CC Multimedia

If you are one of the iTunes aficionados that enjoy listening to music, podcasts and you download iTunes files from the online store, then you are probably feeling weird knowing that the digital format of these files doesn’t allow you to play them outside this application. It seems a really unfair since you paid for the files; do you need to have an Apple Mac or media player to reproduce these files?

The answer is that in this format you cannot play them in any media player not supported by apple or its software. The reason is that these files are in AAC or mp4 format, which is the default iTunes and Apple format. The only thing you can do is convert iTunes files to mp3 and play them in every device, using any kind of media player you prefer.

According to Apple, these files are in mp4 format because it is the only that gives such a high sound quality. For the average user though, this is pretty inconvenient, as most media players play files in mp3 format but thankfully, there are solutions. What can you do?

The first way to convert iTunes files to mp3 is to burn the downloaded files in a CD and then copy them back to your hard drive in mp3 format. This method allows you to store songs in any audio format you like, no matter what the encryption or protection of the original file was. You can use any kind of program that burns audio CDs. This is quite easy method but takes some time – and you will need to use some CDs as well. You can also create a virtual CD drive in order to eliminate the need for CD-Rs, as your system will behave as the virtual drive is real, allowing you to ‘burn’ and save the files in any format you want.

The second most popular method to convert iTunes files to mp3 is to use one of the numerous converters that exist online today. You can find several both free and shareware on the Internet. If you perform an online search you can find many converters that can help you convert even protected files to mp3 format without any compromise in quality.

Websites fall into one of two broad categories. They either provide information, services and products for free (resources), or they provide one or all of the same services in exchange for money (businesses). There are of course, a number of hybrid sites that offer both.

This article is aimed at those that operate an on-line business, but feel free to read on if you don’t!

Okay, so you have a website that offers a product or service for a fee, you have sweat blood and tears to optimise your website, and your pay-per-click advertising is bringing prospective customers in. Fantastic news. You have a major problem however, conversion rates are less than woeful and there is many a time when your ‘Cost Per Customer’ actually outweighs your marketing spend. Running a business this way results in only one outcome, i won’t spell it out because it’s a dirty word.

This brings me onto the point of conversion rates, how do you increase them? If i had the definitive answer i wouldn’t be sat here writing this article, i would be scuba diving off the Great Barrier Reef but i digress. What i do have, is some very useful information relating to a currently very underused on-line marketing technique, streaming website audio.

I’m sure we have all stumbled upon some pretty awful websites, you know the ones, with the animated dog running from side to side, with the MIDI version of the Star Wars soundtrack blaring out at you. Erase those images from your mind, we’re not going there today (although i may tomorrow, for nostalgia’s sake)

I am referring to targeted audio, produced by professionals with one result in mind, more profit for your business.

Audio on the internet is a minefield, with all kinds of compatibility issues & users connections speeds to contend with, up until now that has been a good enough reason for websites not to get involved. What was needed was a universal audio player, so everybody on the web could listen to audio without the need to download files and listen through an external media player. Well, utopia is just about here.

Flash audio is the answer to many a website’s dreams. 96% of all internet users have the flash plug-in already installed on their computer, flash audio also streams right on the page, no need for downloads. File sizes are tiny as the player interface is the only component downloaded, with the audio loading as it plays in real time.

So with that major obstacle finally overcome, the only real question left is “how can my website use audio to it’s advantage?”

Look no further than your radio or TV set. The guys behind these adverts know what works. Now you can apply the same methods on your website. To give you a statistic, websites that sell products benefit in a huge way from having sales related audio on their page, with recent figures showing up to a 33% increase in sales. Think about it, you can’t control what your visitors read but you most certainly can control what they hear.

You can take advantage of methods the TV and radio marketing wizards have been using for years.

Jingles are another massive pull for websites. Brands the world over make use of ‘sonic logos’ to create memorable names, facts and numbers. In a website environment the power of this is magnified. For starters, visitors aren’t expecting to hear a jingle when they visit your homepage so the novelty factor in itself is a good enough reason for them to recall that all important domain name. A good quality jingle will also separate your business from the rest of your probably fierce competition, it strengthens your on-line brand and re-enforces a prospective customers confidence in your business, knowing you have gone that extra mile. From a vanity point of view, there’s also the show off factor!

If you have a website that is full of drop down menus and text boxes, it can be confusing for the novice users out there, remember not everybody is as up-to-date with buying on the web as you are. This is where streaming instructional narrative comes in handy, verbally walking the customer through your site, explaining the way it works and the process they should follow in order to make a purchase.

Testimonials from customers are a good confidence builder when selling your company and a great number of people read these before making a decision to buy from you. Imagine the power of having that testimonial spoken by your customer, that really does erase any doubt in your prospective customers mind that the testimonial may not be legitimate, put yourself in their shoes and think about it.

