Sunday, August 27, 2006

Mp3 Player for Running (or Any Exercise)

by: Charles West

Using an Mp3 Player for exercise, whether we are running or working out in the gym, we like to do it to music. To our favorite music or music we've chosen for what we're doing - possibly vigorous music for aerobics, soothing music for weightlifting, or a good beat for running, snowboarding or skiing, whatever works for you, is the best for you.

One of the easiest ways to carry that music is with a suitable MP3 player that is light, compact and loaded with your choice of music.

Using an Mp3 player for running, as we all know, over many years people have carried radio's, cassette players and CD players while they were running. All of these were either awkward to carry, or were limited by the length of tape or CD, or the CD would skip, or the radio reception was varied or nonexistent.

The MP3 player for running has changed a lot of that, but not all. It has become noticeable that some MP3 players are best not used for vigorous activity. Over the years we've been told that computer hard drives are temperamental and deserve to be looked after. Shaking or dropping them, we've been told will damage them, as a minimum - cause bad sectors, and ultimately cause loss of data or a damaged boot sector.

Then what happens - we are sold MP3 players that run from computer hard drives (ie, spinning disc's). Yes, we know they have shock protection built in, but this is so we don't hear the skipped music tracks - not to stop the hard drive from being damaged.

I was discussing these thoughts with a client last week, and was interrupted by a computer technician, I thought whoops what have I said wrong, he then confirmed what I was saying is right, as he had replaced his MP3 player hard drive twice in 2 years. He had put it down to heavy use as he is always playing it, apart from the running, and not realized the real problem (that he was using his MP3 player for running) until after a discussion with his work mates. Now he uses a solid state MP3 player for his 25Km runs and has had no problem with either the new unit or his hard drive MP3 player over the last 18 months, none at all.

My advice is to only use a solid State MP3 player for running, they can carry from 2 hours to over 300 hours of music (from 128Mb to 4Gig of storage). These units have no moving parts, therefore shock movement will not damage the music quality, the storage or there long life.

Follow the guide to Choose your Next MP3 player for running, at http://tinyurl.com/h6fgl

About The Author


Charles West sells Technology products (cameras, DVD's, sound systems and of coarse MP3 players etc) for a retailer. Over the last couple of years he has come across many people who need a little more help in understanding the idea of MP3's the different types of MP3 players and there uses.

So to help He has developed http://www.mp3srock.com
for people to understand all the many variants and uses of MP3 players.

Will The New Microsoft Mini PC Take Over From MP3 Players And Mobile Phones?

by: Richard Green

The new mini PC from Microsoft, which currently has the concept name “origami”, was shown off at a technology trade show in Germany at the beginning of March. The end-product name for the computer has not yet been finalised, as “origami” is only a nickname which has been used by engineers during its development. The new computer is planned to hit the shelves in April, and is expected to rival apple Mac’s IPod amongst other things.

The new computer is a hand held PC in the similar shape of Sony’s P2P games console. The hand held PC is however as powerful as a standard desktop PC, with a whopping 60 gig hard drive. It has an 18cm touch-screen, and is a mere 1.5cm thick and weighs in at around 1 Kg. Operating with a full version of windows XP, this little computer is intended to have all the media capabilities of a home PC: therefore this new gadget will be able to run your favourite media player for music, games; as well as movies.

The new hand held PC also has additional connection capabilities for keyboards, digital cameras, and mobile phones; leading to speculation about how long before the mini PC and Skype ( http://www.skype.com ) begin to rival mobile phones too. The big question here being; will the large and powerful phone companies like Sony Ericsson ( http://www.sonyericsson.com ) give Microsoft the free rein to enter their marketplace. With Microsoft being such a major conglomerate surely the big phone companies will do everything in their capability to keep their market Microsoft free.

With this new ultra high tech piece of machinery Microsoft are also set to make a serious challenge to the PC hardware market. This brilliant strategy by Microsoft allows them to hit three of the world’s biggest markets (PCs, mobile phones and MP3 players) in one fell swoop.

Can anyone stop Microsoft? The only company to be seen making any challenge to the Microsoft empire at the moment is search engine giant Google – will we become a world dominated by two global Über-companies in the future – we'll just have to wait and see.

About The Author


Richard Green lives in Edinburgh, occasionally writing for the personal finance blog Cashzilla ( http://cashzilla.blogspot.com/ ), and talks to himself a lot, although he is yet to find any intelligent conversation.

Choosing The MP3 Player That Suits You

by: Fabio Marcell

If you've been looking around for an mp3 player, chances are you're very confused with all the different specifications and the vast array of models out there. You've read that you can get your entire music collection on to one mp3 player and that's true - but not every mp3 player. You have also been told that you can throw them around, go jogging with them, climb a mountain with one and all this is true - but again, not every mp3 player will withstand this treatment.

Basically, if you want to get physical with your mp3 player then you need one with no moving parts. In this case, the iPod is not what you want. You would be looking for a machine which saves it's music to memory. Some of the most popular mp3 players which fall into this category are in the Creative MuVo range.

