Posts tagged Really
Is the Digital Music Revolution Really Ruining Sound Quality?
Feb 6th
It seems like every advance in digital music brings with it a debate about whether the latest format degrades quality in exchange for convenience. This was true when CDs first came onto the scene, and it’s probably even more true today with MP3s and their digital audio brethren. Heck, even the advent of the gramophone in 1889 sparked debates over whether its sound quality was worse than Thomas Edison’s phonograph.
Last week, rock veteran Neil Young chimed in with his assertion that the digital music files we listen to today are of much lower quality than the original recordings. Speaking at the D: Dive Into Media conference, he said that the technology now exists to deliver much higher-quality audio to music fans, and that he had even talked to Steve Jobs about a possible solution.
Sponsor
It is certainly true that an MP3 file, by definition, is of lower quality than the original recording. The files that sit on the hard drives of recording studio engineers are massive – several gigabytes apiece – compared to the file consumers eventually download or stream. To get those MP3 file sizes down, the audio has to be compressed substantially. It’s inevitable that some of the detail will get lost in the process.
How Serious is the Problem? … And How to Fix It?
Exactly how bad is this problem? By Young’s estimation, what we hear in most files today is “only 5% of the data of the original recording”. That may be a slight exaggeration, depending on how the files are encoded. Certainly, lower bit rate files (such as 128kbps MP3s) have a noticeably degraded quality to them, compared to a CD. But most sources have graduated to higher quality files now that broadband speeds allow for it. A standard track on iTunes is a 256kbps AAC file and premium Spotify subscribers can listen to many songs at 320kbps, which is about 22% of a CD track’s bit rate.
When it comes to streaming audio on mobile devices, the quality buck pretty much stops at whatever the data connection can handle. On 3G networks, streaming CD-quality audio just isn’t feasible. Over a good WiFi connection, things look a little more promising, but there are still limitations if the user experience is to be preserved.
So what does Young propose as a solution? From the sound of it, he’d like to see a sort of mega-iPod with more disk space and internal guts optimized to playback massive files. Such a device wouldn’t be designed to include one’s entire library, but rather only a selection of audiophile-quality albums. Presumably, it would tend to be used with superior quality earphones or speakers, which is another important factor in the quality of what we hear.
Even if a device akin to what Young describes were produced and sold, how big of a market would there be for it? The quality of the audio found on sources like iTunes, Spotify, MOG, Amazon and Google Music is apparently good enough to convince millions of people to pay for access to it. At the end of the day, most of the content on the pay music services is certainly good enough. Musicians and audiophiles can pick up on the degradations in quality, but for the average listener, it’s pretty subtle. The device that Young describes would have to be marketed toward the audiophiles for whom 320kbps simply won’t cut it.
Last week wasn’t the first time Young has criticized the state of digital music. Some may dismiss his stance as nothing more than a grumpy, old-school perspective, as though he’s just an old guy that doesn’t get the new-fangled ways of the Web and digital media. This isn’t the case. Young may be a veteran of the music industry, but he’s well aware of what’s changed about it and why. During the same interview in which he slammed MP3′s, he said that “piracy is the new radio” and encouraged new artists to forgo record labels in favor of doing it themselves.
There’s Nothing Wrong With Analog
As Young pointed out, Steve Jobs may have been a digital music pioneer, but “when he went home, he listened to vinyl.” This is true not only of Young’s generation, but of a growing number of music fans today. Vinyl sales have been surging for the last few years, with 2011 seeing a 39% increase in sales over the previous year. Digital music sales grew last year too, but by considerably less.
For music fans with the deepest concern for audio quality, it seems analog is increasingly the way to go. That’s okay. We can have our digital revolution in music and still fall back on analog formats. Just like with books, the value offered by digital music is primarily about volume, convenience and ease of production and distribution. And just like sitting down with a good, paper-bound book, putting on a vinyl record is more about quality and the overall experience.
Digital and analog don’t need to be at war with one another. What many labels and artists are doing now is sell records on vinyl and include a coupon for a free, high-quality digital download in the record’s sleeve. That allows people to enjoy the album as it was intended and also throw it onto their iPod or smartphone for listening on the go.
It’s also possible to go the high-quality route in a digital-only format. When The Beatles’ catalogue was remastered and reissued in 2009, the material was released on CD and, for the first time, via iTunes. For diehard fans who wanted more than what iTunes could offer, they also sold an apple-shaped (no, not that Apple) thumb drive containing every album in superior quality, lossless FLAC format, as well as as 320kbps MP3s.
