1. Website_Development_Software_Reviews : Part I
A Brief History Of Ipod
iPod is a digital mp3 / mp4 player developed and marketed by Apple Inc., an American
consumer electronics multinational corporation. During their research, Apple found that in
comparison to available camcorders, digital cameras, and organizers; digital music players
recorded poor sales, primarily due to their awful user interfaces. Apple wanted to do
something about it and so Jon Rubinstein, Apple's hardware engineering chief brought
together a team comprising of Tony Fadell (who dreamed of a hard disk based music
player), Michael Dhuey (hardware engineer), Jonathan Ive (design engineer), and Stan Ng
(marketing manager). In less than a year, they designed a hard disk based music player,
that had a 5 GB hard drive and capable of storing 1000 songs.
Apple's iTunes software is utilized to operate the iPod (m3 / mp4 player). The software is
compatible with all Mac systems. The operating system is stored on its hard disk. A boot
loader program is contained in a NOR flash ROM chip (either 1 MB or 512 KB) which
instructs the device to load the operating system from the hard disk. The iPod has a 32 MB
of RAM, a portion of which is used to hold the operating system from firmware, and the rest
is used to cache songs from the hard disk. Apple also invented a technology whereby the
hard disk of iPod could spin up once and about 30 MB of upcoming songs could be cached
into the RAM. This did not require the hard disk to spin up for every song and thereby
saved battery power. Apple also introduced a Windows version of iPod, at a later stage.
The audio files that iPod (mp3 / mp4 player) supports are MP3, AAC/M4A, Protected AAC,
AIFF, WAV, Audible audiobook, and Apple Lossless audio file formats. MIDI and WMA files
can be played only after a convertor accomplishes conversion, for non-Digital Rights
Management (DRM). Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, and other open-source audio formats are not
supported at all.
Apple wanted an extremely user friendly interface and thus adopted the minimalist interface,
which features only five essential buttons, namely, Menu (to access functions and to toggle
the backlight); Center (for menu item selection); Play/ Pause (this also works as an off
switch when held for few seconds); Skip Forward/ Fast Forward; and Skip Backwards/ Fast
Reverse. An additional Hold button is provided for accidental button pressing prevention,
and it can reset the iPod if it has frozen or crashed. Functions such as volume control,
scrolling are handled by the usage of the rotational click wheel. Later models have some
minor changes in the functions of the buttons but overall the number of buttons has
remained at five.
To market this path-breaking mp3 / mp4 player, they needed a suitable futuristic name and
so they hired a freelance copywriter, Vinnie Chieco, and other writers to give a name.
Inspired by the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and the dialogue "Open the pod bay door,
Hal!" with reference to the context of the Discovery One spaceship and its white EVA Pods,
Vinnie Chieco proposed the name of the product as iPod. The management of Apple
accepted the proposed name and on 23 October 2001, the iPod was officially launched.

2. The rest they say is history.
To enable customers to access songs of their choice, Apple opened up an online media
store The iTunes Store on 29 April 2003, where individual songs could be downloaded at
prices less than a U.S. dollar per song. The purchased songs can be played only on iPods.
Subsequent versions of this iPod (mp3 / mp4 player) also featured video capabilities, and
thus iTunes Store started selling short videos from 12 October 2005. From 12 September
2006, full-length movies were also available at the iTunes Store.
iPods have come a long way from their inception, and now the latest fifth generation iPods
possess multimedia capabilities and are available in both Mac OS and Windows OS
versions. Usually, if a new iPod is plugged into a Mac OS computer, then the hard disk of
this mp3 / mp4 player is formatted as per the HFS+ file format, and if it plugged into a
Windows OS computer, it is formatted as per the FAT32 file format. From being a digital
music player, the iPod has now transformed into a digital media player.
Hiring a web designer to come up with the custom solution that you need can set you back
a few thousand bucks. But you can do the whole thing yourself and make it drag and drop
simple for mere pennies with a tool like Breezy Websites. See http://breezywebsites.com
for details!
WEBSITE_DEVELOPMENT_SOFTWARE_REVIEWS : End of Part I
Website_Development_Software_Reviews : Part II
Modifying Your Midi Composition Using A Sequencer
Once you have recorded your musical composition onto a MIDI sequencer, what next? Well,
you may have noticed some mistakes in your playing that you want to correct. Or you may
want to change the composition to make it sound better. Or you may want to copy your
composition into another file and gradually modify it until it becomes a whole new song and
you have two compositions instead on just one. Whatever the reason, there are two ways
that you can modify your original recording ' real time or step-entering.
Real time modification is just what it sounds like ' you have the sequencer play back the
composition and then fiddle with the controls to modify it as you please. When you get it the
way you want it, you can overdub your original track or record the latest version of your
Magnum Opus in another file. The advantage of this method is that ' well, it's just more fun
that way, and you can get immediate real-time feedback on how various changes to the
composition will make it sound. The disadvantage is that you have to have pretty good
kinetic memory and eye-hand coordination in order to make your changes the way you want

