US Advanced Technology

If you’ve been hearing the buzz on Urge recently, it’s not about a deep desire or compulsion – it’s about MTV’s offering to the world of online music downloads and streaming.

Urge is a subscription based music download service in which its patrons can subscribe for a monthly fee of $10 and listen to as many of the 2 million songs in MTV’s coffers as they like. If they’d like to download that song, then it costs 99 cents each.

But it’s not just MTV behind the latest addition to the world of online music. Microsoft and MTV are working together on this one. Bill Gates must have seen the success of similar sites like Napster and Rhapsody and decided to jump on the bandwagon. Urge’s challenge will be to convince all those music lovers who prefer to buy songs and download them through sites like the incredibly popular iTunes, owned by Apple computers, that subscribing to a site and being able to listen to whatever songs you like, in whatever order and as often as you like is just as good or better than buying them one by one. It’s just one more battle to add to the long running conflict between Microsoft and Apple.

Does Bill have anything different to offer through Urge? Anything that makes this latest venture stand out from similar sites? Not really. Should you choose to become an Urge subscriber, you won’t find any music that you wouldn’t find on any other download – subscription site. The prices are even pretty much the same.

What they do offer is a aesthetics – their site looks good. Plus, there’s the camaraderie. Subscribers can post on blogs and converse with one another. But that’s about it.

But with Microsoft powering the marketing and advertising engine behind Urge, it’s sure to do well. Even the latest incarnation of Microsoft’s Windows Media Player has Urge built in. Everyone with a PC has access to this free player and therefore easy access to Urge.

What PC users won’t have is the portability provided by the wildly popular iPod. Current owners of iPods, should they decide to subscribe to Urge, will have to buy songs through the site, download them, burn them onto CDs and then convert the music files to mp3s in order to be compatible. Other portable devices are compatible with the service, however, and those are listed on the site.

This all may change in the Christmas of 2006, as buzz indicates Microsoft plans to release their “iPod Killer”. Based on the Xbox brand, and including additional features like gaming, this media player is aimed right at Apple’s heart, and could quickly make “Urge” a household name, assuming the two products are closely linked.

Each of the music download sites has their own strengths and weaknesses. Urge fully divides and subdivides genres so that its subscribers can easily find what they’re looking for while exploring other bands that they might like. Yahoo Music Unlimited personalizes the start page to include suggestions based on the subscribers previous downloads and offers a cheaper subscription rate. Rhapsody has the best radio services, providing specialized stations that stream a pre-set list of music.

If you can’t decide, then try one or try them all. Each of them offers a free trial subscription. You can experiment with all of them and decide which one suits you best.

The iPod Video Player: Another New Innovation To An Already Innovative Device

The iPod is a portable digital media player designed and manufactured by Apple Computers. The standard iPod model stores media on a built in hard drive while the smaller iPod Shuffle and iPod nano uses flash memory. The iPod has became the world’s best selling digital audio player since its launch in 2001.

An IPod can play MP3, WAV, AAC/M4A, Protected AAC, AIFF, Audible audio book and Apple Lossless audio file formats. The fifth generation iPod can now play m4v and mp4 video files. With this addition, the iPod has become a complete multimedia player.

Apple designed the iPod to work with the iTunes media library software, which allows users to manage the music libraries on their computer and on their iPod. To add up to the excitement of its feature, users may also set a rating of up to five stars on any song. This will allow them to remember which ones they like or which ones have the best quality.

It also features some games for example the Parachute wherein the player controls a turret and attempts to shoot down paratroopers and the helicopters that released them. This game is similar to Apple II version of the game Sabotage by Mark Allen. Another is the solitaire, a simple card game that resembles the Klondike solitaire card game. There is also the Music Quiz, The game plays a portion of a random song and the player must identify it form the list of five. The faster the player had identified the song, the higher his score will be. No record is kept of the score and there is no limit to the amount of songs played. This is now possible because of the capabilities of the fifth generation of iPod to play videos.

For the meantime, the iPod video could only support MP4 and Mpeg4 video formats. So if you want to load videos to your iPod, you need to convert the videos first if they are not in the supported format yet. This is not a problem since there are many video converters and softwares available in the internet for download to do the job.

But with Apples dedication to keep the number one spot in the iPods segment in the market, it will be sure that the soon enough more innovations will be produced to allow more file formats to be played.

Now you will be able to share your videos and movies with many people easier than ever. You can also transfer files and videos from your office computer to your home computer and vice versa or to any computer.

You can bring your favorite music videos of your favorite artists anytime and anywhere. You can also load your favorite movies or your home movies as well. Take it with you to family reunions, parties and meeting up with long lost friends.

Need to have a bigger view? You can plug it into a television and see it in a bigger screen. With the right accessories, you can elevate the performance and capabilities of your iPod video. Hook it up with a special AV cable to your TV for a bigger view or you can hook it up in your car for battery charging and using the stereo system of your car. To listen to the audio of your movies better, you can plug them as well to a portable iPod speaker. Not only one person would be able to listen to the audio of your videos. The iPod video, a new evolution for Apples premiere product.

A tablet PC is a light weight slate shaped hand-held computer or a slim note book PC. The idea is to replace the traditional pen and notebook with a tablet PC and stylus or digital pen. Historically the tablet was used by the Egyptians to write on clay tablets with a writing stick. In the present day the clay tablet has been replaced with a screen and the writing stick with a stylus. The tablet PC may be considered the pen and notebook of the future. They typically weigh around 2-3 pounds and their main feature is portability. The idea of a tablet PC was floated by Alan Kay of Xerox but was a commercial failure until now, when the prices have fallen down and it is expected that the prices will fall in future. The first widely sold Tablet PC was Newton of Apple Computers.

The hardware consists of a slim touch screen, stylus, optional wireless keyboard and mouse. In this type of computers the data input is not through the traditional mouse and keyboard but through a stylus or a virtual keyboard on the screen. It also has the facility of data input through wireless keyboard and mouse. The stylus is used to write directly/tap on the screen or fingers are used to input data through the touch screen. There is a magnetic field over the screen which interacts with the stylus electronics, hence the user can rest his hands on the screen without distorting the image and only stylus movement affects the screen. They come in various sizes like 8.5 inch, 10 inch and 14 inch.

There are different types of tablet PCs like slates, convertibles and hybrids. Slates consist of just the screen and the stylus. If a slate is attached with a keyboard it is called a convertible. Typically the keyboard is attached with a single joint and it folds/opens onto the screen. The Hybrid has a detachable keyboard so that it can be used both as a slate or a convertible.

Tablet PCs come with resident softwares like handwriting recognition software, speech recognition software, shorthand entry software, virtual keyboard etc,.

There are various advantages like portability, users who are not comfortable with keyboards find stylus more friendly, they do not interrupt line of sight as they are kept on the table and are helpful in meetings and are handheld so can be used in giving presentation while standing up. The disadvantages of Tablet PCs have been cost till now but since the prices have fallen and are falling, hence is not a constraint anymore.

Various companies like Acer, Lenovo, Toshiba Fujitsu, HP, Gateway, Compaq, Motion, NEC etc are manufacturing Tablet PCs.

Are they future proof?Till recent years the Tablet PC was a commercial failure but with the advances in battery technology, handwriting recognition software, wireless internet access, larger memory, better screen resolution they are being accepted as commercially viable option. Many popular science fiction movies portray the use of Tablet PCs. Tablet PCs are bound to replace the notebook & pen and future books, magazines, newspapers.