There are basically three types of mp3 player. Hard drive based, memory based and mp3 CD player based. The hard drive mp3 players allow you to store thousands of tunes whilst the memory based version sacrifices music volume for freedom of movement. You can even get waterproof mp3 players! The mp3 CD players read the mp3 music from a CD which you have pre-burned.

So now you have enough information to know what type of mp3 player you should be looking for. Now what about capacity? How much music can you get on the various players out there? Let's take a look ....

If you want your music to sound good you want to be using at least CD quality mp3s. One minute of CD quality mp3 takes up around 1Mb. The memory based mp3 players have a top limit of around 500Mb meaning you can get roughly 120 average length tunes on there. But the top end hard drive versions go up to as much as 60Gb which is a whole lot of music - an anorak's dream :)

Another consideration is battery life. The hard drive mp3 players plough through the batteries at a rate of knots since the disk has to physically turn. The memory based option uses a lot less battery power. Many of the memory based mp3 players use the AAA size battery which is very convenient since you don't need a re-charger and you don't need to search for hard to find battery types. You'll find that most hard drive versions use lithium-ion rechargeable batteries and if you use your mp3 player a lot, your re-charger will be in regular use. Many people simply leave the power lead plugged in when they are at home.

An important factor in your decision should be the size of the unit. If you want to use your player at the gym or while you're out jogging then you'll want the smallest player possible. There are some really tiny models on the market these days. You will usually have to sacrifice some storage with a very small mp3 players but you can usually get enough music on there to have a good long workout.

If you want to use your mp3 player more at home then size will not be such a great consideration. The iPod is still a very compact unit and most people will be able to fit their entire collection on there. Of course the iPod is not your only option and there are many excellent manufacturers out there. Just be careful of some of the cheap imports you see on ebay, often there is no support for these players.

As a replacement for the home hi fi system, the mp3 player is becoming more and more popular. High fidelity purists obviously will never be swayed but to most of us the quality of the mp3 is perfectly adequate for our everyday listening purposes.

In fact many modern players coming on to the market have been designed with both portability and versatility in mind. What better way to entertain your dinner party guests than to have your mp3 player randomly selecting music from over ten thousand of your favourite tracks? No more fumbling around in your CD rack trying to find the disk that lost its cover ;)

Now you know what to look for, go get yourself a player and join the digital music revolution.

About The Author


Fabio Marcell writes for many niches and is an experienced researcher. He has written articles covering a wide range of human experience and enjoys plying his trade especially on the Internet. He is currently sponsoring http://mp3.linkz-and.info and can be reached on fabio@mp3.linkz-and.info

An MP3 Download Trick that Works...

by: Ron Hutton

You signed up for a teleseminar and ended up missing it. Dang!

But the hosts recorded it. Yah!

They sent you an email message that says "Go here now and listen to the call in its entirety. BUT the web link in the email message points direct to the MP3 file and your browser's protesting. Dang again.

The message you've received looks something like...

"You can download and listen to the call to find out our exact secrets. Go here now:

http://www.some-guru-site.com/teleseminar-recording.htm "

Have you ever attempted to use the "right-click / save as" convention on a link in an email message? It just don't work.

Why do marketers do this? Are they trying to make it difficult to download and pass an MP3 file around? Did they just have a lazy attack?

It doesn't matter why because you can get around this nuisance. It's really easy.

Do this:

(1) Open a new blank web page document using your favorite HTML editor.

(2) Go back to the email message and copy the web link that points to the MP3 file.

(3) Flip back over to your HTML editor, paste the link into the source code of your blank web page document and format it properly as you would any other target URL. Following this procedure, your link will have a formatting something like this (Note - the beginning and ending anchor tags here have an extra "."):

http://www.some-guru-site.com/teleseminar-recording.htm

(4) Now, still in your HTML editor, go to "Preview" mode. Your link is fully functional and now you can use the conventional "Right-Click / Save As" function to start the file download just as if the teleseminar host had sent you to a download page online.

That's it. That's all there is to our little MP3 file download trick. Save this article in your "sneaky computer tricks" file and next time you find yourself fighting with your web browser to access an MP3 audio file, it works slick as a snail trail.


Copyright 2005 Ron Hutton

About The Author


Ron Hutton is a 20 year sales and marketing veteran with a passion for coaching and training. Go watch a free 3 minute video demonstration that puts this MP3 download trick into action. http://www.gothrive.com/free-video-library/video-directory.html While you're there, check out all of Ron's free video tutorials.

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Legally Download Music and MP3's

by: Charles Oakland

Downloading music is one of the greatest things about owning a computer. However, the most popular way to do it is illegal. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is trying to stop anyone from downloading music illegally and have recently been passing out hefty fines to prevent downloading. In the wake of a Supreme Court ruling, companies can be sued for encouraging illegal downloading, most notably and recently Kazaa. With the recent shutdown of the top music downloading networks, one has to ask:

Can I Still Download Music?

