Broadband Will it Affect Your Online Marketing Future?

The coming age of general Broadband use bearing down upon us, minute by minute, is going to leave many changes in its wake. Some will be welcome; others will demand all we can do, just to keep up!

Of course, items like high quality graphics, streaming video and movies on demand will be commonplace. On the other hand, Broadband spells the end of most common text-only websites. Let's face it: the consumer wants more! Offering a good deal with high quality service won't do it anymore.

Websites that cater to the newfound appetite for quality audio and video content will get the sale. Obviously, that makes perfect sense! It brings to mind an experience I had while learning Photoshop. I purchased a very big manual and it took me three weeks just to get my feet wet. A good friend bought a video tutorial and arrived at my level of skill in two days!

There are many other things audio and video can explain better and in much shorter time than text, as in the example above. We're not talking just innovation; but also, the very deep and long-lasting impact the technology is going to produce.

I was reading an informative article written by Darrin Coe, titled The Internet Consumer Exposed. It's a piece compiled from larger studies of the habits and lifestyles of Internet centered consumers. By the conclusions reached in the item, it does appear the consumer will smile upon the coming Broadband changes. Here is Darrin's website: http://dcoe1.tripod.com/exposed1/

There are some Marketers actively staking out their Broadband future. One that comes to mind is Jim Edwards. Jim is also a well known writer and syndicated newspaper columnist and - not to mention - a very pleasant person.

A week or so ago, I received an email from Jim inviting me to witness the birth of his new multimedia Newsletter I Gotta tell You. I was speechless! Very seldom do we get to watch one of the early events giving birth to a revolution! It is content delivery that's light years away and will only get better and better. Good work Jim!

Here is Jim's Newsletter: http://www.igottatellyou.com/

Another application that's blazing a trail into Broadband is the Instant Video Generator sold by Armand Morin, Alex Mandossian and Rick Raddatz. Though they claim it works as well with a dial up connection, I can see it carving out a big chunk of the Broadband market. I've gone to the website and viewed a few presentations. It does seem to work quite well! The buffering is almost instantaneous and the quality very good. Here is the website: http://instantvideogenerator.com

Conclusion

Start taking the necessary steps to get on the multimedia bandwagon or suffer the same fate as the dinosaurs! Broadband dominance will become an inescapable reality of the very near future. As Stark Trek's Borg say: Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated!

About the Author:

Francisco Aloy is the author of Yes, I Want to Start My Internet Business Without Being SCAMMED!. He has an online business catering to the needs of the Newbie Net Entrepreneur. Visit his site to see more of Mr. Aloy's articles. http://www.newbie-business-guide.com

A Cheap Alternative To Broadband?

Are you a dial-up user looking for a faster connection, but don't like Broadband prices? If so, you should take a look at a new service called OnSpeed, which has received rave reviews in Internet technology publications.

What OnSpeed does is to re-route web pages and email via its own servers, compressing the data on the fly prior to sending it onwards to your PC. A small program then decompresses the data, so that you can view it in the normal way via your browser or email client.

In my own dial-up tests, with a modem running at a nominal 49kb/s I appeared to get speeds close to that of my normal broadband connection of 598 kb/s - very impressive. Image quality is often reduced but the compression for this can be improved, though with an adverse effect on the speed of course.

Some file types like MP3 also cannot yet be compressed. The company is working on these issues however and expects to find solutions soon.

Unfortunately I was unable to use email in my tests, due to a 'port' conflict with a spam filter that I was using. The standard advice on the OnSpeed site for such cases is to disable the offending program. Not a constructive approach - to say the least - so I hope that the relevant instructions will be changed soon.

More significantly, the problem persisted even when I switched off the OnSpeed application on my PC; in the end I had to remove the program to get the spam filter working again. I expect that this fault can be resolved, but clearly there are issues in this area that need to be addressed.

The software is easy to install, and is available for Mac as well as Windows PCs. On the whole the service is surprisingly good, and a lot cheaper than broadband. Unlike other 'speed-up' techniques that tweak your computer's settings but result in little noticeable improvement, OnSpeed really works.

