Report Search Engines

If last week I was writing a post about web browsers, today I am going to write a report about search engines. Search engines are vital in the modern Internet surfing. Every time one looks for information on the web, a search engine is being used to search for this information. As you have probably already guessed, the most important and well-known search engine is Google, since it is the search engine most web browsers have as de-facto, as well as the most used and popular. However, apart from Google, I am going to report on a total of 5 different search engines that I use more commonly and others that not os often, and I am going to explain their characteristics and what they are specialized on. By the specialization I mean what type of topics they are good to search.

Let's start with Google. Google is mostly a broad search engine used to browse anything you can think of, therefore it is not specialized uniquely in one topic. However, it has numerous features, as one might think, since about 85% of the World Wide Web users, use Google as their search engine. The Google search features include more than 40 options or keywords to modify the type of search. Google Web Search is a web search engine owned by Google, Inc., and is the most-used search engine on the Web. Google receives several hundred million queries each day through its various services. Beyond the original word-search capability, Google Search provides more than 22 special features, such as: similar synonym words; weather forecasts; time zones; stock quotes; maps; earthquake data; movie showtimes; airports; home listings; sports scores, etc.There are special features for numbers: prices, money/unit conversions, temperatures, general calculations, and so on. 



Next up is Yahoo!. This search engine is probably second up on popularity, and has improved greatly over the years. Like Google, it is a search engine used to browse about everything you can imagine, therefore it is not used uniquely for a certain topic. There are features that the creators of Yahoo! have included in the search engine in order to compete against Google. The first innovative feature added by Yahoo was Search Assistant, an integrated pane that combined autocomplete and related searches. Search Assistant was heavily inspired by Ask.com's left sidebar, but it included a distinctive feature that made it less obtrusive: the pane is only displayed if you stop typing for a couple of seconds or when your typing slows.Probably the most impressive new feature in Yahoo Search and the only one that's not yet live is SearchMonkey, a way for site owners to enrich the snippets with structured information. Site owners will be able to provide all types of additional information about their site directly to Yahoo! Search. So instead of a simple title, abstract and URL, for the first time users will see rich results that incorporate the massive amount of data buried in websites -- ratings and reviews, images, deep links, and all kinds of other useful data -- directly on the Yahoo! Search results page.

 
Third up is About.com. I personally use this search engine quite a lot, since it provides information about many different topics and this information is usually really well-written and very clear. Most of its information comes from their own site, therefore it has a huge amount of information for the use of its users. Recently, due to its increasing popularity, it has added different sections for different article with different topics, from money, to housing, to science...mostly anything can be found. I personally recommend this for any type of search, of any topic, like Google or Yahoo!. 

Fourth on the list is Linkedin. Although I personally do not use it, I am sure that on the future I am going to use this search engine that it now used world-wide in order to search for jobs. Just last year, 5.7 billion professionally-oriented searches were done in Linkedin. Apart from browsing different jobs or people that have certain characteristics, Linkedin has now updated itself and has several new features, and some of these include: Auto-complete,  that as you type your search term you’ll be prompted with options for what you may be looking for, and the more you search, the better it will get at predicting what you want; Suggested searches that is  when you type in a search term such as “product manager” you’ll see example search queries for people or jobs related to product manager as well as a preview of top results to help you find what you’re looking for in one click, and so on.



Last but not least is Scirus. Scirus is a science search engine dedicated to only searching science-specific content. At the time of this writing, Scirus searches over 250 million science-specific web pages, filtering out those results that are not science related in order for you, the user, to quickly pinpoint what it is that you're looking for. It is used uniquely for science, therefore if you want to find information about any science-related topic, this is the search engine for you.



In conclusion, there are thousands and thousands of search engines. Although Google is the most popular and most used, there are several other, even more specialized in certain topics, such as Scirus mentioned above for science, that can find more specific results. Therefore, the search engine world is very broad, and in the end, one will use the one he most likes.

E-mail Services Report

E-mail has become a huge service nowadays. Everyone, or nearly everyone has an email account. What five years ago, maybe a bit more, was not so much used, is today a huge empire. And what is responsible for this? Well, basically the email services providers. With the continuos updates of the email experience, more and more people, younger and younger, are creating their email accounts in order to stay in touch with people, for work or to share photos or videos. Emails provide a large number of features and email providers such as Gmail, Yahoo or Messenger are behind this revolution. In this blog I am going to compare three email service providers: Gmail, Yahoo and Mail, which is used by Apple users.

