I’ve been using Videolan as my primary media player for videos for a while now. ?It even plays flash video that you download.

BENEFITS:

• Unlike the default media player in Windows, it has all the codecs you need and it is free. ?I can’t believe Microsoft really thought we would pay for an untold number of codecs just to watch on videos, which should be in universal players and formats.

CRITIQUE:

• When I go from video to video that has a different default size, why won’t it stick with the same size window I manually created? ?that’s rather frustrating.
• It does not notify you when there is a new update available. ?You have to seek it.

I’m trying to maximize the way I use Itunes for my ipod, but I don’t think most people appreciate all of the features that it has. ?Here are some that even my daughter didn’t know about, which I had to figure out on my own:

BENEFITS:

• For goodness sakes, use the rating system. ?Not only does it tend to play the higher rated songs more, but you can change them on the fly when you’re listening to your songs.
• Duplicate finder is built in.
• Mass update categories, genres.
• Use the smart playlists, which are dynamic.
• Sort by Date Added to make sure that your newest songs are always categorized and rated approrpiately.
• If I don’t recognize an artist, I will give a neutral category.
• I have Smart Playlists for 4 and 5 rated songs and then one for 5 rated songs when I know I’m not going to want to be flipping through songs, such as while I’m driving. ?Both of these lists have an exception for Holiday music.
• Until I can actually clean up the files on the hard drive, I put the least liked or shortest duration sounds/songs on one star.

CRITICISMS:

• It is very unclear what happens to “removed” items on the local drive. ?There is absolutely no file maintenance system and there is no way, apparently to change the file name from within Itunes.
• What’s worse is when you change anything on your actual file system, you either have to retrieve the information by seeking the folder again manually and you are plagued with a bunch of exclamation points for which there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to clean up.

DVDVideosoft.com provides this great software that is incredibly powerful, intuitive and free. ?The only shortcoming is that it only works on Youtube videos.

I particularly like finding rare songs on Youtube and reducing them into high quality MP3′s that are immediately dumped into an Itunes folder that is automatically added to my library and therefore onto my Ipod.

Now I just need to find an MP3 editor of some kind that lets me trim the audio like one does a video.

I use Microsoft because, in part, I am an Outlook/Office user, and they integrate with the software that they designed better, in most cases. ?I was not thrilled with the web results-like format in Google and I like the immediate gratification I get from clicking on the Outlook item and having it open properly.

PROS

• I have been using it for many years and the program has afforded me a way to customize to the umpteenth level the fields that I find to be important.
• The custom fields with the various formulas are very helpful mostly for my contacts.
• I use the Send2 Plugin from 4Team Corporation, which allows me to send out individual emails instead of trying to force bulk email. ?That program is not as robust as I would like, but I will critique it on another page.
• After years of struggling with a range of contact forms that were inconsistent, I finally found a free program called DocMessageClass which in an instant helped me solve years of frustration. ?It was unclear to me for so long how to convert the data I already had to the custom forms I desired and finally I learned that the field that described the “form name” was actually called “MessageClass” most likely because, in their brilliance, Microsoft probably thought that the only custom forms that people would be using would be in emails. ?Unlike most people, it seems, though, I truly take pride in trying to put my legitimate contacts into my address book, and I do so as cleanly as possible.
• Another tip related to forms in Contacts ?is making sure that every Contact folder has every form that you need. ?So, for example, I have ones that are more for Companies and ones that are for individuals. ?I have ones for Listservs, which have fields that I need and not much more. ?Of course in any contact, you can always go to the last tab and see all of the fields, but I wanted a clean interface for each TYPE of contact, so I created a Companies folder that defaults to the Companies form when I create one from scratch.
• For most individual contacts I just right click on an address in the To:, CC: or BCC: field and “Add to Contacts” and the appropriate default form comes up.
• Since the XP version of Office, the file sizes are far less of a problem for Outlook. ?No matter how many folders or categories I have, with the fast search features that there are nowadays, I just put everything into different folders usually by quarter and archive them into a PST file that I leave attached so that it is searchable with the various deskbar search softwares (I prefer the Microsoft one since they know their software the best, but for a while I used the Google Deskbar). ?This helps to reduce PST file size, which used to be limited to 2G. ?The default maximum size now is 20G, but I am far from reaching that, even though I put up to several photos for each contact that I create. ?The older PST files were notorious for unrecoverably crashing as you approached 2G and there was almost nothing that could e done about it, and no warning system. ?I don’t know anyone who has approached the default 20G file size, but I heard that even if you reach it, you can make the file sizes larger. ?I don’t see why anyone would not archive, though, as having any file that size would seem to be a waste of time with the delays that you’d probably encounter.
• I make a point of deleting attachments from emails, since I almost never need a backup in my PST of attachments. ?I also make sure to DELETE forwarded emails with attachments, especially if there is no original language in the forward, but sometimes I just remove the attachment so I have an audit of what I sent. ?You can always add a flag to say what you did, if you want to remind yourself.

CONS

• Why isn’t there a built-in method of hard-bouncing emails to known spammers?
• Why does it take so many buttons to put someone on your spam list? ?I had to create my own button. ?Ask me if you want to know how I did it.
• When I receive an email from a person in my address book, why can’t I have that person’s REAL NAME shown? ?Blackberries have been doing that for years!
• There is no way to add an EMBEDDED picture into custom Contact forms. ?This seems ridiculous.