Videoconferencing

Videoconferencing

A videoconference (also known as a videoteleconference) is a set of interactive telecommunication technologies which allow two or more locations to interact via two-way video and audio transmissions simultaneously. It has also been called visual collaboration and is a type of groupware. It differs from videophone in that it is designed to serve a conference rather than individuals.

Videoconferencing uses telecommunications of audio and video to bring people at different sites together for a meeting. This can be as simple as a conversation between two people in private offices (point-to-point) or involve several sites (multi-point) with more than one person in large rooms at different sites. Besides the audio and visual transmission of people, videoconferencing can be used to share documents, computer-displayed information, and whiteboards.

Simple analog videoconferences could be established as early as the invention of the television. Such videoconferencing systems consisted of two closed-circuit television systems connected via cable. During the first manned space flights, NASA used two radiofrequency (UHF or VHF) links, one in each direction. TV channels routinely use this kind of videoconferencing when reporting from distant locations, for instance. Then mobile links to satellites using special trucks became rather common.

This technique was very expensive, though, and could not be used for more mundane applications, such as telemedicine, distance education, business meetings, and so on, particularly in long-distance applications. Attempts at using normal telephony networks to transmit slow-scan video, such as the first systems developed by AT&T, failed mostly due to the poor picture quality and the lack of efficient video compression techniques. The greater 1 MHz bandwidth and 6 Mbit/s bit rate of Picturephone in the 1970s also did not cause the service to prosper.

It was only in the 1980s that digital telephony transmission networks became possible, such as ISDN, assuring a minimum bit rate (usually 128 kilobits/s) for compressed video and audio transmission. The first dedicated systems, such as those manufactured by pioneering VTC firms, like PictureTel, started to appear in the market as ISDN networks were expanding throughout the world. Video teleconference systems throughout the 1990s rapidly evolved from highly expensive proprietary equipment, software and network requirements to standards based technology that is readily available to the general public at a reasonable cost. Finally, in the 1990s, IP (Internet Protocol) based videoconferencing became possible, and more efficient video compression technologies were developed, permitting desktop, or personal computer (PC)-based videoconferencing. In 1992 CU-SeeMe was developed at Cornell by Tim Dorcey et al., IVS was designed at INRIA, VTC arrived to the masses and free services, web plugins and software, such as NetMeeting, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, SightSpeed, Skype and others brought cheap, albeit low-quality, VTC.

Web Conferencing Software

e/pop Web Conferencing – secure, web, VoIP and video conferencing. This web conferencing software goes far beyond traditional conferencing services (PowerPoint, application and desktop sharing), to include audio (VoIP) and video conferencing, remote control, and a complete set of real-time controls over layouts, users and bandwidth – all as standard, built-in features of the product.

e/pop is available as on-premise software and hosted service. For distributed networks, on-premise installation provides IT managers with maximum control over routing, performance and security. For example, internal web conferencing company requirements can be met by installing the server behind the firewall, eliminating the need to route any traffic outside the company network. For conferencing between internal and external users, e/pop supports SSL/TLS, and even supports using the customers own certificate and/or PKI for the highest level of secure web conferencing available.

e/pop online meeting software has no server prerequisites (other than the operating system and a static IP address), thereby dramatically reducing installation and maintenance time. According to PC Magazine (May 2004) , e/pop web conferencing installs in “5 minutes and 5 mouse clicks!” e/pop is covered by Wainhouse Research, Frost & Sullivan, Gartner, and many other research firms.

AIM (AOL Instant Messenger)- Free instant messaging and video software/service from America Online.

Skype- Offers free video & voice calls over the internet, as well as many other services.

Windows Live Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger)- Free Instant messaging and one-to-one video chat. Also allows making inexpensive calls to regular phone lines. Windows only.

Yahoo! Messenger-Free chat & instant messaging software and service. Includes video.

High Speed Internet Service

High Speed Internet Service

INTRODUCTION

The Internet is a global network of computers.

There are many different types of computers on

the Internet – PCs, Macintoshes, and others – and

many of these computers are parts of smaller

networks, which are also just as varied. The Internet

is based upon a common language that

allows all these computers to talk to each other.