There are a hundred and one uses for audio in a web environment, all you need do is put your creative hat on, or find a company that will take you through the process from end to end. Whatever it is your website sells, it will benefit from having targeted streaming audio, end of story. Remember, people buy from people, not computers.

Telephone, Internet, and TV service are now routinely bundled by service providers. It is convenient to have a single supplier and one bill a month. With the availability of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), the lines between the different services have blurred further.

Broadband Internet service (High Speed) for residential or small business requirements has usually been available from two sources: DSL, a system that piggybacked on the telephone wiring from the telephone company, or Cable, a system that similarly piggybacked on the cable TV wiring. In 2008, about 25 million customers utilized cable broadband, and about 22 million customers utilized DSL. In 2001, a total of about 5 million customers used either cable broadband or DSL.

For most people the TV coaxial cable has offered better performance than DSL, but if you were highly price conscious, then the DSL cable may have been competitive. So, in a discussion of broadband choices, we should include cable and DSL, but we will also discuss new options that are now available like WildBlue satellite, and services that will soon be available like WiMax (WiFi with a city-wide hot-spot) and ViaSat (satellite communications on steroids).

The Impact of Video Downloads (especially HDTV):

Despite the relatively small number of users, research indicates that systems such as BitTorrent and YouTube account for more than half of all Internet traffic. In 1995 the total amount of data transacted over the Internet backbone was about 1.5 million GB. By 2006, this had grown to over 700 million GB.

ABI Research projects that the number of video downloads to increase from 215 million downloads this year (2008) to 2.4 billion downloads in 2012. This number becomes more impressive when one takes into account that a much higher per cent of those downloads in 2012 will be HDTV files, which are much larger (A non HDTV movie is approximately 3 GB/Hour, HDTV file size is dependent on encoding: an MPEG-4 encoded HDTV movie file size is approximately 5 GB/Hour, an unencoded 1280 X 720 movie file size is over 150 GB/Hour, and an unencoded 1920 X 1080 movie file size is over 350 GB/Hour).

By 2010, forecasts call for 80-90% of Internet traffic to be video transfer.

Cable and the Phone Companies (DSL):

Cable broadband is capable of about 30 MBPS of bandwidth, however, speed can vary. Unfortunately, the measurement in real-world conditions can be more complicated. If many people in your neighborhood use the same broadband service as you, and those people use a lot of bandwidth, for video downloads for example, then you will be sharing some resources, and your performance will suffer. Most service providers offer service with between 3-6 MBPS bandwidth for downloads. Upload bandwidth is lower: usually between 200-600 KBPS.

Median DSL speed in the U.S. is 768 KBPS. One type of DSL technology, VDSL, is capable of 30 MBPS bandwidth, but this service is not widely available. Instead, telephone companies more commonly offer ADSL or SDSL services (cheaper and slower).

Both Cable Broadband and DSL service providers commonly employ bandwidth caps for residential and small business customers. Service providers concerned about the overall capability of their network may institute the capacity constraints so that they can provide equal performance to all of their customers.

Cable and the Phone Companies HDTV:

Verizon is building fiber-optic networks that will be capable of broadcasting handle 200+ HDTV channels in addition to all of the conventional TV channels.

Most cable operators have enough available bandwidth for only about 10-12 HDTV channels without a major retooling of their networks.

WiMax and LTE:

In major metropolitan areas in the U.S., WiMax should available late in 2008. Sprint will make its commercial WiMAX debut in Baltimore in September. WiMax supports peak data speeds of about 20 MBPS, but, as with most broadband technologies, that bandwidth will be shared amongst users. On average, a user will see data rates between 1 MBPS and 4 MBPS.

Most major wireless carriers are skipping WiMax, planning instead to build out networks using a similar technology called Long Term Evolution (LTE), a successor to current cellular technology. WiMax has a head start on LTE, which won’t be ready until 2010. These two technologies are referred to as 4G networks (Current state of the art mobile phone technology for accessing the Internet is called 3G). If mobile broadband service is important to you, these products will be very attractive. Unlike rivals GSM and CDMA, both 4G networks are based on “Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing” (OFDM), also sometimes referred to as “discrete multi-tone modulation”. Since both LTE and WiMax are based on similar technology, a unified standard is possible in theory, and discussions are ongoing. Motorola has said 85% of the technology and work for WiMax equipment will be reused in its designs for LTE equipment.

WiMAX and LTE can deliver large amounts of bandwidth operating at the low power levels necessary for mobile devices. Another advantage of WiMax/LTE is its ability to communicate out of line-of-sight (unlike conventional WiFi), and to communicate into large buildings, in theory making dropped calls, typical of today’s cell phones, a thing of the past. A company called MobiTV will utilize the WiMAX network for the broadcast of TV, including HDTV. VoIP (telephone service) has already been deployed on WiMAX networks in other parts of the world.

