CyberNet Classics - CyberNotes

CyberNotes: Shortcut to Close Multiple Programs

CyberNotes: Create a Shortcut to Launch Multiple Programs

Ryan — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:57:45 -0600

This article was written on January 17, 2008 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

In the past we’ve shown you how to create batch files for synchronizing two folders, and today we’re going to demonstrate how they can be used to launch your favorite applications. If you’re like me you probably start the same applications every morning, such as your feed reader, web browser, and your calendar. If that’s the case then you’ll be in love with what I’m about to show you. In under a minute you can create a batch file to launch several applications, documents, files, and more in a single click.

What some people don’t realize is that you can also use this method to reduce the startup time of your computer! It’s likely that you have at least a handful of applications that startup with Windows which you don’t need immediately. Things like an instant messenger or email checker. You can place all of those applications into a single batch file, remove them from the startup list, and then just run them when you’re ready.

Update: Be sure to checkout how you can use a batch file to close multiple programs as well.

You may think that doing something like this is a tedious process, but it’s actually rather easy:

–Instructions–

Open Notepad (Start Menu -> Accessories -> Notepad):
Get the paths for the programs you want to start. The easiest way to do this is to right-click on each of the existing shortcuts, choose the Properties option, and then copy the Target path.
Enter the paths for each of the programs into Notepad, one per line. Be sure to put

start ""

at the beginning of each line, and put a space after it to separate it from the application path. If the path of your application has a space in it, you’ll need to surround the entire path with quotes. It should look something like this:
Save it as a .BAT file by manually entering in the extension at the end of the file name.
Double-click on the new file that you just created to test out the results.

–Examples–

There are all kinds of things that this can be used for, especially since you can throw parameters onto each of the applications. Let’s say you wanted to open our website in Firefox, one of the lines would look like this:

start "" "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" "cybernetnews.com"

You can also have it open a document by providing the path to it, like this:

start "" "C:\Users\Wagner\Documents\CyberNet.doc"

In the end you can create several different batch files each for different tasks. Batch files are powerful tools that can greatly enhance your productivity, and this is one of the ways they do that.

Thanks to Tim for asking us how to do something like this!

CyberNotes: Shortcut to Change Resolutions

Helpful Tip: Create a Remote Desktop Shortcut

Your Week in Review with Sunday’s Summary

Ashley — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 01:52:27 -0600

This article was written on April 27, 2008 by CyberNet.

Sunday’s Summary

What was going on this week at CyberNet News and Learn Firefox? Here’s your chance to catch-up if you missed something!

Monday: History of Windows System Requirements
Tuesday: Free Color Pickers
Wednesday: Top 10 Copy & Paste Firefox Extensions
Thursday: Take Ownership of Files in Vista
Friday: Life Before the Internet was like…
Saturday: Best Sites for Researching Cars and Trucks

Tab Sidebar – View thumbnail snapshots of your open tabs in the Firefox sidebar.

CyberNotes: Your Week in Review with Sunday’s Summary

Add Tabbed Feeds To Your Google Homepage

CyberNotes: Feeds 2.0 – Personalized Web 2.0 RSS Aggregator

Ashley — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 01:48:57 -0600

This article was written on October 06, 2006 by CyberNet.

Free For All Friday

With Google revamping and polishing up Google Reader recently with a new look, some AJAX, and new features, I thought I’d point out a reader that has been around for a little while and uses AJAX technology nicely. Feeds 2.0 strives to give you a more personalized reader which is something that makes them stand out above many others as a truly personalized Web 2.0 RSS Aggregator. Getting an account is free, however they’re currently in private beta (plans to go public soon). I sent a request for an account and got my invitation in less than 12 hours, so it appears the private beta isn’t all too difficult to get involved with.

– A Personalized Experience –

Feeds 2.0 is all about personalization, and they do it well. They use a learning “engine” that over time learns what you like and what you don’t like. By clicking on an article to read it, you’re telling the engine that it’s something you’re interested in. A simplified way to do this if you’re in a hurry is to click the heart that accompanies each article. Using an algorithm, they analyze what you’ve read and liked, but also what you’ve read and marked as non-interesting or ignored to determine what articles should be recommended to you.

– Features –

One feature in particular that I like is the tag cloud which gives you an overview of the most dominant words in the post. When a word is found multiple times throughout posts, it is considered more important and will appear larger in the tag cloud. If you were to click on a word in the tag cloud, it would pull up posts that have the related word from the tag cloud in the article.

When organizing your subscriptions, you’re able to create folders which can be collapsed or expanded. There’s also the option to view all of the unread posts, and posts that have already been read. The AJAX that has been incorporated into Feeds 2.0 makes for quick and easy transitioning from tab to tab to manage your reader and all of the settings.

By far, the best feature of Feeds 2.0 is the personalization engine they’ve incorporated. There are lots of feed readers out there which make you wonder why you’d need to try yet another one, however this reader is different.

You can sign up for the private beta on the Feeds 2.0 home page.

Microsoft News Aggregator Replaces Robert Scoble

Recommendations & Drag-and-Drop come to Google Reader

CyberNotes: Keep Your Bookmarks Organized Online with Quick Bookmarks

CyberNotes: Free Color Pickers

Ryan — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:45:33 -0600

This article was written on April 22, 2008 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

Being a web developer I heavily rely on using a variety of colors in my designs. A tool that has always come in handy for me are color pickers. There are so many different color pickers available that I thought it may prove useful to outline some of my favorites for Windows. Don’t worry… they are all free!

