One thing I found quite frustrating however was the 140 character limit. I mean, for status updates I suppose that’s fine, but for discussion? That’s less than a single text message, and yet within that you also have to include the topic that you’re posting to and if you’re replying to someone specifically then you even have to include their name with an @ symbol before it. Already that takes you down to around 120 characters to convey your point no matter how complicated or intricate it is.

At first you keep forgetting about the limit. You compose a message that you already feel is much shorter than anything else you’ve written that day, only to glance at the screen to find that you’re actually 15 characters over the limit and unable to post. You then read through your message, replacing longer words for shorter equivalents (which never have exactly the same meaning) and substituting shorter words for txt spk. If you’re lucky you get below 140 characters, but if you’re not then you have to start the whole process again. Finally, when your message is hardly legible and barely makes the point that you initially set out to make, it’s short enough to post.

Twitter started out in 2006 as a status update website. I remember checking it out at my old workplace – the tagline was “what are you doing?”. I registered, posted a short message, then dismissed it as pointless and moved on. A couple of years passed, some celebrities stumbled across it and all of a sudden it was the place to go to talk to people you’d never met.

Fast forward to today and millions of people are posting on twitter on a daily basis. Twitter is finding itself included on more and more services – most recently Xbox Live and PlayStation Network – yet many people (myself included) are still wondering what all the fuss is about. Twitter is like Facebook but without the good bits; in fact, it’s not like Facebook at all – it’s just the Facebook status update feature by itself. As far as I can tell, people haven’t tried to hold a discussion through Facebook status updates, so why are they doing it with twitter?

Twitter has exploded for the same reason that Nintendo’s Wii is dominating the other, technologically superior consoles: ease of use and the casual market. In the same way that certain gamers who are reluctant to pick up a controller to play Halo or Call of Duty are happy to pick up a Wiimote to play party games, certain content authors are much happier using twitter than a technically superior alternative that they perceive as more complicated. To a lot of these people, the 140 character limit and the omnipresent Fail Whale are necessary evils because the alternatives are all just too difficult or time-consuming to get into. Of course, anyone who has taken the time or made the effort to set up one of the alternatives – personally I’m thinking about an IRC server here – knows that the extra time invested in setting everything up and learning how to use it is more than a worthwhile investment with with the extra features and flexibility that are available. IRC is actually designed for discussion and file-sharing rather than just posting about what you’re currently watching on TV or how sunny it is outside.

A lot of twitter users who use it for discussion are now becoming frustrated by its limitations – as I was after just a few minutes. Twitter never claimed that their service should be used for lengthy discussion though (although they are trying to bolt-on extra functionality now to try to satisfy demand), so to complain about its shortcomings as a discussion medium does seem a little unfair in all honesty. After all, you wouldn’t kick a cat for not being able to bark as it never claimed to be able to in the first place. So, what can be done to help people find a more suitable means of discussing hot topics without having to do anything too difficult or time-consuming?

Since I work in the educational sector, I’ve decided to set up some chat rooms dedicated to the educational discussions that currently take place on twitter. They’re free, quick and easy to use, aesthetically pleasing, allow proper discussion and file-sharing and also provide transcripts of the discussion for archive purposes. So far, #sschat, #mathchat and #gtchat all have a dedicated room with the possibility of more coming on board in the near future. The rooms are at http://discussions.learnalot.co.uk and will be used (in conjunction with the usual twitter discussion) from this coming Monday. More information is available on the Learnalot blog.

The website prominently displays a host of award badges from sites such as Softpedia and Tucows, and the list of available software, available languages and support forum all suggest some degree of professionalism.

I downloaded Video Converter 6 and installed it. My first impressions were that the software looked reasonable enough. There were a couple of more clues that English wasn’t the developer’s first language (why don’t these guys ever get things translated properly?) but the features looked pretty impressive. I tried it out with a Blu-Ray copy of Gran Torino and once I watched it rip 15 minutes’ worth without crashing, I decided to support the company by buying a license. As I went out later, I didn’t actually get a chance to use the software to back-up any movies until this morning.

