Streaming video is the transfer of digital media that is received as a continuous real-time stream over the Internet. Streamed video (including audio and possibly data) is transmitted from a streaming server and received and displayed in real time on the receiver's computer; unlike video downloads, where the file has to be transferred to the receiver's computer before being watched.

The Internet is rapidly spreading the use of streaming multimedia, no longer is it about being able to video download and listen to audio streaming, the technology has moved on before our eyes to deliver video streaming. From marketing tools, to movie clips, from online infomercials to streaming TV and live webcasting, like it or not, we will all have to embrace this technology or else our sites will become extinct and our communication message lost to antiquity.

The first true video search engine, Google Video, shows that this streaming video technology is becoming part of the day to day Internet experience for millions and millions of people, hence the Google take over of the widely used YouTube. YouTube was founded in February 2005 as a means for people to watch and share original video. Within two years it has grown into a site where more than 70 million videos are watched daily. Most experts agree that the World is rapidly moving to the point of true convergence between the Internet, television and telephone systems that will provide one single service or application for a truly multimedia World.

'Uses of Digital Media' a report by Aberdeen/StreamingMedia.com, found that in the United States $2 billion was being spent on streaming media technologies and that this is projected to grow to $12 billion per annum over the next few years. Today the Internet is the fastest growing marketplace and video is the most effective form of communication on the information super highway. The Internet has become the place to communicate with each other and the main medium for finding information. Video streaming brings a whole new dimension to this experience for everyone, be they business people negotiating a deal, friends and family keeping in touch with their loved ones, or people sharing a common interest or hobby seeing each other for the first time.

To fuel this momentum people online need fully integrated video streaming products for their communications and this technology is available now, ranging from video email, video instant messaging and even live webcasting and streaming TV. Streaming video is the online future and, at the present moment, provides an opportunity to anyone who wants to be ahead of the rest. One can help to fill this void and earn whilst doing so, either by having an advanced web site that uses streaming video over the Internet to gain people's attention and increasing the likelihood that the message will be acted upon and remembered; or by supplying access to the products and technologies that everyone will want to use.

 Are you wondering what you can use RSS for right now? Here are some practical examples of RSS at work.

Use Your Own Content

Almost ANY web based content can be transformed into an RSS feed. The only real requirement is that the information changes regularly.

News Headlines

Typically, the main use of RSS is to present headlines and a short introduction to "newsy" stories. Create an RSS feed on your site featuring your company press releases, site updates, etc.

Upcoming Events

RSS is a great way to let people know of events and activities that may be happening soon. It's easy to turn an "events" page into an RSS feed.

Thoughts/Commentary

You've probably heard of the term "blog" or "weblog". It's a page that displays (in chronological order) a series of writings on whatever the author wants to write about. While a normal blog also allows others to add their comments to yours, you don't have to offer that functionality.

Set up a page where you regularly add your thoughts on all sorts of issues - or just one issue - with the most recent post at the top of the page. Include these items in an RSS feed, and you've got a whole new audience for your pearls of wisdom.

Articles

Share your knowledge. This is a more "formal" type of writing, where you write a series of articles on a specific topic. Add a new article on that topic every week or so. Set up several topics and you've got several new RSS feeds to attract even more interest in what you know.

Don't forget to include a resource box in the article which allows others to reproduce your article on their site, with an obvious link back to you.

New Products

Got an online store with new inventory added regularly? Add details about your newly added items to an RSS feed to let people know what's just come in.

Weekly/Monthly Specials

Do you regularly make special offers on different products in your inventory? Again, RSS is a great way to tell people what's on special this week… or this month.

Newsletters

If you regularly produce an email newsletter, then consider converting it to RSS format as well as continuing to email it. After all, your newsletters ARE also shown on your web site… aren't they?

New Links

If you have a links directory, considering creating an RSS feed of the new links added to your directory in the last week or so. If you have a category structure within that directory, with links added often, you can create a feed for each category.

New Members

Do you run a public membership site? Recently joined members could be listed in an RSS feed with links direct to their profiles. What a great way to welcome new members!

Ticker RSS Feeds

Do you have timely information, e.g. important stock figures, to communicate to your customers? Automate the process with software and RSS can feed new critical information on an hourly basis (or more frequently if needed).

Note: Aim to have up to 15-20 items in each feed if possible. You can have more items if you want. Just remember that most feed reading software will NOT display all the items. Many may only show the first 5 or 10.

Once you've got your feed going… remember to submit your feed URLs to the various RSS Feed Directories.

