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Spider Player – Free music only media player

admin — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:45:45 +0000

Despite the fact there are an inordinate number of media players available, it is difficult to find one that is quite as well rounded as Windows Media Player; the application included as standard with Windows. Many other media players are either overloaded with features you will never use or stripped down to the point where the few extra features you are likely to use on a daily basis are missing.

Just recently, however, I was pointed in the direction of Spider Player, an application that is available via a free download at www.spider-player.com. Admittedly this is just a music player and does not support videos files but focusing purely on audio allows it to excel in this area.

It offers a 32-bit sound processing irrespective of the specification of your sound card which should ensure a high quality of playback of all your audio files. The player also supports 5.1/7.1 surround as well as traditional stereo/mono audio files.

Standard features such as the ability to open individual files and create and save playlists are also included along with a wonderfully simple equalizer panel which is available at all times. This can be minimised if you should wish but this feature, along with the DSP effects manager allows you to customise the sound of the playback to your personal taste.

Along with supporting every conceivable file format, Spider Player will also allow you to convert existing audio files in to another format; for example to change a WAV file to a small MP3 file. This is provided in addition to the ability to rip tracks directly from a CD and then convert them in to a number of formats including MP3, WMA and OGG.

Direct access is provided to a number of Internet radio stations and can record up to five minutes of transmission to any one file (recording time is unlimited in the professional version).

While the standard design of the player is relatively pleasing as it is, the player is fully skinnable with a variety of designs available for free from the developer’s website. If you would rather personalise your own player, there is a skin development package available for download from the website.

Users who require the ability to play video may be best looking into downloading the excellent VLC Media Player, one of the many alternatives mentioned in Click over the years, or sticking with the faithful Windows Media Player. For those that are primarily concerned with music, Spider Player certainly comes highly recommended as although the claim “The Ultimate Music Player” may seem rather grandiose it certainly comes with all the features I could hope for without any of the chaff I would have previously tolerated.

dBan

admin — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 17:10:11 +0000

Over three years ago my web developer at Refresh Creations wrote an article which I published dealing with the question of formatting a hard drive so that the contents were completely unrecoverable. Whether you plan to sell your computer on at the end of its life, recycle it, give it to charity or even chuck it at the tip, it is imperative that you dispose of any potentially sensitive data on the hard drive.

I try not to recycle articles however meeting people on a weekly basis who would more than happily sell a computer on eBay after having simply used Windows to delete their old data has convinced me that in this instance it is necessary.

“
With data security becoming a greater issue on a daily basis it’s important to make sure that you securely remove all your data from your hard drives before you decide to sell your hard drive or donate it towards a charity of your choice. For a great amount of time there have been programs available which can miraculously restore data from a damaged floppy disk, with being the token computer guy in the house at university and still people using this decidedly unreliable format I became familiar with the programs used for restoring corrupted or deleted data from the diskettes.

Technically, just deleting a file isn’t sufficient to get rid of it permanently; when you delete a file from say Windows XP or any other OS you’re not truly deleting the file. To understand this you need to have a rough idea of how file allocation tables work (this is based on the current format of your hard drive). Unfortunately formatting the drive isn’t necessarily sufficient as data can still be relatively easily restored using an unformatting program which are available readily on the Internet.

If you’re intent on selling the drive off to a 3rd party personally I’d recommend the free tool DBAN (Darik’s Boot and Nuke) which is used for securely erasing all data from your hard drive, making recovery of previous data from your drive nigh-on-impossible. DBAN performs a military grade format on your hard drive, conforming to American DOD (Department of Defence) standards.

DBAN is more effective than the conventional Windows format as it performs multiple passes over the hard drive, on each pass it will randomly flip each binary bit from a zero to a one or vice versa to completely scramble all the data on the drive. Multiple passes are required so traces of the old data are more difficult to detect. DBAN is a small, free piece of software which can be downloaded from http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Note it’s name “BOOT AND NUKE” – The CD that you create will be bootable when you turn on the computer with CD booting enabled the program will load automatically and if you’re not careful you will lose ALL data on the drive. This includes the OS and anything else on the drive – ALL data means ALL the data.

