E-commerce

Internet and E-commerce has become a vital part and parcel of everyday modern life. By the way, what is e-commerce? E-commerce or electronic commerce is the buying and selling of products and services on the Internet and in other words, it means online transaction!

Just like the real world commerce, e-commerce consists of retail shopping, banking, auctions, real estate transactions, airline and hotel booking, movie rentals etc and in a nutshell, nearly everything and anything ! All this with just a click of your mouse and sitting in the comfort of your home!

E-commerce has many other advantages too. Like for instance,the yearly fee for an e-commerce website is insignificant compared to the exorbitant property rental for a store in a mall. Moreover, the transactions are handled by software process, and does not require sales and other managing staff – at least not till the item is ready to be packed and shipped. As a consequence, real world businesses just cannot compete with their e-commerce counterparts!

Copyright © 2008 Laila Rajaratnam. All Rights Reserved

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Sending Money Online!

Is it easy to send money fast? Of course it is! Sending money order online is safe, quick, convenient, cheap, and it can be sent to anywhere in the world. There are two methods to send online money order- by Bank and by Internet.

Online money transfer by Bank is the electronic transfer of money from one bank account to another. The recipient should also have a bank account and the money is transferred electronically within minutes direct into a bank account of the recipient. By this bank-to-bank account transfer, no actual cash is exchanged, but the electronic balances are adjusted accordingly in their respective accounts.

In the case of one not having a bank account, a cash wire transfer is possible. The money is paid at the bank and the recipient produces identification at the time of disbursement of funds. Cash wire transfers are costly and has certain limitations. During a purchase transaction a seller can provide false information to the sender of the cash wire transfer, collect the cash at the receiving end under the false ID, and vanish without delivering the merchandise.

Now,lets see what is money transfer by Internet! There are popular reliable financial providers like Western Union, PayPal, E-gold, Ikobo, Moneygram and Xoom which does not require you to have an account with them to transfer money online.

Western Union(www.westernunion.com) - has outlets worldwide and money is transferred electronically between these outlets. A person can pay the transfer fee and money at a Western Union and the recipient can collect the fund from the nearest Western Union branch within minutes. The advantage of this method is that there is no need for Internet access or bank.

Pay pal(www.paypal.com) is the world's largest online payment service which allows people from all around the world to buy and sell off the internet. All one needs is an email address. The fees for such transactions may be a percentage of the money being transferred or a fixed fee, irrespective of the amount being transferred.

Ikobo(www.iKobo.com)- is a service that allows you to send money to anyone with a Visa debit card. All you have to do is to fill up the necessary information via its online form. When Ikobo receives the necessary information, the recipient and prepaid re-loadable Visa debit card are sent and your money can be collected.

Moneygram (www.emoneygram.com) - includes Same-day service and Economy service. The Same-day service is for urgent money transfer and the economy service takes about three to five working days.

Payko (www.payko.com) - sells money order online. You can send money order via Payko with your Master or Visa credit card. The money order can be sent via regular mail, first class mail, priority mail, or express mail.

Finally, there are the nationalised Bank's International Credit and Debit cards like Visa and Mastercard ,as well as ATM cards which enable online money transfer within minutes. Whenever these cards are swiped at a retailer, wire transfer is authorised from the bank account of that card to the retailer's bank account.

Online money transfers are quick paperless transactions and furthermore, as precaution, during money transfers, details like the name of the country, bank, regional location and customer account number are facilitated by use of the IBAN that is, International Bank Account Number.

Copyright © 2008 Laila Rajaratnam. All Rights Reserved

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Online Music: Turn on & Tune In

For the music lovers and music fans the Internet is a one stop source for music!! A high-speed broadband connection and a good set of speakers can turn your PC into a digital jukebox. The internet allows you to listen to music from commercial-free channels or download and burn songs to a CD or load them on a portable player for listening on the go!!

How do music services work?

Music services are available in two basic categories - subscription and non-subscription.

• With non-subscription services, you pay to download individual songs or an entire album. Apple's iTunes Music Store has sold over a billion songs for US $.99 per song.
• With subscription services you pay a monthly fee to access libraries of a million or more songs.. Once the subscription ends, you can no longer listen to your music, unless you have purchased individual songs. Most subscription services also charge an additional fee for their "To-Go" service, which let's you load songs on a portable device.

Sometimes the music service might not have the music you want in spite of them having thousands of songs. So, you can take advantage of the free trials they offer to check out their music vault.

If you don't like the service ,do cancel before the trial period is up or you'll will be billed for at least a month. Alternately,you can use the option of mixing the services like downloading songs from MSN Music and subscribing to Napster for everyday listening. Since most services only require a month-to-month commitment and in case you are not satisfied with the service you can cancel it at any time .