However things may evolve, it’s evident that digital music has brought us great value, but it’s done so at a cost, namely quality. This may not be perceived as a problem by every consumer, but for those who take the craft of creating and recording music most seriously, it’s a one worth solving. Whether it’s through a hybrid of analog/digital music consumption or through some new, high-capacity device for playing back lossless digital audio, the challenge isn’t an insurmountable one.
Vinyl sales chart courtesy of Digital Music News.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Will Windows Phone Really Overtake iOS by 2015? (Poll)
Jan 24th
These days, the smartphone wars are typically viewed as a competition between the platforms of two companies: Apple and Google. Despite its years-long dominance of the desktop, Windows has hardly been a blip on the smartphone marketshare radar, where it clocks in at just under 2% of the market.
That’s all set to change within three years, according to a growing chorus of analysts. The latest to vouch for the impending growth of Windows Phone is iSuppli, who last week predicted that the platform could outperform Apple’s iOS by 2015.
Sponsor
This echoes previous predictions from the likes of IDC and Gartner, and certainly isn’t at odds with the future as envisioned by Nokia president Chris Weber, who stated last year that Windows Phone will make iOS and Android look antiquated in due time. To be sure the platform’s growth will fueled by Microsoft’s partnership with Nokia and the buzz-worthy devices it generates, such as the Lumia 900 and its brethren.
Still, some have balked at the claim that Windows Phone could rise to challenge iOS anytime so soon, given Apple’s propensity to upgrade its mobile hardware every year, with even modest iterations yielding surprisingly successful results. What do you think?
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Are Google’s “New Features” Really That New?
Jan 13th
Last week, Google’s Inside Search blog announced a recap of 30 different search quality improvements it made in December, 21 of which were improvements that were specifically new to Google. However, looking through the list, it seems that some of …
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
Poll: What Does Android “Clopen” Mean, Really?
Jan 6th
There is a new word making the rounds in technology circles that has caused a stir this week: “clopen.” The nature of clopen is that a platform is ostensibly open to be built upon but it must while also creating a profit for the company providing the platform. The clopen argument this week has centered around Android with the fundamental question: How open is Android, really?
Android is open source. Even by the most traditional definitions, the mobile operating system open for developers, manufacturers, carriers, custom ROM builders and hobbyists to build upon. From a consumer perspective, the nature of Android “openness” is cloudy. Is Android “clopen?” Answer for yourself in this week’s ReadWriteMobile poll.
Sponsor
The main argument for Android being clopen was made by reporter Danny Sullivan at Marketing Land. For the most part, this has to do with Android version updates to various devices from original equipment manufacturers. The fact of the matter is that users do not really have any clue if their bright, shiny Android device will ever get the newest iteration of the platform, Ice Cream Sandwich. The so-called “Android update alliance” has been a complete failure.
We have written about the mess that is Android updates several times before. The problem is that updates that run over the air through the carriers are expensive. The OEMs have to allocate resources to make sure devices are capable of running the new version of the operating system, no small task, and then the data that flows over the carriers pipes is costly for the operators.
To a certain extent, the OEMs and operators have put themselves in this hole. There are more than 300 different devices in the wild. Many of those are low cost devices that were never intended to get any significant updates. So, we can eliminate about 70% of the device ecosystem already. The carriers and OEMs should focus on updating devices that fall in the “superphone” category. A superphone is a device of at least a four-inch screen with at least a gigahertz processor. Just about every upper class Android smartphone fits into this category. The owners of these devices have the most invested in their devices, are the most vocal and use the most data and apps. Superphone owners are more cognizant of when platform upgrades become available and want it as soon as it hits the market.
The giant PR nightmare created by the Android update ecosystem could be placated by concentrating on the needs of these users.
Device Upgrades Really Have Nothing To Do With “Open”
The Android upgrade argument of clopen is completely consumer based. Sullivan says that the average consumer does not really have a choice to upgrade to the newest version of the OS if they want it. Apple makes it easy to upgrade through iTunes and now Wi-Fi with iOS 5. Apple’s advantage is that it is both the OEM and the software provider and it does not have to go through the carriers to push updates. Microsoft originates all Windows Phones updates from Redmond and pushes them out in OTA cycles. Granted, it is much easier for Microsoft to update Windows Phone since there are far less devices and users.
There is something missing from this consumer-driven clopen debate. The world of open source technology has almost never had anything to do with average consumers. Average consumers update when their computers or smartphones tell them to. As long as everything works fine and does not need a functional update (to make sure the device works properly), most consumers are hardly even aware that a new version of the OS exists. They are not looking so much for feature upgrades such as with Ice Cream Sandwich.
