maximum extent. There are a lot of technologies that are used in making MP3, including

applying psychoacoustics to make sure which part of audio files can be discarded. MP3 audio

can be compressed according to different bit rate, which provides a range to offset between

data size and sound quality. As a result, it greatly lower data size while the acoustic fidelity of files compressed is not worse than that of originals obviously, to most of users.

MP3 was invented and standardized by a group of engineers of Fraunhofer

Gesellschaft located in Erlangen, Germany in 1991.

The Advantage of MP3

MP3 and WMA are two different kinds of music formats and many converting software can convert audio files of other formats to these two popular ones.

128kbps of MP3  and 64kbps of WMA

128kbps of MP3  and 96kbps of WMA

128kbps of MP3  and   128kbps of WMA

160kbps of MP3  and   128kbps of WMA

192kbps of MP3  and 192kbps of WMA

In terms of the former two ones, the acoustic fidelity of WMA is better than MP3 while

MP3 becomes better than WMA in the condition of the last two kinds of bit rate. But when

it turns to under the third circumstance, there is not big deference between MP3 and WMA.

That is because when the compression rate is above 128k, the quality of WMA do not improve

a bit but MP3 quality is upgraded a lot.

Comparison between MP3 and WMA

According to what Microsoft said that WMA of 64kbps has the same quality as MP3 of 128kbps

when it is compressed by WMP7. However, when used WMP8 for compression, WMA will as good

as MP3 of 128kbps when its bit rate is only at 48kbps. Actually, WMA do not have such effect

though it has advanced technology. We discovered the following things after comparing these

two formats:

1. Under the same data rate, like 128kbps, WMA does better than MP3 in quality;

2. Under low data rate, fidelity of WMA is much higher than that of MP3. When the bit rate is

64kbps, quality of WMA is almost the same as it is when its bit rate is at 128kbps. But things

is totally different in MP3. When a song of WMA format at 32kbps can be heard, MP3 of the same bit rate can’t.

3.MP3 is absolutely a very successful calculating way. It is can be heard when its bit rate

reaches 128kbps and its quality can become great when using VBR compression of bit rate above 128kbps. But the data rate limit of MP3 is 128kbps, if bit rate

is lower than this number, the effect will be decreased a lot.

In a word, WMA mainly improve playback of high-frequency signal under very low data rate. When the

bit rate is higher than 128kbps, it has no advantage over MP3 and its high-frequency distortion is

very serious. But WMA is a best choice for compressing English listening materials.One thing you

should remember in mind is that MP3 of 128kbps is better than WMA of 64kbps and even much better

than 48kbps, for treble part of song played in WMA format has metallic sound–larger distortion.

Uncompressed WMA format is the best, but songs of WMA formats downloaded from internet are

compressed. That is why they sound not as good as MP3. Below 128kbps, WMA and MP3 nearly have no

differences but it takes advantage over MP3 for the file is smaller. However when bit rate is

above 128kbps or larger, MP3 is better than WMA.

There are a lot of arguments about which is better between WMA and MP3. Both of them are lossy

compression encoding formats and have their own merits. Technically, WMA is better than MP3 in

its low bit rate. When bit rate is lower than 128kbps, WMA is the best. The lower bit rate is,

the better of WMA you will feel. And with streaming playing support, WMA is a very popular

format used on the internet. If your computer is tight on disk space and you demand higher sound quality,

WMA is no doubt a best choice. When bit rate is increase to 128k, WMA is the best among all levels of

lossy encoding formats. But when it comes to MP3, high-frequency is obviously lost. It seems that 128k

is a turning point, when the bit rate is upper, the acoustic fidelity does not change a lot. When bit

rate comes to 192kbps, MP3 will become a little better than WMA in quality. So if your computer has

enough capacity and you have higher requirement on audio quality, then you should choose MP3 of high

bit rate (from 192kbps-320kbps). But encoder’s selection is also important.

