MP3 files in my music folder have to abide by a strict naming format; [artist] - [album] - [track] as well as having a complete ID3v2.x tag set. As you can imagine, this isn’t easy to maintain when you’re dealing with albums full of songs, renaming each individual track is the most laborious process you could imagine.

That was until MP3 Tag Tools came into my life, a freeware batch MP3 tagging application that boasts a whole range of features that you’d expect. Hours of my life have been saved using this and my music folder is organised and clean, just the way I like it. It’s simple to use, just select the tracks you want (…)

Programming has been part of my life for over six years now, from the days of juvenile Visual Basic applications to full blown PHP backend solutions. It runs in my blood, I guess you could consider it a hobby.
But nowadays I’m bored of it. No, that’s a broad term, more specifically, I’m uninspired, lost and confused. I’ve got no drive any more, there’s no inspirational moment that causes me to fire open my favourite IDE and code something of use. It’s like writers block I guess, a void that’s difficult to crawl out of.
I can code well in C, C++, Java, PHP and Visual Basic (although I haven’t bothered with that for years) but every time I try to write (…)

Winamp - There’s just that something about Winamp that gives it the edge over Windows Media Player, perhaps it’s the lightweight interface, or the brilliance of the media library that it uses to organise my music. However, this looks set to change once Songbird becomes a more stable release

µTorrent - No competition, seriously. µTorrent absorbs a mere 4 - 6mb of memory and is quick to load. It boasts all the features you could want from a robust bittorrent client. Brilliance.

Media Player Classic - Simple video playback, what more could you want, open a file, a DVD or a stream and press play. Simple, yet brilliant.

PHP Designer - Probably the most robust php/html/css (…)

It’s well known nowadays that there’s a divide in the future of optical media. On one side of the ring, we have Blu-Ray and on the other sits HD-DVD. Both offer their various differences in terms of storage and hardware, but in reality, they’re designed to do the same thing. Hold content in High Definition format.

The concept of moving on in technology, as it always does, is great. But it seems to of split a divide in all of the convergent industries. The film industry, for example has studios backing one or the other. The games industry as another example, we all know Sony has packed in a Blu-Ray drive for their media format of choice, while Microsoft has opted in (…)

The gadget show (Broadcast on Channel 5 in the UK) have just launched a ‘national campaign’ that entails encouraging the government to ‘blanket the entirety’ of the UK with free WiFi access.

Personally I think this is one of the best ideas I’ve heard all week, in this day and age anyway. Most gadgets nowadays involve some form of WiFi connectivity, from phones to PSP’s and obviously, laptops. In reality though, can we really use them wirelessly out in the open, being freely able to walk anywhere constantly connected? The simple answer is no.

As highlighted in the programme, coffee bars, hotels, fast food joints and even bars offer their own WiFi connection to use, but most of the time you have to pay before (…)