By Gabriel J. Adams

Digital media has revolutionized the world of media – digital media is highly portable, easily sent or transferred. Sometimes, though, the many different file formats can leave one somewhat confused. In this article, we’ll go over a few of the most common file formats.

Wave format – *.wav
The Microsoft wave format is a lossless, usually un-compressed audio format. Advantages of the wav format include is cross platform compatibility and ease of editing in various programs. The main disadvantage is a wave files large size.

MP3 format – *.mp3
The MP3 format is the most widely used audio format on the internet. An MP3 file has very good quality in relation to its file size. When creating an MP3 file, you can choose what quality level to save the file as. The MP3 format is cross-platform, and compatible with nearly all media applications.

MPEG – varies, often *.mpg
The MPEG is not a single file format, but rather a “video and audio encoding standard”. There are quite a few different MPEG standards, MPEG-1 and MPEG-4 being the most commonly used for the average consumer.

Windows Media Video – *.wmv
The Windows Media Video format is a common media format for internet usage. It is easily created using Windows Movie Maker (which comes free on any windows computer.) Windows Media Videos can be created using a wide variation of quality settings.

Windows Media Audio – *.wma or *.asf
The Windows Media Audio format is the second most popular media format, second only to Mp3. It is very similar to MP3, except that it supports DRM (Digital rights management).

Quicktime Movie – usually *.mov
The Quicktime Media formats all have a serious disadvantage, in that very few programs support them. You must have Quicktime player to play them, and only a very few programs can edit them. They are far less flexible than many other formats.

By Nathan Smith

Try VoIP Before Buying

So you like the concept of ‘cutting’ your phone service in favour of VoIP but are hesitant to take the plunge and abandon your ‘Landline’ without trying it out for yourself first. Perhaps the advertised features and rates all sound a little ‘too-good-to-be-true’. The terrific news is that you can make VoIP calls using your computer to virtually any telephone or computer in the world with little more than an Internet connection and a headset.

‘Free VoIP’ Using a Softphone

Firstly, let’s look at the ‘Free’ way of taking VoIP for a test drive. So what’s a ‘Softphone’ I hear you ask? A ‘Softphone’ is merely a ‘Software’ ‘Phone‘ that enables you to use your computer like you would a telephone. Softphones are programs that generally resemble the keypad on a telephone and function in much the same way.

Softphones enable you to call other ‘Internet-connected’ devices or softphones for free (Free PC to PC VoIP), or conventional telephones for a small fee (PC to Phone VoIP). The reason that ‘PC to Phone VoIP’ calls (i.e., to conventional phones) are not free is that in order to call normal telephones, your call needs to route partially through the heavily regulated, heavily taxed Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). As long as the person you’re calling is also connected to the Internet, you can talk for as long as you like across the neighborhood or on the other side of the world for free. Furthermore with PC to PC VoIP, there aren’t any contracts to sign or commitments to make. Just download the softphone, and start talking.

PC to Phone VoIP

If you’d like to try VoIP by calling conventional telephones, consider PC to Phone VoIP. Depending on the Service Provider you choose and the destination country you’re calling, the cost could be as little as just a few cents per minute. As long as you purchase ‘pre-paid’ calling credit, you won’t need to enter into a contract of any kind and can use that credit to call any telephone around the world. The smallest denomination of prepaid calling credit usually begins at $10 USD. However, at just a few pennies per minute this easily equates to over 5 hours of talk time. As an added bonus, some PC to Phone service providers also enable free PC to PC VoIP calls using the same softphone as that used for their PC to Phone VoIP calls. That way, you can call a conventional phone using PC to Phone, then arrange to meet the person you’re calling online (PC to PC VoIP) to continue talking for as long as you like, free of charge.

So try VoIP for yourself before you buy. You’ll get an idea of the exceptional call quality and fantastic call rates available before entering into a contract that replaces your landline.

By Mansi Aggarwal

Revolutionizing the world of telephony, VoIP has become one of the fastest growing technologies of today. It has quickly gobbled up the market for the traditional and well established tools for communicating over large distances, by making them look antiquated and expensive.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is basically a process which converts your voice into digital signals that travel over internet. Its most prominent feature is its affordability. With VoIP you can make long distance calls at a fraction of cost that you used to pay to your telephone companies. It is primarily because of the fact that transferring digital signals over internet is quite cheaper than transferring analog signals over the traditional telephone lines.

However, nowadays VoIP is in the news not for the great savings in long distance calls that it offers but for the security concerns attached to it. As VoIP runs through internet, the information exchanged can be intercepted by anyone at any time. Moreover, because of its popularity VoIP has become a soft target for the hackers. In the absence of a strong firewall system, hackers may capture sensitive information such as credit card number and bank details. They can even launch denial of service attacks and shut down a voice conversation, or send spam or virus over the internet to disrupt the services. Another vulnerability that the IT sector is worried about the hacking of VoIP networks for making free calls. According to industry sources, a new generation of “phreakers” may be able to manipulate the data switched through a hybrid TDM-VoIP network which will allow them to exploit the billing system to make free calls. Another menace that is plaguing the VoIP networks is ‘caller-id spoofing’. There are some hacking websites that allow people to control the phone number that appears on the receiver’s caller-id display. Moreover, they can modify their voice with the help of voice modification software. Thus, they have become a useful tool for private investigators and pranksters.

VoIP service providers are now trying to secure their customers from these threats through the tunneling and encryption processes. These techniques prevent the hackers from capturing the information packets as they pass through the internet. Most of the service providers are using Layer 2 tunneling and an encryption method called Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to prevent anyone from getting the confidential information. However, despite of all these possible threats the IT segment is still enthusiastic about the cost savings and the added functionality that VoIP offers to their business. Most of them consider VoIP as a reliable and robust system and the security concerns not so serious to hamper the progress of VoIP.

Thus, although the attacks on the VoIP systems are at a nascent stage but they may gain teeth and hit the consumers sharply as the hackers become aware of the details of this service. Thus, it is necessary for the concerned authorities to understand the criticality of the situation and be ready to take the necessary preventive measures to prevent any major impact of these threats on VoIP in future.