This morning I put in a DVD – Breach in fact – and started the backing up process. Immediately I noticed that AVS4YOU’s software was much slower than the FREE DVD Video Converter from DVDVideoSoft. I’ve used this software to back up some of my movies in the past but had decided to buy a product in the end because of the annoying popups that DVD Video Converter gives you when you close the program. Nevertheless, I let it complete the backup as I wanted to make sure that the default quality settings gave me comparable results.

After the backup had completed, I opened the file. Pretty much immediately I could tell that the audio and video were out of sync – just enough to be noticeable at first, but as I skipped through the movie the delay between what you saw and what you heard got bigger and bigger. Annoyed that AVS4YOU’s software couldn’t even make a backup of a simple DVD at default settings, I went to the support area of their website and opened a ticket to ask if there were any special settings that I was supposed to use to make this software work. That was around 8 hours ago, but so far I’ve received no answer.

Immediately after posting the support ticket, I checked out their forum to see if anyone had had the same problem and – more importantly – had offered a solution. I found a thread dating back 2 years where some guy had experienced exactly the same problem when trying to back up to AVI. This didn’t look good. I progressed through various similar posts and the company’s poorly-written replies before finally ending up on page 10 where I submitted my own account.

I basically laid it all out – I’d bought the software yesterday, found that it didn’t work properly and was disappointed to see that these issues had been going on for over two years. I stated that a free alternative from DVDVideoSoft was able to give me perfect results in half the time and asked if these issues were going to be fixed or if I was going to get a refund.

All day, I had no reply – nothing from the forum and nothing from the support ticket. Then, around 20 minutes ago I decided to check out the forum to see if anyone else had posted anything after me. To my amazement, I saw that the post I made this morning had been edited – gone was the mention of DVDVideoSoft’s free software and gone was the bit where I asked if I could get a refund. To top it off, there was no reply! Someone had actually taken the time to edit my post, but hadn’t bothered to reply to it nor to my support ticket!

I composed another message on the forum that left the company in no doubt that I wanted either working software or a refund and that if they messed around with my posts again, I would write about my experience here. A couple of minutes later though, I decided that it would be best to write about my experience on here anyway so that others can avoid making the same mistake that I made and avoid buying sub-standard software from a company that would rather spend its time editing its users’ forum posts than offering any kind of support.

I uninstalled AVS4YOU’s poor excuse for software and found that it left behind two more applications – an “update manager” and a “software navigator”, both of which I had to manually uninstall despite having just uninstalled the tool that was responsible for them both.

As I’m sure AVS4YOU will edit my last two posts (or maybe even delete them completely) rather than offer me some customer service, here’s a screenshot of the forum as I left it.

Update #1: AVS4YOU still hadn’t replied by the next day, so I opened a dispute on PayPal in order to get a refund. I guess AVS4YOU would prefer that its customers don’t know that they can do this (for up to 45 days after purchase), but they can and they should.

Update #2: AVS4YOU have now deleted all of my posts on their forum bar the original one that was heavily censored. They claimed that each post broke one of their forum rules – either by “advertising another product” or by “making a complaint against a moderator”. It seems you have to be happy both with their sub-standard software AND with their questionable forum censorship practices in order for your posts to be left alone on there. I’ve made one final post, making absolutely sure that it doesn’t violate any of their “rules”, which contains a link to this article – let’s see how long it stays on there and what the excuse is when they remove it!

Update #3: It’s gone! It lasted 24 hours but now Vlad has deleted it and emailed me to inform me of the deletion, though he’s completely neglected to tell me which forum rule it broke in order for it to be deleted. I’ve replied and asked for clarification. That Vlad and AVS4YOU continue to demonstrate the kind of censorship rarely seen outside of North Korea even though I’m reporting every instance is astounding.

Update #4: Incredibly, Vlad replied to tell me that the post was deleted for being “off topic”. This whole thing has become farcical so I’ve asked for ALL of my posts to be removed immediately. I have no wish to have any posts on what is an absolute JOKE a forum – especially ones that have been doctored to say something totally different to what was intended. So far he’s deleted everything except my initial (doctored) post, including his own fake reply, but he’s now disabled my account so that I can’t post any more links to this article.

Vlad, you’re lucky that I have ethical standards or I’d have edited your post to say “Our software sucks and we are all unprofessional clowns!”.

The PSPgo was released in Europe and the US on October 1st, 2009 as an alternative – not a replacement – to the recently released 3000. At launch the unit price was £250 – around £100 more than the 3000 – though due to the substantial resulting backlash many retailers were discounting the machine to around £225 from day one.