MP3 is a smaller size file of compression rate of 1:10 or even 1:12 by using audio compression

technology, which can maintain finer acoustic fidelity. WMA is an audio compression format developed

by microsoft, which is later , smaller and better than MP3. The biggest difference between these two

formats is that standard of WMA is made by Microsoft while MP3 is an open criteria without copyright

problem, which makes it more popular than WMA.

Then, which are Microsoft’s top Web services? Here I would like to introduce the top 5 after I tried numerous Microsoft’s Web services and all the 5 ones are free.

You will find most of the services below are with “Live” brand and you may be confused with the “Live” product line of Microsoft, especially after Microsoft pushed out Live Essentials applications. In fact, Windows Live is the collective brand name for a set of services and software products from Microsoft with most of these services being web application, while Live Essentials containing Photo Gallery, Movie Maker and Instant Messenger, is one of the ways to offer Windows Live services.

Windows Live SkyDrive

Windows Live SkyDrive is a store service like its name – the hard disk in the “cloud” which provides 25G web store space. With Windows Live SkyDrive, you can upload and download your private files whenever and wherever possible and let others add or upgrade files in the shared folder.

However, SkyDrive is not perfect. You can not use it as a virtual drive – it won’t show up in My Computer, so you can not directly save a file to the SkyDrive, but this is just a small flaw. You have no reason to require a free store service with 25 GB space to be perfect, especially considering Google has just launched such service named GDrive as a part of Google Docs recently and Yahoo’s Briefcase closed in March 2009 supplied only 25M space. Therefore, it is reasonable to classify SkyDrive to the list of the best online store services

Windows Live Sync

Windows Live Sync is the software for remote sharing, which lets you synchronize or share your files on Internet simply and conveniently. To use the complete service, you need to install a client program and an activex control. After installing the client program, you need to log in the site of Windows Live Sync to fill in the information you want to be synchronized in your personal computer.

You can use it to create images of important folders (such as Favorite, Picture and Documents) so that they can keep synchronizing all the time. Besides, you can access your files at anytime when being out by connecting the synchronic computer through remote system. Finally, it makes sharing files so easy. You can share files with your friends, colleagues and family by just adding or upgrading files in the shared files with the file size Sync can handle up to 4GB.

Different from some commercial synchronic services, Windows Live Sync doesn’t store your file copies in the cloud. It is just a channel to connect all of your computers. However, it is because Sync isn’t involved in any online store that it has no limit to the synchronic data volume.

Live Mesh

Live Mesh was a great attempt that Microsoft tried to link all of our data together and it succeed. It can not only synchronize the data in different devices of a single user but also supply the shared space for multiple users.

Superficially, Live Mesh is quite similar to the other synchronic services such as Dropbox, SugarSync and even FolderShare which also belongs to Microsoft. Actually, what makes Live Mesh special is the platformization ambition. It can synchronize data from various devices including the Windows PC, the Mac and the mobile phone or even other hardware devices in the future.

Different from the synchronization of files and folders between one PC and another PC, you can create folders in Live Mesh and make all of your personal devices keep synchronic with these folders. In addition, you can access theses files and folders anytime and anywhere by any machine on Internet. Meanwhile, you have considerable control rights with the synchronization. You can choose files smaller than 500MB or files revised in the past 30 days to be synchronized. Also, Live Mesh supports remote control. So far, Microsoft has never indicated to charge for this service or limit the data volume you can store.

Microsoft Office Live Workspace

Microsoft Office Live Workspace is an online collaboration product to let people access and share Microsoft Office files. Its main target users are individual, small-scale business users and education circles not the large enterprises who expect to access files anywhere.

To begin to use it, you need to have a shared workspace first by choosing the one right for you from the 11 preset workspaces such as Project Workspace, Conference Workspace and Travel Workspace. Of course, you can also create a workspace for yourself. Every workspace will have a built template including PowerPoint presentation file, Excel worksheet and Word file. The members in the workgroup can edit and save the file and remote share and collaborate with the others. To edit the Office files, you need to install a free Office plugin but to browse the file doesn’t need this plugin even no need to have Office installed.

Compared with Google Docs or Zoho, the advantage of Office Live Workspace is the seamless integration with Microsoft Office. You can save files in the workspace and can also use Office programs to edit the files in the workspace. The most important is that it’s better to create files and workspace in the way of template driving.