Let's start with Gmail. Gmail has a lightweight, minimalist design for speed and most of the screen is taken up by the inbox. At one time you couldn’t view the inbox and an email at the same time, but a

new ‘labs’ feature splits the view horizontally or vertically with the inbox in one half and the current email in the other. Folders for organizing messages aren’t supported and instead you attach labels, such as work, personal and family. Clicking a label lists all the messages tagged with it. It’s merely a different way of organizing email, and arguably more effective. It takes some getting used to, but if you know the right commands to enter into the search box, you can do some clever filtering that isn’t possible with rival services. There are many different ways to view email and the default shows messages in date order. Priority inbox puts at the top messages Gmail thinks are important, and this works well. Gmail can automatically sort messages by content into primary, social, promotions, updates and forums and these are accessible on tabs. It’s nice to have lots of different ways of viewing email. There are more interface themes these days, and an option to use any image you like for the background. There are more configuration options than most services and overall, it’s excellent. Moreover, it has a large capacity of storage space to store emails and it rarely has a problem, thus being highly reliable. In addition, you can send email with up to 25 MB of content, something other competitors do not have. 

Let's move on to Yahoo!. Yahoo! has a modern look and feel, and themes are available with plain or

photographic backgrounds. The attractive design is ruined by an advert, but you can go ad-free for £30 a year. There’s a panel with the inbox, sent, spam, trash and other system folders, and a list of email on the right from whatever folder is selected. A preview pane can be added to enable you to browse folders, such as the inbox, and read messages at the same time. Tabs are optional and when turned on they enable multiple messages to be opened on different tabs, and new messages to be created on a tab. It makes it easy to switch from reading to writing to browsing the inbox without losing the current view. Menus under the tabs provide access to all the functions for replying, moving, deleting, flagging messages and so on. Clicking Folders on the left enables you to create extra folders to organize messages. They can be dragged and dropped into folders and there are facilities for creating filters that automatically sort incoming mail into the right folders. Messages can be starred and filters created from them to deal with similar ones. Other email accounts elsewhere can be added so you can see all your messages in one place, holiday responses are available, extra email addresses can be linked to the account and disposable addresses can be created. Contacts with Facebook, Google and other import options, and a calendar is available. 

Last on is Mail. If you have an Apple device, such as an iPhone or an iPad, you will have an iCloud account and email is a component of that service. The web-based version is a bit disappointing and less

functional than the mobile versions. On the iPhone and iPad, Mail can be set up to access other email accounts, such as Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo!, but at the website you only have access to iCloud email. In typical Apple fashion, the service is designed with simplicity and ease of use in mind. It has the commonly used three-pane view with email and folders on the left, the inbox listing all the messages is in the middle and the currently selected email on the right. It’s straightforward, easy to understand and looks very nice, but there are no options to customise it. The reading pane can’t be hidden or displayed below the inbox list as it can with Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo!. Folders can be created and emails dragged and dropped in them. Rules can also be created to automatically sort messages into folders too. Making a sender a VIP adds their messages to the VIP mailbox, which is useful for ensuring you don’t miss important emails, but it doesn’t have the custom views that Gmail and Outlook have. iCloud is a simple email service and non-technical people will love the attractive and easy-to-use interface. 


Overall, I believe Gmail is the best email service. Although I personally use more Yahoo! since before it had more options than other services and I have gotten used to it, I think Gmail offers the best features and is the most reliable. Rarely one gets an error with Gmail. Plus, its lack of ads, and it huge storage space is highly appealing, and its user-interface is just getting better and better making it very attractive. Therefore, I highly recommend Gmail, although Yahoo is another good option as well.

Web Browsers Report

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. It can be said that without this browsers, surfing on the internet would not be the same. These programs are what have shaped the way we surf the web and are fixed in our minds as directly related to connecting to internet. This web browsers include the following and most famous 5 browsers: Interner Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari and Opera. However, in this blog post I am going to compare three of these, which are the browsers I have the most experience with: Firefox, Chrome and Safari.

