Internet Music
Internet music has typically involved either download (e.g. i-tunes) or streaming (e.g. Internet radio, podcasts). These models involve no two-way interaction. One can simply wait (typically tens of seconds) for all the information (packets) to arrive before playing. This time lag (buffering) accommodates both the time it takes to process the audio information and the variability of one-way transmission over the Internet.
JamNow adds an interactive component. You collaborate in high fidelity with other musicians or fans as if you were all in the same room. For natural interaction, we cannot allow the time lag associated with buffering, AND we have to contend with the two-way performance of the Internet. This introduces several challenges.
Audio compression with high sound quality, low bit rate, and low delay
High quality in the presence of Internet congestion, lost packets, delay, and packet jitter

Network performance
Our network uses the a novel architecture optimized for low delay between collaborating artists and fans, while providing efficient and robust streaming of live and posted content.

Audio Compression
Audio compression technology is used in all voice (Internet telephone, cell phones) and computer audio (MP3, streaming, Internet radio) applications. Why?
If you convert audio to digital format for transmission over a network, you end up with lots of bits (~1 million bits/sec (1 Mb/s) for high quality stereo). Typical Internet connections support less than ¼ of that (250 Kb/s).
Much of the information in the digitized audio cannot be perceived by human hearing. Audio compression or coding technology uses all sorts of clever math and signal processing tricks to take out the information that will not be noticed, then package the remaining bits in an encoded format that will fit into the minimum bandwidth.
To play it back at the other end you use a decoder that recreates a very good replica of the initial sound. All this goes on in your MP3 player, so it’s pretty standard stuff.

What does JamNow add?

We’re creating an interactive experience or collaboration between musicians and fans. To do this, artists and fans need to feel like they are in synch. There cannot be a noticeable time delay between speaking at one end and hearing at the other.
Consider a measure of musical score. Each beat takes about 7/10 of a second or 700 milliseconds (ms) at 90 beats/minute. To feel in synch, the delay required to get your audio across the network must be a small fraction of a beat, typically less than 100 ms.
It takes a least 100 ms for standard MP3 audio compression to encode an audio signal, and transmission and buffering takes at least another 10 s. So forget about collaboration.
Our JamNow encoding and decoding takes less than about only 10 ms, and typical transmission takes less than 50 ms. (less than typical phone calls – and with much better audio quality!). Also, our special signal processing methods eliminate the need for extensive buffering.
This is done while retaining audio quality that is to most listeners indistinguishable from the original audio signal. So we are able to provide the feeling of being there even over distances of thousands of km.
Bottom Line
Using some very strong audio processing and network technology, we are able to bring artists together with fans, or with other artists, in ways that haven’t been possible. People can meet and interact naturally in a virtual venue, and become part of a high-quality stream that is available from any web browser on the planet.
Drop by JamNow.com and check it out!

RELATED WEBSITE LINKS

www.jamnow.com/asburylanes
The first concert venue to use JamNow to broadcast live shows 4 nights a week

http://www.jamnow.com/rickflorino
A heavy metal podcaster using JamNow to broadcast interviews with well known bands

http://www.jamnow.com/jupiterone
Live performance by a great band

What is CSS and how does it work?

This would be a quick explanation of the separation of content and presentation, and how it’s valuable for having a central, site-wide repository of style (instead of code scattered through thousands of pages site-wide). That saves time and money.
Visuals: code in an editor > unstyled markup in a browser > Photoshop mockup > final site with CSS styling applied (using mezzoblue.com as an example)
When would I use it?

Aside from actual web designers, who should already be using it? Some people might be handed the keys to a web site and told to make changes. Or they may have to work with a content management system that has been set up to rely on style, which features formatting.
Visuals: Wordpress page editing, how it looks on-site. (using north08.webdirections.org site as an example)
What’s cool about CSS?

The neatest part about the whole separation of content and presentation thing is that if you build it right, you can make some drastic changes with a few lines of code. I can completely change the way a site looks by swapping in a new style sheet. This can apply to every page on the site, or just certain sections. I could give my products page a blue background image, my contact page a different red image, etc. with just a few lines of code.
Visuals: browsing through a few CSS Zen Garden designs
At the end I’d love a quick question about the conference I’m running in Vancouver for web designers and people building web sites, called Web Directions North. All I want to say is that it’s for web designers, developers, and project managers, and it’s happening in January 2008. Oh, and we’re all going skiing/boaring at Whistler after.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/why_css.html
Why use CSS?
http://www.mezzoblue.com/downloads/markupguide/
A listing of common HTML elements to be used in content management systems for CSS-based sites.
http://www.positioniseverything.net/
Position is Everything is the #1 site for IE6 CSS bug fixes, the bane of any web designer’s existence.
http://xhtml.com/en/css/reference/
CSS reference with screenshots of many properties in action.

On-Air RELATED WEBSITE LINKS
http://mezzoblue.com
http://north08.webdirections.org
http://csszengarden.com

Attach:BlendLayers.pdf