Oracle Bought Sun

On April 20 2009, Oracle bought Sun at about $7.4 billion. This was a heavyweight enterprise merger case in the global IT industry of 2009.

Now, this event is still in development and there are continual trace and observation for this news event. Although the American authority has approved this merger case which was expected to be finished in August 2009, this merger is still blocked in the EU.

The main worry the EU has with this case is from the open source database software MySQL which will be acquired together with Sun by Oracle. The open source community is worried about Oracle will affect the development of MySQL after Oracle owns MySQL in the future and impair the competition in database software market.

Although this event happened in 2009, its real impact on the IT industry I’m afraid will begin in 2010. As the result of this merger case clearer in 2010, it will be a great IT event that deserve much attention in 2010.

Some reading for you:

Oracle Acquisition of Sun Makes Perfect Sense

What does the Oracle-Sun News Mean for Enterprise CTOs?

Oracle Sun: Good News, Bad News for Google and Microsoft

Microsoft’s Search Made a Leap Forward

On June 4 2009, Microsoft’s search engine Bing was launched.

In 2009, Microsoft invested much in search engine market embodied in:

1. Launching the search engine Bing

2. Signing the search ads cooperative agreement with Yahoo

The two pieces of news looks like unrelated but in fact both served for Microsoft’s search business.

Bing is a great substitute in the field of search engine core and the ads cooperation with Yahoo is to promote the market share and ads revenue of Bing, which are two strategies prepared for each other.

Indeed, Microsoft’s Bing deserves Google’s fear. Firstly, the performance of Bing is not bad compared with Google; even some innovated features of Bing like image search also worth Google’s tension judging from our observation in the past half year. Secondly, it was showed in a market investigation report that after Bing was launched, Yahoo got converging attack from Google and Bing though Google’s market share was not affected, so Yahoo had to cooperate with Microsoft for the long run.

Some reading for you:

Microsoft Search Marketing Vs Google Search Marketing

It’s Official: Microsoft and Yahoo! Finally Strike Search Deal

Which IT Projects Are Right for the Cloud

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing could be regarded as the most loudly slogan in 2009. As the march of time and the development of IT, there are more content to talk about for cloud, but in terms of the basic concept, I really can not find any difference it has from the ASP (Application Service Provider) in ten years ago and the Web services popular a few years ago.

Perhaps, cloud computing is just a buzzword of IT industry and there will be other slogans as time passes by just like the Web 2.0 in a few years ago which is not talked about now but the content which referred to at that time is still evolving.

No matter the past Web 2.0 or the current cloud computing, after trace to the source, what we need to understand are theses questions: What changes does the Internet bring to the personal consumer and the enterprise? How many daily things will we do on Internet (including mobile Internet) in the future? How will the paradigm of IT change from the PC terminal to the Internet? We had these questions when the Internet came in more than a decade ago and so are us now and in the future no matter what the popular slogan is.

Some reading for you:

What is Cloud Computing?

Smaller firms take a shine to cloud computing

Which IT Projects Are Right for the Cloud

Google Revealed Chrome OS

In November 2009, Google revealed Chrome OS and will directly confront Microsoft in 2010.

It was definite a great event for the global IT industry that Google released Chrome OS, since it is widely believed that besides Apple, Google is the most capable company in the world to compete with Microsoft, especially in software field.

Certainly, it has brought big anticipation for the IT industry that Google is entering the PC OS market, so there have been constant analyses and rumors for Google. It is reported that the Chrome OS netbook would come into the market in the middle of 2010. However, I would like to forecast that Chrome OS is incapable to compete with Microsoft in terms of a short time for I’m afraid the real product challenge will just begin in 2010 and we should consider the influence of Chrome OS in the long run.

Some reading for you：

What the Hell’s Google Chrome OS

Will Chrome Netbooks Really Be Competitive?

Windows 7 Was Launched

In October 2009, Windows was launched with the help of hundred computer manufacturers.

