It all started with the introduction of the iTunes Music store! Since then there has been an increasing availability of online music stores where you can legally purchase and download your favourite music tracks and albums. It was just the other night I purchased a full album off the iTunes store when I had a little realisation. Wow that was easy, and I didn’t even have to leave my house.
This all made me think a little about what actual purpose the ‘Record’ store actually serves in the current world that we live in. One of the biggest differences between the two and reason that I think that online music stores have been so successful is not so much the ease of purchase but more so the ability to pick and choose exactly what songs you want. No longer do you have to spend $30 for an album where you only get two or three songs that you actually want to listen to. It think this is the major appeal, but what about pricing?
While albums available for online purchase all come in at different prices depending on the number of tracks, when comparing their prices to purchasing a CD from a store there is a significant price saving.
I have a feeling that the preference to purchase music on a form of media like a CD may also be a bit of a generational thing as well. Given the fact that in the past people have always had a very tangible experience when purchasing music and movies, essentially they would walk into a store, hand over their hard earned cash and physically get something for it. From what I can see it seems that those generations of people still want that tangible experience. However for the younger generations that are used to the more intangible experience of handling their media I think we will slowly see the need and want to have a physical copy of a movie or music slowly fade, and with it will the need for bricks and mortar record stores. Just the way I see it anyway. What do you think? Let us know in the poll below!!
Plasma was the original technology when it came to the original big modern & slim flat screens we are familiar with today and while in the beginning it did suffer a few teething problems with failing pixels and the like it has definetely proved itself in the marketplace as a suitable technology. However in recent times it seems like LCD technology has been surpassing plasma in leaps and bounds.
In recent times LCD panel makers have been investing a lot of time in LED backlit displays to help improve contrast which was always one of the downsides of LCD televisions, and we are continuously seeing thinner and thinner displays.
As a personal preference I do prefer the picture that plasma television screens give off, they have deeper blacks and better viewing angles and all up I feel they have a superior picture. Whereas LCD has always battled (although they are almost on par now) problems with contrast, ghosting and the ability to view on wide angles.
Panasonic has just released their next generation of Plasma television panels to be included in certain models, this technology has been named NeoPDP. One of the big selling points of this new technology is that the new panels consume less power than previous plasma’s – another reason for people choosing to purchase LCD instead. However the NeoPDP also boasts full 1080 HD resolution with improved analysis of the picture data to supposedly improve the image quality in fast moving images on the screen.
The contrast on the panels have also been improved and they are now boasting 2,000,000+:1 Dynamic Contrast. This is intended to produce blacker blacks while maintaining the proper balance of darks and lights to help reproduce the picture the way it was intended. This is combined with richer graduation technology to help ensure colours are reproduced and even the delicate shades of colours in an image are reproduced accurately.
I’m happy to see that at least one television manufacturer is putting effort into ensuring there is a future for the plasma television so that we can continue to enjoy the benefits that this type of display provides. Below is Panasonic’s latest commercial advertising the new technology.
To start off with here I will explain a little about what a DNS is and will later describe a service to help increase your security on the web and speed up your browsing experience.
DNS stands for Domain Name System, and what does this mean? Well the main purpose of a domain name service is to turn domain names (the address or URL of a website) into something meaningful to humans. Essentially the internet is a massive number of computers which all connect to one another and every computer that has access to the internet has a number the usual format is something like 111.222.3.44. The way you access websites is by telling your computer to go and get information off another computer using a given number. Due to the fact that the internet would be largely unusable to us if we had to remember these numbers each time we wanted to visit a site, we have domain names. each domain name is an easy way of presenting the string of numbers the computers use to talk to each other.
Normally when you type in an internet address you’re computer speaks with your internet service provider who then gets the page your looking for. However services such as OpenDNS allow you to direct your internet traffic through their data centres rather than through that of your own internet service provider. This is achieved by either re-directing at each of the computers on your network or you can tell your router to control this allowing easy set up for all computers on your network.
If for nothing else the benefit of using a service like this enables a good speed boost to your web browsing experience. On some of my tests I noticed that sites were loading around 2 seconds quicker than they previously were through my ISP’s service.
I feel that all households should make use of a service like this in large for the security features that they offer. If you have children it may be of interest to know that you have the ability to specifically blacklist websites that you want to restrict access to. This is often more effective than the built in parental controls on the computer itself becuase it is being controlled by a third party service externally, therefore it is not possible for them to work around this. There are presets provided by OpenDNS which allow you to quickly and very easily filter your web access the presets include:
None: no restriction to your browsing, you may select this if you’re not using the service for security
Minimal: protects you against phishing websites and attacks
Low: protects you against limited adult material & phishing attacks
Moderate: protects against all adult material & illegal material & previously mentioned items
High: restricts all adult material, illegal activity, social networking, video sharing, general time wasters plus previously mentioned items.
If you run a business you may find the high level of protection suitable to protect you and your employees from accessing unwanted websites and material. To further add to the offering, if you are so inclined down the big-brother kind of path you can enable stats. This logs all websites that are visited and makes them available for you to view, this can of course be turned on or off.
One of my favourite uses of this service is mainly because I’m lazy, and this is the shortcuts feature. Once you have set this up within the dashboard on your OpenDNS login you simply add a website to the list and give it a shortcut. For example I have it set so that when I type ‘fb’ into my address bar, it will automatically direct me to facebook.com. Pretty handy if you can remember your shortcuts. There is always bookmarks in your browser of course. To add to this is the auto correct feature, this means that if I type facebook.cmo by mistake it recognises this and redirects me to facebook.com instead of giving me a 404 page not found error.
One of the last things that I will mention here for personal users is the ability for the service to redirect when you come accross a site that either no longer exists or you have entered incorrectly and isn’t able to be auto corrected. What happens is that if I am to try and go to fabebook.com, this is obviously spelt wrong but instead of my browser giving me the very annoying 404 page not found error, OpenDNS spits up a page which politely says why you weren’t taken to the page and gives you a list of alternatives or you can do what looks to be a google search.
These are some of the reasons why I feel that this is a service that all homes should be using, and the best part is that for the basic account which gives you all of the things I have mentioned here it is all free! No theres no catches all free. If you’re a business and want some of the more advanced features that this kind of service can provide you do pay a fee. So even if for nothing else but a bit of a speed boost to your browsing head over to OpenDNS.com
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