Let's start with Firefox. In 2003, Mozilla's browser, Firefox started competing with Internet Explorer, becoming more popular than Explorer quickly. Due to being a cross-platform browser, working on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, its popularity increases greatly, and it is one of the most standard-compliant browsers. Among its most appealing characteristics are the better rendering of the web pages compared to Internet Explorer, in other word, the speed at which the web pages load, add-ons and extensions that allow you to personalize you searches, session restoration, a download manager por-up blocking. It also features the all-in-one address and search bar. This means that the bar where the URL of a web page appears can be used either for the direct search of the web page by means of the URL or can be used to search as if it were the Google main site that we all are familiar with. However, it also has a separate search bar that you can personalize to browse in Google, Yahoo, Bing or even other websites, like dictionaries, Wikipedia, etc. It supports HTML5, CSS3 and it enable developers to create full-screen content apps. In my personal experience, it is also better than Chrome and Safari at the time of playing application that require Java for their view. In terms of speed, I consider it to be faster than Safari but a bit slower than Chrome.

Going on: Chrome. This recent browser, it was launched by Google in 2008, was meant to rethink browsing completely. It is nowadays the most used browser, and its popularity continues to grow, as it has lived up to the users' expectations. Chrome was the first browser to introduce tab isolation and one box for both addresses and searches, and it started as a faster and cleaner browser. This new characteristics that revolutionized the experience of surfing on the web were promptly copied by competitors due to the great ideas that they were, and nowadays we see these features in every browser. Aside from all of this, it also includes some useful features, like a quick calculation system included in the address bar, or drag and drop downloads and searches, as well as developer resources. it also enables multiple profiles in one window, and allows you to access your printer from any enabled web app through Google and Cloud Print. 

Last up, is Safari. Apple's Safari was initially developed for Mac OS, but it was later introduced to

Windows (XP, Vista or 7). It is the default browser for Mac, but it doesn't rank very high in number users, since most users are those who have a Mac and use Safari as a default user, as well as those with any other Apple product such as iPhone, iPod or iPad. Standards-compliant, browsing with it is fast and secure, and supports HTML5, CSS3 and SVG. An interesting feature of this browser is that it removes advertisements and pop-ups and leaves just the text, to allow you to read any given article without being bothered by these. Like all browsers now, it enables DNS prefetching to allow users to make searches using the address bar. 

In conclusion and in my opinion, out of these these three web browsers, Google Chrome is the one I use the most and which I consider to be the best. Although there has been a point in my life in which I have used the three of them quite a lot, I can say that the best experience has been with Chrome. Although I am a declared Mac user and have used Safari a great deal, I can say that the best experience has been with Chrome. The speed of Chrome is incredible, and it is extremely reliable. It has never given me a problem, and its total integration with Google comes in very handy in numerous situations. Plus, the way tabs are organized, and how it automatically selects the websites you visit the most in order to put them in you main site when opening the browser is extremely useful (although Safari also has this feature). Therefore, I highly recommend Chrome to everyone.

External Memory - Backup Storage Policy

Technology has taken over the world in the past decades, and we cannot conceive a world without it. From schools, to worksites to our homes: everything is full of smartphones, tablets and computers. However, one my ask himself: How do I storage so much information, that in many cases is vital for my work, school or personal life? This is a question that all of us that work with technology should ask ourselves because we all know that nowadays there is no excuse if your computer breaks, since there are many ways to save your files.

In this blog post, I am going to explain what my backup policy is. I understand that everyone has his own personal backup policy, but I am going to explain how I do it, especially for computers, but some applications may be used for tablets and smartphones as well.

First of all, I would like to distinguish between the internal memory of the computer and the two main external memories that exist nowadays. The internal memory of a computer is the one that comes with the computer and which is located inside the computer. The internal memory has several components such as the RAM memory that increases the power of your computer, or the internal hard disks. The internal memory is certainly vital, but in case your computer breaks, the external memory hardware comes into place. This external memory devices, such as mentioned before, include the most portable, which are USB disks such as pendrives, and then bigger and more compact hardware such as the external memory drives that can store large amounts of data, normally 500 GB or 1 TB, but up to however knows.

Once knowing this, I am going to explain what I do to backup my data.