First off I wanted to begin by saying that the tools we’re going to cover are system-wide color pickers, and not specific to any one application. For example, image editors often have their own color pickers available, and there is even an extension available for Firefox that works within the browser. The three programs below, however, will work in any application within Windows.

–ColorPic (Homepage)–

Of the three programs ColorPic is probably the most powerful of them all. It has a lot of different options available for putting together color palettes, which is especially handy when doing web design work. Here are some of my favorite features:

Colors are shown in hex and decimal
Adjust Hue, Saturation, Value, Red, Green and Blue values
Save colors to the “chips” section by pressing Control+G
Determine an average/sample color for a 3×3 or 5×5 pixel area
Nudge the color selector by 1 pixel in any direction using the arrow keys
Zoom in or out on the preview
Snap to websafe colors
Overlay a grid for quick color picker alignment

(Click to Enlarge)

–Color Cop (Homepage)–

The thing that really makes Color Cop unique is that it has a no-install version available. That means you can throw it on your USB drive and carry it with you from one Windows computer to another without any hassle. Aside from that the interface is extremely simple and only shows the information that you need.

Here are some of Color Cop’s best features:

No-install version available
Clean interface with many of the options hidden away in the context menu (right-click anywhere in the program for advanced configuration settings)
Can auto copy Hex value to clipboard
Determine an average/sample color for a 3×3 or 5×5 pixel area
Snap to websafe colors
Color history
Color code support for HTML Hex, Delphi Hex, PowerBuilder, Visual Basic Hex, and Visual C++ Hex
Separate screen magnifier

–ColorMania (Homepage)–

One of the reasons you might be playing around with colors in the first place is to see what they would look like as a background to some text. ColorMania has got that covered! In the upper-left corner of the program you’ll find the currently selected color as the background, and some text placed over top of it. You can change the size, color, and style of the text to almost anything you want thereby giving you an accurate preview.

Here are some of the other features in ColorMania:

Invert your color choice
Shows the screen coordinates of the color picker
Color code support for HTML Hex, Delphi Hex, VB Hex, C++ Hex, RGB values, RGB %values, HSV (HSB) CMY, CMYK, and Photoshop
Adjust Hue, Saturation, Value, Red, Green and Blue values
Zoom in or out on the preview

–Free Online Tools–

Once you’ve used the color pickers to get the color you desire it is time to starting having fun with it. Personally there are four different tools that I use on a regular basis for that:

ColorBlender – This will provide a 6-color matching palette for any color.
Color Schemer Online – Creates a large palette of matching colors, and gives you the option to lighten or darken the color scheme in a single click.
ColorJack – A color-rich sphere selection utility that offers a variety of options for exporting your scheme.
Color Scheme Chooser – A great way to find colors that are complimentary, monochromatic, analogic, and more.

–Overview–

As you can see there are quite a few different tools out there for grabbing and manipulating colors on your PC. If one of your favorites wasn’t mentioned here be sure to post it in the comments below!

CyberNotes: How to Measure Items on Your Screen

CyberNotes: Your Week In Review With Sunday’s Summary

CyberNotes: Your Week In Review With Sunday’s Summary

CyberNotes: Dynamic Text Templates in Live Writer

Ryan — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 01:36:10 -0600

This article was written on September 18, 2007 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

Last Thursday we showed you how to make Windows Live Writer portable, and today we are going to show you how to create powerful text templates that will save you incredible amounts of time. Unfortunately the plugin you’ll need to install, Dynamic Templates, won’t work with the portable version.

Dynamic Templates was created by Joe Cheng who happens to be one of the primary Live Writer developers. For that reason I had expected the plugin to be good, but I didn’t expect it to be this good!

As of two-weeks ago I was using the free Post2Blog software for writing all of my articles, and it had a built-in template manager. It was designed to let users quickly enter in some HTML code that would otherwise be found repetitious. It was limited to doing what Dynamic Templates can do in the first example below, so if the plugin doesn’t seem special from that demo make sure you move on to the others!

Before we get started with the four demonstrations I want to give you a heads up that there is some C# code involved in some of the examples. I’ve never actually programmed in C# before, but I’ve done 7 or 8 other languages so I was quickly able to pick up on the basics. The Dynamic Templates page has some instructions on how to insert the syntax, but you’ll probably learn the ropes from the videos.

–HTML Templates–

This is a basic HTML template that is what most of you will probably want. We use these all the time to insert things we frequently use in posts, such as our daily CyberNotes logo. That way we don’t have to insert the image every time we want to use it.

Code:

Time Saving Tuesday

–Selection Formatting–

The Dyanmic Template plugin has a command, "_selection", that lets you insert the highlighted text anywhere in your template. You might be asking yourself how that would be useful, but I think you’ll be surprised at how many things you can do with it. In this example we show you how to wrap multiple HTML tags around the text that we’ve highlighted thereby creating a one-click colorful header.

Code:

<%= _selection %>

–Selection Processing–

This is using the same "_selection" command mentioned in the previous demonstration, but now it is really starting to tie in some of the C# programming. More specifically this code will send the highlighted text through an HTML filter which will transform any plain text HTML tags into valid HTML.

Code:

<%= HtmlDecode(_selection) %>

–Advanced Video Insertion–

This demonstration shows you why I love the plugin so much, but you’ve got to know a little bit of programming to completely understand what it’s doing. Here I setup the plugin to prompt the user for a Google Video ID and the desired width/height for the embedded video. If no dimensions are entered in it will fall back on some defaults which can be designated in the code.

