Delivering Digital Content

Podcasts
A podcast is a audio or video which is distributed over the internet by syndicated download (download through a series of sites exclusive to where the file is) to personal computers and portable to portable media players such as IPods.
Examples of podcasts can be found at:
http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/racket/listen/default.htm
http://www.triplem.com.au/sydney/shows/peterbernerexperiment/podcasts/
http://comedy.podcast.com/
http://podcast.com/episode/31248145/

Mobile Content
Mobile Content is all media viewed or used on mobile phones. This includes games, ringtones, graphics, music and movies.

RSS
RSS is a set of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated data in a standardised format. It stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS is used primarily in publishing blogs, news headlines, audio and video feeds to the internet.

Blogging

Blogs
A blog, or Web Log, is a website updated and maintained by an individual or group, often to provide commentary or news of a particular subject or range of subjects, or to act as an online diary. They usually involve text, images and links to other websites.

Types of Blog
5 different styles of blog are:
Artlogs; http://nish.artlog.com/
Photoblogs; http://www.hawaiiphotoblog.com/tag/surfing/
Sketchblog; http://kristens-sketchblog.blogspot.com/
Vlogs; http://vlog.rheingold.com/
Podcasts; http://www.xarj.net/

Blog Sites
3 sites that enable web users to create their own blogs include:
www.blogspot.com
www.squarespace.com
www.blogger.com

Video on the Web

Formats
3 Common formats for video on the internet are:
Flash Video, .fla / .flv / .swf
MPEG Version 4, .mp4
Quicktime, .mov

Compression
Video needs to be compressed for use on the web because of bandwidth limitations. Video files contain large amounts of image and audio data and as such require a high bandwidth to be transmitted to a user’s computer. Compression reduces the size of video files, and especially so with MPEG-4 and MPEG-8 compression, allowing internet users to stream video far more effectively.

Compression Codecs
3 common compression codecs are:
H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
DV/DVCPRO- NTSC
DV – PAL

Video Footage
This is an example of video footage: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=xjWaLy74nuo
The compression used is H.264, the frame rate is 24fps, the resolution is 640 x 480 NTSC, and the format is .mov

Images on the Web

JPEGs
A .jpg or .jpeg image (Joint Photographics Experts Group) is a heavily compressed raster image (10:1), created using lossy compression. .jpg images are commonly used on the web for images with a large range of colours, such as photographs and artwork.
This is an example of a .jpg image.




GIFs
A .gif image (Graphics Interchange Format) is a raster image format that supports 8 bit colour (256 colours), compressed using the lossless LZW format. .gif is suitable for use with logos or graphics, simple images with areas of a single colour.
This is an example of a .gif image.



Bitmaps
A bitmap image is an image made of a spatially mapped array of bits or pixels. Bitmaps normally contain 1 bit per pixel. .jpg, .gif, .tiff and .png are all compressed formats of bitmap images. Bitmap images are used for the full resolution (un-compressed) display of images by software and operating systems.
This is an example of a bitmap image.

Resolution
The ideal resolution for images on the Internet is 72 dpi.