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Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category

Technology does not always survive commercially by outperforming its competitors. While natural selection might ensure that a particular species survives while another becomes extinct, no such force exists in the area of consumer preference. Otherwise the Betamax format might be remembered as something other than a failure.

The Video Cassette Recorders- VCRS first became widely available in 1972. The Philips Video Cassette Recording system might have been innovative, but it did not prove to have much staying power. Price might have been part of the problem as consumers could have been hesitant to fork over more than $2000 for a new and unproven technology.

By 1975 the marketplace had shifted and selling VCRs to the public became a profitable endeavor. The idea of bringing a portable movie studio into living rooms proved exciting to the public, while Hollywood Executives predicted that the machine could destroy their industry.

Luckily for movie lovers bringing VCRs into homes proved to have the opposite effect of destroying the movie industry. VCRs became a staple in homes, and the only question that remained was VHS or Beta?

The Betamax emerged first on the market and offered superior picture and sound. VHS offered two hours of recording time. Quantity won out over quality as the public desired time to record movies and television events.

But pricing and marketing also doomed Sony’s VCR. VHS was cheaper, and once JVC’s VCR began to gain market share it partnered with movie studios to offer a wider selection of offerings. Despite being first and better quality, Betamax proved to be the lesser of the two VCR offerings. By the 1990s the Beta was a dead technology.

While Beta had a short shelf life, the format war between the two systems has become a marketing case study. The rapid introduction of new technologies to the market place means that companies will always remember the lessons of the Sony Betamax, while desperately hoping that their products do not suffer a similar fate.

Computers are essential to life as we know it today. They are everywhere, but just who invented them? The computer is something that has evolved from many different designs and inventions, developed over time by various people over many years.

A mechanical calculator was built in Germany in the 1930’s. This was considered the first binary computer and was used to do mathematical calculations. It was refined by the 1940’s to use old movie film to store programs and data; the first not to use paper tape or cards. A 1941 version had a memory of 64 words.

What were referred to as personal computers from then through the 1950’s and 1960’s were able to do mathematical calculations. They weren’t able to do everything like the computers of today, but were sophisticated for the time. Their concept and the ideas of their builders were still visionary nonetheless. The different types that appeared throughout the time period featured switches and dials built into bulky large boxes.

The paperclip computer was a device in the late 1960’s based on a book that described a working computer built out of homemade supplies. Programs were stored on a magnetic drum and the device had units for input, output, control, and arithmetic. The main units of this system correspond to most modern digital computers, even though the machine looked nothing like a home computer.

Machines that began to take on the appearance of modern PCs in the early history of computers began to appear in the 1970s. The first successful mass produced computer was made by Apple in 1977, while IBM and Microsoft developed several computers in the 1980’s. Several entered the mainstream, such as Atari, as computerized video games became a cultural phenomenon, but it is also impossible to leave out the Commodore 64, since it was one of the most popular individual computer types on the market.

The reliance on more powerful gaming systems, as well as word processors, secured the high demand for better computers. Today, there are computers everywhere and inside just about anything electronic.

Every wonder why seemingly every website has an annoying blinking animation or game that asks to click here?

Well that answer is marketing, but wondering how leads to the answer of Wunderkind Jonathon Gay. As a child, Gay became interested and apt at working with computers. So much so that by the time he was in high school his science fair projects were sophisticated enough to earn the attention of professional programmers. By the time he was a senior in high school Gay was working for the company Silicon Beach, which released his first commercial product, Airborne! a black and white game for the Macintosh. Gay had bigger plans than building games for the Apple II or Mac. Before leaving home to attend Harvey Mudd College, Gay contributed to Superpaint 2, a revolutionary program that allowed both simultaneous bit map painting and vector drawing.

Foreseeing a market for graphics, Gay formed his own company. FutureWave Software company built a drawing program, before moving on to software for the emerging market of Internet programmers. Future Wave Software released FutureSplash Animator, which created vector based animations. As a vector based program the animations adjusted to screen size, unlike pixel based programs.

With the advent of Netscapes plug in features turned FutureSlash into a more viable product. Soon major sites such as msn.com and Disney’s Daily Blast were using FutureSplash. Gay had gone from high school standout to the big time. Soon major companies such as Macromedia were taking notice.

In December 1996 Macromedia purchased FutureWave. With a team of developers behind it Flash animations would soon become an Internet staple. Flash enjoyed the advantages of being vector based, bandwidth friendly and browser independent with those advantages, Flash spread. Some would say like a weed.

Back to those annoying, “look at me” animations. Those are almost certainly Flash, but so are useful tools again. The tutorial that showed how to make a Bobbie Flay style meal or the YouTube video showing the after effects of visiting the dentist both probably used Flash Media Player. Much like the Internet Flash has greatly evolved. And like any technology it has been abused. But with out Flash the Internet would be, well, less Flashy (or not as animated).