USES OF THE INTERNET

Companies, individuals, and institutions use the Internet in many ways. Companies use the Internet for electronic commerce, also called e-commerce, including advertising, selling, buying, distributing products, and providing customer service. In addition, companies use the Internet for business-to-business transactions, such as exchanging financial information and accessing complex databases. Businesses and institutions use the Internet for voice and video conferencing and other forms of communication that enable people to telecommute (work away from the office using a computer). The use of electronic mail (e-mail) speeds communication between companies, among coworkers, and among other individuals. Media and entertainment companies use the Internet for online news and weather services and to broadcast audio and video, including live radio and television programs. Online chat allows people to carry on discussions using written text. Instant messaging enables people to exchange text messages in real time. Scientists and scholars use the Internet to communicate with colleagues, perform research, distribute lecture notes and course materials to students, and publish papers and articles. Individuals use the Internet for communication, entertainment, finding information, and buying and selling goods and services.

The Internet can also be used to transfer telephone calls using an application known as IP-telephony. This application requires a special phone that digitizes voice and sends it over the Internet to a second IP telephone. Another application, known as the File Transfer Protocol (FTP), is used to download files from an Internet site to a user’s computer. The FTP application is often automatically invoked when a user downloads an updated version of a piece of software. Applications such as FTP have been integrated with the World Wide Web, making them transparent so that they run automatically without requiring users to open them. When a Web browser encounters a URL that begins with ftp:// it automatically uses FTP to access the item.

History of the Internet

At the beginning of the 1960s, an American researcher

had already developed the theoretical

basis for networking computers. Some years

later, the Advanced Research Projects Agency,

ARPA, a research institute of the American military,

developed such a computer network. In

October 1969, two computers in two scientific

institutes in the U.S. were connected with one

another.

After a few months, two more computers were

connected to this network, which was called the

ARPANet. In 1972 – when the network included

23 computers – electronic mail, or e-mail, was

developed. At the end of the 1970s, the discussion

groups called newsgroups came into existence.

Between the 1970s and 1983, the ARPANet was

connected to further networks. The large new

network that resulted from these connections was

called the Internet since it connected several

networks with one another. Also in this year, an

address system was established that allowed

computers on the Internet to have names rather

than the numbers by which they had previously

been identified.

Gradually, more and more countries connected to

the Internet, and by 1988, more than 50,000

computers were connected to this network. Until

this point, the Internet was used primarily by the

academic world. In 1989, an Englishman invented

web pages, that is, pages on the World

Wide Web. In 1993, a graphical web browser

was invented that allowed users to navigate easily

from one place to another on the Internet.

Thanks to this invention, more and more people

outside of the academic world began to use the

Internet – such as entrepreneurs the world over,

who set up web sites and used electronic mail.

At the beginning of the year 2000, there are more

than 200 million Internet users, and on the web

it’s possible to find information of every kind,

shopping opportunities, online games, old and

new friends – or you can take advantage of investment

and banking capabilities, hear music

and radio programs, see TV programs and films,

and much, much more.

BROADBAND

Computers store all information as binary numbers. The binary number system uses two binary digits, 0 and 1, which are called bits. The amount of data that a computer network can transfer in a certain amount of time is called the bandwidth of the network and is measured in kilobits per second (kbps) or megabits per second (mbps). A kilobit is 1 thousand bits; a megabit is 1 million bits. A dial-up telephone modem can transfer data at rates up to 56 kbps; DSL and cable modem connections are much faster and can transfer at several mbps. The Internet connections used by businesses often operate at 155 mbps, and connections between routers in the heart of the Internet may operate at rates from 2,488 to 9,953 mbps (9.953 gigabits per second) The terms wideband or broadband are used to characterize networks with high capacity and to distinguish them from narrowband networks, which have low capacity.

Higher-speed Internet transmission facilities, known as broadband, are also helping improve response times. Broadband technologies include Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL), which works over telephone wiring, and cable modems, which work over cable TV wiring. Each technology allows data to flow from an Internet service provider to a user's computer hundreds of times faster than traditional dialup modems.

Domain name

Domain name

A name that identifies a computer or computers on the internet. These names appear as a component of a Web site's URL, e.g. wikipedia.org. This type of domain name is also called a hostname.

The product that domain name registrars provide to their customers. These names are often called registered domain names.

Names used for other purposes in the Domain Name System (DNS), for example the special name which follows the @ sign in an email address, or the Top-level domain names like .com, or the names used by the Session Initiation Protocol (VoIP), or DomainKeys.

They are sometimes colloquially (and incorrectly) referred to by marketers as "web addresses".

The most common types of domain names are hostnames that provide more memorable names to stand in for numeric IP addresses. They allow for any service to move to a different location in the topology of the Internet (or an intranet), which would then have a different IP address.

By allowing the use of unique alphabetical addresses instead of numeric ones, domain names allow Internet users to more easily find and communicate with web sites and other server-based services. The flexibility of the domain name system allows multiple IP addresses to be assigned to a single domain name, or multiple domain names to be assigned to a single IP address. This means that one server may have multiple roles (such as hosting multiple independent Web sites), or that one role can be spread among many servers. One IP address can also be assigned to several servers, as used in anycast and hijacked IP space.