Using Content From OTHER Web Sites

If a site offers an RSS feed for people to subscribe to, you can possibly use that feed on your site. Just check the terms and conditions on the site FIRST to see if you can reproduce the feed. If in doubt - send an email or phone them to ask permission.

What you are aiming for is to build many extra pages of useful content on topics of value to your visitors. Don't worry that the links in the feed take people off site (make that happen in a new window). The content is what is needed for search engines and people to devour!

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site

Summary. It also has been referred to as a "pull" technology rather than a "push" technology. And, in fact, this feature is what makes RSS so popular in terms of today's Internet usage.

It's probably hard to argue that anyone who uses the Internet today hasn't heard of spam. If they have an email inbox it is probably full of it.

Spam, for the uninitiated, is the receipt of unwanted emails from people whom you did not request to receive information. Spam represents the "push" technology. That is, people "push" their email message at your inbox, whether you have asked to receive the email or not.

And that aspect of "push" technology is what many have come to believe is the death of email. It's arguable that email will still be around for quite a long time, even though there are still people who continue the illegal spam process. In fact, companies are making millions now just providing everyday users as well as huge corporations, solutions claiming to solve their spam problem.

RSS, on the other hand, can be said to be the exact opposite of the email "push" technology. Because you cannot "push" your message to subscribers. In fact, the only way that people can subscribe to an RSS feed is to do so voluntarily. And, at the same time, they can unsubscribe whenever they want.

That's why it's called a "pull" technology. Because subscribers "pull" information into their readers and, if the content isn't what they expect, they can unsubscribe whenever they'd like. So, unlike the email "push" technology, there is no one using RSS that is experiencing an inbox full of spam. All they have to do is to unsubscribe and they will never receive another message from the person who provided the feed.

RSS has become a popular way to make money on line too. And that is due in part to the popularity of the RSS "pull" technology. Here's one way of monetizing a website using RSS feeds.

Imagine setting up a static one page web site - a minisite if you will. Now, add either Google Adsense code or the new Yahoo version of the Google Adsense style ads that, when clicked by a visitor - you earn cash.

This gives you a nice starting point and, if you optimize your web page properly, there is a good chance you will get a high ranking in the search engines. And, the more people who see your page, the more likelihood they will click on one of the links on your web page and you'll earn revenue from the click.

But RSS provides an even greater potential. Because by adding an RSS feed to that same web page, you turn a static web page that only contains the information you placed on it, into a dynamic ever changing web page that others will likely come back more than once to read.

After all, once someone has read a one page web site, what incentive is there for them to come back? Plenty, if you use RSS feeds on your web page. It is possible to add 5, 10 or 15 feeds on your once static web page and now, you've got a page that automatically updates itself and provides something that people will want to come back to read time and time again.

You can easily convert any web page into a dynamic web page using free RSS creator software.

Once you've set this program up on your website and added the proper code to your website, then you will need to collect RSS feeds that relate to the topic of your web page.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is a method developed to allow webmasters and online publishers to syndicate their contents easily to other webmasters. For example, if you use RSS to publish your ezine, then other webmasters can easily use RSS to display your ezine/content on their website - automatically.

Without RSS, if a webmaster saw an interesting article and wanted to display it on his site, he would need to copy that article and paste it into an HTML file on his own website. This is a very time consuming and tedious process. However, with RSS, all the cutting and pasting can be eliminated and this process can be automated with RSS software.

RSS is very new. The latest wave started in 2004 (although it’s been around since the late 90’s, but was only in use by the real geeks). One news release from summer of 2004 is quoted as saying, “Google is considering renewing support for the popular RSS Web publishing format in some of its services. This marks the latest twist in a burgeoning standards war over technology that could change how people read the news.” Even the giants such as Microsoft, eBay and Yahoo embrace the RSS syndication format.

Yet there are currently many webmasters and zine publishers still doing it the old way. Companies that don't have an RSS approach in place yet might need to reevaluate the way they are doing business. Their competitors will probably have already implemented some level of RSS support in their web sites. An innovative marketing channel has opened up allowing you to market your products and services. With more and more people using RSS, the market potential is endless.

RSS has thus far, proven itself as becoming the preferred method of distributing news and information online. Those in the know are subscribing to RSS feeds to read news online and to receive the latest updates from their preferred publishers. If you publish a newsletter, you now have another conduit to distribute your news to thousands of readers! Who doesn’t want that?