Ryan Carson, Refresh Creations Ltd
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Online Fraud

admin — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:48:25 +0000

This week I decided that enough was enough and that it was time for me to talk openly about online credit card fraud and the rather bizarre attitude that the police and card issuing companies seem to have towards it.

As you may or may not know, the Refresh Cartridges website is my primary source of income and it is this income source that I use to put a roof over my head and food on our table; as such I can get very protective. Earlier this week we had a number of people come on to the site and use card details which we later found to be fraudulent. At the time, the amounts weren’t exceptionally large and so being a company that sends out hundreds of cartridges on a daily basis we did the basic checks, thought nothing more of it and sent the goods.

I’d approximate that around £600 worth of goods went out the door over multiple orders and naturally you’d have thought that this would have been something that the police might have been interested in, surely? After all, if someone came in to the shop, stole over half a grand from the till then went as far as leaving me their address (remember, the online fraudsters provided us with a delivery address), I’m fairly confident that they’d be soon knocking on his door.

Instead, and rather bizarrely the police won’t even allow a merchant such as us to report card fraud to them anymore as they say it is simply too widespread for them to deal with. I find this attitude particularly interesting; surely if a problem is particularly widespread then as a police force you would want to do exactly the opposite of ignoring it in the hope that it’ll simply go away? To make a rather absurd analogy, let’s assume that illegal gun ownership becomes widespread in this area; would Devon and Cornwall constabulary then not allow me to report that I’ve just seen a man walking down the road with an AK47?

It would appear that ignoring the problem is having the predicted effect; apparently credit card fraud is the fastest growing form of organised crime and in 2007 it increased 44%. I have even seen a website just recently that sells stolen credit card numbers quite openly for the bargain price of $10 a card; you even get a discount if you buy in bulk.

This left me wondering quite why the police don’t seem to really care about the problem and I could only summarise that the reason is that individuals aren’t really affected. If someone has their credit card stolen they are completely protected; the card owner will report their card stolen, they will be refunded and the money will then be taken straight back out of the bank account of the company that sent the products in good faith.

Most people assume that in an instance of credit card fraud, the banks are the ones that cover the cost but unfortunately it is the companies and their staff that bear the brunt. To add insult to injury they are often charged an additional £25 per fraudulent transaction by the merchant bankers for ‘administration’, effectively leaving the banking corporations in profit.

It is clear that as a business we are targeted as the goods we sell can be high value and are easily resalable. Give one guy a hundred stolen credit card numbers, thousands of different Internet companies to buy off and in a couple of days he could have tens of thousands of pounds of stolen goods to resell.

It is a sad fact the 90% of the addresses given are in London and that every fraudster that I’ve spoken to so far (yes, I do occasionally call them) has been a young male with a foreign accent. I’m not going to join the dots for you but with the government currently so cautious about the incomes of such demographics, you wouldn’t have thought they would be casually ignoring this form of organised crime.

CD and DVD Formats

admin — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:44:28 +0000

On a daily basis I’m still asked about the different forms of blank disc available on the market and the differences between them. For this reason I thought this week we would look back at all the commonly available disc based media formats and the differences between them; from the humble CD to the more recent BluRay and HD-DVD.

CD-R – Whilst the CD format has been available since the early 1980’s, the specification for the writable version (CD-R) was published further down the line, in 1988. Whilst available in a number of different variants, the most commonly available is the 700mb version with a write speed of typically 52x (52 times the speed of the original CD-R standard). Whilst they don’t offer the storage capacity of newer alternatives such as DVD, they are still ideal for storing smaller amounts of data, for example a music album. CD-RW is a rewritable variant of the write once CD-R disc.

DVD-R – This format is typically capable of holding up to 4.7Gb (4700mb) of data and offers write speeds surpassing the CD-R standard. This makes the DVD-R an ideal choice for storing larger files, or indeed movies. There are DVD-RW (Rewritable) discs available along with a Dual Layer version which uses a second layer on the same disc which almost doubles the capacity to 8.5Gb

DVD+R – A rival format to the DVD-R, the DVD+R is technically very similar, but there are a number of subtle differences that distinguish the two. Whilst most end users wouldn’t notice between the two, the existence of the two formats means that if buying a DVD disc, you need to ensure that you pick the correct format unless you have a drive which supports both. As with DVD-R, this format is also available in DVD+RW and DVD+RW Dual Layer.