I am an Apple user, therefore I have a Mac. For this reason, I have a wonderful program called Time Machine which comes very handy at the time of making security backups of your entire computer. What I usually do, is once a week, normally during weekends, is opening up Time Machine at the same time that I connect my 500 GB external hard drive to the computer, in order for Time Machine to produce a new security backup of my computer and storing this new data once again, but updated, to the external memory disk. This process can take a long time if you have not done backups in a while and you ha a lot of new information, but if you do it every week, it should only be a matter of 5 minutes or less, and it is totally worth it.

In the highly unlikely chance that both my internal memory and external memory hardware breaks, I once again weekly, store what I consider my most important files in iCloud, therefore I can open up these files in my other devices just in the case of an extreme situation. 

Lastly, in the even higher unlikely chance of a failure in the iCloud server and the breaking of both my internal and external memories, I store the most important files of the week as well in Dropbox, since I have the Dropbox application in my computer, and it is honestly very easy and fast to store those files.

So here is my backup policy. What I believe that everyone should remember is that it is important to do at least one backup a week in at least an external memory drive in order to have your information secure and in hand in the case of an emergency.

I hope you have found this post useful!

Dropbox vs Google drive vs Box and report on Evernote

With the increasingly faster internet connections and the larger amount of data that everyone needs or wants to control due to more photos, or videos, or files in general, many online cloud based programs have appeared in order to solve this problem of sharing the files. Services such as Dropbox, Google Drive or Box have taken a control over this service on the Internet by offering their users free storage space on the cloud and easy sharing with other users, a characteristic that was being sought by many people in order to create and edit teamwork projects more easily. 

In this post I am going to compare these three services, with their advantages and disadvantages, and at the end give a personal opinion as to which one is the best in my opinion. Here is the comparison table.

  

	Dropbox	Google Drive	Box
What it offers	- Cloud-based file storage with the ability to share information with other users via email or sharing the link - Soon will allow integrated authentication with Active Directory. -A mobile application for Android, IOS and Windows Phone 8.	- Cloud-based file storage built into the Google universe, which has a lot of application which complement Google Drive. - Integrated with Google Apps -A mobile application for Android, IOS and Windows Phone 8.	- Cloud-based collaboration suite, in many ways more similar to Dropbox than to Google Drive. -A mobile application for Android, IOS and Windows Phone 8.
Best Qualities and Characteristics	- 2 GB free personal storage. - Simplicity of interface, it is very easy to use - Ease of sign-up and installation (just need to download the program into the computer or use it online) - The name Dropbox has become nearly synonymous with cloud file storage and sharing due to its increasingly popularity. It was probably the program that initiated this cloud file storage revolution.	- Free 5 GB personal storage. - Online readers for rendering many types of files in your browser; You can see who sees your documents and is easy to edit with other people. - Online Editors for Office documents such as Powerpoint or Word. - Integration with other Google offerings like Gmail, which makes communications swifter and easier.	- 10GB for free - Designed for business, but can also be used for personal use. - Good set of collaboration tools which everyone can use. - Similar in many ways to SharePoint, thus people will have an idea of how to use it.
Limitations	- Designed as a consumer/personal solution, therefore it is not as good for business or teamwork projects. - Not a collaboration solution because people cannot edit the documents online. - No corporate control of document sharing or retention in personal accounts, thus you can share the document, but it cannot be edited by other people. - No auditing, legal discovery in personal accounts. - No full text search.	- Designed as a consumer/personal solution - Online editing is not full fidelity and documents may not look the way you expect on the desktop after editing, therefore it takes a lot of time to edit the document until it looks the way you want it to look - No corporate control of document sharing or retention in personal accounts. Same as in Dropbox. - No auditing, legal discovery in personal accounts. As well as in Dropbox.	- Expensive, 10$ a month for a total storage space of 100 GB - Separate set of collaboration tools to learn and manage if you are used to Microsoft Office or SharePoint
Cautions to have due to risk	- Dropbox has gone viral giving users extra storage for signing up their friends. With so many people using Dropbox with their friends today, your corporate files are most likely up here without any controls unless you have implemented another solution for your users. This is why your information is not controlled very much, so it is easier for other people to see you personal files, something very dangerous nowadays.	- Google's user agreement states that they have the right to scan all your content and sell information about you to anyone. They also reserve the right to create derivative works based on files or documents you put in Google Drive. For this reason, you do not know to whom google is selling your information, and this increases the sense of insecurity.	- Box is an all-or-nothing solution. If you have sensitive data, you cannot host it on premise and integrate it into your corporate Box environment - When implementing any corporate collaboration solution, you should plan before you deploy. -However it is to be said that it has become more secure with the latest updates.