The Go has exactly the same hardware specifications as the 3000 except that it can’t play traditional UMD games as it lacks a UMD drive and it has a smaller screen due to the console itself being half an inch smaller and 43% lighter than the 3000. Depending on who you ask, the smaller size is sometimes a positive and sometimes a negative – yes it’s easier to fit into your pocket but yes a larger screen is always better than a smaller one.

Sony’s decision to launch the original PSP back in 2005 with a UMD drive was quite controversial. Back in 2005, solid state memory was pretty expensive and the UMD allowed a cheap method of providing up to 1.8GB of storage space for its games which would have cost almost as much as the console itself in solid state. However, the drive was slow, it drained the battery and as soon as your games collection surpassed the grand total of 1 you had to find another pocket for your (cumbersome and delicate) UMDs. Some cases allowed up to 3 UMDs to be carried with the console but quickly got bulky – anything more than 3 and you were looking at a bag.

The UMD format shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone though as Sony’s history with bespoke formats is long and colourful. Among the success stories are the CD, the Memory Stick and Blu-ray, but on the flip side are BetaMax, DAT tapes and Mini Disk. Cynics were adding the UMD to the latter list as early as 2006.

At the beginning Sony seemed to have high hopes for the UMD format. As well as providing the medium for the PSP’s games, the UMD was also used for PSP versions of the latest blockbuster movies (the original PSP came with Spiderman 2) though this aspect was actually poorly thought out.

Firstly, a UMD movie could only be watched on the PSP – a rumoured UMD set-top box that would allow UMDs to be watched on your living room TV never materialised. Secondly, this PSP-only version of the movie often cost considerably more than a DVD copy that you could watch on anything. It was even possible to rip DVD movies to memory card and watch them on the PSP at no extra cost, though Sony artificially crippled the resolution of movies played back this way to 320×240 as a way of forcing people to watch their movies on UMD – which could use the system’s 480×272 screen to its full potential. With custom firmware removing this limitation however and UMD movie sales slumping, Sony eventually removed the limitation from their own firmware in revision 3.30 as part of a larger drive to try to stem the flow of custom firmware installations.

So, the UMD failed as a movie format and here in 2010 you can get memory cards of a higher capacity for next to nothing, so surely the PSPgo is a no-brainer and everyone should upgrade from their PSP3000, right? Sadly not, and the reasons are all down to yet more stupidity on Sony’s part.

First there’s the console’s price. Even today it costs £200 while the PSP 3000 costs £130. The Go has recently gone through a relaunch due to lacklustre sales to an indifferent public and now includes 10 “free” games, though again all is not as it seems. The first and most obvious issue is that you’re paying for these “free” games in the inflated price of the system so they’re not free at all. The second issue is that while 6 of the games are either critically or commercially acclaimed, four of them are not and so are unlikely to be on your wanted list, and lastly, although Sony claims that there’s £200 of games being given out for free here, you could actually get all 10 for closer to £70 on UMD if you were to shop around. Still, if this offer is enough to tempt you, be warned that Sony fully intends to make back any money that it’s losing with this promotion as soon as you start buying more games.

Assuming you swallow the £70 higher price tag of the Go, you’ll then be wanting to buy some more games for the machine. The only place to buy games for the Go is on Sony’s online PlayStation Network (PSN), and for some reason nearly a year after the console’s launch there are still a LOT of great games that aren’t available on the service simply because they were released before Sony started selling games online.

When you do find a game that you want to buy on the service, be prepared to pay a premium. Despite having zero distribution costs, everything from brand new releases to bargain-bin golden oldies costs significantly more on PSN than on UMD. I’ve heard clowns make excuses for this, claiming that it costs publishers more to sell on PSN than it does to sell in shops and therefore the games simply have to cost more. Whether this is the case or not I don’t know, but I don’t think the average customer cares about the politics behind it all and I think they just want fair prices. Besides, I’m not sure how any of this is supposed to excuse Sony’s own games which also cost more on PSN than they do on UMD – are we to believe that Sony’s gaming division is charging itself extortionate rates to sell on its own platform? That seems to be quite a stretch for the imagination – even for a Sony fanboy.