If there is an argument to be made about the clopen nature of Android, it has to do with what restrictions or limitations that Google places on the platform from a developer perspective. For that perspective, there is not a lot. The nature of Android being open comes into question when third-party service providers, such as location-based network Skyhook, come into play. Overall though, Android is about as open source a system as it can be without causing complete and utter chaos.
So, what does clopen actually mean? To different people it means different things. The nature of open source has taken a subjective tone in the last several years. What is open to one person seems closed and proprietary to another. Make no mistake though, there are not many companies that take a major operating system that powers hundreds of millions of devices and makes the source code available to everyone.
What does clopen mean to you? Take the poll below and let us know in the comments.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
How Much Is A Click Really Worth?
Jan 6th
All forms of paid advertising use the max bid – it’s the most basic concept yet calculating the theoretical maximum value to pay for a click is surprisingly difficult. It’s not that the math is tough; it just takes stepping back from the granularity of channel specific optimization to get a…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
What is Really New About the Cloud?
Jan 5th
Socrates: And you did not know, you never suspected, that they were goddesses?
Strepsiades: No, indeed; I thought the Clouds were only fog, dew and vapour.
- Aristophanes, The Clouds
Billions of words have been written about “the cloud” and its benefits, implications, and challenges. Hundreds of vendors have sprung up or re-positioned themselves as cloud companies, and there is a vast amount of real business change underway. However, I have seen very little that explains for the layperson what is actually new about the cloud that makes it so interesting and important.
Sponsor
Infrastructure-as-a-Service: All of the Benefits, None of the Commitment
Dave Jilk is CEO and co-founder of Standing Cloud, a Boulder-based provider of cloud-based application management solutions. An experienced software and Internet entrepreneur, Dave previously co-founded Wideforce Systems and eCortex.
The advent of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) with Amazon Web Services’ Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) offering suddenly made it vastly cheaper and easier for anyone to provision a system in the cloud.
Previously, the primary options were:
- Using a shared hosting service, install an application in the shared host container. This is inexpensive, but also very limiting: Only applications that can operate in the shared-host sandbox and do not need to scale will work in this environment.
- Lease or buy physical servers, rent co-location space, and either set up and manage the physical machines yourself, or hire a managed services provider to do so. This is relatively expensive, because it requires a minimum commitment.
- Build your own data center.
With IaaS, you simply sign up for an account, enter a credit card number, and start launching servers from the control panel. These servers are available in minutes, and although they are “virtual” machines, they behave for most purposes as an entire computer system. They are persistent and they have their own public Internet address. The minimum commitment is an hour of server time, which can cost as little as a penny and a half on Rackspace Cloud. Consequently, while the idea of deploying a system “in the cloud” was not new, the ability to provision the required servers quickly, easily, with no human physical contact, and with virtually no commitment – that was entirely novel.
Two innovations have enabled providers to offer this capability: virtualization technology, which enables the creation of multiple virtual machine servers on the same physical server via a “hypervisor”; and orchestration technology, which fulfills provisioning requests by tracking the physical server pool and the virtual machines running on them.
Virtualization took a big leap forward in 2006, when both Intel and AMD added hardware virtualization capabilities to their processors. This both improved performance and made the hypervisor code simpler and more reliable. Popular hypervisors today include VMWare ESX, Xen, and KVM. Perhaps not coincidentally, Amazon built its orchestration system for EC2 around the same time, with the first beta release in mid-2006. Dozens of orchestration systems are now available, including VMWare vCloud, Citrix CloudStack (formerly cloud.com), and Eucalyptus.
Software-as-a-Service: Now Playing Anytime, Anywhere
So it’s not really the cloud that’s new. It is the ease, convenience and value of using the cloud that has vastly improved. There was real innovation involved in making that possible: for IaaS, the virtualization and orchestration technologies; for SaaS, progressively improving connectivity along with more interactive browser technologies.
While software-as-a-service (SaaS) is not new and has always operated “in the cloud,” the ubiquity of web browsers, broadband Internet and Wi-Fi has made them more responsive and easier to access. Improvements in web browser capabilities and the use of powerful Javascript frameworks and other RIA (Rich Internet Application) technologies have made it possible to build web user interfaces that rival the sophistication and interactivity of locally installed Windows or Mac applications.
As a result, new categories of applications for which a series of separate web pages is unsatisfactory – such as word processing and spreadsheets – can now be operated as SaaS, on any device that supports a full web browser. These seemingly incremental improvements have created a qualitatively different experience for SaaS, and that experience is new. The
Sum of the Parts
But look at what all this means:
- I can deploy custom systems in the cloud easily and with low commitment.
