I've long hated Internet Explorer. I won't really go into the technical details of why, just to say that Internet Explorer is the worst browser and anyone still using it (regardless of the version) needs to switch now. Well the good news is, people are doing just that! IE has been in a steady decline for several years while Firefox has been on the rise and Google's Chrome is on a rapid climb. It's now official, for the first time in over a decade IE accounts for less than half of the browsing done on the Internet. If you look at just desktop computers or if you add in tablets and smart phones, IE is in a downward spiral.
Anyone who's a fan of IE could point out that IE is still the single largest browser in use with almost the same amount of use as Firefox and Chrome combine. My answer to that is to look more closely at the numbers. The best figure I can find is over 91% of all desktop computers run Microsoft Windows, with the remaining 9% running another operating system such as MacOS or Linux. So what this means is over 91% of the computers on the Internet come with IE preinstalled, and yet IEs share has dropped to less than half, which means a lot of people are bothering with the trouble to download and install a better browser (i.e. Firefox and/or Chrome).
So if you haven't already downloaded Firefox and/or Chrome, you need to do so. Let's see how low we can get IEs market share.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
MP3 versus OGG
Recently I talked about FLAC, the free lossless audio codec. Although lossless is a good thing, me personally I couldn't hear a difference so I decided to go with the space savings of MP3 / OGG. But today I wanted to talk more about MP3 and OGG files.
Without a doubt the MP3 format is the de facto audio format. Everyone uses it, just about every device and piece of software reads that format. But that doesn't mean it's the best format. I recently took a closer look at the OGG format and was surprised by what I learned. Unfortunately I can't show you like I could with the picture samples in my post about image compression, so you'll just have to download some samples and judge for yourself.
Put simply the OGG format offers better compression for the same bitrate compared to MP3. So what this means is you can have smaller files than MP3 without sacrificing quality. Or you could have files of the same size but with better quality. At first I didn't believe these claims, I think part of me was hesitant to give up my trusty MP3 format. But listening to some samples and reading about the two formats it is true. Think of it this way, MP3 dates from the early 90s whereas OGG is from 2000. In that decade they improved upon the technique of compressing audio without losing quality. This is how OGG is able to compress more without loss of quality compared to the MP3 format.
So starting now I'm going to switch to the OGG format for all my furture audio needs.
Without a doubt the MP3 format is the de facto audio format. Everyone uses it, just about every device and piece of software reads that format. But that doesn't mean it's the best format. I recently took a closer look at the OGG format and was surprised by what I learned. Unfortunately I can't show you like I could with the picture samples in my post about image compression, so you'll just have to download some samples and judge for yourself.
Put simply the OGG format offers better compression for the same bitrate compared to MP3. So what this means is you can have smaller files than MP3 without sacrificing quality. Or you could have files of the same size but with better quality. At first I didn't believe these claims, I think part of me was hesitant to give up my trusty MP3 format. But listening to some samples and reading about the two formats it is true. Think of it this way, MP3 dates from the early 90s whereas OGG is from 2000. In that decade they improved upon the technique of compressing audio without losing quality. This is how OGG is able to compress more without loss of quality compared to the MP3 format.
So starting now I'm going to switch to the OGG format for all my furture audio needs.
Friday, October 28, 2011
Smart TVs - more like stupid TVs
Ok, today's post is more of a rant than anything. If you've even considered buying a TV in the past year than you know that most new TVs are what they call "Smart TVs." Basically the TV is Internet-enabled so you can watch content from the web as well as standard TV programs. At home I own two of these Smart TVs. But in my opinion they should be called "Stupid TVs." The "Internet" feature to these TVs is all but worthless.
When you think of the Internet, there is a ton of great free content to watch. And I'm not just talking about YouTube. Some of the great free sources of content are Hulu, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and PBS. There are a lot more, but with just those 6 there is more free content then you could ever hope to watch. So, how many of these 6 Internet sites do you think you can watch using a Smart TV? The answer is ZERO! It's very frustrating too because you can use a computer and visit all these sites and watch free content all day long. But you cannot use a TV to view free content from these sites.
I don't blame TV manufactures either. The problem is the content providers (the above 6). They have decided in their infinite stupidity that we should not be able to watch this content from our TV (again, despite the fact that we can watch it from a computer, even a computer connected to a TV).
As far as I can tell the only uses for a Smart TV right now are the following:
Well I'm just hoping these sites will finally realize how arbitrary and stupid their decisions are and allow us to starting watching this content. If not, I may build a HTPC to get around this problem.