Lastly, if you’re one of those people who sells their games once they’re completed or no longer played (personally I keep all of mine, unless the game is just total garbage) then you’re out of luck on the PSPgo. Games are digitally signed at the point of download to only work on your PSP, so you’re stuck with the game whether you like it or not. You can’t sell it to anyone and can’t send it back for a refund – this really is a one-way trip here. Of course, with a UMD copy (which cost you less in the first place remember), you can either sell it on eBay or part-exchange it for another game in your local games shop.

I said earlier I’d come back to why the PSPgo has so far sold so poorly that Sony felt it needed a relaunch. Unfortunately for Sony, it appears that the gaming public isn’t quite as stupid or gullible as Sony likes to believe.

When the PSPgo was first announced and the lack of a UMD drive was confirmed, thousands of PSP owners who initially wanted to upgrade asked the question, “How do I get all of my [UMD] games onto it?“. Sony promised a solution, though wouldn’t give any clues as to what the solution was until shortly before the release of the console. Speculation was rife, including – though not limited to – the idea that Sony would install booths into games shops all around the country that would turn UMD games into digital copies.

It turned out however that the “solution” was this: for people who had an existing UMD games collection, Sony was willing to give them an incredible 3 games for free with their PSPgo. That included those who only had 3 UMD games as well as those who had 100+. Also, the selection of games to choose from was very limited. Unsurprisingly, few took up their “trade-in” offer and most stuck to their older PSPs instead.

Those who were new to the world of PSP weren’t stupid either – why would they pay extra for a system that also forced them to pay extra for a smaller selection of games? And then prevent them from selling those games when they were done with them?

The result was, quite naturally, poor sales of the PSPgo which lead Sony to conclude that the gaming public “was not yet ready for digital distribution”. I’d say that on the contrary, digital distribution is doing just fine when done properly and that in fact what people aren’t ready for is to be ripped off three times over with a single console. Had the pricing of the console reflected the lower manufacturing cost and the pricing of the games reflected the zero distribution costs, then I think the PSPgo could have been a contender – even with the smaller games selection. As it is, to answer the question at the beginning of this article – is is worth buying a Sony PSPgo? No it isn’t – get the PSP 3000 instead.

First off, the console is gorgeous. It’s noticeably smaller than the original and very shiny. The power and drive tray buttons are both touch-sensitive so you only need to tap them for them to work and there are 5 USB ports instead of the old one’s 3 – which means my USB hub is now unemployed.

Somewhat annoyingly, the connection to the power brick has also been changed so I had to go behind the TV and untangle a load of wires to get the old brick out so that I could put the new one in.

Anyway, once all that was done I looked again at the console. The hump that housed the HDD on the old model has disappeared and in its place is a little slot with a little cover clipped on it. I took this cover off and found a little HDD case about a half inch tall and about 3-4 inches wide. I pulled out the HDD to take a look at it and saw a couple of standard Serial-ATA connectors on the other side. Was Microsoft finally letting people upgrade their machines with unofficial drives that were bigger and cheaper than the official offerings?

A discussion with @XboxSupport on Twitter revealed that no, this is not the case. Somewhat annoyed by this since my PS3 is happily running a 7,200RPM 500GB drive since I got it, I asked why. The ensuing conversation (after the jump) has been edited to make it more readable but the content is untouched.

g4r37h: Hey guys. I got my 360 Slim today. The HDD has standard serial ATA ports on it – does that mean I can install a bigger drive?

XboxSupport: It is not possible for a larger hard drive to be installed into the console. ^RH

g4r37h: Hmm, so what would happen if I connected a 500gb laptop drive? It would physically fit, right? But the software would block it?

XboxSupport: The drive would not be properly formatted to work with the 360. ^RH

g4r37h: So the answer is yes you block it through software. I guess that’s so that you can charge twice as much for an official drive?

XboxSupport: The official drives have been formatted to work with the 360 software to ensure security of the files and system. ^RH

g4r37h: Come on guys, I know formatting is nothing more than the file system which is controlled by software. You could make unofficial drives work quite easily. In fact, you’ve clearly gone out of your way to stop them working if an unofficial drive won’t work. I think it’s down to being able to charge crazy money for official HDDs. Tell me I’m wrong.