Two years after the launch of Windows Vista which has been fed up with criticisms, users finally got a decent new choice. From the subsequent report and investigation data, we know Windows 7 do get more popularity than Vista, but there were critics who deemed the good of Win 7 not really very good but just built on the lousy Vista.

According to what Microsoft and PC manufacturers said, the native support for multi-touch of windows 7 will bring innovation for the PC design and application. In 2010 the year for Windows 7 to get into market mainstream, let’s watch to see whether Windows 7 will really be the motivity of the industry innovation.

Some reading for you:

Windows 7 Review

Microsoft Pushes Tablet PCs Windows 7 at CES But Not Mobile

62 Windows 7 Tips, Tricks and Secrets

Windows 7 – A Life Saving-Straw of Microsoft

In October 2009, Windows 7 was officially sold all over the world which meant the reclusion of its predecessor Windows Vista which was undoubtedly a failure like the earlier Windows Me system. Microsoft obviously doesn’t want to be entangled with Vista that was doomed to be a hurried passer, so it spared no effort to promote Windows 7 in the hope of retrieving the declining tendency.

Compared with Windows Vista, Windows 7 was made with great improvements in system compatibility, lowering requirement for hardware configuration and so on to redeem the faults of Vista. What’s more, Microsoft has strengthened the marketing promotion so we could even see Win 7 in home appliances chain stores. In fact, after experiencing the failure of Vista, Microsoft found a good way. Windows 7 has drawn on the excellences of XP and other operating systems and deleted some verbose procedures in Vista.

However, facing the ceaseless new challenges from its competitors like Google Chrome OS, will Windows 7 be the life saving-straw of Microsoft in 2010? Now we can learn the satisfactory sale volume of Win 7 and the wide acceptance by users. Obviously, we can be optimistic with the performance of Windows 7 in home use, but whether it will be successful in enterprise use market remains in doubt.

“Butterfly Effect” Performed by Google Chrome OS

Google officially revealed long rumored Chrome OS and released the source code of Chrome OS in November 2009. For a long time, IT news was around Chrome OS, which indicated Google had a new arm to fight with Microsoft. From previous online office apps to current Chrome OS, Google shows its ambition everywhere.

Based on Linux and Being Open Source, Chrome OS has three developing points that are (performance) speed, (operation) simplicity and (system) security with all programs network-based. As a whole, Chrome OS is the concept of “cloud” operating system with just a browser to run. We can see Chrome OS be intended to avoid the traditional desktop PC field of Windows operating system and then win a share in the operating system of netbooks and smart phones in the future.

Will Google Chrome OS which is based on Linux be the next one of Linux to have tepid fate? Facing the yet wispy “cloud” application of desktop system, how much cordial feeling will users have with Chrome OS? Maybe we shouldn’t ask like this. It seems to be a generally acknowledged truth that Google is the one of most excellent network companies with best searching engine. Anything this company does centers around advertisement business. It spent great efforts to develop the same type products or innovated products, all of which was to ensure it wouldn’t be pushed out from any market so as to firm its core search and advertisement business. Therefore, it’s easy for us to find the products of Google such as Chrome OS and Google Docs are intended to convert users to network. Will Google Chrome OS play a good butterfly effect? We wait for the answer in 2010.

High Speed – Highlight of Mac OS X 10.6

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard was launched in August 2009, earlier than Windows 7 and Google Chrome OS. Although this system has artistic and gorgeous appearance, it actually doesn’t have numerous new features to attract us to upgrade to it, while it indeed has a feature appreciated by all: high speed.

Without special new features, what Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard brought are many small improvements, including built-in support for Microsoft Exchange, turning to Intel CPU from PowerPC CPU and the greatest highlight: high speed. Someone calls Mac OS X 10.6 as the copy of Windows 7 since both systems spent much in interfaces and details. But the strategy of Mac OS X 10.6 was successful with well known artistic and gorgeous interface. What’s more, the home edition of Mac OS X 10.6 costs only $49 and it has many similar features to Windows 7, which turn a part of the users’ attention to low-cost Snow Leopard from Windows 7.