After comparing these three services, I personally choose Google Drive. Personally it is, out of these three services, the one I use the most. For example, I have created the comparison table presented above using Google Drive. I choose it because it allows you a great amount of storage space, 15GB, for free, as well as being a simple interface. It also has the options of creating documents or presentations that are extremely similar to those of Microsoft Office, thus it is very easy to use since most people are used to these programs. As well, and probably the characteristic that I most like, is that you can choose who can edit the document, thus it is very easy to work as a group, as well as it is easy to share the document with other people. As well, its direct connection with other Google application makes the process of sharing and creating documents swifter and easier. And this is why I choose Google Drive overall.

As well I am also going to talk about an increasingly used program, Evernote, that is used for exactly what its name refers to, taking notes. It was founded by Stepan Pachikov and launched in 2008, reaching 11 million users by 2011. 

It is a suite of software designed for notetaking and archiving. In Evernote a note can be text, a full webpage, a photograph, a voice memo, or a handwritten "ink" note. What Evernote allows you to do is to have notes with attachments, and to organize these notes by putting them into different folders that can be tagged and then exported as a notebook. Evernote is available in a paid version or more restricted free version.

The notes done in Evernote can be either saved on the local machine if you have the downloaded program for your respective device (It has programs for almost every platform, from Android to IOS to Windows Phone) or if you have an internet connection, take the files from the cloud storage that Evernote has. 

The data you can enter in the notes, as mentioned before, is not limited only to typed notes since Evernote supports image capture from cameras on supported devices and the recording of voice notes, that on the case of having to take a really long note, can become really handy. As well, for devices with a touchscreen, it has handwriting recognition. As well, where suitable hardware is available, Evernote can automatically add geolocation tags to notes. There is also an integration with twitter, for those who use this social network.

Finally, there is the option of having a free or a premium account. The free online service has monthly usage limitations (60 MB/months as of 2013) and displays a "usage" meter. A premium service is also available at $5 per month or $45 per year for 1,024 MB/month usage as of 2013. As well as the larger per-month upload limit, the premium service features faster word recognition in images, greater security, and text searching within PDF files. Another advantage of the premium service is more options in the sharing process.

As time approaches for me to go to college, I have started thinking about what technology I will need at university, and thus, this could be a great graduation present. I have decided that from today's technology, there are three main types of devices that are dominating the entire market: laptops, tablets and smartphones. In my case, I have always been an Apple fan and bought most of my products from them, thus I am going to create a comparison between their three most famous products (MacBook, iPad and iPhone) in order to decided which one will be more useful for university.