XboxSupport: If you’d like to use an external USB drive you can for storage from 1-16GB. ^RH

g4r37h: I don’t want 16GB USB storage. I want a 1TB drive in there. There’s no hardware reason why I can’t – the connections match. So can you confirm that a 1TB drive wouldn’t work because your software would block it? I have a 500gb drive in my PS3 and have done since launch. Why can’t I do the same with my 360?

g4r37h: OK I’ll be honest – I know it’s so that you can charge crazy money for official drives. I just wanted to hear you say it

XboxSupport: It is not a feature supported by the 360. We do not have specifics on why that decision was made. ^RH

g4r37h: Of course you do – check out my previous post!

XboxSupport: We do not have specifics on those decisions that were made. ^RH

g4r37h: OK let’s make a deal. We’ll agree that it’s so that you can charge double for official drives until you give me an alternative.

XboxSupport: We don’t have details on that decision but it is not for that reason. ^RH

g4r37h: Oh come on. If you don’t know what the reason is, how do you know what it isn’t? It’s not hardware – the hardware is the same. It’s not software – because you control that. The only other variable is price. Why let people buy 500GB if you can charge them the same amount for 120GB! It’s a great business plan.

XboxSupport: The official hard drives are there to be trusted sources and help keep the platform secure. ^RH

g4r37h: Trusted sources? So a brand new drive with twice the capacity and half the cost wouldn’t be secure? Can you explain why? Because as far as I know you could still format the drive, encrypt the content etc just the same.

g4r37h: I was happy to let this go with a gentleman’s agreement but since you’re trying to tell me it’s something else now I’m curious!

XboxSupport: We don’t have details on that process, sorry. ^RH

g4r37h: Sony’s PS3 is a lot more secure than the 360 and yet they allow unofficial HDDs. I’d say secure sources isn’t a factor.

g4r37h: Hmm ok then. Is that your final word on the matter? Because all of this is going into my blog as we speak.

XboxSupport: It is a decision that was made by Microsoft when developing the console. Sorry, we don’t have any details outside of that. ^RH

g4r37h: Yes I know when the decision was made and who made it. The question was why. I’m saying it’s all down to pricing.

XboxSupport: We do not have full details on why the decision was made. ^RH

g4r37h: Yeah I got that the first time! Then I said it was so you could charge double for official HDDs and then you failed to retort.

g4r37h: Never mind. I think everyone else knows the reason even if you’re not allowed to confirm it. Thanks for the chat!

XboxSupport: Have a good day. ^RH

So, there we have it. When I put it to Microsoft that there was no plausible reason for blocking unofficial HDDs other than the fact that they want to be able to over-charge for official drives, they had no reply. I know we all knew that anyway, but it was still somewhat disappointing that Microsoft couldn’t just admit something that is painfully obvious and instead tried to fob me off with some rubbish about security and reliability – security on a console that is a lot less secure than its main competitor (which freely allows unofficial HDDs) and reliability on a console that is plagued by RRODs – none of which are related to the HDD.

Microsoft, if you’re going to lie about the reason you don’t allow official hard drives, at least come up with a half decent excuse!

I got the HTC Desire with 300 minutes, 3000 texts and 500mb data on a 24-month contract for just £20/month with the phone itself costing me £55.

If you look at what the competition is offering, the same deal would cost £30/month at the Carphone Warehouse (although the phone would have been free), which over 24 months means that I’d have paid £185 more overall – including the cost of the phone.

It’s a similar story at Phones4U where the same deal again costs £30/month although the duration of the contract is lower. However, all is not as it seems. While Phones4U would claim that an 18-month contract is better than a 24-month alternative, in this case it simply isn’t. Allow me to demonstrate:

£30/month for 18 months and a free HTC Desire = £540
£20/month for 24 months and an HTC Desire for £55 = £535

At first glance Phones4U looks only slightly more expensive here, and if you speak to them on the phone they make a big deal about it “only” being an 18 month contract. However, for that you’re actually getting 6 months less service, and to have a working phone for the same length of time you’d need to extend the contract by another 6 months which would cost an additional £180 which brings it up to the same cost as the Carphone Warehouse. No-one only needs a phone for 18 months, and that’s what they’re relying on here to make their deal look more attractive. It doesn’t take much to see through their false logic though.

