ADUTAINMENT: Advertising as Entertainment
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What A Newsletter Can Do For Your Business
Newsletters are often thought of as easy, do-it-yourself communications projects. The reality is different.

Channels Network? Unveils Video on It's Niche Business Websites
For the past several months Channels Network? has been working behind the scenes to join the power and popularity of video with their niche e-business network websites. They are pleased to announce today that the planning, development, and beta testing is over, and the bright future of Channels Network? is underway.

The Face of Your Business, Part I
When we initially started our businesses, we had to decide how we were going to market ourselves. Kind of an obvious statement - every business has to do that.

You May Need To Hire People To Help You With Your Home Business
If you are deciding whether or not to start your own home business, you may also want to consider having people work for you. Owning a home business is similar to owning a brick and mortar business. You may be surprised at how quickly your business takes off and you may be swamped with work sooner than you think. With the help of other workers, your stress level can be reduced and your tasks can be alleviated.

Tom Quanbeck Joins Meritide as Vice President of Sales and Marketing
Meritide, a business software and technology consulting leader, is pleased to announce that Tom Quanbeck has joined the company as the Vice President of Sales and Marketing.

Texas Civil Justice League PAC Endorses Bailey Moseley Business Group Lauds Candidate's Experience and Public Service
The Texas Civil Justice League PAC (TCJL PAC) endorsed Bailey Moseley's bid for the 6th Court of Appeals.

Search Engine Marketing....What Does It Take To Rank These Days?
What does it take to rank nowadays? Intro.

Internet Marketing Powering Small Business
The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) has just published current statistics for internet marketing. The group reports that Search Engine Marketing spending, including paid placement, paid inclusion SEO and purchase of technology platforms, is expected to double by 2011. The aggregate spending total will be $18.6bn.

SecureSheet Technologies Introduces SecureSheet? Mobile Spreadsheets for Business with Support for Apple iPhones and Windows Smartphones
SecureSheet? Mobile Spreadsheets For Business extends the current web capabilities of the SecureSheet? platform empowering users to access and update their existing SecureSheet? custom business applications with the security of the their existing business rules using their mobile devices.

Six Sigma Business Scorecard Second Edition, and Software Products Released
The Second Editon of Six Sigma Business Scorecard has been released by its publisher McGraw Hill Publishing company. The latest edition incorporates measures of innovation, case study, and Strategy for Execution (SFE) Map. Besides, two companies i-Nexus, and Dunn Solutions have launched product supporting implementation of Six Sigma Business Scorecard

New Conservative Website -- libNOT.com -- Video, Commentary, News, and Opinion
libNOT.com is a new conservative website providing daily news, video, opinion and commentary. libNOT.com is not necessarily a Republican website, as there is a difference.

Affiliate Marketing: Clickbank's Private Army
If I were to hazard a guess, I'd wager on the likelihood that you have come across the word "ClickBank" during your foray through the jungle of internet affiliate marketing right?

Pro Step Marketing Announces Marketing Partnership with a Top-selling Coral Springs Real Estate Team
Pro Step Marketing, a real estate-focused marketing strategy, design and implementation firm, has partnered with The DuPree Team of Coral Springs, Fla. -- the No. 1 producer for Keyes Company Realtors -- to implement a new marketing strategy. Pro Step Marketing developed a marketing strategy for The DuPree Team that included the development of a new custom website and optimizing Search Engine rankings.

New Revolutionary Free Video Advertising Business Directory inORIS.com
inORIS.com is an innovative video advertising businesses directory developed to provide a platform where small to medium-sized businesses can upload their own user-generated online commercials for free. Consumers can then view these video ads, allowing them to make more informed buying decisions.

World's Last Chance Video Identifies Papacy as the Dreaded Beast of Bible Prophecy
World's Last Chance released a new video on Bible prophecy identifying the papacy as the first 'beast' of Revelation 13. The video reveals that the Bible has given nine distinct identification marks to identify this 'beast'. World's Last Chance believes that the papacy, united with Protestants, will enforce Sunday observance globally through Sunday Laws. They affirm that by submitting to such laws humans will receive the 'mark of the beast'.

Streaming Video on Your Website - Convert Visitors into Customers

Streaming video is a sequence of "moving images" that are sent in compressed form over the Internet and displayed by the viewer as they arrive. Streaming media is streaming video with sound. With streaming video or streaming media, a Web user does not have to wait to download a large file before seeing the video or hearing the sound. Instead, the media is sent in a continuous stream and is played as it arrives. The user needs a player, which is a special program that uncompresses and sends video data to the display and audio data to speakers. A player can be either an integral part of a browser or downloaded from the software maker's Web site.