Smartphones and smartphone comparisons have become akin to two species becoming one, or at least, two species forming a symbiotic relationship. For example, you can’t operate a smartphone without knowing what it does or doesn’t have; hence, a smartphone comparison is necessary. Likewise, you can’t understand a comparison unless you are already familiar with the ins and outs of a smartphone; hence, the need to have one.

What has spurred the perennial cycle of marketing and marketed? The best explanation is the fundamental human drive to possess the latest and coolest gadget. Smartphones are some of the most amazing devices currently released, and a thorough smartphone comparison provides even those “in the know” with the information necessary to make a wise decision.

A comparison of all the great aspects of every smartphone may not be realistic, but you can definitely relish the best parts and pieces of a specific smartphone. This year, 12 new smartphones hit the market: Samsung Galaxy S Pro, Evo 4G, iPhone 4, Droid X, Motorola Droid, Droid Incredible, Nexus One, Dell Streak, Nokia N900, Blackberry Bold 9700, Blackberry Storm 2 9550, and the Palm Pre Plus (they may sound like video games for X-Gen members).

To get the most with this generation’s phone obsession, you will need to understand terminology such as slide-QWERTY keyboard, super-AMOLED touch-screen, front-facing camera, Media-Hub access, DLNA support, Android 2.1, six-axis sensor, accelerometer, Hummingbird processor, and Visual Voicemail.

It can be easy to feel overwhelmed, but know that with the right information, you too can join the evolving symbiotic relationship, enter the high-tech world, and communicate.

Having access to the Internet is pretty much a necessity nowadays. There are many ways to get online, in regards to the providers that offer deals for accessing the Web. You can even use the Net itself to search the websites of providers, where you can find detailed information on what each offers, and even find reviews and forum comments about the quality of the service.

Even if you don’t yet have access, you can always use a friends’ computer, go to a library, or visit an Internet café if one exists near where you live to do your research. The type of information you want to look for is whether you get enough features and perks to justify the cost. Most of the time, they are relatively inexpensive because of the competition; there are almost countless providers out there.

If you are lucky, you can even have Internet access included in your cable TV and/or telephone plan. Various top named cable providers offer high-speed access; speed being one of the top features to look for. You can easily get a fast service and connection, and there is no reason to have long wait times for websites to load or to send email.

Email is another feature that you can no longer do without. In addition to reliability, you also want to know how much storage space you have, and whether the provider’s system experiences any significant downtime. This is something you want to assess about the system overall before you buy into the service. You can also consider extras such as website hosting and domain registration, if you’re inclined to get into the technical side, as affordable additions or standard features of the service.

With so much information online, you can use the Internet to find Internet deals. Don’t hesitate to browse forums, blogs, review sites, or your favorite trusty search engine to find information. If something is worth talking about it, you can be sure someone is out there to post useful information that you can use in your decision.

In today’s face paced, instant access world there are a lot of new technologies emerging every day to bring information faster and no other trend has captured people the way twitter has. For those of you who haven’t caught up with the craze, twitter is a social blogging site where instead of long, drawn out blogs, the tweeter is giving those that follow his thoughts, feelings, and other musings in short 160 character bursts. This is right on par with today’s society of the short attention span.

But twitter wasn’t the start of the short, constant update theater. If you have been following the social networking and media sites you can come to the conclusion that twitter has been around forever, it’s just more of an evolution.

The first big social networking site was myspace. Myspace was a fully customizable web page where you could add friends as well as send out bulletins and comment on peoples page. Each page was allowed to have a profile pic and a quote next to it. In the very beginning of the Myspace craze, these quotes were anything from the absurd, to inside jokes, to famous sayings, to simple explanations of the person themselves.

As Myspace’s user base grew so did the use of these quotes. Quotes were being updated daily and changing from song lyrics to thoughts and feelings. There was also the increase in the rise of bulletins and how they were being used. Once only used for alerting people to special cuases, events, and chain emails. Now bulletins were being used to simply let out feelings.

When facebook became, far and away, the preferred social networking site we learned very quickly that the most important feature wasn’t a friend request. The status update became the preferred method of communication. There were people updating every day, some times multiple times in a day and it became that they may have led to the twitter craze. In the status updates people could tell you how they felt or simply promote something. The Twitter format was around long before Twitter itself.

People spend their whole lives thinking about their past. Not just what they have done as it relates to where they are going, but the past that existed before they did. They try to learn of the heritage and lineage they belong to.

In today’s world companies are established to help those that want to know get a very thorough picture of their own family tree. People will pay top money to find out where their ancestors came from and who they were. They pay money to be intrigued by the journey it took to have them created. But how is tracing a history easier now than it was 30 years ago? One answer: the Internet.