DVD-RAM – A competing format to the rewritable formats DVD-RW and DVD+RW, the latest revision of the DVD-RAM standard offers a maximum storage capacity of 9.7Gb. Considered extremely reliable, along with being designed for constant re-recording (a DVD-RAM disc can be rewritten 100,000 times compared to just 1,000 times for a DVD-RW or +RW disc), this format is ideal for frequent data backup. Its popularity has been hindered by the fact it’s approximately five times more expensive than a –RW or +RW disc.

HD DVD – This format was developed by a consortium of companies with the intention that it would be the successor of the conventional DVD. Exactly the same physical size as a standard DVD disc, this format allowed a maximum storage capacity of 15Gb per layer with a Dual Layer version to double this space to 30Gb. Recordable discs for this format are still expensive, costing over a fiver each. Unfortunately Toshiba who were the main driving force behind HD DVD, announced a couple of days ago that they would no longer be developing or manufacturing players and recorders for this format, meaning that it has essentially lost out to its main competitor, BluRay.

BluRay Disc – So named because of the blue laser that is used to read the bottom of the disc, the BluRay format has been developed by a number of companies that form the BluRay Disc Association. Technically a superior format to HD DVD, BluRay discs can store 25Gb per layer meaning that a Dual Layered disc will hold a massive 50Gb of data making them ideal for high definition movies. The success of this format is in no small part down to the Playstation 3 being equipped with a reader as standard.

There are also options regarding the type of surface on the top of the disc. A technology known as Lightscribe will allow you to literally etch a design in to the top of the disc using a laser built in to a compatible writer. Alternatively other discs have a white, paper style surface which allows the printing of directly on to the disc using a compatible printer. Next week we’ll look at these technologies in more detail.

The Pitfalls of Refilling

admin — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:40:03 +0000

I do try to keep shameless self promotion out of my Click articles however, as you are probably all aware, I run a business in the computer consumables field and as such there are events in my day to day life that often appear like they would make good computer based reading material. We have recently started offering a refilling service and as such my knowledge of this particular area has increased exponentially over the last couple of months making it the ideal focus of my article today.

Thanks to adverts such as those commissioned several years ago by JR Inkjet (the ones featuring motoring journalist Quentin Wilson), there are a great many people who believe that they are immediately qualified for the task. Whilst refilling is certainly good for both your pocket and the environment, it is also an exact art that when improperly executed can yield terrible results.

Many companies will tell you that all you need is a drill piece, a universal ink and some sticky tape but if you’re looking for a result that’s half decent this is, unfortunately, not entirely accurate. The printer manufacturers spend a great deal of time and money ensuring that inks are specifically formulated for each individual cartridge and that the cartridges they offer are as difficult to refill as possible and as such a good degree of working knowledge is required.

Preparation is as important as the actual refilling itself and whilst not everybody is as thorough as ourselves, we use the following equipment on a daily basis to ensure that we retain the original quality.

- Centrifuge – This literally spins every last drop of ink out of the printer cartridge so that when you refill you don’t have two differing ink types mixing together inside the cartridge.

- Steamer – Removes any blockages that may have formed in the cartridge print head by focusing a concentrated jet of steam towards the bottom of the cartridge.

- Ultrasonic Bath – Breaks down any remaining blockages; these machines incidentally are similar to those used to clean surgical instruments in the healthcare industry.

- Replacement sponges – These are useful as not only to you often get a better quality by using fresh sponges but additionally some cartridges can have their capacity increased by the use of a different sponge.

- Replacement lids – These are put on to cartridges which we are able to remove the tops from; this prevents potentially messy ‘drill and fill’ techniques often employed at home.

Once the cartridge has been prepared it is important that it is refilled using ink that is a very close match to the manufacturers’ original specification rather than simply using a ‘universal’ ink. Ideally the refill should be performed under vacuum conditions so that there is no air present in the cartridge – This results in the ink spreading more evenly throughout the sponge and then making direct contact with the nozzle plate so that the print head immediately starts to rehydrate. By refilling outside of vacuum conditions you risk the possibility of trapped air which can have a serious effect on the print quality.