When you think of the Internet, there is a ton of great free content to watch. And I'm not just talking about YouTube. Some of the great free sources of content are Hulu, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and PBS. There are a lot more, but with just those 6 there is more free content then you could ever hope to watch. So, how many of these 6 Internet sites do you think you can watch using a Smart TV? The answer is ZERO! It's very frustrating too because you can use a computer and visit all these sites and watch free content all day long. But you cannot use a TV to view free content from these sites.
I don't blame TV manufactures either. The problem is the content providers (the above 6). They have decided in their infinite stupidity that we should not be able to watch this content from our TV (again, despite the fact that we can watch it from a computer, even a computer connected to a TV).
As far as I can tell the only uses for a Smart TV right now are the following:
- If you have a Hulu Plus, Vudu, Amazon Prime, and/or Netflix accounts (all of which cost money), you can watch that on your TV.
- I have found a single source of free content on my Smart TV, Revision3. Revision3 offers tons of great free programming, all of it is technology/computer related. If you're into that you'll enjoy their content, otherwise this channel won't be for you. My personal favorites are Tekzilla, Hak5, and the Ben Heck Show.
Well I'm just hoping these sites will finally realize how arbitrary and stupid their decisions are and allow us to starting watching this content. If not, I may build a HTPC to get around this problem.
DNS servers
I remember back in the day it was common to remember the IP address of at least one DNS server. This was probably back when I used a modem to connect to the Internet, and you would typically enter the IP address of a DNS server manually. Without at least one valid DNS server you might as well not be connected to the Internet because it's nearly impossible to access any sites. But remembering DNS server's IP address is never easy, they always have what appear to be random addresses.
Well good news. Google offers two public DNS server with very easy to remember IP addresses. They are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. Hopefully you'll remember this little tidbit of info the next time you need to enter an IP address.
Well good news. Google offers two public DNS server with very easy to remember IP addresses. They are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. Hopefully you'll remember this little tidbit of info the next time you need to enter an IP address.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Is the PC dead?
I've seen a lot of news stories and opinion articles lately that say the PC industry is dying. I think because I program on PCs these types of articles rub me the wrong way. Every article like this I've seen, when you read the article in detail it paints a different picture. In every case the PC industry is GROWING year over year. So how do they claim the PC industry is dying? Well their claims are based on the fact that the PC industry isn't growing as fast as it once was, so they are drawing the conclusion that if this continues the PC industry will start to decline. Well no one can predict the future. Certainly the global economy is weak right now, so that could easily explain the slower PC industry growth.
These articles always go on to say that most users are buying tablets and smartphones, and that these devices will eventually replace the PC. I personally find that hard to believe. I would say a desktop/laptop computer has two main uses - leisure and work. Leisure would be activities like playing games, watching videos, surfing the web, etc. I will agree that tablets and smartphones can do these leisure activities just as well as a desktop/laptop computer if not better. And they are portable so you can do it anywhere.
But what about "work." This would be tasks like writing documents, editing files, programming, accounting, etc. This is where tablets and smartphones I think will always fall short. Do you really want to write a 20 page paper on a 7" screen using the keyboard on the screen? Think about it another way. Businesses throughout the world buy millions of desktop/laptop computers for their employees to use. They are far and away the largest consumer of computers, far more than home users. I think that tasks people do on a work computer would not translate well to a tablet/smartphone. So as long as businesses need computers, the industry will continue to grow.
If I had to make a prediction here it would be this. Tablets and smartphones will continue to gain in popularity, especially with home users, and most home users will still buy a computer for home user although these numbers will decline slightly. Finally, I predict that businesses will continue to need mass quantities of computers.
These articles always go on to say that most users are buying tablets and smartphones, and that these devices will eventually replace the PC. I personally find that hard to believe. I would say a desktop/laptop computer has two main uses - leisure and work. Leisure would be activities like playing games, watching videos, surfing the web, etc. I will agree that tablets and smartphones can do these leisure activities just as well as a desktop/laptop computer if not better. And they are portable so you can do it anywhere.
But what about "work." This would be tasks like writing documents, editing files, programming, accounting, etc. This is where tablets and smartphones I think will always fall short. Do you really want to write a 20 page paper on a 7" screen using the keyboard on the screen? Think about it another way. Businesses throughout the world buy millions of desktop/laptop computers for their employees to use. They are far and away the largest consumer of computers, far more than home users. I think that tasks people do on a work computer would not translate well to a tablet/smartphone. So as long as businesses need computers, the industry will continue to grow.
