For many shoppers online, “legal” and “legitimate” are two words that do not mean much and they would not mind buying music from unethical sources, if it means having to pay much less than what it actually sells for.

There are several websites that sell all the latest downloads from top American artists for pennies on the dollar. Music fans are only too thrilled at the prospect of getting music so cheap, especially with the quality and experience being almost the same as the music downloads found at legitimate music sites such as iTunes and others. They willingly enter into the black illegal world of piracy, where they are asked to use their credit cards to purchase music downloads.

What they fail to realize is that, by buying music from these illegal sources, they are becoming part of the theft and piracy racket.

Not many music aficionados who download music from these file-sharing sites really understand the extent of this crime, but even those that do, pay no heed because of the convenience associated with such sites, in terms of low prices and newest songs.

Some even feel that it is perfectly okay to download free pirated music because the musicians have enough money and are not losing much or because the recording companies are charging too much for CDs. They fail to look at this as almost similar to stealing a CD from a store and most of these people would not dream of doing that offline. Stealing online or offline, still amounts to theft and downloading music without paying for it or paying less using illegal sources is stealing.

Keeping aside the conscience part of it, most music fans are not aware of the risks of using credit cards at these sites. The few that are vary of using their credit cards on sites embroiled in legal issues, say that they do not feel secure as they are not sure where their credit card numbers are going. The problem with crossing international boundaries is that there is a huge grey area with no support.

There are several such websites hosted in Russia and these are supposed to be the riskiest sites on the web. Known as the king of Russian music websites, AllofMP3.com closed its doors in 2007, and during its existence was often part of the legal battles contesting its legitimate status. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), most Russian websites are said to violate international laws by selling copyrighted music without permission. RIAA slapped a lawsuit on AllofMP3.com in 2006, for $1.65 trillion, for all the 11 million songs that were downloaded from their site. Although, RIAA was not given that money, it did manage to shut the site down. After the closure of this site, there are other Russian websites, such as MP3sparks.com that continue to perform this illegal activity.

In fact, Visa and MasterCard stopped accepting transactions through several such sites and many people complain that their cards have been declined.

People who use credit cards at illegal sites can be aggressively pursued and caught, through their credit card details. They not only stand every chance of getting their ID stolen but also get their credit ruined.

As the music industry and the credit cards associations clamp down on this issue, consumers are seeing more and more lawsuits. Many file sharing users have been slapped with lawsuits. An aggressive example of one such lawsuit won by RIAA in the recent past is against a resident of Minnesota, for $222,000 for 24 copyrighted songs she had made available on the Kazaa network.

Experts feel that those dealing with Russian websites are more at danger because of leaving a paper trail behind, with the use of their credit cards. Music fans have to rethink what is right and wrong and whether it is worth taking these risks and being seen as criminals in the eyes of law.

Veveo Inc. is a company that has just beta-launched its video searching vTap. This is a free service and is designed to enhance user experience on broadband enabled phones. The company claims that it has huge listings of Web videos — much more than any other video portal.

As everyone knows, although the latest smart phones come with big screens and have the capability of bringing video to life, finding a video that plays in a format compatible with the smart phone is a tough task, and most people give up because of the effort and time involved.

The main advantage of vTap lies in its ability to find videos even using phones and TVs. Although the videos on vTap are from several different sites and these online videos are in various formats that do not play on phones, Veveo converts the original video format into a format that can stream and play on a user’s particular phone.

This application is said to work on Windows Mobile, Nokia N-series, and many different handsets from manufacturers such as Sanyo, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, LG, and Samsung. The fact that they also have a version that works on the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch makes it very appealing to the younger generation.

One wonders how Veveo is able to provide this free service. They say they are looking into making profits from licensing this technology to content providers and hardware companies. Although this service can function on any data connection, in order to play videos that are smooth — without any breaks while waiting for data — it would be better to use either a Wi-Fi or 3G wireless service. This will ensure that users have an uninterrupted and enjoyable video watching experience.

Veveo is being hailed by analysts for its thoughtfulness in addressing a problem that needed a solution. They have given the phones what Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Live have given desktops, with their special video search modes.