With equal elegant desktop design and many similar features to Windows 7, it was the best strategy for Mac OS X 10.6 to highlight the speed with its many new improvements drawn from Windows Vista. The running speed of system was improved based on meeting users’ habit, which made Mac OS X 10.6 get more public praise. Besides, for users who are used to Mac OS, Snow Leopard at least let them see Apple striving for better user experience. Of course, price is the important charm of Snow Leopard.

A Habitat for Linux in Netbook

Netbook, a word created by Intel in Spring IDF Exhibition of 2008, was fashionable in the PC market of 2009 after a short market demonstration. The IT industry compared the netbook to “retrogressive innovation”. It was this little world built up by an Aton CPU and a small screen that aroused users’ consideration of balance between “want” and “need” and finally they chose “need”. Thus, it initiated a market battle among operating systems in netbook systems.

Early this year before Windows 7 was officially released, it was shown by an investigation that more than 85% netbooks run Windows XP. While what we may really need is not an all-round operating system like Windows but an operating system that is more suitable for mobile terminal and brings more excellent surfing experience as the gradual upgrade of netbook application and in view of the “second notebook” location of netbook. Therefore the netbook provides a big market space for Linux.

In fact, the industry has pushed out innumerable operating systems for netbooks. From Ubuntu Linux to Intel Moblin, all of the systems can let us daily surf online and do word processing work. The application tendency of Non-Windows systems in netbooks is self-evident with legerity design to finish starting up or shutting down in a few seconds. By virtue of Live CD feature of Linux, we can even run this system through USB flash drive or SD card without installing it. Although Linux system is not popular in ordinary users and Windows 7 is infiltrating into netbooks, the features of ingenuity and open source of Linux was bound to find a habitat in netbooks in 2009.

Bustling Mobile Operating Systems in 3G Age

The development and change of smart phones are very fast. No one would know Apple’s iPhone could become so popular today; no one would think of being so convenient with 3G today. The colorful network application of 3G age needs such carriers as smart phones and netbooks to come true. In 2009, the 3G mobile operating system field was already swarmed with old brand systems such as Microsoft’s WindowsMobile, Apple’s Mac, Nokia’s Symbian, but there were still emerging Google’s Android and China Mobile’s OMS, which made the mobile operating system market out of recognition.

Apple’s iPhone was such a hot seller and so was Blackcherry in 2009. However, the relatively close condition for hardware and software of iPhone and Blackcherry caused their exclusive operating systems appealed to just a small crowd. What we saw mainly was the contest between Linux-based Google Android and Microsoft WindowsMobile, the common feature of which was to contend for markets through vast mobile manufacturers adopting their operating systems. Eventually, in mobile operating system field of 2009, we saw Windows prevail in the contest.

It’s easy to understand this result. The essential of mobile operating system application is to extend various internetwork applications to the smart phone. For example, the key point of Google Android certainly is mobile search, while Windows system is better in implanting the PC terminal applications such as MSN, search, email, and chat in the mobile. Currently, what do we do most with mobile network application? The answers are chat, search and collecting & sending email. Considering the current most frequent applications of mobile network, we can find the advantage of the series of Windows operating systems. By contrast, Google can only popularize its search service through Android and thus the application scope of Android is not broad.

What Will We Use in 2010?

It is an indisputable fact that demand induces development and the development of operating system is also the development of computers in a sense. As a standard suit of package software, the operating system must meet the demand of multiple users as far as possible, so the operating system constantly dilates, its features constantly increase, the application environment constantly extends and grow up a platform environment from developing tools to system tools to application software. This is well embodied in Linux system.

In 2010, on which operating systems will we see development and change? 3G network and cloud concept that are two catalysts will presumably be more apparently embodied in operating system in the future after they experienced healthy development in 2009. It is believed that the well-known operating systems such as Windows, Mac and Linux will roll out more branch versions of which Google Chrome OS is a good example.

Certainly, some curious imaginations might occur to us at the end of 2009. Will Windows 7 completely replace Windows XP in 2010? Will Linux engage more attention with the help of 3G wave? Will Mac OS X become the new land for hacker attack? We look forward to the answers in 2010…

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