Satellite Broadband:

Also newly introduced into the Broadband market, is WildBlue Satellite. This broadband service does not require a phone or cable line. WildBlue Satellite broadband service offers download/upload speeds starting at just $50 per month (512 kbps download speed with upload speed up to 128 kbps), or $80 per month (1.5 Mbps download speed and uploads up to 256 kbps). For those living in areas not well served by Cable Broadband and DSL, this is an attractive alternative. iNetVu offers a portable system for vehicles.

A very powerful new satellite, Viasat-1, will launch in 2011. This satellite will greatly improve the competitiveness of satellite in this field. ViaSat-1 has a total throughput capability of over 100 Gb/second, which is more capacity than the current American fleet of two-way C, Ka, and Ku band satellites combined. In 2010, a similar service will be launed in Europe by Ka-Sat.

Both WildBlue and ViaSat terminals use a networking technology that uses satellite bandwidth more efficiently, called DOCSIS (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specifications), lowering the cost of Internet service to consumers. The terminals include satellite modems and Ka band transceivers. DOCSIS has the ability to address “rain fade”, a reduction in signal that is caused by heavy cloud cover, like during a thunderstorm. DOCSIS automatically responds to a reduced signal caused by atmospheric conditions with variable power control and data encoding techniques.

ViaSat-1 will offer more than a 10X increase in the capacity with frequency reuse by utilizing a technique called “SpotBeams” (WildBlue also uses SpotBeams). The high throughout of ViaSat-1 makes it ideal for transmitting new video applications requiring ultra high bit rates such as HDTV, HD digital cinema, and 3D TV. Spotbeams can be compared to a searchlight. SpotBeams focus a signal on an area 100 to 200 miles across. Thge same frequencies can be be reused many time, but for a different focus area.

WildBlue and ViaSat are geosynchronous satellites. A geosynchronous satellite remains above the same spot on the earth by orbiting at approximately 36,000 kilometers above the equator. Your signal must do a round-trip, and the minimum time for such a trip is about 1/4 second.

Satellite HDTV:

While HDTV local channels are more available on cable than satellite, DirecTV and the Dish Network each offer more national HDTV channels. DirecTV offers about 60 national HDTV channels and the Dish Network has about 50 HDTV channels. DirecTV and EchoStar plan additional satellites to offer at least 150 national HD channels, as well as local stations in HDTV.

“Satellite’s going to be constrained not so much by how many channels they can carry than by how many they can get,” Bob Scherman, Satellite Business News.

By 2010, it is projected that 60% of TV receivers will use a Satellite signal, up from 15% in 2002.
Summary:

Median DSL speed in the U.S. is 768 KBPS.
Median Internet speed over Cable broadband is about 4.5 MBPS.
WildBlue service is approximately 500 KBPS.
WiMax service will be between 1 MBPS and 4 MBPS.
ViaSat-1 service (2011) will be about 2 MBPS.

HDTV service is currently more fully served by the satellite TV companies like DirectV and Dish Network. New systems being implemented by Verizon, or perhaps a thorough retooling by local cable TV operators will offer the best competition.

The supply of HDTV and Broadband service in the U.S. is currently fragmented from the satellite industry. Both may be available from local retailers, but a unified system is lacking. This compares poorly to Europe and EutelSat, which will launch Ka-Sat in 2010 (Ka-Sat is very similar to ViaSat-1, discussed above), and install this satellite in a satellite “neighborhood”, so that a single system will receive both the TV signals from their HotBird satellite system, and receive high performance broadband from Ka-Sat. This is unfortunate for U.S. consumers.

Currently, over 90% of customers of broadband services utilize either cable broadband or DSL. However, new worthy competition is entering the fray, and it will be difficult for those services to maintain their market share.

People learning to play violin are always faced with the expectation that this is one of the most difficult instruments to play. This is true. However, your patience will pay off well if you really learn how to play. It was said that the violin is one of the best musical instruments to play at a very tender age.

Once you have the right set-up, you can now start playing violin. First off, you need a private area and sit back on a straight-backed chair. You will also need a music stand where you can lace the music sheet. You first need to pluck every string on the violin and then test the tension. This is also the way you can test the pitch of the violin. You can use a piano to tune the violin. If you do not know how to do it, you can ask a tutor or have it tuned by a professional.

Now, the next step in learning to play violin is how to position it. You need to make sure that the base of the violin and its chin rest right below your chin. If the violin is incorrectly positioned, you will also have difficulty playing. Next, use the pad of your index finger to stress the G string. This is the bottom string and it is recommended that you press it well to an extent that it also touches the D string altogether. This mode of playing is called pizzicato or plucking.