	Macbook	iPad	iPhone
Power	In terms of power, a laptop will always be more powerful than a table or phone. With more storage space, more ram memory and speed, a laptop is useful if you have to program of use powerful applications for design for example.	iPads have gotten to be more powerful over the last few year. Their storage space is not bad, up to 64 gb, but may not be enough for certain activities such as film editing. However, they are more powerful than iPhones.	Similar in power to an iPad, its storage space can be exactly the same as that of the tablet, but the difference is that an iPad can handle more programs and more powerful programs than an iPhone can.
Portability	If size matters, then a Macbook will always lose. It is much heavier and bigger than an iPad or iPhone, so if power is not an issue for you, then I would not recommend a laptop.	iPad is the second on this list in terms of portability. Even if it has gotten lighter and lighter, it cannot compete against the 114 grams of the iPhone. However, its weight compared to its huge screen is very tentative, with the option that there is an iPad mini, which is smaller and can be carried practically anywhere.	The iPhone is by all means the most portable of the 3. Its 114 grams and 4 inch screen can be carried without you noticing in your pocket. For that reason, if the size of the screen does not matter, an iPhone is perfect for you.
Battery	In terms of battery, it would be the second in my list. With up to 9 hours of battery life, or that is what Apple says, it can be used throughout a whole day without having to charge it, and use it even more if wifi is not required for the task.	The recent models of iPad are estimated to last around 10 hours, but my personal experience confirms that the battery can last way more than 10 hours, and that gives a plus to the iPad in this aspect.	By far, iPhone has the least battery life. It is said to last 8 hours. However, the 3G or 4G network makes the battery last for approximately 4 hours if used constantly, thus having to charge the phone every day, something that is not good.
Multi-tasking	By far, a laptop is the best device of the three to multitask. You can have as many open application as your RAM permits, which makes it very easy to change from one application to another.	Multitasking in the iPad and iPhone is exactly the same, so I am going to join both in this aspect. Multitasking has become better in this devices, however one has to leave the application to then go on to the next one, which can get to be really slow if working with many open applications at the same time.	Same as the second column for iPad.
Other features	Some other features I am going to include are the camera and the data connection. Laptops to start with have only the frontal camera, which by all means is not comparable in quality with iPads or iPhones. Second, it cannot have data connection, and by this I mean 3G or 4G, thus you depend on a wifi network if you want to surf the web.	The iPad has a wonderful camera,  although I have to say that at the beginning it was quite poor. It has now a camera of 8 megapixels that takes fascinating photos as well as HD videos. In addition, it has the option of adding a Sim card, thus having the possibility of having a data plan and internet everywhere you go.	The iPhone has without doubt the best camera of the 3, with incredible resolution photos as well as HD videos that can be seen crystal clear. As it is obvious, it has 3G and 4G, and even in the USA LTE, which is said to go way faster than any wifi connection, thus having a huge advantage over the laptop in this aspect.
Price	All of these devices, being from Apple, are quite expensive, but some more than the others. For example, a Mac laptop, starts at $999 for the Macbook Air and $1299 for the Macbook Pro.	The price for the new iPad air starts at $499 for the 16 GB model, and in the case of the iPad mini, from $399 its 16 GB model.	The new iPhone 5s has a starting price of $649 unlocked for its 16 GB model, but of course the telephone companies make different offers in which the phone itself may be less expensive.

Although this list gives you a basic idea of what the features of each device are, it is a combination of different factors that will make you decide one from the other. In my case, I am going to study engineering, therefore I am going to do a lot of programming and managing a lot of different powerful application. For that reason, I would probably buy a powerful laptop in order to program (something that you cannot do in table of phones or at least that I know of) and manage all the programs I am going to need with the laptops' excellent multitasking feature, something that tablets and phones still lack. For this reason, a laptop is my choice, plus the fact that its battery is getting better and better and may last a long time without a wifi connection (which is not always necessary) and its large screen, which for programming is once again vital in order to see the characters clearly.

Terms Definitions

In the following post I am going to define some of the terms related to podcasting and to the reproduction of audio.

Jingles : A jingles is a short tune normally used in advertising and for other commercial uses. They are a form of sound branding, and in the world of podcasting they are widely used for example in new programs or radio programs, since all of those use jingles. In other words, jingles are short clips of audio.

Loops : A loop is a repeating section of sound material. Short sections of material can be repeated to create ostinato patterns. Loops can be created nowadays with the new music technologies, and they are used in radio programs and news reports when for example, they change from one news story to another.

MP3 (.mp3) : Probably the most famous audio format, MP3 is the name given to the file extension of the type of file MPEG, audio layer 3. Layer 3 is one of three coding schemes for the compression of audio signals. Layer 3 uses audio coding to eliminate any unimportant or irrelevant parts of the sound signal, thus eliminating the things that humans cannot hear. It also increases the frequency resolution by 18 times compared to that of level 2. The result of all of these characteristics, is that it shrinks the storage space of the sound by a factor of 12 from something like a CD, without sacrificing its sounds, therefore allowing users to have more songs in the iPods for example. It can be opened and used practically on every device.

MP4 (.mp4) : MP4 is a file format created by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) as a multimedia container format designed to store audiovisual data. The MP4 is largely replacing earlier multimedia file formats, and creating some changes in the way that vendors sell audiovisual files to the public.The MP4 is based on a QuickTime file format, and has various file name extensions that can help provide clues to what kind of content is contained in the file. This has led to some confusion on the part of users over just what an MP4 is and how a particular MP4 is set up. Experts point out that some MP4 files are encrypted with what’s called Fairplay Digital Rights Management, which is a technology used by Apple to protect some of the content that it sells on the iTunes platform.