Not only is RSS easy to use, it also affords you free targeted traffic without any additional efforts. In order for your business to be successful, you need traffic to your website, and lots of it. You need to grab a hold of the people who are interested in your products and services. It doesn’t matter how good your products and services are if no one visits your site. One solution to drive traffic to your site is SEO. You can spend countless hours or spend large amounts of your budget to hire a search optimization expert. Or… you can use RSS to glean similar results.

With little effort you can easily add and display your articles in hundreds of websites - automatically! What could be better than automatic feeds while you sleep! You can stop the tedious article submissions. What’s more is with RSS, you’ll be adding fresh, relevant content on your website. Change the content daily if you prefer. It really is simple. Now Yahoo even has a free RSS directory.

So what are you waiting for? Get with the program!

RSS stands for "really simple syndication", and as the name suggests, it is relatively easy to take advantage of RSS to make money.

There are many ways you can profit from RSS data feeds. To begin with, since this is a new technology, most people are afraid to jump in and learn how to take advantage of it. This makes it a great opportunity for you because there is less competition.

In the same way you generate traffic, subscribers and money by writing and submitting articles to article directories, you can do the same thing with RSS feeds.

You simply create your RSS feed and then submit it to the various RSS feed directories.

The links within your feeds need to point back to your websites, affiliate links and opt-in list pages so that you can make money.

On the Internet content is king and webmasters are always on the lookout for free content. Especially nowadays, with the Google Adsense craze, a lot of Internet marketers are creating tons of websites constantly with page generators and free content.

This is why an RSS feed will be picked up and used on lots of different websites, and the smart marketers that use RSS feeds stand to profit wildly from this situation.

Since you will be submitting the RSS feed to directories, it is important to use an attractive title, including related keywords. This way, people looking for content will find it when doing a search in RSS feed directories.

Now that you have a fair understanding of what RSS is, and how you can create your own feed, here are some creative ways to put the power of RSS to work and bring in profits:

1. Syndicate your RSS feed in RSS directories to be picked up by webmasters looking for free content.

2. Insert relevant affiliate links in your RSS feed.

3. Insert links to your websites and opt-in list pages. This way you build up your link popularity and attract traffic to your websites.

4. Sell a product directly using RSS by including your sales letter in the feed.

5. Use RSS data feed content from other authors to create a content site using a page generator. Once the content site is done you can add Adsense and related affiliate links.

These are just a few ideas to get you started with profiting from RSS feeds. With application of this technology you will come up with various other ideas, and profit even more. The key is to take action and differentiate yourself from the majority of Internet marketers, many of whom are afraid to deal with technology at all.

You have read all over the internet about how easy it is to make money with something called content publishing. Well, it's true; you can make some decent money online with content publishing. There are however, a couple of things you need to know before you'll be able to generate significant money from Google's Adsense or any of the lesser known context advertising systems.

First on this list is "original content". Do not fall into the trap of obtaining private label content for use on your context advertising site and using it without truly making it yours. This cannot be stressed enough. In order to get the biggest benefit from your private label purchases, you must re-write the content to make it unique. The search engines love unique content and it makes absolutely no sense to purchase the right to re-write the content, making it your very own, and then not exercise that right. There are so many people who buy private label rights and then do nothing with them. One of your objectives must be to make your content stand out from the crowd. The search engines will reward you with a higher ranking. This will translate into more visitors and more clicks on your ad links.

That brings us to another issue that you must not forget about: traffic generation. You could have the best looking site on the world wide web, but if you get zero traffic you will not make any money from it. Like it or not, traffic generation is something that you must work at to be successful in content publishing. Sure, at some point you should be able to count on getting regular traffic from the search engines, but how long will that take? In the beginning, you will need to drive any traffic that you get to your site. Traffic doesn't just magically appear. It takes some hard work, but in the end the payoff can be significant.

Traffic generation can be accomplished in two ways, free traffic or paid traffic. Free traffic generation methods include link exchanges with similar sites, signature lines in emails or forum posts, free classified ad sites and many more. Paid traffic includes sites where a specific amount of website visitors can be purchased. Be very cautious about using paid traffic sites as these sites may send traffic that is untargeted and therefore potentially unresponsive. It's obvious that the kind of visitor you want is someone who is interested in the content on your site. Although this is obvious, it needs to be stressed. Random web surfers who land on your site are very unlikely to spend much time reading your content or clicking the ads. The kind of visitor you want is someone who is actively looking for the kind of content you have published. These visitors are very likely to click on relevant ads and that is one of your main objectives as a content publisher.

