There is also an iOS app available so that you can easily create the temp email address on-the-go.

The only thing this lacks compared to the other service is a limit on the number of emails the address can receive. I thought it was a nice touch that the other service would let you, for example, only receive one email at the generated email address before it was automatically disposed of. Hopefully that’s something the developers will consider adding to MeltMail.

MeltMail Homepage and iOS App

Find and Replace Text in Files

Ryan — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:26:28 +0000

Windows only
A few months ago we pointed out that Notepad++ has an option to find and replace text in multiple files, but that is obviously not the sole purpose of the app. If you need to perform a find and replace operation across multiple files I’d highly suggest that you try out a program that focuses on that kind of task, such as TextCrawler. It’s an extremely powerful app when it comes to finding and replacing text.

As you can see from the screenshot above there are a wide array of features spread out across the intuitive interface. Not only can you see what files matched your query, but you can view the exact line in the file that was matched. That way you can make sure the text you’ll be replacing is what you expected, but just to be on the safe side you can still have TextCrawler make a backup of the files before they are changed (just enable this in the settings).

Here are some of the other features:

Search and Replace across files, Insert or Delete text
Fast searching, even on large files
Simple to use interface
Flexible search parameters
Text Extractor – rip text into a new file
Post-process extracted text – sort, remove duplicate lines, remove whitespace
Search and replace using Regular Expressions. Create sophisticated searches.
Regular Expression test tool
Regular Expression library – Save your searches
Create backup files
Highlighted search results
Export Results
Preview Replace Function
Copy found files to new location
Batch Find and Replace

TextCrawler Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)

Free Google Reader Desktop App for Mac

Ryan — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:52:20 +0000

Mac only
The web-based version of Google Reader is pretty good, but it can be nice to use a desktop app from time to time. On the Mac you would be hard-pressed to find a decent free Google Reader desktop app, but the newly released Cappuccino is exactly that. It is a rather complete Google Reader app that comes equipped with folder/group support and sharing features.

One thing you’ll find in Cappuccino that I haven’t seen in some of the other apps is the Growl configuration options. There is an option to turn on Growl notifications in the Settings menu, and then you can right-click on individual feeds to suppress Growl notifications from being displayed. That’s a really nice feature, and with it you’ll be able to ensure you only get notifications for the feeds that matter to you.

In some ways Cappuccino still feels a little rough around the edges, but considering it is both new and free I find it hard to complain about the little nuances. One thing that really stood out to me is the lack of an option to hide all feed items that you’ve already read. There is, however, the “unread” group that automatically gets populated with your unread items, but I’d like to be able to hide the read items in individual feeds as well.

Cappuccino Homepage (Mac only; Freeware)
[via Addictive Tips]

Gmail via Exchange on iOS: You Can Now Delete Instead of Archive

Ryan — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 08:27:45 +0000

Up until the other day on my iPhone/iPad I always used the IMAP protocol to access my Gmail accounts instead of Exchange because of the way Google handled deleting emails. For Exchange users Google would archive an email anytime you hit the trash icon, and if you really wanted to delete the message you’d then have to go into your “All Mail” label and delete it from there. It was a tedious two-step process, and that is still what they have in place by default. The good news is that you can switch this behavior now.

Google added an option to the m.google.com/sync site so that you can have emails trashed when you hit the delete button instead of archiving the emails. Basically all you have to do is visit the m.google.com/sync site on your mobile device, select your device from the list, and check the box to Enable “Delete Email As Trash” for this device.

That may sound pretty easy, but if you have a bunch of accounts it can be quite a pain since you have to login to each one to change the setting. If you have a lot of accounts I recommend using a desktop browser where you can change the user agent to an iOS device, which will make it go a little faster to login and logout of all the accounts to enable the delete instead of archive option.

WrapUp: Grooveshark Launches Mobile HTML5 App, Ubuntu TV, and More

Ryan — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 07:35:32 +0000

–News–

Grooveshark Releases Free Mobile HTML5 App
The Grooveshark app may have gotten pulled from the Apple App Store and Android Market awhile back, but they are working around that with a free HTML5-powered web app that is actually pretty good.

Mozilla Will Provide an Extended Support Release of Firefox
Mozilla released six new versions of Firefox in 2011, and keeping up with that was quite a headache for any IT person managing desktops with the browser installed. As a result Mozilla will also be providing an Extended Support Release (ESR) version of Firefox that will only be updated once per year.

BlueStacks Bringing Android Apps to Windows 8
A company called BlueStacks is developing a way for you to run Android apps in the new Windows 8 Metro interface, and is working on deals to have the software preloaded on some new PCs.

Personal Google+ Results Appearing in Your Google Search Results
Google will be injecting Google+ search results, such as posts from friends, if they believe it is relevant to what you are searching for on Google.

Kinect for Windows Coming February 1st
Microsoft is pushing out the Kinect for Windows, and it should be available from retail outlets starting February 1st with a retail price of $249.

Opera TV Store Brings HTML5 Apps to Your TV
Everyone is getting into the television market these days, and Opera is no different. Last week they announced the Opera TV Store which will let users run HTML5 apps on their television… assuming that device manufacturers adopt their technology.

Nokia Lumia 900 LTE Windows Phone Announced
In the coming months Nokia will be releasing the Lumia 900 LTE Windows Phone on AT&T, and it will include a 4.3-inch AMOLED display.

Ubuntu TV Unity UI Demo
Ubuntu is entering the television market with software that will stream videos and record live TV. Ubuntu-powered TVs are expected to be in stores by the end of 2012.

Samsung and LG Show Off 55-inch OLED TVs
At CES 2012 both Samsung and LG demonstrated their 55-inch OLED TVs that are due out later this year. No word on pricing yet.

Netflix Branches Out to UK and Ireland
Netflix has expanded their streaming service to include users in the UK and Ireland. If your unsure about the service they are offering a free 1-month trial for you to test the waters.

–Tips, Tutorials, and Reviews–

Customize OS X Lion’s Scrollbar Behavior for Each App You Use
LionScrollbars is a clever little Mac app that lets you choose whether or not the scrollbar is always displayed on a per app basis.

Tweak Hidden Mac OS X Features
The iTweaX app lets you customize Mac OS X features that are otherwise buried deep in the OS.

How to Crack a WiFi Network’s WPA Password
Lifehacker has a guide available for cracking the WPA password for a WiFi network using Reaver. It takes a little effort, but it has a good chance of working.

–Downloads–

Adobe Reader 10.1.2 [Homepage] [Mirror]
CDBurnerXP 4.4.0.2905 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Dropbox 1.2.50 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Dropbox 1.3.6 ^Experimental [Homepage] [Mirror]
FileZilla 3.5.3 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Firefox 10.0 ^{Beta 4} [Homepage] [Mirror]
GOM Player 2.1.37.5085 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Google Chrome 18.0.1003.1 ^Beta [Homepage] [Mirror]
KMPlayer 3.1.0.0 ^R2 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Miranda 0.9.41 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Process Explorer 15.12 [Homepage] [Mirror]
SeaMonkey 2.7 ^{Beta 3} [Homepage] [Mirror]
Skype 5.7.0.137 ^Beta [Homepage] [Mirror]
Thunderbird 10.0 ^{Beta 2} [Homepage] [Mirror]
uTorrent 3.1.26650 [Homepage] [Mirror]
VirtualBox 4.0.16.75491 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Wireshark 1.6.5 [Homepage] [Mirror]
Yahoo! Messenger 11.5.0.155 [Homepage] [Mirror]