Tip: This code can easily be configured for use with any video service, but sites like YouTube specify the ID, height, and width twice in the embed code. Make sure you replace all necessary instances if you want it to work properly.

Code (there are also a few variables which you can get from the video):

<% if(width == "")width = "400"; %> <% if(height == "")height = "326"; %> px; height:<%= height %>px;" id="VideoPlayback" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=<%= ID %>&hl=en" flashvars="">

–Overview–

While the plugin is very complete in my eyes there are a few things that could make this even better:

Hotkeys! Oh man, it would be really sweet if you could assign hotkeys to some of the templates you use the most often.
I would like the option to set the size of the window which lists all of your templates. I have about two-dozen templates, and I don’t really like having to scroll to get to some of them.

To wrap things up Dynamic Templates is a great way to remove the strain of repetitive tasks, but to harness the true power you’ll need to sit down for an hour or so and learn how to write code that works well with it. Believe me, you won’t be sorry!

Dynamic Templates Homepage (Download)

Windows Live Writer now has XHTML Support

CyberNotes: Making Windows Live Writer Portable

Microsoft Is About To Release Windows Live Writer

Download Microsoft’s New Windows Live Writer

CyberNotes: Create Your Own Smart Bookmarks in Firefox 3

Ryan — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:09:53 -0600

This article was written on May 07, 2008 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

One of my favorite additions to the Firefox 3 browser (currently in Beta) are Smart Bookmarks. There’s a good chance that you’ve played with things in other applications that are similar to Smart Bookmarks. For example, iTunes (and many other media players) have what are referred to as Smart Playlists. These are playlists that automatically assemble themselves based on specific criteria, such as the “most played” and “recently added” media. Smart Bookmarks are very similar since they can show you things like your most visited bookmarks or your recently added bookmarks:

Just a few weeks ago we showed you how to quickly restore the default Smart Bookmarks that come with the browser, but did you know that it’s also possible to make your own? Thanks to the new bookmarks backend that Mozilla has implemented it’s actually pretty easy for you to create your own Smart Bookmarks once you understand how they work. An extension will inevitably come along that makes this a no-brainer, but it will take you no time to catch on to manually creating them.

The first thing we’re going to do is show you the steps needed to create a new Smart Bookmark, and then we’re going to give you an overview of the query syntax you’ll want to use to take things up a notch.

–Creating a Smart Bookmark–

There are a few different ways that you can create a Smart Bookmark, but I’m going to show you the one that I believe is the easiest.

Open up the Bookmarks Organizer by going to the Bookmarks Menu, and click the Organize Bookmarks option.
Click the Organize Menu and choose the New Bookmark option:
Now you need to type in whatever name you would like for the Smart Bookmark. In the location field, however, is where you will insert the specialized “URL” which we’ll cover in the next section. This screenshot shows an example location that will return the top 10 bookmarks you visit the most:
The Smart Bookmark that you just created should now be visible in the Bookmark Organizer, and you can place it wherever you would like. The content will dynamically change based on the criteria that you specified in the previous step.

–Smart Bookmarks Queries–

In Step 3 above you were told to insert a specialized URL into the location field of the bookmark. This is really the thing that differentiates a Smart Bookmark from a regular bookmark. Each location field for a Smart Bookmark will start with “place:” followed by a few parameters that tell the bookmark what its contents should contain. You’ll also notice that each parameter is separated by an ampersand (&).

Want some examples? Here are a few to get your creative juices flowing:

10 Most Visited Sites:
place:queryType=0&sort=8&maxResults=10
10 Most Recent Bookmarks:
place:queryType=1&sort=12&maxResults=10
15 Most Visited Bookmarks:
place:queryType=1&sort=8&maxResults=15
10 Most Visited Sites with “CyberNet” in them:
place:queryType=0&sort=8&maxResults=10&terms=cybernet
5 Most Visited Sites at the cybernetnews.com Domain:
place:queryType=0&sort=8&maxResults=5&domain=cybernetnews.com

Looking at some of those examples there is a good chance that you picked up on how the queries work. Over at the Mozilla forum they have begun assembling a rather comprehensive list of parameters that you can use with the queries, but there are quite a few that most of you won’t use when creating these manually. Here are some of the more useful ones that I used in the examples above, along with a brief description of the values that go with them:

sort – This is used in all of the examples above, and this is what determines the order in which the bookmarks are sorted. A majority of the examples I gave use a sort value of “8″, which organizes the results according to the largest visit count first. Here are all the values that you can use with it:
- 0 – Natural bookmark order
- 1 – Sort by title, A-Z
- 2 – Sort by title, Z-A
- 3 – Sort by visit date, most recent last
- 4 – Sort by visit date, most recent first
- 5 – Sort by uri, A-Z
- 6 – Sort by uri, Z-A
- 7 – Sort by visit count, ascending
- 8 – Sort by visit count, descending
- 9 – Sort by keyword, A-Z
- 10 – Sort by keyword, Z-A
- 11 – Sort by date added, most recent last
- 12 – Sort by date added, most recent first
- 13 – Sort by last modified date, most recent last
- 14 – Sort by last modified date, most recent first
- 17 – Sort by tags, ascending
- 18 – Sort by tags, descending
- 19 – Sort by annotation, ascending
- 20 – Sort by annotation, descending
queryType – This is also used in all of the examples above. It’s used to specify whether you want to search the History (a.k.a. sites you’ve visited), Bookmarks, or both.
- 0 – Searches only your History
- 1 – Searches only your Bookmarks
- 2 – Searches both your History and Bookmarks
maxResults – Use this to specify how many results you want returned.
- 0 – Return all results
- 1 to ?? – Any number besides “0″ will indicate the number of results you want returned
domain – Specify the domain of a site, such as “cybernetnews.com” as seen in the example above.
terms – Word(s) that you want to search for. From what I gather it searches most areas of your sites/bookmarks including the title.