A content management system, or CMS, is a piece of software that makes it easy to create and manage websites. It is very important for a website's content to be frequently refreshed and updated. Fresh content keeps visitors coming back and can improve search engine rankings. However, publishing new content on a regular basis can become complicated if the webmaster has to make a new HTML page each time he adds an article, image, link or other piece of content. Content management systems have been developed to solve this problem.

With a content management system, there is no need to create new HTML pages manually - the CMS does it automatically. The webmaster simply enters the content into a form, clicks a button and the software generates a new web page. A content management system separates the content (e.g. images, text, links, files, etc.) from the layout. When the webmaster sets up a new website he creates a set of templates for the pages. Whenever he adds new content, the pages are automatically laid out based on these pre-defined templates. This may sound complicated, but in most modern content management systems, setting up the templates is simple. The webmaster will probably use an HTML editor like Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression Web to create templates for the CMS. They contain all the page elements that are common across the whole site like header, footer, logo, and navigation. Spaces are left in the templates for the CMS to insert content when a new page is generated.

Users who are not confident with HTML need not worry - most content management systems offer some ready-made templates that can be used 'out of the box'. Many open source content management systems offer free templates, which have been submitted by their community of users. It is also possible to buy CMS templates from online template stores. Another alternative is to find a designer to build custom templates.

These are the basic principles upon which all content management systems are based. So how do you choose which CMS is right for you? The first thing to establish is the size of your budget. Content management systems range in price from zero up to thousands of dollars. The no-cost end of the market is comprised of the many open source content management systems that are available. At the high end of the market are the custom built enterprise systems used by big corporations.

For the purposes of this article, we will concentrate on the open source options; there are so many CMS products to choose from in this category that there is bound to be one to suit most needs. Open source software has an open license, which means it is free to use and the source code is available for anyone to modify it.

Some of these open source systems are capable of running complex portal websites with lots of dynamic functionality, whilst others are much more simple. It is important to establish the scope of a website before choosing the CMS. Most websites exist simply to publish standard content. For sites like this, a complicated portal CMS is not required. (We will discuss portals in more detail later.)

Learning how to use a portal CMS can be quite a demanding task because of the complexity of these systems. For most simple websites there is no point in going through this learning process. Instead choose a simpler CMS that will require far less time and technical skill to operate. One of the simplest content management systems is called sNews. Other simple alternatives include most of the blogging software packages (e.g. WordPress, Nucleus, Typo, etc.). Although these are called 'blogs' they are, in fact, content management systems. By default, they have been configured to run blog sites, but by simply changing the templates they can be made to run many other types of website.

There are also many simple content management systems that are not primarily designed to run blogs. These systems will run a wide range of websites (including blogs!) and although the core software is usually fairly simple, there may be add-ons and plugins, which can be used to extend the system's capabilities. A good example of this kind of system is a package called 'CMS Made Simple'.

We have already briefly mentioned portal systems. As well as managing content, these provide all kinds of additional functionality like front-end user registration, polls, forums, ecommerce, mailing lists, etc. They are very powerful pieces of software and, for the advanced webmaster, they provide almost endless possibilities in site creation. However, for novice and intermediate users, the high level of technical ability required may be prohibitive. Examples of portal systems include Joomla!, Mambo, Drupal and Postnuke.

You should now have an overview of how content management systems work and some of the things to consider when researching which CMS to use. It is important to note that there are hundreds more open source content management systems than the handful mentioned here.

One of the most innovative benefits of dynamic web programming is content management systems that make the life of internet content editors easy and their work visually attractive.

Imagine that you are the editor of an online newspaper or magazine. You are creative in your writings and very knowledgeable about the content you write about. However, these skills alone are not good enough to be able to work in an online “news” source. You must have at least the very basic knowledge on the functions and the tags of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). You must be able to create codes for the presentations of your articles. This process of writing web articles can be very frustrating (and exhausting) if you have never heard about CMS’s (Content Management Systems).

Content Management Systems are almost like personal automated web page authors. You write your articles, surveys, and rating systems as if you are using a word processor or a visual editing program. Driven by the data you put in, the CMS stores all of these in a database and then translates them into HTML. CMS basically acts like a translator between you and the browsers by creating very user friendly graphical interfaces.

CMS generally have a front-end and a back-end. The front-end obviously refers to the face of the site that each visitor sees. The back-end is the user-friendly graphical interface where you can edit your content or the template with the help of the many wizards that are supplied by these systems. Let’s say you needed to write a code for a user-upload function in the site, or a survey system that would enable users to vote on your articles; you don’t even need to touch Dreamweaver, Frontpage, or any kind of HTML editor; there are already hundreds of modules that are written for different CMS’s. You just download the module to your server and install it.