Yes, at plenty of Web sites, some requiring payments and some free. Pay sites that have licensing agreements with the entertainment industry -- such as iTunes, Rhapsody, Yahoo Music and others -- are panting for your business. Sites battling the industry such as Grokster and Morpheus -- which were targeted in Monday's decision -- face a cloudier future. While the Supreme Court sent their case back to a federal appeals court for trial, they are almost sure to lose. They and other file-sharing services that allow for sharing of copyrighted files -- and make money off it, through advertising and other means -- may fold or have to change their sites drastically.

Unfortunately these top profile downloading sites often charge a hefty fee for their access. Basic membership fees often cost upwards of $30 a month, while tracks start at $1 a piece. Alternatives have arisen that promise to give you the same amount of content but at a cheaper price.

These alternatives include: MP3-share, mp3downloadhq, legal music access, and online download network. Reviews of these programs can be found at http://music.webreviews.ca managed by http://webreviews.ca

About The Author


Charles Oakland is a journalist by nature who manage the popular web review site: Free Web Reviews Free MP3 Reviews

MP3 Audio File Format

a New Format For Storing Sounds
by: David Chandler

MP3 is the latest and the most popular audio format that is used now. This acronym stands for MPEG Layer 3. It is a compressed audio format with a compression ratio of up to 12: 1. The sound quality of the audio in this format is very high. A normal audio file, which is 1200 KB in size, can be stored in just 100 KB if it is using the MP3 format. The size of the audio files is very small when compared to other formats of audio files. This makes it easily portable.

Where to get MP3 audio files?

MP3 audio files are widely available in CDs now. Almost any album that is released in the world is also sold in the MP3 audio format. These albums in the MP3 formats are also available in some websites that are dedicated for MP3 downloads. You can also purchase these MP3 CDs at any audio store meant for that purpose.

MP3 downloads

Free MP3 downloads are also available in some of the websites. You need to become a member of these sites for a fee to download unlimited number of songs in the MP3 format. Some of the sites charge you for each song that is downloaded. Free MP3 downloads for testing the quality of the audio is usually provided by most of these websites. Websites like www.napster.com allow free MP3 downloads if you have MP3 players from select manufacturers. You can download directly to the player by using the software provided by the website.

How to play a MP3 audio file?

To play a MP3 audio you need separate players whether it is software or a physical player that can be carried. MP3 software players are used in your PC to play MP3 audio. Physical players from many branded manufacturers are available in the market to play these MP3 audio files.

MP3 Ringtones

With the advent of the mobile phones, it has become a fashion to make your mobile call you with your favorite songs as Ringtones. Youngsters particularly teenagers are more interested in using Ringtones of the songs they like. This has picked up in such a manner that MP3 Ringtones are now being sold in websites. Many websites sell Ringtones in the MP3 format. The mobile you are using should be capable of playing the Ringtones in the MP3 format to use these MP3 Ringtones. These websites provide you with an interface to select the model of the mobile phone you have and then download MP3 Ringtones that suit your mobile phone model.

About The Author


For more information, visit the MP3 Info Center at http://www.mp3infocenter.com .

David Chandler
For your FREE Stock Market Trading Mini Course:
"What The Wall Street Hot Shots Won't Tell You!" go to: http://www.stockmarketgenie.com

MP3 - a Brief Overview!

by: Luna Sol


Internet did not only change the daily habits but also the way people do their shop. And more than that: Internet has also increased the space to commit piracy.

Music is a good example of how Internet can contribute to piracy. With all this revolution regarding in the means of communication, more and more files or software are available and can be downloaded. Music is one of these files.

The most common music format is MP3, which is the short for MPEG-1 Audio Layer-3. These are files of music found in a compression version but which keeps the original quality. These files are highly searched through Internet.

With this option of downloading music and creating your own CD, composers and music bands started to claim for their copyrights and royalties. This arouse another question: how to protect the bands and composers?

The exit found was to create laws to protect them. These laws presuppose that both websites that offer free MP3 downloads without the permission of the owners of the copyrights and also websites that offer paid downloads should be punished. In this case, the owners of those websites that don’t respect these laws are sued.

But of course it’s not every website on the Internet that breaks the law. There are websites that offer both free and paid MP3 download without breaking the law and respecting the composers’ or music bands’ copyrights.

And something that people are usually not aware of is that downloading a MP3 without the previous consent of the owner of this music you may also be sued. It doesn’t matter that you just downloaded it. It works like this: these websites only exist because people download their MP3, so if you stop downloading it the website will disappear. Then, you are considered to be accomplice of the website’s owner.

There are, however, some legal ways for you to download MP3, both free and paid.

www.mp3ps.com

About The Author


Luna Sol

I've always loved music and stuff related to that. That's why I started reading about music, MP3 and Internet. And there are so many things we are not aware of. My intention is to help you find the same things I had figured out.


http://www.mp3ps.com