If I had to make a prediction here it would be this. Tablets and smartphones will continue to gain in popularity, especially with home users, and most home users will still buy a computer for home user although these numbers will decline slightly. Finally, I predict that businesses will continue to need mass quantities of computers.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) files
In my last post I talked about PNG, the newer lossless image format which I personally think is superior to JPG. Today I wanted to talk about FLAC which is a lossless audio format.
As a general rule, lossless formats do not compress as well as lossy formats. So whereas FLAC will be smaller than the raw WAV file, it will not be as small as an MP3 or OGG. From what I've seen a good rule of thumb is a FLAC file will be about 50% the size of the original WAV. Compare that to MP3 and OGG which will be about 10% the original size. Or another way of looking at it is FLAC will be about 5 times larger than an MP3 / OGG.
If you read my last post, you know I liked the PNG format because you could see the lost image quality even in JPGs saved at 100%. So for me to recommend FLAC over MP3 / OGG there has to be a noticeable difference in audio quality. Unfortunately I cannot "show" you the difference as I can with images, you'll just have to download audio samples and have a listen. That said, I personally couldn't really tell a difference between FLAC and MP3 / OGG. I suspect that it really comes down to A) what the source material is and B) how good your speakers are. The same would be true of images. Most images you cannot see the "noise" in the JPG when saved at 100%. But certain images, such as my sample image with text, the issues with quality were apparent. So I'm guessing the same is true of audio files. Some audio samples you'll have to try very hard to hear a difference, whereas other audio samples the difference will be apparent. Given this, and the fact that MP3 / OGG are noticeably smaller than FLAC, my preference is to stick with MP3 / OGG for most applications.
Even through FLAC didn't win for me, it's still a nice format to have around. There are instances where I will use it, and since it's a totally free codec you don't have to worry about legal issues. One final note I'll mention for all you people out there who listen to your music on Apple devices. Apple has their own proprietary audio format called Apple Lossless. Both formats are lossless, but FLAC is definitely better. FLAC encodes and decodes the music in less than half the time, and the end file is a few percentage points smaller than Apple.
As a general rule, lossless formats do not compress as well as lossy formats. So whereas FLAC will be smaller than the raw WAV file, it will not be as small as an MP3 or OGG. From what I've seen a good rule of thumb is a FLAC file will be about 50% the size of the original WAV. Compare that to MP3 and OGG which will be about 10% the original size. Or another way of looking at it is FLAC will be about 5 times larger than an MP3 / OGG.
If you read my last post, you know I liked the PNG format because you could see the lost image quality even in JPGs saved at 100%. So for me to recommend FLAC over MP3 / OGG there has to be a noticeable difference in audio quality. Unfortunately I cannot "show" you the difference as I can with images, you'll just have to download audio samples and have a listen. That said, I personally couldn't really tell a difference between FLAC and MP3 / OGG. I suspect that it really comes down to A) what the source material is and B) how good your speakers are. The same would be true of images. Most images you cannot see the "noise" in the JPG when saved at 100%. But certain images, such as my sample image with text, the issues with quality were apparent. So I'm guessing the same is true of audio files. Some audio samples you'll have to try very hard to hear a difference, whereas other audio samples the difference will be apparent. Given this, and the fact that MP3 / OGG are noticeably smaller than FLAC, my preference is to stick with MP3 / OGG for most applications.
Even through FLAC didn't win for me, it's still a nice format to have around. There are instances where I will use it, and since it's a totally free codec you don't have to worry about legal issues. One final note I'll mention for all you people out there who listen to your music on Apple devices. Apple has their own proprietary audio format called Apple Lossless. Both formats are lossless, but FLAC is definitely better. FLAC encodes and decodes the music in less than half the time, and the end file is a few percentage points smaller than Apple.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Portable Network Graphics (PNG) files
In the world of computers there are dozens if not hundreds of image formats. So many that I'm not even going to try and list them. But in terms of the Internet, relatively few formats are commonly supported. In fact it seems as if there are 3 main image formats; GIF, JPG, and PNG. I wanted to look more closely at these formats and try and learn more and the PNG format.
GIF
One of the first, if not the first, image format on the Internet is GIF. In the early days of the Internet, most people connected to the Internet via a slow 2400 or 9600 baud modem. So keeping file sizes small was very important. The GIF format uses a palette of 256 colors, so file sizes are pretty small. GIF does support transparencies (a single alpha channel) as well as animations.
JPG
The JPG format has undoubtedly become the king of image formats, both on and off the Internet. The JPG format uses lossly compression to achieve some pretty good compression ratios. I don't think JPG supports transparencies, nor does it support animations.