Part of the exercises in learning to play violin is you need to practice plucking the G string also for fur times and stop only once you have the gotten the rhythm. After plucking the G string for four times, you may follow it through with the strings D, A, and E.

Learning to play violin has more exercises. For now, you need to practice this basic plucking style and make sure you have at least become efficient with it and then move on to other violin exercises.

Having an MP3 player can be a really great convenience, and can come in handy in a variety of situations. But if it breaks, finding ipod parts or iphone screens can be difficult, expensive, and time consuming. That is why taking care of your MP3 player is such an important aspect of owning one.

There are many great ways to use your MP3 player or a phone that has similar capabilities. If you want to go out for a jog or go to the gym to work out, it is easy to grab your MP3 player and hit the road. If this device is coupled with a phone, then you are never without either convenience. Music is great to listen to while you’re running or working out. It can relax you, get you into the rhythm of running or biking for long distances, or it can pump you up to hit the bench press and max out.

The battery life on the most recent versions of the MP3 player and the MP3 capable devices makes them great for long road trips, bus rides, or plane flights. If you’re stuck next to the talkative traveler or the couple with the crying baby one the plane, you will want as much life out of your batteries as possible. Some of the newer devices offer up to 30 hours of listening to songs between charges, plenty of time for almost any set of flights. And if you want to watch videos on your device, you can get up to 10 hours of playtime on some newer devices. That’s 4 or 5 movies that you can choose before you even get on the plane, so you won’t have to watch reruns of a show or a movie you don’t like.

Besides killing time, MP3 players can be useful learning devices. Put an audiobook or a podcast on your MP3 player and you can enjoy your favorite books or programs while you do something else. Many devices also offer radio tuners so you can listen to whatever radio show you want to on your commute to work. Some newer devices also offer phone conversations, in case you need to conduct business or catch up with some old friends. Many now also offer faster and faster internet service as well as up to 12 hours of battery life while your device is on the internet. Newer models even offer touch screens that can allow for access to your favorite features that is faster, more intuitive, and more fun.

There are some things to be aware of when buying or using these products. Be sure to read the operating guidelines in the handbook that comes with your device before using it. Things to take into consideration are the high and low temperatures that your device will work at, as well as the humidity. The cases and screens on these devices are becoming more and more durable as they become more lightweight, but it is important to remember that these devices have fragile components inside and no device is completely shock proof or waterproof.

The era of mp4 is coming. The most popular word online is no longer mp3 but mp4. You can never imagine how fast the computer technology move forward. While most people enjoy the benefits they bring. Few really understand them and are less likely to use them to their full potentials.

What is MP4 anyway?

MP4, abbreviation of MPEG-4, is a compressed video and audio format. MP4 files was created due to the joint effort of a large number of researchers focused on reducing the size of large, cumbersome music and video files into smaller ones to provide more disk space. Like mp3 player – a symbol referring to the music playing device, mp4 player literally means the device playing both movie and music. Thus, it is not difficult to conclude that ipod is falling into this category of personal multi-media device. MP4 has been hailed as the prevailing music and video file in the market today. The iPod itself encourages the use of the MP4 files for video and music.

An mp4 player plays movie, but not limited to MP4 movies.

Singly form the advertised mp4 player, one can only get that this thing can play movie. The truth is that there are numerous movie formats existing in the market, enough to confuse every one. Most mp4 players play MP4, 3PG and AVI which are widely used in other electronics like cell phone. Among all these, MP4 is the most advanced formats, which has the same high quality as VOB, but the smallest file size compared to other formats. On the flip side, some old mp4 player versions, which only support WMV movie, should not be called mp4 player.

Download movie and convert them.

So I know what a mp4 player can do, is adding movie to my player as simple as download and then drag-and-drop? Not exactly. Some movie formats popular on the web are not compatible with your mp4 player, like MPEG, DVD,RMVB,RM. You need to convert them with the formats convert software included with the player. As long as the industry still not reach one solution, this issue will remain. The download of movie is not cost-free. All “free” website require a minimal member fee, no matter it is legal or illegal. The only free way I know is the P2P (peer to peer) sites where people share interests together. Even you have downloaded movies you like, there is one final step to take. Since every MP4 player has its own screen resolution, you have to set the output file size in accordance with the specified resolution before the convert process. Your mp4 player can’t handle large-resolution movie, even it is in the right format.

Hard drive or flash memory based player

There are two types of storage media adopted by mp4 player, hard drive and flash memory. The former is first used by ipod to produce large capacity players. As technology improved, large capacity flash memory comes into reality and is stable. Hard drive is relatively cheaper than flash memory, but slower in the reading speed. Because there are no movable parts, a flash based player is considered more drop-resistant than a hard drive based one.