You could argue that with Phones4U you’d be getting your upgrade 6 months earlier than you would with Vodafone, but the £185 more that you’d be paying for a phone that works for 24 months would cover the price of an upgrade from Vodafone (for a similar phone) over 3 times over.

Vodafone’s UK Deals Team is also offering the HTC Legend on a similar contract for just £15/month (which is the one my father and two of my sisters have taken) and they have lots of other deals for different manufacturers as well.

Well, it’s finally here. Nearly three months after Magus released his SWF Decryptor which circumvented both Amayeta’s SWF Encrypt and DCOMsoft’s SWF Protector 2, DCOMsoft has returned with SWF Protector 3. The update was initially promised to be with us within days, so let’s hope this new version is worth the long wait.

First impressions were slightly dampened by the installer’s default install location and icons being labelled “Swf Protector 2″, despite the text and the graphics on the installer claiming that this is in fact “Swf Protector 3″. Clearly whoever compiled the installer didn’t take the time to check the strings in the setup script, which seems a bit slap-dash considering the length of time this thing’s been in development. I manually updated the paths and names and continued with the installation.

Once installed, SWF Protector 3 looks pretty much identical to its predecessor apart from the label in the application’s title bar. What with the above installer issue and the identical application interface, it’s pretty clear that all that’s changed in this version of SWF Protector is the obfuscation engine so that’s where I’ll focus my attention for this review. For any other aspects of the software you might as well check out the review for the previous version.

I decided to take an in-development Learnalot resource (blog) as my test file because I’d actually had trouble with it with SWF Protector 2. Despite working perfectly with Settlers, the second version of SWF Protector broke a single button in this resource which prevented the user from progressing from the first activity. I never did work out the exact reason for this failure, but nevertheless SWF Protector 2 was always adamant that the file had been obfuscated “successfully”. As a workaround I had simply used another obfuscator because I don’t have the time to invest in making one piece of software work when alternatives work by default.

Anyway, I published the resource in question to give me a file of 337kb in size. First I decided to see if SWF Protector 2 was still breaking the resource. Had the file fixed itself in the time that had passed since I last tried SWF Protector 2? No, it hadn’t and the button in question was once again broken and the file was now 464kb in size.

I republished the file and this time obfuscated it with SWF Protector 3. The new file was 424kb in size, which is exactly 40kb smaller than the output from SWF Protector 2 – impressive! I ran the SWF to see if the button in question was now working, and I’m happy to report that yes it was!

As is always the case with an arms race the winning side depends purely on the time-frame in which you make your analysis. It could be just a matter of time before Magus (or someone else) releases a decryptor that undoes SWF Protector 3′s work, and then it would just be a matter of time before SWF Protector 3 was updated once more. As such, being drawn into such an argument is pretty futile so for now, I’ll just confirm that yes it protects against today’s version of SWF Decryptor.

With everything else in the application being identical to the previous version, there’s not much else to say other than to perhaps ask, where are the new features, DCOMsoft? Over two months ago in a comment over on Magus’ blog, a beleaguered Alex Chevalier did all he could to reassure the Flash community that a new version of SWF Protector was already in development a week before Magus released his tool, complete with “new algorithms and features” that was going to be out as soon as the testing process was over. Three months on, we certainly have new algorithms but where are the new features? We have support for Flash 10, but that’s it. After three months of hype I must admit that I was expecting a little more than Flash 10 support.

Nevertheless, any over-hyping (and anticlimactic) issues are irrelevant when it comes to reviewing the software as it is, and as this software is an improvement on what came before it (albeit an evolution rather than a revolution), I’ve got to mark it accordingly. The lack of any new features means there’s just as much distance between SWF Protector and Kindisoft’s SecureSWF as there was before, but the obfuscation algorithm in SWF Protector 3 is clearly a vast improvement on its predecessor both in terms of reliability and efficiency, and the official support for Flash 10 is of course a bonus for those working with the very latest plugin.

8.5/10

The reason for sending the unit back is simple; though actually diagnosing the problem was far from it. Having hooked the D-Link up to my Netgear DGN2000 which was now running in modem-only mode, my internet download speed dropped from 20mbit to 10mbit. Because it wasn’t actually the D-Link that was dialling up, this unit wouldn’t give me any connection details other than “connected” (which was far from helpful) so I had to disconnect that and connect to the Netgear directly in order to access its webmin and check the details on there. The Netgear reported a 20mbit connection, and yet whenever I downloaded anything on any of the computers, I was getting 250kb/sec max.