The different parameters that I just covered are only a small amount of what’s actually available, but they are the ones that have proven to be the most useful to me. If you get overly ambitious you can checkout the full selection.

–Overview–

It’s inevitable that there will be an extension that makes it easier to configure these Smart Bookmarks, but it’s actually not that hard to manually create them. Although it could get tedious if you wanted to make a bunch of them.

Now we would like to turn things over to you. Let us know in the comments what kind of concoctions you come up with so that more of us can benefit from your infinite wisdom!

Related Posts:

Restore Firefox 3 Smart Bookmarks

Space Saving Extension for Firefox Bookmark Toolbar Users

Helpful Tip: Recover Lost Bookmarks in Firefox 3

Tip Of The Day: Recovering Your Lost Firefox Bookmarks

CyberNotes: Your Week in Review with Sunday’s Summary

Ashley — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:50:50 -0600

This article was written on January 28, 2007 by CyberNet.

Sunday’s Summary

Here is your week in review with Sunday’s Summary! If you missed something, check it out. What was going on this week at CyberNet News with CyberNotes?

Million Dollar Monday: Suzuki Concept Car Takes you to the Movies
Time Saving Tuesday: TrayDevil goes Beyond Minimizing to the System Tray
Web Browser Wednesday: Which Browsers Scale Images the Best?
Tutorial Thursday: How to Display the Folder Size in Windows Explorer
Free For All Friday: Watch All Your Favorite TV Shows, Music and Videos with Peekvid
Weekend Warrior: Create Your Own Visual Map with Wayfaring and Google Maps

CyberNotes: How To Send An Email To Your Phone

CyberNotes: “Push” Email Using SMS Text Messages

Ryan — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:38:36 -0600

This article was written on September 04, 2008 by CyberNet.

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…

–Push Gmail Using SMS Text Messages–

Login to your Gmail account, and navigate to the Settings. Under the Forwarding and POP/IMAP section you can have Gmail forward all of your emails to a specified address. This is where you can specify the email address your carrier uses for your cellphone number, and you’ll want to be sure to choose the keep Gmail’s copy in the Inbox option to ensure the messages don’t get removed after being forwarded:

Note: If you don’t know the email address format used by your carrier refer to the section below that covers some of the most common carriers.

After you’ve setup forwarding any emails that are sent to your Gmail account will also be forwarded on to your cellphone via text message. The text messages obviously won’t contain the full email if they’re really long, but it serves as a good notification system.

Alternatively you can setup a Gmail filter to only forward important emails to your phone via text message.

–Email Addresses for Common Carriers–

These are the email addresses you need to use in the instructions above. Be sure to replace the “0123456789″ with your own phone number.

AT&T: 0123456789@txt.att.net
T-Mobile: 0123456789@tmomail.net
Sprint: 0123456789@messaging.sprintpcs.com
Verizon: 0123456789@vtext.com
US Cellular: 0123456789@email.uscc.net
Nextel: 0123456789@messaging.nextel.com
Alltel: 0123456789@message.alltel.com
Virgin Mobile: 0123456789@vmobl.com
SunCom: 0123456789@tms.suncom.com
Powertel: 0123456789@ptel.net
Metro PCS: 0123456789@MyMetroPcs.com

If your carrier was not listed here you should check their website. The information can often be found in the help or support section.

–Overview–

Cool, huh? If you know of any other good ways to use text messages as notifications be sure to drop us a comment. And remember, you’ll probably want to stay away from doing anything like this unless you have an unlimited text message plan.

CyberNotes: Multiple Email Addresses In GMail Filters

Send Text Messages To Any Cell Phone For Free Using Google

Wireless Carriers Sued Over Text Messages

CyberNotes: Your Week In Review With Sunday’s Summary

Ashley — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:29:44 -0600

This article was written on October 08, 2006 by CyberNet.

Sunday’s Summary

Here is your week in review with Sunday’s Summary! If you missed something, check it out. What was going on this week at CyberNet News with CyberNotes?

Million Dollar Monday: Hasselblad Reveals World’s First 48mm Full-Frame DSLR Camera
Time Saving Tuesday: Following The Weather In Your Area
Web Browser Wednesday: What Cool Features Does Netscape 8 Have?
Tutorial Thursday: How To Reveal Vista’s Boot Screen
Free For All Friday: Feeds 2.0 Personalized Web 2.0 RSS Aggregator
Weekend Warrior: “Fat Finger” Airfare Deals

CyberNotes: Luxury On Wheels: Most Expensive Coaches

CyberNotes: Expensive Wheels You Probably Haven’t Seen on the Streets!

Ashley — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:17:24 -0600

This article was written on January 15, 2007 by CyberNet.

Million Dollar Monday

It’s Million Dollar Monday and we’re talkin’ wheels! They are a far cry from ordinary, and chances are, you probably won’t be seeing these on the road anytime soon. One set of rims could literally cost you a million bucks! Better yet, here’s a deal you might not be able to pass up… buy a set of rims, and you’ll get a Bentley for free! Let me explain…

Asanti is known for their wheels. Quality, and classy wheels for that matter. Not long ago, their big ta-da was the Cubic Zirconia encrusted wheels for $250,000. They decided to out-do themselves and upgrade to diamond-encrusted wheels. The picture to the right shows their 1,100 carat creation. They also offer a pretty fantastic deal! If you buy a set of four Asanti diamond-encrusted wheels, you’ll get a Bently GT for free (Hey, it is a deal, it brings the cost of the rims down into the $800,000’s).