Many years ago tracing the family tree required a lot of leg work. Not only would you need to oral accounts of things that happened but you would need to call places to research documents and begin piecing together your history. However, in today’s digital world there is no need to go anywhere but the privacy of your own home.

These agencies and companies do it the same way anyone else would in this day and age. With hospitals leaving their medical records online it’s easy to search to see if someone was born in that hospital 100 years ago. With so many counties and cities being online you can find out for certain if someone had lived in the state. The reason the agencies are so successful is because they have the knowledge to understand not only where to go but how to navigate through the sites to obtain the information they need.

Still there is one thing that the family tree companies cannot help with and that is the oral history, the rich and vibrant stories that make a history worth looking into. Perhaps something was accounted for in a local paper or perhaps there was something written in a book, but more often than not there is nothing that can replace the telling of those stories.

The Internet has arrived as the Age of the Video. While the Internet goes through various phases and transformations, it seems that the hottest trend now is the idea of online videos. From video blogs to behind the scenes clips of televisions favorite shows it seems that every has gotten into the act of uploading videos to the Internet. And while people understand the rules about releasing pornographic or sexually explicit images on sites like YouTube, they may not be paying attention to the laws about copyright infringement. This may not seem like an issue but it’s best to be aware of the pitfalls before deciding to use copywritten images.

The first thing you need to know is that the law states that copywritten images or sounds are only to be used with expressed written consent of the people who own the rights to them. This means if you wanted to make a five minute short film and use a popular bands music for your soundtrack you could be in violation of the copyright law unless you get their written permission and usually that comes with a fee.

Now, sites like YouTube are generally passive about copyright infringement for 2 reasons: 1.) The sheer volume of videos that exist with copywritten images are huge and unless the company that owns them complains it would be very difficult to remove them, not to mention time consuming. 2.) In most cases the companies themselves don’t care because the images are used as good advertisement for the show or in some cases they are tribute videos from fans. This makes it in bad form to ask them to remove them from the site.

So what does all this mean for you? Well it means that first and foremost you should be aware that when you are making a video and setting it to popular music that there may implications for you financially and legally. And while it is unlikely that anything would happen to you it doesn’t mean it couldn’t so it means you should be very careful before doing it.

The internet is a great place to learn about a variety of things you may not have had access to years ago. You can learn about medicine, world news, and the latest in movies and music. But perhaps you didn’t know that you can use the internet to begin to retrace your own family history. There are various companies that can trace your family history for you and while they do a good job they can also set you back a pretty penny.

So how do you trace your own family history with the whole world wide web to navigate through? The answer is simple and can have you discovering cool and interesting things about your family in no time.

The first is to start at home. Get on your computer and write out a comprehensive list of everyone you know in your family. Don’t forget to include your mothers maiden name as well as your grandmothers maiden name. Any woman who came through your family could be a descendant of another family. At some point you’ll have a pretty long list. Once you get far enough down make sure you try and keep everything straight. Things can get confusing once you branch out. When you get to far enough back that the memories and the history become fuzzy, then it’s time to get online.

As you go farther back it will help to find information about where someone lived. This will help you narrow your search down. Perhaps a person lived in Chicago, Illinois, then you can search through the city of Chicago database to find any information you can on that person. It could have an address, social security number, or copy of their birth certificate or death certificate. From there you can do a google search to narrow down the person’s name based on their city. This should pop up any other relevant information there. Then it’s a game of connecting the dots. You have to be patient but if you are then you can reap the rewards of a rich family history.

The Internet offers businesses the ability to focus on their competitive advantage rather than spending time building up expensive infrastructure. Software as a service (SaaS) is a case in point. These on-demand applications are generally deployed over the Internet or run behind a firewall in a local area network. They are also highly flexible and scalable and lets users save money by avoiding the costs of buying their own servers or software. This model is also referred to as the application Service Provider (ASP) model. ASPs charge on a “per-use” basis or may require a monthly/annual fee.

Small enterprises and home users are usually more cost conscious. They’ve been using a lot of freeware and shareware applications from the Internet on their computers. Shareware applications are essentially “try-it-before-you-buy-it” software. Unlike traditional software distribution channels where one is forced to pay for the product even before one has seen it, these applications allow a user to try the program, evaluate it, and decide if it suits the customer’s needs or not. It offers the ultimate money back guarantee; if you don’t use the product, you don’t pay for it.

The Internet, to use a clichéd term, has truly revolutionized business in every way, from the way products are created to the way products are marketed. In fact, the Internet is unearthing hitherto unknown markets. The lowering of search costs leads to a substantial increase in the number of products that are difficult to find (i.e. you can find almost anything). Some of the most famous businesses that have benefited from this new model of “using the niche to find the riches” include eBay (auctions), Google (web search engines), and Audible (audio books).

The Internet allows users to research and learn, conduct business, play games, shop around the world without leaving the comforts of home, and communicate with people across the globe instantaneously. Who knows what’s next?