Things are totally different when it comes to phones, where these kinds of search tools were not available previously. It was a raw point with people. There was the excitement of having found something they wanted to watch, but that excitement evaporated, usually due to the video not being available in a format that was compatible with their particular handset.

Most Web videos are in Adobe Flash, which is not available on most handsets — even on BlackBerry, iPhone, and most of the Windows mobiles. To satisfy this need, people mostly rely on their wireless carriers, such as Sprint TV or Verizon V Cast, although they are expensive and do not provide many choices.

Even if someone is willing to manage with what is available on YouTube, the experience of browsing from a mobile is worse than using a computer. The iPhone does have a YouTube application that makes browsing and searching the site easier, but it only allows access to very few videos.

Veveo manages to overcome this using a process that takes video from the Web and converts it to a format that will work with the player installed on the handheld device.

In order to get vTap on a phone, the user needs to sign up at the Veveo website first. Veveo then sends a mobile text message with the link. Once that link is clicked, the software is downloaded and installed on the handheld. After vTap is loaded, the user needs to enter their desired search term to get a list of related videos.

There is also a wonderful option to turn any search into a feed, which means videos related to that search will automatically show up in a list when they become available. There are also other pre-programmed channels available such as sports, entertainment (TV show clips and movie trailers,) and news content.

The only limitation is that since vTap reformats videos retrieved from other sites, it cannot do this with sites that block Veveo from reformatting its content. If a site requires some other proprietary player to be installed, vTap will not work on that site.

The advantages of Veveo far outweigh the limitations, and the next thing that Veveo intends to do is to embed its technology in Internet-connected TVs and other gadgets. This may be viable at a later point in time but for now, for people who would like to give mobile video a try, vTap is certainly worth a try.

RSS is especially useful to pull feeds into your website. This bulks up your site with content offerings and article titles from other related sites. RSS can also be used to improve your search engine optimization (SEO) as it makes your site more visible to search engines and generates traffic and incoming links. Finally RSS can be a connection between you and your customers letting them know when new material is offered through your website.

To use RSS feeds, consider the following:

• Plan the content the RSS will contain. A RSS feed can contain many forms of content. The feed can publicize articles or blog posts, product reviews, press releases, announcements or any combination of the above. The contents of your feed should be interesting to readers, and centralized to retain the interest of your initial audience. The more specific and interesting your feed, the more likely it will be picked up by other sites or individuals.

• Create the feed. Once you have established the direction your feed will take, get busy creating the content. You might update your blog or site articles weekly or on another regular basis, or simply update your feed when new products or announcements become available. You can write your own content or hire someone to write it for you, but it should be well-written and directed at your visitors, not search engines.

• If your blog or site already has components set up to create a RSS feed, the process is simple. If your site is missing this feature, you can still create a feed using specialized software you can download and install.

• Publicize the feed. Simply creating a RSS feed isn’t enough to make an impact on the marketplace. You must promote the feed the same way you would your website. There are directories available for listing feeds which you should investigate and subscribe to. It is also important to include RSS feed icon on your site or blog that allows visitors to add your feed to their browser, email or sites. You might also consider specific buttons such as “AddToMyYahoo” or “AddtoMSN” to make it easier for visitors to subscribe to your feed.

• Optimize your RSS feed. Again, just like a website, RSS feeds should be optimized. Feed validators can check to see that the code is working. You simply put in the URL of the feed and the validator will double check to see that others are able to view your feed as you would like. You can optimize your actual site content for search engines, but catchy titles and descriptions will be the best means of bringing traffic to your feeds.

• Track the feed. Once your RSS feed is live and optimized, check to see how it is being distributed. Tools are available that track the feeds and offer analysis and statistics of users. These can give you a better idea of your success and target markets.

• Continue to generate fresh content to retain readers. Finally, once the RSS feed is created and active, you must maintain it by adding new content on a regular basis. Visitors will stop reading your material if you fail to address their interests and needs. And even with the ideal content you will lose readers over time, so you must always be in pursuit of new subscribers.

The best way to continue to attract new visitors and keep the ones you have is to write relevant, interesting pieces in a routine fashion. Update the site in a predictable manner and keep the content tightly focused on what your readers have been looking for in the past.