I don’t know about you, but if I had a set of these wheels on my Bentley, I think I’d take along a body guard for me, and the car. When making the big purchase, you have your choice of sapphires, rubies, or other gems, it just depends on what you’re looking for. These 22-inch diamond encrusted rims will set you back around $1 million!

Next up is the more affordable option. The Pimpstar Dub Custom Wheels with a chrome finish will certainly set you apart from nearly every car out there. Definitely check out the video below for a demo on what you can expect with these wheels. Built-in full color LED lights with a microprocessor and a wireless modem will allow you to display text, graphics, logos, and digital photos on your wheels

Included with the price is software so that you can create your own images. After you’ve created your images or selected from photos or other images, you can send those images to an individual wheel, or all of the wheels at one time. This means that each wheel can have a different picture. No batteries are required because it uses the vehicle’s electrical system. And, you won’t have to worry about going through the car wash or a rain storm, because the wheels are environmentally sealed.

So, what will a set of wheels like this cost you? Well, it depends on the size. There are three different packages with sizes ranging from 22″- 26″, and the prices for those ranging from $12,500-$19,500. Checkout these wheels in action…

If you’re wanting to set your car out from the rest of the pack, sure you could get a fancy paint job. If that doesn’t do the trick, you could always buy yourself a pricey set of wheels like the Asanti diamond encrusted wheels, (get your Bently GT for free!) or the Pimpstar Dub Custom Wheels.

CyberNotes: Your Week In Review With Sunday’s Summary

Best Buy Selling Microsoft Streets And Trips For $9.99

CyberNotes: World’s Most Expensive MP3 Player

CyberNotes: How to Edit MP3 Details in Vista

Ashley — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:07:23 -0600

This article was written on February 11, 2008 by CyberNet.

Microsoft Monday

Many of you have an extensive library of songs on your computer that you’ve downloaded over time. If you’re like me, having all of the album information like the name of the song, the year it came out, and the artist is important. Today we’re going to be talking about how to edit MP3 details in Windows Vista so that your library of songs stay up-to-date and accurate.

Edit MP3 Details in Details Pane

One way that you can edit MP3 details in Windows Vista is in the Details Pane. This is the box that you see at the bottom of Windows Explorer when you’re viewing a song. Below is a screenshot of the details pane that I see when I click on the song “Have a Nice Day” by Bon Jovi:

Most of the text that you see in the Details Pane can be changed. Below is a close-up of the pane so that you get an idea of what all can be changed:

Artist – Type in the name of the artist
Album – Which album is the song from? Enter it here
Genre – This is where you specify the music genre
Ratings – Rate a song between 0-5 stars
Year – This is where you can enter the year that it was released
Title – Enter the title of the song

Notice in the image below how you can resize the pane to see more details which is a really nice feature. If you shrink it down to the smallest size possible, all you’ll see is a very small picture of the album art, the title of the song, and the artist. By expanding the pane to show more details, you’ll be able to view more information.

If you decide that you don’t want to view details, you can right click and select “Hide Details Pane.” If you hide the pane and decide you want it back, just click Organize > Layout > Details Pane.

Remove Properties

The details pane may include more information than you really want displayed. Luckily you can remove properties from displaying by right clicking in the pane and selecting “Remove Properties.” A Box will pop up where you can select which properties you’d like removed as shown below:

Edit MP3 Details in Properties Menu

Another way to edit MP3 details in Windows Vista is to right-click on a song and select “properties.” There are a ton of different details that you can change in the properties menu which you can’t change in the details pane. Here’s just a sampling of what you can view and/or change in the properties window:

Select which music player the song should open with by default
View/enter the publisher, when it was copyrighted, the URL for the author
View and then copy or restore any previous versions that may be available
Open advanced attributes and choose settings you would like for the particular folder (you can also compress or encrypt attributes as well)
View Security details

Note: In both the details pane and the properties menu, you can bulk edit by selecting multiple songs at the same time.

Below is a screenshot which shows what the properties menu looks like:

Editing MP3 details in Windows Vista is very simple to do, especially with two different ways to go about doing it. For those of you who like to keep all of the track information correct and available for the songs that you have on your computer, you’ll appreciate using both the details pane and the properties menu (which you can find by right clicking on a song) in Vista.

Google Maps Gives Editing Rights to Users

Windows Vista Beta 2 Update Available

CyberNotes: Your Week in Review with Sunday’s Summary

CyberNotes: iCal vs. Windows Calendar

CyberNotes: Tag All Your Music Files Quickly

Ryan — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:47:41 -0600

This article was written on July 18, 2006 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

It was about 4-years ago that I was looking for a nice piece of software that would clean up my music a little bit. I always took the time to make my filenames for my MP3 files look nice by formatting them as “Artist – Song.mp3″ and I would place all the songs from the same artist in a single folder. The problem was that I couldn’t find an easy way to edit the tags of all those songs until I found TagScanner.

Click To Enlarge

The TagScanner program is very easy to use but is also extremely customizable. I was able to have it go through all of my music files and remove all of the tags. After it completed that task I had it go back through and generate the ID3v2 tags based on the file name I assigned it. I only had it fill in the artist and song title fields and made it leave the rest of the fields blank. After several minutes it had scoured through more than 1500 songs which would have taken me hours to do myself.