Alas, even with the correct training and expensive equipment, refilling can be messy; those that visit our store will often find one of us with ink inexplicably plastered across the forehead but this is simply put down to occupational hazard. If you do decide to brave refilling yourself then we do have the kits available, but since we guarantee to be the cheapest in Torbay, the smart advice would be to leave it to the professionals.

PC or Mac?

admin — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 16:16:15 +0000

The great thing about computer geeks has to be the passionate way that they can either loyally defend or implacably slate a particular system; fanatics are polarised so much by two competing platforms that only very rarely can some kind of sensible middle ground ever exist.

I remember when I was younger, talk in the playground often turned to which console was best, your Sega Megadrive or your mates Super Nintendo – You can guarantee that if I were a fly on the wall in a school today, that the same kind of discussion would still be raging between the X-Box and Playstation gamers.

A similar kind of discussion, ‘which is superior, the PC or the Apple Mac?’ has been burning between adult computer users for several decades now. Personally I don’t have the time to worry about the issue a great deal, nor do I feel the need to militantly argue my points in forums all over the Internet but clearly many enthusiasts do; a simple Google search for ‘PC vs Mac’ returns hundreds of thousands of matches.

The debate has been taken to a new level by a series of adverts recently commissioned by Apple in which the two comedians Mitchell and Webb take on the rolls of the two systems; Mitchell acts as a PC and Webb as an Apple Mac.

In these adverts the two ‘systems’ compare their features and of course, PC comes off looking like a a boring, inefficient dinosaur while Apple Mac humiliates him and generally comes off looking a little too smug. I’m not certain that any of the adverts would tempt me to move over to the Apple Mac platform but I suppose the real question is, if you look behind the advertising, is the Mac really better?

So we can understand the two platforms a little better we should probably look at how they have developed and changed over the years. Hopefully this will somehow justify Apples name calling and rationalise them insulting pretty much everything about the machine that the large majority of us use on a daily basis.

What most users would come to term ‘PC’ refers to one of the many machines evolved from the original IBM Personal Computer which was introduced back in 1981. The success of this machine can be predominately attributed to the fact that IBM decided on an open architecture so that other manufactures could produce and sell peripherals and software for the machine. The rather loose copyrighting and availability of technical specifications meant that it didn’t take long before other manufacturers reverse engineered the BIOS to produce their own legal IBM PC ‘clones’. This lead to the PC standard being adopted and developed by a number of competing companies which of course had a positive impact on the range of devices and software available for the machine as well as reducing prices.

Nowadays IBM, the original founders of the platform have relatively little influence on the development of the PC as it is continually evolved by the thousands of companies who manufacture the computers, peripherals and software which are compatible with this open standard.

On completely the opposite end of the scale is Apple who released their first Personal Computer, the ‘Macintosh’ back in 1984. Since this time, Apple have been the only company to manufacture, sell and support the Mac which of course means that they have full control over the brand including the Hardware and Operating System.

Whilst retaining complete control over your platform would appear to be a good idea, especially when it comes to monopolising on sales, it has certainly hurt the popularity of the machine in the industry. With so many more companies supporting the PC it has certainly dominated sales over the past twenty years which has resulted in Apple Mac being regarded as very much a niche machine by many.

Fortunes may be about to change however; a partnership with Intel, a new Operating System on the horizon and compatibility with Windows means that many now consider Apple to be a viable option again. Join me again next week to hear my opinion on whether your next computer really should be a Mac…..

Backing up movies

admin — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 15:13:03 +0000

As you can imagine a company such as ours that sells blank media (CD’s, DVD’s etc) does get asked on a daily basis how to go about making a copy of a movie using a home PC. As this is something not yet covered in Click I thought this week I would write a definitive answer as to hopefully decrease the frequency that this question pops up.

I will of course point out where the law stands on this; you are legally allowed to make a single backup of any copyrighted video that you own for personal purposes only as long as that backup is then kept for your sole use and not rented, lent of given to a third party. To copy a movie for any purpose other than this is very much illegal and something that neither myself nor the Herald Express could condone.