HTML:

Intro:

In the first section of this article, we will look at HTML. HTML is the oldest of the four languages and stands for Hypertext Markup Language. Its main purpose is to structure a web document by denoting sections of the document with certain tags. In HTML, there is usually a header section, which contains the title and description as well as some META tags for search engine spidering purposes. Next there is a body tag which contains the main content of your document. Paragraphs, descriptions, and pictures would usually go in this section. Last of all, there is a footer to an HTML document. This is usually there additional links or any additional information that does not belong in the body go.

History:

Although HTML has been expanded and changed since its initial creation, it was originally created by physicist Tim Berners Lee in 1980 while he was working as an independent contractor for CERN. Since the world wide web at that time was mainly a way for scientists to share research data, HTML did not gain much notice until the end of the 80s and into the 90s. It was not until 1990 that the World Wide Web (W3) was proposed and accepted by CERN. The year 1991 marked the first year where an HTML standard was made public. This early version of HTML had relatively few tags(some which are still available today), such as the basic “href” link tag and the “img src” image tag that could be used to define parts of a webpage and where certain elements could be inserted into an HTML document. HTML continued to improve and expand throughout the 1990s. People began to take more and more notice of HTML standards as the World Wide Web gained popularity among the masses. HTML specifications have since 1996 been maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium(W3C). In 2000, HTML standards became international and spread across the globe. The latest version of HTML that is widely accepted is 4.01.

Advantages and Disadvantages:

There are two flavors of HTML standards, strict and transitional. The difference between them is that transitional is much more of a loose standard and ignores many things that strict would consider errors or warnings. Transitional is widely accepted and is favored among most webmasters and designers as it allows for more elements in the document than strict. The advantage that HTML has over other standards is that it is the easiest to follow and one that most webmasters should be familiar with. HTML knowledge is generally considered a requirement to build any kind of website, no matter how complex or simple. The disadvantage of HTML is that by itself it is quite limited is what it can do. It does not provide the variety of descriptive tags and elements that something like XHTML or XML can provide. While beginners may be content with HTML, more advanced designers will want to learn other markup languages and standards.

XHTML:

Intro and History:

The next markup language we are going to look at is XHTML. XHTML stands for Extensible Hypertext Markup Language and is similar to HTML. However, XHTML also conforms to XML standards. XHTML standards are generally more strict than HTML and because of this, real XHTML documents can be easily auto-processed and generated with a variety of XML tools. XHTML, although not technically HTML, is considered by many the rightful heir to HTML. However, W3C considers XHTML as separate from HTML and continues to develop HTML 5.0 . XHTML became a W3C recommendation on May 31, 2001. Many former HTML writers have now switched to XHTML because of the advantages allowed by following the XML standards.

Advantages and Disadvantages:

One of the most apparent advantages of XHTML comes from the inclusion of XML namespaces which allow web designers to define separate elements and attributes to each namespace. These function as modules in XHTML that can be called from anywhere. It is similar to functions or classes in a programming language such as C++. This allows much added flexibility for web designers. XHTML also reduces the load on syntax parsers. Because it is far more strict that regular HTML, there is less variety in the way you can use XHTML tags. This, in turn, eliminated the need for complex parsers to handle the different ways syntax can be written. One drawback of XHTML against HTML is that it is not as widely supported as HTML. Many browsers do not support strict XHTML or only support one version of it. Because of this and the fact that XHTML is harder to abide by than HTML, many web designers continue to stick with transitional HTML standards.

XML:

Intro and uses:

The next markup language we will look at is XML which stands for extensible markup language. This language allows designers and programmers to specify their own tags and is therefore much more flexible than HTML in terms of what can be done with it. Outside of webpages, many things such as level design for flash games and even flat-file databases are designed in XML. XML is particularly useful for sharing information across different systems as XML parsers are widespread and the XML format has widely been used as a specification language for certain data.

Advantages over HTML:

While HTML had descriptor tags such as “<title>” that allowed you to specify the title, it did not allow you to create tags such as “<author>” to specify the author of a document. In HTML, the tag was either there or it wasn’t. XML solved many of these problems by letting people create tags for author, contributors, and other things. For web designers who wanted more control over their web documents, XML was a natural choice to switch to once it became available.