TagScanner also has a wide range of other features such as generating file names based on the tags, which is the reverse of what I used it for above. Heck, you can even have it go to the Internet to see if it can find the information for the song. You don’t have to worry about your folder structure either because there is an option to have it dig deep into all your subfolders to make sure it finds all the music files.

If you have a large music collection on your computer then you should have TagScanner there to help you keep those tags nice and tidy. Best of all is that this software will not cost you anything, it is absolutely FREE! CNet gives this software 5/5 stars and it has been downloaded over 350,000 times. I also give it 5/5 stars because I have been using it for more than 4-years and have never needed to find another piece of software that handled the tags any better. Hope you like it as much as I have.

MP3Tunes – We have Unlimited Storage to Giveaway!

CyberNotes: Quickly Compare Two Text Files

CyberNotes: USB Travel Devices

CyberNotes: Some of the Best Unknown Travel Gadgets

Ashley — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:41:13 -0600

This article was written on January 13, 2007 by CyberNet.

Weekend Warrior

There are all kinds of gadgets designed specifically for traveling. Here are some of the best ones that you probably haven’t heard about.

–Solar Powered Cooling Pith Helmet–

First up is the Safari-grade helmet from Hammacher. It may look a little funny, but it will be sure to keep you cool when you’re out in the hot weather. It uses rays of the sun to power a small fan, and a quiet motor is powered by compact solar panels. Have no worries either, at night or when the clouds are covering the sun, you can power this hat by using two AA batteries. It’s made from straw that is lightweight and easy to carry. Also important to note: Apparently it’s pretty popular! Hammacher is all sold out “due to the popularity of the item!”

Price: $49.95

–Cell Phone Mini Projector–

I bet you never thought your phone could also be a projector! Code named GPP, it has not yet been released yet to the public, but could possibly be a great tool for those traveling on business. You’re able to transform your cell phone into a very portable projector. While the size may be a little large for a phone, it works greats as an ultra portable projector. It also has a swivel LCD screen, and a D-pad to control navigation menu.

Price: No price yet, it hasn’t been released.

– Solar Generator Briefcase–

This is another item you probably haven’t ever thought about before. If you carry around a briefcase when you travel, why not carry the Solar generator briefcase? It’s perfect for the great outdoors when you don’t have electricity. You could always drag along a gas powered generator, or you could simply use the SOL8-Solar Generator Briefcase. It’s powerful enough to run laptops, small tools, DC refrigerators, GPS, etc. Two solar panels on this briefcase generate 13 watts of power! It’s fairly lightweight and small at 9.7lbs., and measuring 20.1 x 14.7 x 1.6 inches.

Price: $139.95

–StashCard–

This is a pretty clever way to make use of that empty PC card slot in your laptop. The StashCard is exactly what the name says. It looks like a card, and it’s perfect for stashing a variety of things like:

Memory cards
Money
Stamps
Extra keys
Screen cleaning clothes
Photos

Not to mention, it’s also really affordable!

Price: $7.95

– Inflatable Massage Chair–

Last on the list is the inflatable massage chair. It would work well when you’re traveling for business, and you don’t have all of the comforts of home, like relaxing in your favorite chair. It inflates electrically in less than 2 minutes, and includes a remote handset. It also has three levels of intensity with massage zones in the back. Great for a massage, on the go!

Price: $49.97

Source: Techeblog

CyberNotes: Your Week In Review With Sunday’s Summary

CyberNotes: Your Week in Review with Sunday’s Summary

CyberNotes: Windows Vista Tips and Tricks

Ryan — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:26:23 -0600

This article was written on February 01, 2007 by CyberNet.

Special Vista Edition: Part 3

This is the third and last part of our special Vista Edition of CyberNotes this week. We’ve already reviewed all of the various applications and features that are included in Vista, as well as covering some add-ons that can be used to make Internet Explorer 7 even better. I wanted to wrap up today by offering some tips and tricks on using Vista.

Here are the tips and tricks listed in this article:

Checkboxes and Dragging Files/Folders
Taking Full Advantage of Flip3D
Quick Calendar View
Slow Down Aero Animations
Scale Desktop Images to make them Larger or Smaller
Keyboard Shortcut to Launch Quick Launch Apps
Customize the Location of User Folders
Open Command Prompt Here
Modifying Vista’s BCDEDIT the Easy Way
Disable User Account Control (UAC)
Get a Report on your System’s Health
Temporarily View Menu Bar in Windows Explorer
Overview

–Checkboxes and Dragging Files/Folders–

Vista makes you very aware of when you are doing things with files and folders to prevent accidents from happening. I’m sure it’s happened to all of us at some point or another, where we accidentally dragged a folder or file somewhere and didn’t realize it.

First, go to the Folder Options in Vista, then the View tab, and check the box that says “Use check boxes to select items.” Now when you’re selecting multiple items, Windows Explorer will place a checkbox on that item so that you can easily see what items you currently have selected:

The other thing that I wanted to mention was dragging files around in Vista. If you have multiple files selected it will show you how many items you are actually dragging which can be really helpful at preventing accidents from occurring:

–Taking Full Advantage of Flip3D–

Flip3D is one of Vista’s new ways to switch between running applications. It angles all of the open windows so that they can all be seen at the same time, but there are some things you may not realize you can do with it:

Note: To activate Flip3D press the Windows Key + Tab

Use your mouse’s scroll wheel to quickly flip through the open windows.
Use the arrows to flip through the open windows
Click on any portion of a window with your mouse to quickly switch to it without having to flip through them.