There are loads of CM systems online that are presented as freeware. However, below are two suggestions for different user groups;

Typo3: If you think yourself a professional and think that you can deal with some PHP coding, this robust and very flexible system is just for you.

Mambo: If you say “No, thanks. I don’t want to deal with PHP coding, I am doing this as a hobby”, then Mambo should be your choice since it does not require the user to change much and is already supported by many ready-to-install modules and templates.

In summary, CMS makes our life much easier then before and our sites much more attractive. They are the “operating systems”, personal coders and free translators of the web.

The top word for the year 2005 was "podcasting," as selected by the New Oxford American Dictionary. According to one dictionary, podcasting is "the web-based broadcast which works with software that automatically detects new files and is accessed by subscription."

There are two explanations of the etymology of the word, "podcasting." One explanation is that it is a combination of the words "iPod" and "broadcasting," because early listeners generally downloaded audio broadcasts to their Apple iPod mp3 devices. The other explanation is that the root of the word comes from the acronym for "personal on demand," which would be pod. Personal on demand broadcasting becomes podcasting.

Podcasting began as a means to distribute music files, but soon website owners realized that podcasting the spoken word was an important way to increase the amount of useful content on their website. For example, all of the major news agencies that distribute countless pages of written information now also offer their subscribers portable audio content as well.

Podcasting is produced from two separate actions. The first action is to design, create, and record an audio show that is to be broadcast later. An audio file is created and is made available on the podcaster's website in order for listeners to download the file directly to their listening device or to listen to the file as it streams from the website. Additionally, the smart podcaster will make the audio file available through a subscription-based feed. The subscription is generally free, but some podcasters charge a small fee for the subscription. The web feed stores the audio file so that a listener can have access to the file at any time they choose.

The second action is for the listener to periodically check for new content from their favorite shows. The listener can either search for new content or download it to their digital audio device or they can enlist the help of a podcatcher or feedreader. The feedreader will search for new content from the listener's favorite shows and notify the listener when new content is available. The obvious advantage to this system is that the listeners will receive new content without ever having to search for it themselves.

Audio podcasting is an important way for a website owner to distribute their content to their audience. Many people would rather listen to audio content than to read the same content. With the use of portable audio devices, the website content can be enjoyed at a time and place that is convenient to the listener. The website owner will be able to increase the amount of visitors to their website by being able to offer podcasts as an additional source of information.

It was not that long ago that becoming a web page authoring wizard required little more than an understanding of a few dozen Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) tags, and perhaps modest experience with a scanner and a graphics program to generate a corporate logo image file.

The stakes are much higher now. The hobby phase is over. The Internet is a big business. Competition for visitor “hits” is enormous, as it becomes more and more difficult to get your site noticed, much less bookmarked. Sensing that the authoring world wanted more out of HTML then a poor imitation of the printed page, the web browser makers and Internet standards bodies have been expending the capabilities of web pages at a feverish pace. These changes are allowing us to make our pages more “dynamic” – pages that can “think and do” on their own, without much help from the server once they have been loaded in the browser.

In websites, the most important thing that a user, editor or author looks for is the robustness and the maintainability of the site. In static approach for web page authoring, you simply write a different page for all the content in your site and connect these pages with hyperlinks or most probably by using a navigation bar in the main page. It seems like a simple and manageable idea. However, when it comes to add new content or change the general layout of the site, it is almost impossible for you to go through each and every page and edit the code. In the dynamic approach, you use a database as the foundation of your web site. What you put in this database totally depends on what you need to have for your pages; usernames and associated passwords, articles that you are going to use as your content, pictures, files, basically anything that you can think of. This database can be thought as your storage for the elements to build this site. However, it is not you who is building the pages, it is the PHP, ASP, PERL code that you have written or purchased. The only thing that is left for you is to draw a “plan” for the data driven code so that it knows where to put the building elements that are stored in your database. This plan is called the template for the site which is generally created using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and Dynamic HTML (DHTML). Once the site is loaded into the browser, dynamic pages in a way “interacts” with the user and generates the HTML pages rather than taking the user from page to page with the help of the hyperlinks.

As one can see very easily, Dynamic Websites seem like the future of the Internet. It saves a lot of time and effort for the authors and also the user from frustration of waiting for the pages to load while visiting a simple site with an interesting article with a lot of pages.