untangling_the_web

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What you are witnessing is streaming media. While not the smoothest, cleanest
technology, it is cheap (the most popular software used for streaming media is free),
and with broadband connections, it is relatively fast if sometimes choppy. The major
free media players (all handle audio and video) are the following:
~ Windows Media Player-Microsoft's proprietary software that plays many
audio, video, and streaming formats, including MP3, WMA, CD audio, and
MIDI.
~ MacroMedia Flash Player-a browser plug-in that, according to the company
"is installed on 98% of Internet-enabled desktops worldwide and on a wide
range of popular devices."!" The Flash Player displays content created with
MacroMedia Flash and plays files with the .SWF extension.
~ MacroMedia Shockwave Player-The Shockwave Player displays content
created with MacroMedia Director and plays files with the .DCR extension.
Because there is so much confusion about these two products, MacroMedia created
a webpage that compares these two products:
~ QuickTime-the only one of these free media players not originally developed
for the Windows environment, QuickTime is an Apple Computers' product
capable of handling various formats of digital video, audio, text, animation,
music, and more. The QuickTime media player is bundled with Apple
computers but free downloads are available for Windows as well.
~ ReaIPlayer-ReaINetworks' media player that plays its own proprietary
RealAudio and RealVideo as well as other formats including MP3, MPEG-4,
and QuickTime. It was one of the first media players capable of handling
streaming media over the Internet.
The Major Online Video and Video Search Sites
I decided to list these alphabetically because there is no good way to rank them:
each has some advantages and usually quite a few drawbacks. Some things to keep
in mind about the current state of video search:
~ Most video search sites only search the metadata and/or text associated with
a video. TVEyes is an exception; it uses voice recognition technology to index
every word spoken in a video, but the technology is imperfect. Most video
118 Macromedia Flash Player FAQ, (November 28, 2006) .
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