Major streaming video and streaming media technologies include RealSystem G2 from RealNetwork, Microsoft Windows Media Technologies (including its NetShow Services and Theater Server), and VDO. Microsoft's approach uses the standard MPEG compression algorithm for video. The other approaches use proprietary algorithms. (The program that does the compression and decompression is sometimes called the codec.) Microsoft's technology offers streaming audio at up to 96 Kbps and streaming video at up to 8 Mbps (for the NetShow Theater Server). However, for most Web users, the streaming video will be limited to the data rates of the connection (for example, up to 128 Kbps with an ISDN connection). Microsoft's streaming media files are in its Advanced Streaming Format (ASF).

Streaming video is usually sent from prerecorded video files, but can be distributed as part of a live broadcast "feed." In a live broadcast, the video signal is converted into a compressed digital signal and transmitted from a special Web server that is able to do multicast, sending the same file to multiple users at the same time.

Streaming media is audio and video that are transmitted on the Internet in a streaming or continuous fashion, using data packets. The most effective reception of streaming media requires some form of broadband technology such as cable modem or DSL. A packet is the unit of data that is routed between an origin and a destination on the Internet or any other packet-switched network. When any file (e-mail message, HTML file, Graphics Interchange Format file, URL - Uniform Recourse Locater request, and so forth) is sent from one place to another on the Internet, the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) layer of TCP/IP divides the file into "chunks" of an efficient size for routing. Each of these packets is separately numbered and includes the Internet address of the destination. The individual packets for a given file may travel different routes through the Internet. When they have all arrived, they are reassembled into the original file (by the TCP layer at the receiving end).

A packet-switching scheme is an efficient way to handle transmissions on a connectionless network such as the Internet. An alternative scheme, circuit-switched, is used for networks allocated for voice connections. In circuit-switching, lines in the network are shared among many users as with packet-switching, but each connection requires the dedication of a particular path for the duration of the connection. "Packet" and "datagram" are similar in meaning. A protocol similar to TCP, the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) uses the term datagram.

MPEG, the Moving Picture Experts Group, develops standards for digital video and digital audio compression. It operates under the auspices of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The MPEG standards are an evolving series, each designed for a different purpose. To use MPEG video files, you need a personal computer with sufficient processor speed, internal memory, and hard disk space to handle and play the typically large MPEG file (which has a file name suffix of .mpg). You also need an MPEG viewer or client software that plays MPEG files. (Note that .mp3 file suffixes indicate MP3 (MPEG-1 audio layer-3) files, not MPEG-3 standard files.) You can download shareware or commercial MPEG players from a number of sites on the Web.

The term codec is an acronym that stands for "compression/decompression." A codec is an algorithm, or specialized computer program, that reduces the number of bytes consumed by large files and programs. In order to minimize the amount of storage space required for a complicated file, such as a video, compression is used. Compression works by eliminating redundancies in data. Compression can be done for any kind of file, including text, programs, images, audio, video, and virtual reality (VR). Compression can reduce the size of a file by a factor of 100 or more in some cases. For example, a 15-megabyte video might be reduced to 150 kilobytes. The uncompressed file would be far too large to download from the Web in a reasonable length of time, but the compressed file could usually be downloaded in a few seconds. For viewing, a decompression algorithm, which "undoes" the compression, would have to be used.

There are numerous standard codec schemes. Some are used mainly to minimize file transfer time, and are employed on the Internet. Others are intended to maximize the data that can be stored in a given amount of disk space, or on a CD-ROM. Codec's are used in many popular Internet products, including QuickTime, Netmeeting, Cu-Seeme, and VDOphone.

Flash, is a popular authoring software developed by Macromedia, and is used to create vector graphics-based animation programs with full-screen navigation interfaces, graphic illustrations, and simple interactivity in an antialiased, resizable file format that is small enough to stream across a normal modem connection. The software is ubiquitous on the Web, both because of its speed (vector-based animations, which can adapt to different display sizes and resolutions, play as they download) and for the smooth way it renders graphics. Flash files, unlike animated but rasterized GIF and JPEG, are compact, efficient, and designed for optimized delivery. Known as a do-it-yourself animation package, Flash 4 gives Web designers the ability to import artwork using whatever bitmap or illustration tool they prefer, and to create animation and special effects, and add sound and interactivity. The content is then saved as file with a .SWF file name extension.

Web users with Intel Pentium or Power Macintosh processors can download Flash Player to view Flash content, which performs across multiple browsers and platforms. Flash is lauded for being one of the Web's most accessible plug-in. According to an independent study cited by Macromedia, over 90 percent of Web users already have Flash Player installed. Macromedia was recently acquired by Adobe in a 3.4 billion dollar deal.

About the Author: Ole Arndt is President of Global Media LLC, in Branchburg NJ.

Correspondence to: oarndt@streamingmediabiz.com