Metadata : Metadata describes how and when and by whom a particular set of data was collected, and how the data is formatted. Metadata is essential for understanding information stored indata warehouses The metadata for compressed and uncompressed digital music is often encoded in the ID3 tag. Common editors such as TagLib support MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, MPC, Speex, WavPack TrueAudio, WAV, AIFF, MP4 and ASF file formats.

Stingers : A sound effect or musical effect that punctuates a punchline or emphasizes a thought. This technique is often used by DJs and comedians.

Sound Effects : Sound effects (or audio effects) are artificially created or enhanced sounds, or sound processes used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media. In motion picture and television production, a sound effect is a sound recorded and presented to make a specific storytelling or creative point without the use of dialogue or music. 

Timeline : It is the duration of a sound or clip when editing this data in a program used for these purposes. Normally, in a timeline one can see the length of the audio or clip and an overview of the order and timing of how the audio or clip will appear.

Track: any of a number of separate sections in the recording on a record, CD, or cassette

XML : XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a flexible way to create common information formats and share both the format and the data on the World Wide Web, intranets, and elsewhere. For example, computer makers might agree on a standard or common way to describe the information about a computer product (processor speed, memory size, and so forth) and then describe the product information format with XML. Such a standard way of describing data would enable a user to send an intelligent agent (a program) to each computer maker's Web site, gather data, and then make a valid comparison. XML can be used by any individual or group of individuals or companies that wants to share information in a consistent way.

RSS : RSS is the acronym used to describe the de facto standard for the syndication of Web content. RSS is an XML-based format and while it can be used in different ways for content distribution, its most widespread usage is in distributing news headlines on the Web. A Web site that wants to allow other sites to publish some of its content creates an RSS document and registers the document with an RSS publisher. A user that can read RSS-distributed content can use the content on a different site. Syndicated content can include data such as news feeds, events listings, news stories, headlines, project updates, excerpts from discussion forums or even corporate information.

I hope this post has been helpful!

Comparison Audio Formats

In our world today, audio formats are one of the most important things related to technology. The release of the iPod especially, increased the demand of audio that occupied less space but without loosing quality, therefore many audio formats appeared, such as the famous and probably most used MP3, but others such as AIFF, WAV, WMA and RA.

In this post I am going to explain the characteristics of each of these audio formats and their differences.


MP3 (.mp3) : Probably the most famous audio format, MP3 is the name given to the file extension of the type of file MPEG, audio layer 3. Layer 3 is one of three coding schemes for the compression of audio signals. Layer 3 uses audio coding to eliminate any unimportant or irrelevant parts of the sound signal, thus eliminating the things that humans cannot hear. It also increases the frequency resolution by 18 times compared to that of level 2. The result of all of these characteristics, is that it shrinks the storage space of the sound by a factor of 12 from something like a CD, without sacrificing its sounds, therefore allowing users to have more songs in the iPods for example. It can be opened and used practically on every device.

WMA – Window Media Audio (.wma) : This audio format is a Microsoft file format for encoding digital audio files, and is similar to MP3. However, though being similar, it can compress files at a higher rate than MP3. A really good aspect of this audio format is that the file extension can be of any size compressed to match any different connection speeds, or bandwidth. It is often used to play music from the Web. However, this audio format cannot be played on an iPod.

WAV (.wav) : WAV is the format used for storing sounds in files developed by Microsoft and IBM together. Originally, the support for WAV files was built into Window 95, and it was the de facto standard for sound on PCs. These .wav files can be played nearly by all Windows application that supports sound. It is often saved in a 44.1 KHz, 16-bit, stereo format, usually used for CDs. Therefore this format is really similar to AIFF, explained below.

RA – Real Audio (.ra .ram .rm) : Real Audio is a proprietary format, and is used for streaming audio that enables you to play digital audio files in real-time. To use this type of file you must have RealPlayer (for Windows or Mac), which you can download for free. Real Audio was developed by RealNetworks. 

AIFF – Audio Interchange File Format (.AIF or .IEF) : AIFF is a common format for storing and transmitting sampled sound. It was developed by Apple and if the standard audio for Macintosh computers. It is also used by Silicon Graphics Incorporated (SGI). A big difference from the rest of formats, is that AIFF format does not support data compression, so AIFF files tend to be large. Its quality audio is similar to that of a .wav file and it is commonly used to store standard CD audio.It has a sampling rate of 44.1 KHz and are 16-bit.




I hope this post has been helpful. Thank you for reading!