Digital Rights

Since the industry makes its money by selling CDs, there will be a revenue loss if people can generously exchange digital copies of songs. Hence, many digital file formats have built technical safeguards that does not allow duplication and sharing of music. This is called Digital Rights Management or DRM. Both AAC and WMA files utilize DRM technology while MP3 files don't.

With this technology you may not be able to burn songs to a CD or even if you are able to, it will be for a restricted amount of times!

Have fun with Online Music!!

Copyright © 2008 Laila Rajaratnam. All Rights Reserved

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Internet Radio

Computer can be used to listen to the radio. But then, to listen to radio online, your computer must be equipped with a sound card and speakers or headphones. You'll also need a media player or an audio plug-in for your web browser There are thousands of radio stations around the world and by putting their programming online, these stations can now reach a global audience.The best part is that the internet radio puts you in control. You can listen to what you want, when you want. The technology that makes this all possible is called streaming audio.

What is streaming audio?
Streaming audio is a process where you hear the music as it arrives at your computer over the internet, and therefore you do not have to wait for a complete download. Once a small amount of the file is buffered, the audio begins. Therefore, this is different from the usual method of receiving Internet audio – which is downloading a .wav or a .au or other type of file completely before being able to listen to it. As the data arrives it is buffered for a few seconds and then playback begins. As the audio is playing, more data is constantly arriving (or streaming), and as long as you are receiving a constant stream of data, you should hear constant

Tune It Up

Depending on the station, it will probably use one of the 2 major formats currently available: RealAudio or Windows Media Player. These two media players

are are not cross-compatible; you can't play a RealMedia file with Windows Media Player file and visa versa. However, some types of files, like .mp3, will play on both. A growing number of stations are using streaming MP3 format and Winamp also can be used to play these. Another popular and versatile program is Apple's iTunes for both the Mac and PC.

In general, speech sounds better than music. But the faster your connection, the better will be your audio experience .However, software audio players have control panels, so you can play, pause, fast-forward and rewind at will. Also, a few online radio programs are indexed, hence,you can directly access the content you want, like skipping the weather report to take in the local sports scores.

Turn it on

There are radio station search engines on the internet and the Radio-Locator is the most popular one.They have links to thousands of radio stations worldwide . The other popular radio websites are the National Public Radio and BBC Radio, which offers talk, sports world news and music.

Enjoy the Web Radio!!

Copyright © 2008 Laila Rajaratnam. All Rights Reserved

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All about MP3

Do you throw parties often? Go on long picnics? Listen to music all the way to and fro driving to work? Well, there’s good news for you! You don’t have to carry loads of music CDs .Compressing and converting the music to MP3 format, all you have to do is to carry a couple of CDs! For example, a regular audio CD holds between 12 and 16 songs whereas a Mp3 CD has about 120- 150 songs in a single CD.

What is MP3?

MP3 files are actually MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group) files. MP3 is a compressed audio format that is much smaller in file size and has similar sound quality to WAV format, the format found on normal music CDs that you buy in a store.MP3 shrinks the size of audio data while preserving sound quality, so music files can be easily distributed over the Internet. Sounds stored in the MP3 format have the extension .mp3.

Why is MP3 is Popular?
1. A song in MP3 format can be up to 10 times smaller than the same song on a regular audio CD.

2. MP3 is still very close to CD quality. Smaller does not mean smaller in playback time, but smaller in needed storage space.

3. Mp3 enables you to download songs quickly, with a broadband connection, it only takes minutes.

4. Since an MP3 is a lot smaller, sending or receiving MP3 takes lesser time and is faster too.

5. The format is popular for turning your PC into a jukebox of hundreds or thousands of songs.

6. You can load thousands of songs into a portable mp3 player and carry your music collection wherever you go.

7. MP3 has become the standard for exchanging music on the Internet.

Free downloadable MP3 music are available on the Internet from file sharing tools like Limewire, KaZaa, Bearshare, eDonkey and many more. These tools allow you to download entire CD's in MP3 format.
If you would like to download and listen to MP3 files on your computer, then you need *

A sound card and speakers for the computer.An Internet connection.An MP3 player (a software application you can download from the Web in 10 minutes)

How to play MP3?

To play MP3 files you need a MP3 player! These players are available in two types * portable players and software players. The portable players are hardware devices like Apple's iPod, MP3 portable players, Walkmans etc. Software players are programs you install on your computer like iTunes, Winamp, RealPlayer etc. PC users will already have Windows Media Player installed and if not, it can be downloaded from Microsoft. Once you have the player installed, you can download music from many sites on the net .You can either listen to the downloaded music on your computer or transfer the songs from the computer to the hardware device or mail it as an attachment in your messages to anyone!

Converting music to MP3?