To backup a movie DVD you will need essentially two pieces of software – one to unscramble the movie and then one to actually copy and compress the data on to a blank DVD. The first piece of software removes the encryption that prevents regular utilities from Nero and DVD Creator making the copy and then the second actually does the business of moving the data from disc to disc.

A good application I’ve found for removing the encryption goes by the name of AnyDVD and this can be downloaded by heading to www.slysoft.com. The program is free to try out although if you do like it then you will have to purchase the full version after a period of 21 days. Installation is simple and then the program just sits quietly in the taskbar, removing the copy protection from whatever disk is present in the DVD drive of your machine. AnyDVD also has the additional advantage of being able to remove region protection so that you can watch DVD’s from all around the world on your region locked DVD player.

To actually copy the DVD itself a program such as CloneDVD does the job perfectly. This is available from the same address and like AnyDVD, whilst it is free to download you will have to pay for the full version should you wish to use it outside of the 21 day evaluation period.

Whilst one would assume that once the encryption was removed that copying a DVD is an easy process which any software could accomplish there is one major stumbling block; most pre-recorded DVD’s you buy are Dual Layer and hence twice the capacity of standard Single Layer recordable discs. To get around this CloneDVD is able to strip out any special features of the DVD (such as actor interviews, foreign subtitles and directors’ commentary) and then compress the remaining data so it fits perfectly on to one disc. Like AnyDVD the software is easy to install and since it includes a couple of step by step copying wizards it literally couldn’t be any easier to use.

Whilst I do usually recommend free software in Click I haven’t been able to locate any free utilities that accomplish the above however if anyone out there knows differently then please do let me know. Once again I feel obliged to say that copying a movie for any purpose than making a single backup for your own use is illegal so please don’t even think about it!

YouTube

admin — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 15:11:01 +0000

The popular video hosting site YouTube.com has hit the headlines several times recently for all the wrong reasons so I thought I’d draw focus back to the real reasons this website is always on my favourites list. YouTube was founded back in February 2005 by three early employees of PayPal and has already grown to become one of the most popular sites on the Internet. It provides users with a way to upload video content as well as being able to immediately view a huge number of video files completely free of charge.

As you would well imagine the variety of the content is huge – with 65,000 videos being uploaded every 24 hours you can type practically any word or phrase in to the search box and without fail a number of results will be returned. All videos are rated by users of the site and if you choose not to search by keyword you can also view videos by category, user rating, age and popularity.

Personally I predominately use YouTube to search for music online as the extensive range of content means that you can easily find not only quickly and easily find any song you choose but additionally the associated video. Using YouTube I have managed to locate a number of more obscure songs that even several different popular peer to peer file sharing programs couldn’t help me with. The website also sets itself apart in the fact that you don’t actually download the video to your machine but simply watch it on demand.

Of course many use YouTube as the modern day equivalent of public access TV and come up with original material which can be informative, funny or just completely weird. Whilst theoretically no copyrighted material is available on the site in reality the sheer number of videos uploaded on a daily basis coupled with a rather primitive detection system means that this really isn’t the case. As the popularity of YouTube soars this will have to be something they pay more attention too if they are to avoid heavy legal bills in the future.

YouTube has also suffered criticism caused by its open door policy which means any user can upload material without its content being checked by a member of admin staff. Despite the huge amount of activity online there are only around 50 staff working for the company which means that very few videos can be randomly checked to ensure they don’t breech the terms and conditions of the site. Users can of course flag up questionable material however due to a shortage of manpower such material is often online for short period before being removed.

There is no doubting that YouTube will have to become more efficient in banning violent, pornographic and illegal videos that may work their way in to the system if it is to continue. I do however think that it is worthwhile remembering despite the pitfalls the site does provide a very worthwhile way for users to share videos with the world. Such a facility is especially useful for amateur producers who may have previously had no other way of showcasing their work.

Those without a broadband connection will probably want to give this site a miss but everyone else should certainly check out www.youtube.com when they have a spare half an hour as there is certainly something for everyone on this site.

DBAN

admin — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 15:09:36 +0000

My business partner at our webdesign company Refresh Creations recently started talking to me about wiping all data from a computer that I was set to sell on eBay. The computer in question had a fair amount of sensitive information on it and he seemed horrified that I was just going to wipe the hard disk using a Windows format and then sell it on.