–Quick Calendar View–

By left-clicking on the clock in the System Tray you’ll get a nice calendar popup. Once you get used to having quick access to a calendar like this you’ll take it for granted. Also, if you observe Daylight Savings Time it will notify you one-week prior to setting your clocks back so that you don’t forget.

–Slow Down Aero Animations–

The Aero Glass interface is pretty nifty, but the animations happen so quickly that there just isn’t enough time for you to savor them.

No problem! It requires a little Registry work to tweak the timing, but it might be worth the extra “wow” factor.

Click on the Start button and in the Search field type regedit. Press Enter.
Click Continue if you see a User Account Control Prompt.
Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM
In the right hand pane, right click on an empty space and from the context menu that appears choose New > DWORD (32-bit) Value.
Give the new DWORD (32-bit) Value a name of AnimationsShiftKey
Double click on the AnimationsShiftKey value and give it a value of 1.
Close the Registry Editor and logoff of Windows and log back in to see the effect.

You’ll only see the effect of the slow animation when holding down the Shift key, so it doesn’t completely hinder your productivity. The source of this tweak also found out that the coolest animation has to be when starting Windows Flip3D by pressing CTRL+WinKey+Tab and then holding the Shift button while clicking on a window. It’s just something you gotta see at least once.

Source: Windows Now

–Scale Desktop Images to make them Larger or Smaller–

While on your Desktop hold down the Control button on the keyboard and start scrolling with the scroll wheel on your mouse. You’ll notice that you can make the icons on the desktop very small or very large. Here is the smallest and largest that you can make the icons:

–Keyboard Shortcut to Launch Quick Launch Apps–

Open any of your applications or documents in the Quick Launch bar by simply pressing the Windows Key + Num where “Num” corresponds to the position of the shortcut. Here is an example of how the numbering scheme works (for example, Internet Explorer would be Windows Key + 3):

–Customize the Location of User Folders–

The most important things on your computer are probably your documents, music and pictures. The custom locations option is something you’ll love if you happen to place these things on a separate drive just incase the Windows hard drive fails. That’s what I do and now I can point the My Music, My Pictures, and My Documents folder to the location on a different hard drive. Then whenever I click a link to one of those locations it will immediately pull up the results from that other drive.

–Open Command Prompt Here–

You can easily open a command prompt window pointing to any directory by simply right-clicking on a folder while holding down the Shift key. That will reveal the “hidden” option that says “Open Command Window Here“:

–Modifying Vista’s BCDEDIT the Easy Way–

Microsoft changed how users modify the boot entries available when starting your PC. If you want to do something simple like modifying the name of the operating system that appears, you’ll be forced to go to the Command Prompt because Vista uses BCDEDIT. However, there is an alternative that I have talked about before called VistaBootPro that makes this chore a lot easier.

–Disable User Account Control (UAC)–

If you get tired of those User Account Control prompts always popping up wanting to get your permission, just disable them. To do this just go to the Control Panel -> User Accounts and Family Safety -> User Accounts -> Turn User Account Control On or Off. After doing this you will have to restart your computer though.

–Get a Report on your System’s Health–

It’s always nice to know that your computer is up to par when it comes to its’ health. That’s why you can generate a health report in a few minutes that analyzes a bunch of different aspects of your system. Pulling up the report is pretty simple, just go to the Control Panel -> System and Maintenance -> Performance Information and Tools -> Advanced Tools (located in the left sidebar) -> Generate a system health report.

If something is not quite right this report will be sure to tell you after it is done analyzing your system. Who knows, a health report might be just what the doctor ordered.

Source: ZDNet

–Temporarily View Menu Bar in Windows Explorer–

The Menubar (File, Edit, View, Tools, etc…) is hidden by default in Vista when using Windows Explorer. It can be enabled by going to Organize -> Layout -> Menu Bar but I think you’ll find that you hardly need it. If, however, you do want it real quick just press the Alt key while in Windows Explorer to temporarily reveal the Menu Bar. It will disappear immediately after making a selection in one of the menus.

–Overview–

That completes our first Vista tweak guide. If you found any of these interesting you should make sure to follow future postings closely because I’m sure we’ll find other great things to tweak as we are able to play around with Vista a little more.

Microsoft Windows Vista 5365 Tips And Tricks

CyberNotes: Your Week in Review with Sunday’s Summary

CyberNotes: Your Week in Review with Sunday’s Summary

Ashley — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:05:30 -0600

This article was written on July 06, 2008 by CyberNet.

Sunday’s Summary

What was going on this week at CyberNet News and Learn Firefox? Here’s your chance to catch-up if you missed something!

Monday: A Look at Microsoft’s Main Redmond Campus
Tuesday: Automatic Text Replacement Programs
Wednesday: CyberSearch Firefox Extension
Thursday: Assign Driver Letters to Folders in Windows
Friday: More Dumb Laws from Around the U.S.
Saturday: Get Company Reviews and Salary Information

CyberNotes: Kaleidescape Stores All Of Your Media

CyberNotes: How to Copy a DVD Movie

Ryan — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:55:44 -0600

This article was written on August 02, 2007 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

What would you do if you lost your entire movie collection? Wouldn’t it be nice to have some backups laying around in case someone scratched your precious Rudy video or your dog ate an entire season of the Simpsons?

A popular application called DVD Decrypter lets you copy an entire DVD onto your computer’s hard drive, and it bypasses any copy protection mechanisms that would make duplicating a store-bought DVD otherwise impossible. The only problem is that new copy protection algorithms are frequently being created, and this application hasn’t been updated since 2005.