Music can be converted from CDs which are in wav format to mp3.To convert songs from your CDs into MP3 files, you have to use a ripper and an encoder software to do that. A ripper
copies
the song's file from the CD onto your hard disk. The encoder compresses the song into the MP3 format. By encoding the songs, you can play them on your computer or on your MP3 player. The CD burning software Nero is the most popular advanced tool to convert music to MP3.It has a built in encoder for easy conversion. Windows Media Player also has provision to rip songs from CDs to MP3 format. There are many free soft wares available on the net to rip music!

Is this not cool? :)

Copyright © 2008 Laila Rajaratnam. All Rights Reserved

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What is Multimedia?

In this tutorial you will learn about different multimedia formats and how to use them !

Multimedia refers to everything you can hear or see in the computer like text, graphics, music, videos, sounds, CDs, DVDs, animation, interactive games and more. Different browsers handle multimedia in different ways. Some browsers handle multimedia online by supporting a number of multimedia formats. To experience multimedia online, you'll need a computer with sound and video cards and special software programs called plug-ins. Plug-ins, also known as players, extends the ability of your web browser, turning your computer into a radio or TV. Plug-ins may be already installed with your web browser but when a web page requires a special plug-in, you will be prompted to download it from the Internet.

Multimedia elements like sounds and videos are stored in media files and come in many different formats while the file extension determines the media type. Though there are many formats in use, AAC, MP3 and WMA are the big three formats used by digital music services. Your personal computer probably play songs encoded in any of the formats, but most portable music players cannot. For instance, iPods play MP3 and AAC files, but not WMA files. Thus, your portable player may determine which service you can use.

Sound can be stored in many different formats.

1. The MIDI Format - cannot store songs, only tunes. MIDI files can be extremely small and a 23K size music file can play for nearly 5 minutes. MIDI files are supported by all the popular Internet browsers. Sounds stored in the MIDI format have the extension .mid or .midi.

2. The RealAudio Format-The RealAudio format which supports video and allows streaming of audio (on-line music, Internet radio) was developed by Real Media, with low bandwidths. Because of the low bandwidth priority, quality is often reduced.

3.The AIFF Format -The AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format) was developed by Apple, but unfortunately these files are not cross-platform and are not supported by all web browsers. Sounds stored in the AIFF format have the extension .aif or .aiff

4.The WAVE Format - is one of the most popular sound format on the Internet and developed by Microsoft . It is supported by all the popular browsers. Sounds stored in the WAVE format have the extension .wav.

5.The MP3 Format -MP3 files are actually MPEG files.MP3 is one of the most popular sound formats for music recording. It shrinks the size of audio data while preserving sound quality, so music files can be easily distributed over the Internet. Sounds stored in the MP3 format have the extension .mp3 or .mpga (for MPG Audio).

6. AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) has improved on MP3 by requiring less data to reproduce the same sound quality. Songs downloaded from Apple's iTunes Music Store are encoded in this format.

Videos too can be stored in many formats

1. The AVI Format -The AVI (Audio Video Interleave) format developed by Microsoft is supported by all computers running Windows and popular web browsers. It is not always possible to play on non-Windows computers. Videos stored in the AVI format have the extension .avi.

2. The Windows Media Format-The Windows Media format ,developed by Microsoft Windows Media is a common format on the Internet, but Windows Media movies cannot be played on non-Windows computer without an extra (free) component installed. Videos stored in the Windows Media format have the extension .wmv.

3. The MPEG Format-The MPEG (Moving Pictures Expert Group) format is the most popular format on the Internet. It is cross-platform, and supported by most web browsers. Videos stored in the MPEG format have the extension .mpg or .mpeg.

4. The QuickTime Format-The QuickTime format , by Apple is a common format on the internet, but QuickTime movies cannot be played on a windows computer without the plug-in installed. Install QuickTime, a plug-in for playing video clips on Macintosh and PC computers and watch movie trailers and other multimedia with this useful little program. Videos stored in QuickTime format have the extension .mov

5. The RealVideo Format- This format allows streaming of video (on-line video, Internet TV) with low bandwidths. Turn your computer into a radio or television with the RealPlayer. Once you install the RealPlayer, you can listen to the latest newscasts from National Public Radio, CNN, BBC and hundreds of other sites.This format has the extension .rm or .ram.

6. The Shockwave (Flash) Format-This format by Macromedia requires an extra component like Flash to play and to add pizzazz to a website. This component comes preinstalled with the latest versions Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. It turns your computer into an interactive animation machine.Shockwave format has the extension .swf

Some multimedia content, called streaming media, are embedded in a web page and begin to play when you access the page.

There are many more exciting ways to use multimedia options in the computer as well as on the Internet!!

Copyright © 2008 Laila Rajaratnam. All Rights Reserved

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