3. it ' in other words, you have to be pretty good at playing your instrument live.
If you don't want to modify your composition in real time because your skill level isn't high
enough or because you want to make very complex or exacting modifications, then you can
always proceed to 'step-enter' your changes. If you have a software sequencer such as
Reason, Cubase, Logic, etc., it will include a display board where the MIDI commands that
make up your composition are displayed through the use of visual symbols (not the
numerical MIDI messages themselves).
Once familiar with the meanings of the various symbols on the display board, even
Poindexter the Geek can produce a hip-sounding song, all without a drop of rhythm in his
body. Step-entering is the most effective way to take a tune from your head and put it into a
recording without having to depend on physical mediums such as kinetic memory, rhythm,
and eye-hand coordination. It seems only fair, because today's electronic music was made
possible by nerdy scientific types who probably can't dance to the music that their
technological breakthroughs made possible.
Hiring a web designer to come up with the custom solution that you need can set you back
a few thousand bucks. But you can do the whole thing yourself and make it drag and drop
simple for mere pennies with a tool like Breezy Websites. See http://breezywebsites.com
for details!
WEBSITE_DEVELOPMENT_SOFTWARE_REVIEWS : End of Part II
Website_Development_Software_Reviews : Part III
Modifying Your Midi Composition Using A Sequencer
Once you have recorded your musical composition onto a MIDI sequencer, what next? Well,
you may have noticed some mistakes in your playing that you want to correct. Or you may
want to change the composition to make it sound better. Or you may want to copy your
composition into another file and gradually modify it until it becomes a whole new song and
you have two compositions instead on just one. Whatever the reason, there are two ways
that you can modify your original recording ' real time or step-entering.
Real time modification is just what it sounds like ' you have the sequencer play back the
composition and then fiddle with the controls to modify it as you please. When you get it the
way you want it, you can overdub your original track or record the latest version of your
Magnum Opus in another file. The advantage of this method is that ' well, it's just more fun
that way, and you can get immediate real-time feedback on how various changes to the
composition will make it sound. The disadvantage is that you have to have pretty good
kinetic memory and eye-hand coordination in order to make your changes the way you want

4. it ' in other words, you have to be pretty good at playing your instrument live.
If you don't want to modify your composition in real time because your skill level isn't high
enough or because you want to make very complex or exacting modifications, then you can
always proceed to 'step-enter' your changes. If you have a software sequencer such as
Reason, Cubase, Logic, etc., it will include a display board where the MIDI commands that
make up your composition are displayed through the use of visual symbols (not the
numerical MIDI messages themselves).
Once familiar with the meanings of the various symbols on the display board, even
Poindexter the Geek can produce a hip-sounding song, all without a drop of rhythm in his
body. Step-entering is the most effective way to take a tune from your head and put it into a
recording without having to depend on physical mediums such as kinetic memory, rhythm,
and eye-hand coordination. It seems only fair, because today's electronic music was made
possible by nerdy scientific types who probably can't dance to the music that their
technological breakthroughs made possible.
Hiring a web designer to come up with the custom solution that you need can set you back
a few thousand bucks. But you can do the whole thing yourself and make it drag and drop
simple for mere pennies with a tool like Breezy Websites. See http://breezywebsites.com
for details!
WEBSITE_DEVELOPMENT_SOFTWARE_REVIEWS : End of Part III