Standards:

There are two levels of XML standards that can be abide by. They are well-formed and valid. A well-formed XML document conforms to all of XML’s syntax rules whereas a valid document also follows all of XML’s semantic rules. To be valid, an XML document cannot contain any undefined tags. To pass the W3C validator, a document using XML standards must be a valid document.

Disadvantages:

One point of notice is that XML does not itself provide a way of displaying the contained data. The design of a document in terms of looks still must be guided by something such as HTML or CSS. XML is just a markup that defines and puts data in specific tags that make it easier to process. Because it is not a language that is meant for display, XML is generally a more specialized markup language that is reserved for those who are more interested in formatting data. Many web designers do not need this in a regular webpage and find it easier just to stick to regular HTML standards.

CSS:

Intro and History:

The last language and standard we are going to look at is CSS. CSS stands for cascading style sheets and is completely used for the display of a webpage. CSS is a mixed bag as it is powerful for certain things, but not all that useful for others. Many times a webpage will have CSS tied in with HTML for rendering. CSS was officially adopted by W3C in 1998 and has since slowly spread across the world wide web.

Advantages and Disadvantages:

CSS is better than HTML in terms of design as it is less intensive on the processing(divs over tables) and it allows you to place things precisely where you want them down to the last pixel, which is something you generally cannot do with HTML. However, CSS standards are not the same across browsers and there are many bugs reported within Internet Explorer and Firefox that have required CSS filters or hacks to fix. The standard is getting more widespread and browsers are slowly adopting the CSS standard more but it has not become as commonplace as many web designers had hoped. For many things, people still use tables instead of divs because tables are easier to make and combined with CSS within the table, positioning can be nailed down pretty accurately. The loading times and processing power advantages that CSS provides over HTML are pretty much negligible in this age of DSL and high-speed cable modems. The lack of browser-wide support for its standard, the complexity that is takes to implement multiple column designs, and the lack of properties for some things like floats, generally prevent CSS from replacing HTML as the most commonly used design language.

In conclusion:

Out of the four languages mentioned above, HTML continues to be the most dominant one used online. Partially because it was the first one and people are hesitant to change and partially because browsers and other various issues has kept the others back from replacing HTML.

1- It made the WWW public, generating and distributing web content began to be more common, users could participate in the sites data creation and create their own pages, threads, blogs, videos and auctions. These sites such as Wikipedia, Ebay, and Youtube have now become the leaders on the WWW and contain big usercommunities which update their sites data consistently.

2- Categorization and organization of content, such as the deep linking, site owners organized their content in a more comfortable, user freindly way using the back slash (/). The sites appeared more clear on search engines and the user could just type www.site.com/news instead of browsing the whole site to find this section.

3- And the last, most important thing was the “Dot-Com boom” (1995-2001), in which many new Internet-based companies began their work as their owners saw their potential on the Internet, companies such as Google and Ebay had been founded in the early beginning of the “boom” and became the great success of today.

The uses of Web 2.0

Web-based applications and desktops:

These “online desktops” are similar to a PC environment and function as application platforms giving the user the feeling his is at his desktop, not online, today this service is mostly used when a user wants to enter his desktop from another computer, all he/she needs to do is to sign up to one of these services and the problem is fixed.

Rich Internet applications:

Client-side software

Web 2.0 gives the users an option to work with data stored on servers, a simple example of it is an online html form which can be found anywhere these days, this forms are made using the scripting languages such as javascript, Java or flash, the forms are very helpful for site owners who can easily browse the form with all the details included inside and sort it or make further uses out of it (such as export it and store it on a side-server).

XML

XML is a fee-free open standard. Its primary purpose is to facilitate the sharing of data across the Internet. XHTML and RSS are written on the XML language by adding semantic constraints.

RSS

The RSS is another Web 2.0 feature giving the users an option to make other uses of a sites data.
The RSS is used to publish content updates such as new headlines on news sites or blog entries.
The user can enter and see the updates made on his chosen site and the chosen section (News/Music/Jokes) without
the need to search for them by himself.

Web protocols

Web communication protocols are supported by the Web 2.0 structure. These protocols such as the REST and SOAP involve some form of XML coding in them.