PNG
The newest format to come along is PNG. Like JPG, this format supports full color, but unlike JPG it uses a lossless compression so image quality is not compromised. Also, PNG has full alpha channel support, not just a single channel as with GIF. So really, you can think of PNG as the best of the two formats.
But how do the three formats compare? I created a sample image using GIMP. It's a gradient from blue to red on top, pure white on the bottom, and some sample text in the middle. Let's have a look at the image in the different formats.
GIF:
If you look closely at the GIF file you can see it dithered the image down to 256 colors. This is especially evident in the red part of the gradient. This would be even more evident if the original image had more colors. The GIF file is fairly small at 16KB.
JPG (80%):
The JPG saved at 80% quality looks really bad around the text. It's easy to see the compression has lost image data in order to get the file size down. This file is 6KB in size.
JPG (90%):
Whereas the JPG saved at 90% looks better, you can still see the loss in image quality. This file is 8KB in size.
JPG (100%):
The JPG saved at 100% looks pretty good. Unless you look really close you cannot see the loss of image quality. This file is 21KB in size.
PNG:
The PNG file is absolutely perfect. You cannot see any quality issues in the image because there are none to be seen. This is pixel for pixel identical to the original image. The PNG file is the largest at 31KB.
Let's have a closer look at these images:
I've enlarged the images 300%. You can clearly see the loss of image quality in the JPG 80% and 90%. The JPG at 100% looks good, until you compare it to the PNG below it. The PNG image is crisp and clear whereas the JPG is blurry.
Conslusions:
When the PNG format started gaining in popularity, I'll admit that I avoided it. Anytime I downloaded an image that was in the PNG format I converted it to JPG. After all, JPG is the king of image formats. But having seem the loss of image quality, even in a JPG saved at 100%, I now see the benefit to the PNG format. Add to that the full support for alpha channel and the decision is clear to me. The PNG format is a better format than the venerable JPG format. For only a slight increase in size you gain lossless compression and full alpha channel support.
GIF
One of the first, if not the first, image format on the Internet is GIF. In the early days of the Internet, most people connected to the Internet via a slow 2400 or 9600 baud modem. So keeping file sizes small was very important. The GIF format uses a palette of 256 colors, so file sizes are pretty small. GIF does support transparencies (a single alpha channel) as well as animations.
JPG
The JPG format has undoubtedly become the king of image formats, both on and off the Internet. The JPG format uses lossly compression to achieve some pretty good compression ratios. I don't think JPG supports transparencies, nor does it support animations.
PNG
The newest format to come along is PNG. Like JPG, this format supports full color, but unlike JPG it uses a lossless compression so image quality is not compromised. Also, PNG has full alpha channel support, not just a single channel as with GIF. So really, you can think of PNG as the best of the two formats.
But how do the three formats compare? I created a sample image using GIMP. It's a gradient from blue to red on top, pure white on the bottom, and some sample text in the middle. Let's have a look at the image in the different formats.
GIF:
If you look closely at the GIF file you can see it dithered the image down to 256 colors. This is especially evident in the red part of the gradient. This would be even more evident if the original image had more colors. The GIF file is fairly small at 16KB.
JPG (80%):
The JPG saved at 80% quality looks really bad around the text. It's easy to see the compression has lost image data in order to get the file size down. This file is 6KB in size.
JPG (90%):
Whereas the JPG saved at 90% looks better, you can still see the loss in image quality. This file is 8KB in size.
JPG (100%):
The JPG saved at 100% looks pretty good. Unless you look really close you cannot see the loss of image quality. This file is 21KB in size.
PNG:
The PNG file is absolutely perfect. You cannot see any quality issues in the image because there are none to be seen. This is pixel for pixel identical to the original image. The PNG file is the largest at 31KB.
Let's have a closer look at these images:
I've enlarged the images 300%. You can clearly see the loss of image quality in the JPG 80% and 90%. The JPG at 100% looks good, until you compare it to the PNG below it. The PNG image is crisp and clear whereas the JPG is blurry.
Conslusions:
When the PNG format started gaining in popularity, I'll admit that I avoided it. Anytime I downloaded an image that was in the PNG format I converted it to JPG. After all, JPG is the king of image formats. But having seem the loss of image quality, even in a JPG saved at 100%, I now see the benefit to the PNG format. Add to that the full support for alpha channel and the decision is clear to me. The PNG format is a better format than the venerable JPG format. For only a slight increase in size you gain lossless compression and full alpha channel support.
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