It turns out that the D-Link was establishing a mere 10mbit connection to the Netgear (the D-Link being a gigabit unit and the Netgear being a 100mbit unit), so no matter how fast my internet connection was I was only ever going to get 10mbit from it. I set the D-Link to force a 100mb connection and when that didn’t work I tried the gigabit option, which also didn’t do anything. Hardly performance that you’d call “Xtreme”, is it, D-Link? There was no such option on the Netgear. I disabled QoS, packet shaping, UPnP and everything else that was there to be disabled but no, nothing made any difference so I logged into PIXmania, found my order and requested an RMA number. I wrapped the D-Link back up in its French SKU box and prepared it for posting. I then did what I now wish I had done at the beginning and ordered a gigabit switch, which I’d use to connect everything to the router and get the best of both worlds – a gigabit internal network and a 20mbit internet connection.

I connected everything back up to the Netgear for now and put that back in modem/router mode, only to find that this was now playing up and refusing to issue a DHCP IP address to one of my computers. Also, one of its ports refused to work with any device. I’d had another Netgear router do this to me 18 months ago – the DG834G – which was what I’d replaced with the DGN2000. Really angry at this point, I binned the Netgear, vowed never to buy any of their crap again and hooked up the old Thompson router that we got from O2 a year ago. Everything connected to that without any problems.

The gigabit switch arrived a few days ago and so far everything with the internal network is fine, though there is an issue with O2′s router which I’m hoping a replacement router from O2 will fix, but I’ll write about this separately as it appears that a number of others are experiencing the same thing.

Hassle, hassle and yet more hassle!

Just use the code AD25 at checkout to apply the discount.

Kindisoft’s SecureSWF is the latest Flash obfuscator to go under the microscope (SWF Protector 2 and SWF Encrypt are reviewed elsewhere), so as the most expensive of the three (when considering the luxury versions), how does it stack up in terms of interface, functions, usability and stability?

Having downloaded the .zip file from the website, the first thing you notice is that there’s no installer. SecureSWF comes in a .zip file ready to extract and use without installation which has both pros and cons, though the benefits do outweigh the drawbacks. You can stick SecureSWF straight onto a USB drive like a portable app without worrying about whether or not it will run (assuming Java VM 1.5 is installed on the target machine), though if you believe in consistency you’ll have to manually stick the folder in your Program Files directory and create the relevant shortcuts in your Start Menu or favourite application launcher. As I said, the benefits do outweigh the drawbacks and I’m not suggesting that this is an issue – it’s just an observation.

So, after settling on where you’re going to run SecureSWF from, the next thing you notice after running the application is the number of options available. Compared to the other two solutions, there is a lot going on here (even the entry level SecureSWF has more options than both SWF Encrypt and SWC Encrypt combined), and it does seem a little daunting at first, but you quickly come to realise that it’s actually not that bad.

There are five tabs along the top – four of which contain settings and the last one is a status summary page. The fourth tab is just a rules page that overrides some of the options on the previous tabs, so in reality you have just three options tabs to familiarise yourself with rather than the initially anticipated five.

The first tab is the lightest on the options with just a SWF selection area, a list of presets to choose from and somewhere to specify the output location. You can select multiple files to import from the file browser (SWF, SWC and AIR formats – the others can only do SWF), though unfortunately there is no recursive import. There are five presets to choose from ranging from most- to least- aggressive, and a custom option should you want to tweak any of the presets yourself.

The second tab gets into more detail, allowing you to completely customise the level to which identifiers are renamed. Everything including local identifiers, labels, instance names, global variables and class members can be renamed to your exact requirements, and there’s even a tree structure that allows you to go in and select individual values. While this is great for offering the maximum level of obfuscation and the ability to make slight adjustments in the case of too many changes causing problems, I probably wouldn’t spend too much time here as it’s far easier to just let the presets take care of it all. Still, if I was in a situation where the maximum protection was available to me apart from one little identifier somewhere causing a problem, it’s nice to know that I can go in there and make the necessary change without having to sacrifice the security of the rest of the SWF.