For that reason you should use Free DVD (kudos to xpgeek in the forum for pointing this out). It can copy an entire movie to the hard disk while removing all traces of copy protection (CSS, RC, RCE, APS, UOPs and Sony ARccOS). This application is frequently updated, and best of all it’s not hard to use nor does it require any installation.

How you copy a DVD movie:

Put the movie you want to copy in the DVD drive of your computer. Open up the contents of the DVD using a file explorer, such as Windows Explorer, and copy the VIDEO_TS folder to a location on your hard drive.

Download and run Free DVD (the free version, not the Platinum). It’s only 44KB, and doesn’t require any installation.
In Free DVD, select the VIDEO_TS folder you copied to your hard drive in the first step. You’ll receive a prompt notifying you of the restrictions that will be removed.
You probably won’t need to adjust any of the settings, but go ahead and do so if it’s needed. Then press the Free DVD! button to remove all copy restrictions from the movie.
Then if you want to put this video on a DVD you can use DVD Shrink. This program will also remove copy protections, but it is well over a year old and you’ll probably run into some DVD’s that it doesn’t work with. If you use Free DVD first then all of your issues should be solved. The great thing about DVD Shrink is that it will also cut down the size of the video so that it will fit on a normal DVD instead of needing a dual-layer disc.

Backing up your DVD’s has never been so easy! Now remember, these instructions are for educational purposes only, and I guess they should only be used on your own home-made movies that you apply copy protection to.

Once again a big thanks goes out to xpgeek in the forum for pointing out this great app!

Coming Soon: Copy your Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs Legally

Windows Vista Supports Copying Movies

CyberNotes: Always Group Similar Taskbar Buttons in Windows

CyberNotes: Do more with your Windows Taskbar

Ryan — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:54:26 -0600

This article was written on January 02, 2007 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

One of the things that you probably use the most on your Windows computer is the Taskbar, right? I’m not just talking clicking because think about how many times your eyes wonder down to see what time it is in the System Tray. One thing that I find that Windows Vista (to be released January 30, 2007) still lacks are some features that make using the Taskbar more efficient. Let’s see if we can find some freeware tools that will make things a little easier…

–What the Taskbar Can Do By Default–

There is one thing that the Windows Taskbar can do by default that most people don’t realize, and that’s performing operations on multiple windows simultaneously. This is by no means an extravagant trick but if you didn’t know about it then you’ll probably find it to be useful.

If you Ctrl+Click on multiple Taskbar items and then right-click you’ll be presented with some operations that you can perform on all of the selected programs. Whether it be closing them all, minimizing them, or tiling/cascading them so that they are easier to see:

–Easy Access Calculator (Homepage)–

Over time I have noticed that I trust my mental math less and I reach for the calculator more. I guess that is more figuratively speaking though, because more times than not I find myself popping up the built-in Windows Calculator to get the job done. Most of the time I am wanting to just add or multiply a few numbers so all I need is something simple.

Have no fear…the Taskbar Calculator is here! It doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles that your graphing calculator has, but I would say that it is a fair match for the Windows Calculator. All you have to do is type in an equation like “7+3″ and press Enter to have it show you the result. This could come in handy if you’re not a registered user on our site and you’re having troubles with the spam protection.

–Virtual Dimension (Homepage)–

Virtual Dimension greatly surpasses the Windows XP PowerToy that Microsoft released for Windows. It does all kinds of really great stuff and even offers a window that can be placed on your desktop to show which applications are currently open on which desktop (pictured below). You can make that window as big or small as you would like.

As if a well-made virtual desktop manager wasn’t enough…this also adds features like minimizing a window to the System Tray or making it partially translucent. These options are available when you right-click on an item in the Taskbar and go to the Virtual Dimension menu (pictured below). There you’ll also find an option to move the application to any of your other virtual desktops. Talk about a great way to reduce clutter! The application officially works in Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP but I have also tested it in Vista and can verify that it works great on there.

–GroupBar by Microsoft (Homepage/Download)–

This is one application that I am surprised Microsoft has kept so silent on. They haven’t even put GroupBar on the PowerToys for Windows page, but this is one thing that should definitely be on there. Here are a list of things that you can do with GroupBar:

Drag and drop reordering of items in the Taskbar
Drag and drop arranging of items in groups (pictured below)
Perform actions on groups of windows such as closing, minimizing, or maximizing all of the windows in the group
These bars can be simultaneously placed in multiple locations on the screen
You can save the state of your open windows so that you can do things like restart the PC and quickly resume where you left off. You may want to be careful when using this feature though, because it isn’t like what happens when hibernating your PC. GroupBar tries to store key information about the program that you have open, such as with Microsoft Word it will store the file location of what you currently have open, and then upon restoring the session it will re-open the file. Saving sessions only works with the more popular applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Visual Studio, Internet Explorer, and Shell/Explorer (folder windows). It is customizable though, so you might be able to save sessions for other applications as well.

–Overview–

I talked about the next version of Windows, codename Vienna, in an article yesterday and offered possible solutions that Microsoft may use to replace the Windows Taskbar. New functionality is quickly getting limited and I think Microsoft has taken the Start Menu as far as they can in Windows Vista. There are few people in the world who have a good idea of what to expect in the next big release of Windows…but whatever it is will take some getting used to. By the time Windows Vienna is released we will have been accustomed to the Taskbar and Start Menu for 15-years, and I’m sure it will be hard to let go.