I can recommend OnSpeed for dial-up users who can't justify the expense of broadband, or who are not located close enough to a suitable exchange. OnSpeed is also stated to be great for mobile or PDA users, as GPRS (wireless) speeds can be boosted by as much as 8 times. It even helps with broadband if you can only get a reduced service in your area.

My overall rating is 4/5 - very good, but the email support needs to be improved.

If you want further details of OnSpeed, please visit http://www.On-Speed.net. There is a 14 day money-back guarantee, so you can try the service without any risk.

Copyright ? Richard Prosser 2004

Richard is a software developer and entrepreneur, and may be contacted via the 'Article Tips' site given below. This article may be published without permission, but only in its entirety.

Free email course: Drive 'Hot' Prospects To Your Site For Free! http://www.ArticleTips.com

Bandwidth

The term bandwidth is very common these days, especially because its technology affects almost all aspects of our lives. You use bandwidth when you connect to the internet, when you use the telephone, when you watch television, and in many other activities. But what exactly is bandwidth? Read on to find out and see how it can change your life.

Bandwidth defined

The term ?bandwidth? refers to the amount of data or information that can be transmitted over a network in a given time, or, in much simpler terms, is a measure of how much ?stuff? is sent through any connection. Information sent can take many forms depending on the channel.

How bandwidth affects you

Bandwidth in internet terms is usually expressed in either bits per second (bps), kilobits per second (kbps), or megabits per second (mbps). The higher the bandwidth of your connection, the faster you can upload and download data from the internet. Dial-up connections are low speed at only about 50+ kbps, while better cable connections go from 500 kbps and up. Whether you need a connection that has bigger bandwidth depends on your purposes for using the internet. If you only use the net for text-based research purposes, you don?t need much bandwidth. A whole page of English text is only about 16,000 bits, so if your modem can move about 57,000 bits per second, you are more than covered. You may need higher bandwidth if you upload or download full-motion and full-screen video, which, depending on compression, requires roughly 10,000,000 bits-per-second. It is wise to subscribe to a high-bandwidth connection if you use the internet for pictures, graphics, music and videos.

The telephones use bandwidth, too ? in fact, a bandwidth of about 3,000 ?cycles per second? (cps) is required for voice transmission. The bandwidth required for television broadcasting is even higher at about 6 million cps, and satellite system prevent interference by spreading television signals using bandwidth of as little as 17.5 MHz to a as much as 72 MHz.

Bandwidth provides detailed information on Bandwidth, Bandwidth Tests, Bandwidth Management, Bandwidth Meters and more. Bandwidth is affiliated with Colocation Hosting.

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Just What Is Optical Carrier (OC) Bandwidth?

Ever wonder just what the heck was an OC48? Not surprisingly many network engineers and IT managers aren't up to speed (no pun intended) on just what OC really means...and what all is available to enahnce their company's applications within this bandwidth category.

So....here's a quick run down to set you straight.

The OC (optical carrier...fiber optic based broadband network )hierarchy goes as follows, starting with a T3/DS3 electrical carrier and then on to an OC-1:

DS3 (Electrical) = 44.736mbits/sec = 28 T1s/DS1s

STS1 (Electrical) = (1) DS3 @ 44.736mbits/sec with SONET (Synchronous Optical NET) overhead = 51.840mbits/sec

OC-1 (Optical) = (1) STS1 on Optical facilities

OC-3 = (3) OC-1s = 155.52mbits/sec

OC-9 = (9) OC-1s (not commonly used) = 466.56mbits/sec

OC-12 = (12) OC-1s or (4) OC-3s = 622.08mbits/sec

OC-18 = (18) OC-1s (not commonly used) = 933.12mbits/sec

OC-24 = (24) OC-1s (not commonly used) = 1.244gbits/sec

OC-36 = (36) OC-1s (not commonly used) = 1.866gbits/sec

OC-48 = (48) OC-1s or (4) OC-12s or (16) OC-3s = 2.488gbits/sec

OC-192= (192) OC-1s or (4) OC-48s or (16) OC-12s or (64) OC-3s = 9.953gbits/sec

The reason for the stair-stepping of the OC Hierarchy is due to the fact that the next available level of multiplexing ('muxing) of lower-level circuits is usually 4: (4) OC-3s = (1) OC-12, and (4) OC-48s = (1) OC-192.