The third tab offers code transformation, obfuscation, encrypted domain locking, SWF optimisation and literal strings encryption. The domain locking worked as expected, preventing my SWF from running anywhere other than this website and also from being run locally on my computer. Because I can only tell how well the other features are working by running them through a deobfuscator, I’m reserving those for another article that I’m working on which will be coming shortly.

Obfuscating a test SWF of 1,115kb, SecureSWF delivered a file of 1,156kb on maximum settings and 1,111kb on minimum settings – yes, it was actually smaller than the original. Obfuscation time was quick and on par with the others, and I experienced no crashes or freezes from the software no matter how hard I tried.

SecureSWF is a feature-packed obfuscator that not only works on Flash SWF files, but also SWC and AIR files as well. As the only obfuscator that works with these alternate file types, SecureSWF is really your only option when working with these formats. With regards to SWF files, the level of detail with which SecureSWF allows you to customise its obfuscation is significantly higher than that of SWF Protector 2, and an order of magnitude higher than that of SWF Encrypt.

One issue that always seems to come up in SecureSWF reviews is price. Yes, the fully-fledged bells-and-whistles version costs $400 which is significantly higher than either SWF Protector 2 or SWF Encrypt. However, the obfuscating methods, options and features available in this package – not to mention the fact that it will also protect your Flash components and AIR files – mean that you are getting a lot more here so naturally the cost is going to reflect that. I don’t really want to start comparing SecureSWF with its competitors here because this is supposed to be a review – not a comparison – but when one of the factors that could potentially put people off SecureSWF is its price when compared to its competitors, it’s difficult not to get sucked into such a comparison.

The bottom line is that SecureSWF starts at just $99, which is $151 less than SWF Encrypt and SWC Encrypt combined, but it offers more features than those two and does everything better. In light of that, even if price is an issue for you then SecureSWF blows SWF Encrypt out of the water having beaten it on options, features and price. Where things start to get interesting is when you compare SecureSWF to DComSoft’s $39.95 SWF Protector 2, but for that you’ll have to wait for my Versus feature which is coming soon.

In its own right, SecureSWF is a very impressive tool that is bursting with options and features. Due to the extreme levels of flexibility, it should be possible to tune every possible SWF file so that it’s protected as securely as possible without breaking any functionality. The fact that it allows obfuscation of everything from function names to labels and global variables to class members means that SWF files will be that much closer to being totally secure.

Out of 10, the usability and features on offer here have to command top marks, but I think the price of the professional edition could possibly push the application slightly out of reach for some lone developers. Yes, the Personal Lite Edition is only $99 but if you’re buying SecureSWF then you want the best version. Bearing the price of the professional edition in mind and the fact that a portion of its features are found in a product that only costs 1/10th as much, I’ve got to take a mark off. However, the wealth of additional options and features that you get for your money, their importance and the extra protection they bring to your work – plus the additional format support of course – mean that it’s just a single mark.

9/10

Coming soon: A review of how these SWF protectors stack up against SWF decryption tools.

* I say apparently because while the maths behind that increase ratio does make sense, the maths also predicts transfer rates of more like 12.5mb/sec on a 100mbit line – so to be getting 8-10mb must mean there’s quite an overhead involved…

Anyway, after looking around I settled on a D-Link Xtreme N Gigabit DIR-655 and promptly searched for some prices on Google Products.

PIXmania was the first name that I’d heard of before (and bought from previously), so although they weren’t quite the cheapest I decided to go with them – the power of brand recognition working a treat. PIXmania had it for £79.90 including VAT, so I went to the site, added it to my basket and went to checkout. Just then Firefox crashed, so when it loaded back up I manually navigated to PIXmania’s site and searched for the router. To my amazement the router was now £96.98 including VAT! That’s a 21% increase in price, with the only difference being that on the first occasion I was referred from Google Products and on the second there was no referral.

I went back to Google Products and did the search again from there. Sure enough, the router came up again for £79.90, so this time I went in and bought the router from there. I checked out, paid via PayPal and now have an email receipt for £79.90.

It would seem that PIXmania is slashing prices on price comparison websites to make themselves more competitive, yet hiking them up again to non-referrals who are unlikely to have compared their prices before making a purchase. The moral of the story here is to always use price comparison websites whenever you’re making a purchase online!