- I can keep all my documents and data on cloud systems.
- All my standard business systems can be run as SaaS.
- I can use different client devices at different times without creating a data mess.
- As my usage of systems or services increases, the cost and scale of the systems scales with that usage in granular increments.
- Whether I am acting as an individual or as a business, I no longer need to own or manage any physical servers, and I am no longer tethered to particular client devices either.
So it’s not really the cloud that’s new. It is the ease, convenience and value of using the cloud that has vastly improved. There was real innovation involved in making that possible: for IaaS, the virtualization and orchestration technologies; for SaaS, progressively improving connectivity along with more interactive browser technologies.
The cloud may still be just “a computer attached to a network,” but how that computer got there and how it is used is now very different from the days when those pictures of clouds first showed up on architecture diagrams.
Cloud photo by Jeff Ruane
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
How To Liberate A Squatter Twitter Account (Really!)
Dec 13th
Is someone sitting on the Twitter handle you want? Is it someone with 0 followers who registered in 2008 and never tweeted once? Yeah, that was me, too. At least, it was yesterday. This morning, Twitter Trust & Safety turned over to me the account I’ve been after for years.
The trick is to file an impersonation claim. That’s the only one Twitter responds to in a timely fashion. This means you have to make a credible case that you or your brand is being impersonated. But if you have your ducks in a row, you can have that account in your hands in under a week. Here’s how.
Sponsor
Step 1: Own An Email Address That Matches The Twitter Account You Want
Yes, in some cases, that’s a big caveat. But it’s much easier to get a domain name than a trademark, and you need to establish that the name or brand you’re after is indeed yours. You’re going to need an email address giving you a credible claim. Having a website, even if the domain is just forwarding somewhere, won’t hurt.
For example, the Twitter handle I wanted was @emotikon, which is the name of my musical projects. I own emotikon.co, so I used an email address from that domain throughout this process.
Step 1.5: If you already have a Twitter account with an alternative name, and you just want to change its name to the one you want, skip step 2.
Step 2: Register A Dummy Twitter Account With That Address
Sign up for a new Twitter account using the email address from step 1. The handle can be anything you want. When Twitter liberates your account, they’re going to merge it over to the dummy account, so you’re saving a step by giving them an existing account to use. I called mine @emotikonTEMP.
Step 3: Report The Account for Impersonation
The form you need is at support.twitter.com/forms/impersonation. Choose the bottom option, “I am being impersonated.” When you click that button, more options will appear. Choose the one that applies.
Once you’ve chosen the right option, a contact form will appear. Fill that out with all the relevant information and be sure to use the email address that clearly establishes your claim to the name. The optional Twitter username is the one from step 1.5 or 2. It says it’s optional, but it will save you a step.
Step 4: Wait A Little While
After you submit, you’ll get an auto-reply right away. Before too long, a human on the Twitter Trust and Safety team will follow up with you if there are any problems with your submission. If everything is in order, after a perfectly reasonable amount of time, you’ll get the glorious email.
After that, the account is yours! When you log in to the account you listed in step 3, it will have the name you’ve been waiting for.
Victory is mine.
— emotikon (@emotikon) December 13, 2011
Thanks to J.B. at Fusible for showing me how this works. I can’t believe it, but it really does!
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Microsoft Research: Searchers Really Do Favor Some Domains Over Others
Dec 13th
A new study from Microsoft Research confirms what most SEOs have known for years—that domain names are a crucial element for capturing clicks and conversions from search results. Unlike what’s been published in most search marketing forums, however, this research was not focused on SEO…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Should Your Business Really Be Using Twitter? [INFOGRAPHIC]
Dec 13th
Twitter is not for everyone and/or every business. It takes a lot of time, effort and strategies to create an account that pays off. However, there are numerous “speakers” telling business owners that Twitter is the magic bean that will make their business dreams come true. Nothing great in life comes easy. Success is not [...]
Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal
View full post on Search Engine Journal
Opinion: 3 Onsite SEO Myths and Facts – What Really Counts? – Search Engine Journal
Dec 7th
|
Opinion: 3 Onsite SEO Myths and Facts – What Really Counts?
Search Engine Journal Everybody who is into SEO knows that it is more than just link building and offsite techniques. Sure, links matter the most, but how about your website itself? Onsite optimization might not be the most important part of SEO according to some people but … Distributing to an Array of Wires Will Have a Positive Impact on SEO Campaigns |
View full post on SEO – Google News