Hostnames are restricted to the ASCII letters "a" through "z" (case-insensitive), the digits "0" through "9", and the hyphen, with some other restrictions. Registrars restrict the domains to valid hostnames, since, otherwise, they would be useless. The Internationalized domain name (IDN) system has been developed to bypass the restrictions on character allowances in hostnames, making it easier for users of non-English alphabets to use the Internet. The underscore character is frequently used to ensure that a domain name is not recognized as a hostname, for example with the use of SRV records, although some older systems, such as NetBIOS did allow it. Due to confusion and other reasons, domain names with underscores in them are sometimes used where hostnames are required.

The following example illustrates the difference between a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and a domain name:

URL: http://www.example.net/index.html

Domain name: www.example.net

Registered domain name: example.net

As a general rule, the IP address and the server name are interchangeable. For most Internet services, the server will not have any way to know which was used. However, the explosion of interest in the Web means that there are far more Web sites than servers. To accommodate this, the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) specifies that the client tells the server which name is being used. This way, one server with one IP address can provide different sites for different domain names. This feature goes under the name virtual hosting and is commonly used by Web hosts.

For example, as referenced in RFC 2606 (Reserved Top Level DNS Names), the server at IP address 192.0.34.166 handles all of the following sites:

example.com

www.example.com

example.net

www.example.net

example.org

www.example.org

When a request is made, the data corresponding to the hostname requested is served to the user.

Search Engine, Search Engine marketing, Search Engine optimization

Search Engine

Search Engine, computer software that compiles lists of documents, most commonly those on the World Wide Web (WWW), and the contents of those documents. Search engines respond to a user entry, or query, by searching the lists and displaying a list of documents (called Web sites when on the WWW) that match the search query. Some search engines include the opening portion of the text of Web pages in their lists, but others include only the titles or addresses (known as Universal Resource Locators, or URLS) of Web pages. Some search engines occur apart from the WWW, indexing documents on a local area network (LAN) or other system.

To find a web site, a user can consult an Internet reference guide or directory, or use one of the many freely available search engines, such as WebCrawler from America Online Incorporated. These engines are search and retrieval programs, of varying sophistication, that ask the user to fill out a form before executing a search of the WWW for the requested information. The user can also create a list of the URLs of frequently visited web sites. Such a list helps a user recall a URL and easily access the desired web site. Web sites are easily modified and updated, so the content of many sites changes frequently.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it "ranks", the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

As a marketing strategy for increasing a site's relevance, SEO considers how search algorithms work and what people search for. SEO efforts may involve a site's coding, presentation, and structure, as well as fixing problems that could prevent search engine indexing programs from fully spidering a site. Other, more noticeable efforts may include adding unique content to a site, ensuring that content is easily indexed by search engine robots, and making the site more appealing to users. Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that tend to harm search engine user experience. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques and may remove them from their indexes.

The initialism "SEO" can also refer to "search engine optimizers", a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term "search engine friendly" may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems and shopping carts that are easy to optimize.

Search engine marketing

Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet Marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in the Search Engine result pages (SERPs). According to the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization, SEM methods include: Search Engine Optimization (or SEO), paid placement, and paid inclusion. Other sources, including the New York Times, define SEM as the practice of buying paid search listings with the goal of obtaining better free search listings.

As the number of sites on the Web increased in the mid-to-late 90s, search engines started appearing to help people find information quickly. Search engines developed business models to finance their services, such as pay per click programs offered by Open Text [4] in 1996 and then Goto.com [5] in 1998. Goto.com later changed its name [6] to Overture in 2001, and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, and now offers paid search opportunities for advertisers through Yahoo! Search Marketing. Google also began to offer advertisements on search results pages in 2000 through the Google AdWords program. By 2007 pay-per-click programs proved to be primary money-makers [7] for search engines.

Search Engine Optimization consultants expanded their offerings to help businesses learn about and use the advertising opportunites offered by search engines, and new agencies focusing primarily upon marketing and advertising through search engines emerged. The term "Search Engine Marketing" was proposed by Danny Sullivan in 2001 [8] to cover the spectrum of activities involved in performing SEO, managing paid listings at the search engines, submitting sites to directories, and developing online marketing strategies for businesses, organizations, and individuals. In 2007 Search Engine Marketing is stronger than ever [9] with SEM Budgets up 750% as shown with stats dating back to 2002 vs 2006.