This muxing scheme is usually dictated by the equipment manufacturers and is pretty much an adopted standard in the Telecom industry - hence the lack of the lesser-common bandwidth aggregations like OC-9, OC-18, etc. The only exception is the OC-3, which was needed to allow the upper-level hierarchy to work.

Hope this tidbit of info helps the network design decisions for your business now....and in the future!

Michael is the owner of FreedomFire Communications....including DS3-Bandwidth.com and Business-VoIP-Solution.com. Michael also authors Broadband Nation where you're always welcome to drop in and catch up on the latest BroadBand news, tips, insights, and ramblings for the masses.

Tim BernersLee: The Man Who 'Invented' The Internet

While working as an independent consultant at CERN (a nuclear research laboratory close to Geneva) in 1980, Tim Berners-Lee developed an innovative way of storing information in a program named Enquire.

Many of the fundamental concepts in this program were later used in the development of a global hypertext system - popularly known as the Internet or the World Wide Web.

The WWW was developed to increase the ease with which people could exchange information. This became a reality with the introduction of the first WYSWIG (What You See Is What You Get) hypertext web browser which was written by Tim Berners-Lee.

The advantage of the WWW over previous systems was the lack of a need for a centralized server. In short, this meant that it was just as easy to retrieve, as well as link to, a document that was down the hall as across the world.

This was a huge breakthrough in computing science.

The Web and the first web server were released to the hypertext communities in mid 1991, after being released within CERN in late 1990. In order to achieve a coherent standard for the WWW, specifications for URLs, HTML and HTTP were published.

The universality forced by these specifications, the non-dependence on a central server and decision by Berners-Lee not to profit from the WWW led to a high level of adoption of the technology between 1991-94. A ten fold increase in annual traffic was recorded on the first Web server during this period.

With the advent of the Web, a number of spin-off technologies have emerged. A vast array of server side, client side and database languages have been created to fulfill needs of businesses and individuals.

There are two types of programming languages used on the WWW: client-side and server-side.

A client-side language is executed in the users' browser and is not dependent upon the Web server. Client-side programming is done almost exclusively with JavaScript.

A server-side language executes on the Web server. In recent years server-side programming has become more popular than client-side programming because it is independent of the type of browser that the surfer is using. Programmers refer to this as being 'cross-platform'. Perl, PHP, ASP and JSP are popular client-side programming languages.

Databases have been developed to allow for 'dynamic' websites.

Dynamic websites allow for a high level of personalization when retrieving information.

Whenever you type in values in a form on a web page - whether those values are for a user id and password, the characteristics of your ideal partner or an author's name - it's a 'dynamic' web site. That is just a way of saying that there is a database being used to run the website.

Popular databases used include MySQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle.

An area of the WWW that Berners-Lee has direct involvement is in his role as the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (WC3) which has existed since 1994.

The aim of the WC3 is to achieve coherent standards between all companies using web technologies such as HTML, CSS and XML. Prior to the creation of the standards detailed by the WC3, companies used different standards, which led to potential incompatibilities. The WC3 remedied this by creating an open forum - allowing companies to agree on core standards for WWW technologies.

The future of Berners-Lee's influence on modern computing is in the context of the Semantic Web. 'Semantic' means 'meaning'.

A semantic web is one where elements that appear in a document hold some meaning that can be automatically processed by a machine in some form of data gathering. Currently, documents on the WWW written in HTML hold no meaning ? they're presentation based.

Tim Berners-Lee laid the conceptual foundation for the World Wide Web. It was his initial idea to create a way where information could be freely and easily exchanged. The standards associated with it and the lack of reliance upon a central server, gave the Web a cross platform advantage and independence, which led to its meteoric rise in popularity.

In turn, its popularity spawned and popularized many different programming languages, databases, markup standards, servers - as well as - viruses and worms.

However, while Tim Berners-Lee is the 'father' of the Internet, its development over the years is a result of the efforts of an extraordinary number of individuals. There is little question that 500 or 1,000 years from now, historians will look at the invention of the Internet as one of those rare, seminal historical events - much like Gutenberg's printing press.

If you found this article educational, please visit my blog Creative And Unique Gift Ideas. There's nothing educational about it but it is a lot of fun!