Windows Media Player: It's still free and well worth it

Microsoft has released the Windows Media Player version 11 (beta). It's pretty. It plays lots of kinds file types. It can connect you to a music store to download files. And I'll continue to use Itunes, a Mac application that was ported to Windows and described by Steve Jobs in his usual understated manner as being the best Windows application ever made. Not exactly. But it's better than the Windows application for my purposes.

With something like 15,000 files from my own CDs, from my old LPs, and from various online services, it's important that I be able to find what I'm looking for and Apple's browser is simply the best way for me to find what I'm looking for. But I'm getting ahead of the story. This is, after all, a report about the Windows Media Player and I have come to praise WMP, not to bury it. (Apologies to W. Shakespeare.)

Click any of the images for a larger view.

		Microsoft gets off to a good start by not trying to claim every single media file as its own. Most competing applications either just assume you want them to be responsible for all your media files and take control of them -- some without even asking. The Windows Media Player assumes that you want it to be responsible for Windows media. Good choice. Loading the Windows Media Player also gives you a glimpse at the interface you'll see with Windows Office 2007.
		The Windows Media Player looks in the standard locations for files, but I don't keep mine in the standard location. I pointed it at the Itunes folder and it claimed to add all but a few hundred "protected" files. These are files that need Apple's digital rights management to be played.
		In some cases, WMP is able to find album covers. This doesn't happen very often. You can, of course, scan CD covers or grab the cover art from various websites.
		One cool feature Microsoft has added to this version is the ability for graphics to smoothly resize. As I drag the album information column's boundary to the right ...
		... the graphic becomes larger. When the application senses that titles may be too short to be useful, it automatically drops the track numbers. Clever.
		This is, after all, beta software. Some things never change.
		The Itunes interface is actually plainer and less attractive than Microsoft's, but it's more functional. The left column (light blue) allows me to choose a location (store, podcasts, library, or playlist). Once I make that selection, I can select from a genre (left white column), then an artist (center white column), and an album (right white column). The bottom half of the screen shows all of the tracks in the category. And yes, I can select two or more artists to include all of their music in the list.

My primary computer is a Windows machine. I need to use some Microsoft-specific media files. For those reasons alone, I'll always have the latest version of the Windows Media Player. But I won't be using it to listen to my music files.

Overall: Windows Media Player (4 cats)

It's free. It seems to have as one of its goals not being annoying and generally succeeds. If you're more familiar with Apple's Itunes, you won't switch to WMP for music files, but you should still have the latest version for best results with Windows media files. You can download it here.

Odds and ends

Not exactly newsy enough to be in Nerdly News and not exactly long enough to get their own individual space, sometimes I run across topics that should fit somewhere. This is that place.

Support ends for Windows 9x and Me

July 11 is the last day Microsoft will support Windows 98, Windows 98 Special Edition, and Windows Millennium Edition. Support had already been withdrawn for Windows 95 and Windows 3.1 and 3.11. Microsoft planned to halt support for the Windows 98 platform in January 2004 but delayed implementation to give users time to upgrade.

An estimated 70 million didn't upgrade and that means they will be without security updates from Microsoft.

Office 2007 delayed (again)

And speaking of delays, Microsoft has announced another delay in the release of Office 2007. If all goes as planned, the product will still ship before the end of 2006. The company says the delay will allow programmers to address some performance and design issues that have been criticized by beta testers.

Business users should see Office 2007 by the end of the year and it should be in stores during the first quarter of 2007. It probably wouldn't do to ship Office 2007 in 2008.

Thanksgiving excrement

Subject line on a spam message I received this week. Yeah, I'm going to be real likely to open that one. And the ones titled "Thanksgiving excrement", "Re: rokuv", or "Order status, oratio obliqua".

Spammers place random words in the subject line and in the text of messages to fool spam filters. They don't fool mine, but they do provide some laughable terms.