For all intensive purposes what I was about to do would have been fine but to be on the safe side he introduced me to a piece of software which does a much more thorough job. I thought it might be prudent for him to talk my Click readers through this program as it could certainly come in useful for anyone looking to sell their computer or hard drive on the second hand market.

“

With data security becoming a greater issue on a daily basis it’s important to make sure that you securely remove all your data from your hard drives before you decide to sell your hard drive or donate it towards a charity of your choice. For a great amount of time there have been programs available which can miraculously restore data from a damaged floppy disk, with being the token computer guy in the house at university and still people using this decidedly unreliable format I became familiar with the programs used for restoring corrupted or deleted data from the diskettes.

Technically just deleting a file isn’t sufficient to get rid of it permanently; when you delete a file from say Windows XP or any other OS you’re not truly deleting the file. To understand this you need to have a rough idea of how file allocation tables work (this is based on the current format of your hard drive). Unfortunately formatting the drive isn’t necessarily sufficient as data can still be relatively easily restored using an unformatting program which are available readily on the Internet.

DBAN is more effective than the conventional Windows format as it performs multiple passes over the hard drive, on each pass it will randomly flip each binary bit from a zero to a one or vice versa to completely scramble all the data on the drive. Multiple passes are required so traces of the old data are more difficult to detect. DBAN is a small, free piece of software which can be downloaded from http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Note it’s name “BOOT AND NUKE” – The CD that you create will be bootable when you turn on the computer with CD booting enabled the program will load automatically and if you’re not careful you will lose ALL data on the drive. This includes the OS and anything else on the drive – ALL data means ALL the data.

“

My thanks go to Ryan Carson for providing this article. Please do be careful with this utility as careless use can cause a loss of data which neither myself, Ryan or the Herald Express will be held responsible.

E-Mail Spoofing

admin — Sat, 06 May 2006 14:55:18 +0000

This week I’m going to reply to an e-mail I received from a reader this week which touches on a subject I’ve have had a fair amount of first hand experience with just recently:

I follow your column in the Herald Express and see you sometimes highlight problems. I have followed your advice and some time ago installed the AVG Grisoft virus check, which I keep fully updated.

I am however being inundated with returned e-mails which did not originate from me but uses the latter part of my e-mail address. I note that they all have attachments which of course I have never opened. As virus checks do not reveal a problem on my computer, can you suggest a possible cure?

John Cadman, via e-mail

As mentioned at the beginning of this article I have encountered this exact problem myself just recently. Unfortunately a number of spammers have been trying to sell Viagra and shares in dodgy companies to unsuspecting users by using my own business e-mail address rather than their own.

There could be a number of reasons for them wishing to do this however I believe the most likely useful purpose would be to fool spam filters. Usually when a spammer starts a campaign of mailing random people their e-mail address is very quickly blocked by the spam filters to prevent the intended recipients from receiving unsolicited mail. If the spammer can send out messages from completely random and alternating addresses then it is very difficult for spam filters to function efficiently without banning millions of legitimate users e-mail addresses.

Of course this is quite frustrating for those that have had their e-mail address exploited because like John I am receiving a large number of ‘your e-mail cannot be delivered’ messages on a daily basis as the messages sent from the spoofer get bounced back to my legitimate e-mail address. Additionally I have had a few customer complaints about me supposedly trying to sell them treatment for impotency when the reality is that this particular business venture has nothing to do with me!

Unfortunately the problem stems from the fact that the SMTP mail protocol that is most commonly used to send e-mail on the Internet doesn’t require any authorisation and as such it is incredibly easy to send e-mails that appear as though they are from someone else entirely. I’m sure most of you have by now received a spoof e-mail which appears to have come from your bank asking for you to confirm your account details and this scam works on the same principle.

The short answer to your question is unfortunately there isn’t really anything that you can do to stop this from occurring although the good news is that the symptoms experienced are not a sign that your computer is infected with anything nasty. Businesses and individuals will continue to be vulnerable to these kinds of spoof e-mails until a more secure system of sending e-mails is implemented. To the best of my knowledge for the time being the best you can do is ignore the bounced e-mails and hope that the spammers soon find a new target.