Another card you don't want

Not long ago, I talked about receiving a "postcard" notice that claimed to be from a family member. Without going any further, I knew that the notification was a fake. The postcard company wouldn't know my relationship to the sender and virtually all electronic postcard providers send a message that includes the actual sender's name and e-mail address. Neither was present. The people who create these lures are using better bait, but it's still easy to spot a phony.

		Click any of the individual images for a larger view. Here's the e-mail I received. The supposed text from "mypostcard.com" was written by someone with only a marginal knowledge of English. The supposed message from my "friend" set the hook well, though, "Hy there! It has been a long time since I haven't heared about you! I've just found out about this service from Claire, a friend of mine who also told me that..." Well, it set the hook reasonably well. I don't know anyone who writes that poorly and misspells simple words such as "hi", but it's easy to miss things like that. Clicking the link would not show me an animated card, but would run an executable program on my computer. Needless to say, I didn't click the link.
		The link went to an IP address (65.98.90.103) so I wanted to see who owned it. The address came back to Fortress ITX, which appeared to be an Internet service provider and possibly a hosting company.
		I tried entering just the IP address in the browser -- not the rest of the deadly URL. The result was a 404 error, but the error message kindly told me the name of the domain, CuteTemplates.com.
		CuteTemplates.com is a business that's located in Panama.
		This is the CuteTemplates.com website. Conclusion: CuteTemplates was not involved in the scam, but was an unwitting victim. Apparently someone gained sufficient access to the company's Web server to create a directory and install a file.
		The card claimed to be from YourPostcard.com, but the domain is not in operation and is for sale. Conclusion: YourPostcard.com is a victim.
		The link's IP address is owned by Fortress ITX. The company's website is shown at the right. Conclusion: Fortress ITX was not involved and is a victim.

The postcard's actual point of entry was Newnan.com, which is registered to The Newnan Times-Herald of Newnan, Georgia. Conclusion: A computer at the newspaper had been turned into a zombie and was spewing Trojan horse messages designed to infect other computers.

This is a lot of work

I spent about an hour tracing down various leads and capturing screen images. If that seems like a lot of work for a single e-mail message, it is.

None of that work was really necessary, though. I did it to illustrate how many people are victimized by the creeps (and I'm being polite) who do these kinds of things. I did it because I could. I did it because occasional forays of this sort are interesting diversions.

But I could have stopped the instant I read the message. The lack of a valid, verifiable sender's identity told me all that I really needed to know. If that wasn't enough, finding a link that ended in "exe" certainly would have been.

Nerdly News

You, too, Apple?

Microsoft Windows check in with Microsoft periodically, to the great annoyance of some users. At Apple, they think different. Starting with the just released OS X 10.4.7, Apple's operating system periodically checks in with Apple, to the great annoyance of some users. Apple calls it the Dashboard Advisory and said that it's designed to keep widgets up to date. Apple also says that the connection transmits no personal data to the company.

So if you don't like it, you just go to System Preferences and turn it off -- right? No, Apple thinks different and there is no easy way to turn it off. If this sounds vaguely familiar, it was Apple that released Itunes 6.0.2 with the MiniStore feature to push music buying selections back to the user. I would call this advertising. Apple called it a customer service, but later provided a way to turn it off.

Suits have been filed against Microsoft for its Windows Genuine Advantage program, so Apple's timing in releasing a new version of the OS with a similar feature could have been a bit better.

You can turn off the Dashboard Advisory, but it requires using the Terminal and typing a long and complicated Unix command with the "sudo" command, which gives the user temporary root (or "super user") privileges.

Google Checkout, but not at Ebay

Google recently launched Google Checkout, a service that allows people to pay for on-line purchases. Ebay says the service isn't welcome. This is hardly a surprise given Ebay's relationship with PayPal. But it is surprising in that Google was careful to point out that Checkout would not compete with PayPal.

Ebay also doesn't welcome Netpay, Qchex, Epassporte, or BillPay.

Google Checkout stores users' credit card and address information so that they don't have to enter the information each time they make a purchase from a new website.

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