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What they say: (excerpted from http://www.ventrilo.com)
Ventrilo 2.3.0 is the next evolutionary step of Voice over IP (VoIP) group communications software. Ventrilo is also the industry standard by which all others measure themselves as they attempt to imitate its features.

By offering surround sound positioning and special sound effects on a per user, per channel, per server or global configuration level the program provides each user the option to fully customize exactly how they wish to hear sounds from other users or events.

Ventrilo is best known for it’s superior sound quality and minimal use of CPU resources so as not to interfere with day to day operations of the computer or during online game competitions. It is also preferred for the simple user interface that any first time computer user can very quickly learn because the most commonly used features are immediately visible and can be activated with a single click of the mouse.

What the Viper Sez: my test of Ventrilo found it to be easy to install and use in its client mode. To set up your own server requires navigating through a clunky DOS based interface, but the instructions are pretty easy to follow. Best of all, this baby is FREE. Ventrilo sports higher ping rates, faster transmission, plus all the features you would expect from a typical VoIP solution. A binding a Push to Talk (PTT) key allows you to assign a spare mouse button, like your “back” button to keep noise down on your channel. But if you want the good old Darth Vader sound, use voice activation with your mic, that way you can taunt others with the rasp of each breath. Voice is near phone quality, and the fast transmission makes this software a premiere choice for first person shooter fans, who can’t afford lag in their communications.

Ventrilo’s claim of “minimal use of CPU resources” remains to be seen as some mid-level systems running high-level games may experience some performance issues. My system ran Ventrilo at the cost of 6,436k in vitrual memory. While this shouldn’t be an issue for most gaming rigs, remember to turn off virus scan during play.

Another fun feature in Ventrilo is its naming function. It allows you to phonetically type in the names of your channels and yourself. Your name is announced when you join the server for everyone already online to hear. The system also tells you what channel you’re in. The naming function is subject to abuse, the phonetics are limited only by your imagination.

The thought of inserting any device into my skull makes me cringe, but the potential benefits certainly are tempting. While reading A Step Toward a Living, Learning Memory Chip by Scientific American, I learned that a group of scientists has created a method of recording a set of patterns originally created via synapses in the brain to a device that can store that pattern for many days. The key here is that this transfer of knowledge doesn’t disrupt any other function in the brain, as far as they know. That’s always the caveat with new technologies though.

Beyond the physiological risk, this opens an entirely new realm of competition between humans. It’s almost like gamers with their hardware rigs, and the race to have the most realistic graphics and purest sound. Similarly, I can see a future where humans scramble to buy the latest upgrade to their implant processing subsystem.

My question is: what happens when the system gets bogged down with spyware or the more recent botnet scams? Because if implants go mainstream, wireless implants would soon follow. Would you be able to perform a system reformat and start over?

The ethics in a situation like that become debatable. I would argue that ascending too quickly and creating an addiction to embedded mechanical technology is dangerous.

For a present example, ask any World of Warcraft addict how fulfilling their life is.

There are two main ingredients in Google’s formula: (1) Publish quality content that people find useful, and (2) Prove that your site is worthwhile by networking with other web site owners and convincing them to link to you. But tread carefully here because gaining links in a “shady” manner can earn a boot out of Google’s index.

If you haven’t already, I recommend you subscribe to Google’s Webmaster Central Blog to keep up on what they expect from site owners. Then focus on making your site content-rich, and free of hidden links or stealthy web-rings. In essence, avoid darklinking. Google also recently introduced their anti-malware team to the public, which is focused on identifying sites that distribute bad software (badware).

eBizBlog wrote an article (more…)

Apparently the Manitoba First Nations tribe in Canada is asking for monetary compensation for any airwaves passing through their territory, according to BroadBandReports. This adds a whole new dimension to airspace as it demands measurement of metaphysical objects. Maybe what they should consider next is a tax for any foreigner breathing on their land. After all, oxygen isn’t cheap these days.

This is a close parallel to another debate happening right now between content and pipeline providers. Companies like AT&T who deliver physical access to the inter-web want companies like Google to “share” a portion of their revenues. After all content can’t be delivered without the pipeline right? But of course the retort is that pipelines are worthless without great content.

Talking about paying taxes on airwaves and forcing content providers to share revenue exposes a common red line question. What is the value proposition?

Pipeline providers claim they’ll provide priority bandwidth to those who pay, but I suspect with their current infrastructure that would be difficult to measure. Manitoba First Nations possesses some wonderful land with lots of fresh air, and maybe with those two qualities airwaves would travel with less interference? That’s stretching it.

My point is that in order for these proposals to sound halfway reasonable they need backing by solid value.

But, no one likes to lose a cash cow.

Europe, the old world — for many a trip to Europe is very high on their life goals list. Many Americans have ancestral roots in Europe and can’t wait to visit. I was among those and while on my first trip to the old world I created a notebook of tips which I’ll be sharing with you on metaViper.

The European union has made it easy to tour western Europe. Cars, planes, trains, and boats zip across open boards with few checks, and the Euro means one currency for many countries. Communication wasn’t a barrier because English seems to be the primary language of any tourist area.

That said, I spent time in Italy and Austria and was shocked at the prices, the swindles, and the complexity of a European Vacation. The Euro has made everything more expensive, from bread to Internet access. With the dollar only worth about $.70 for every Euro I met many other Americans who were finding their European vacation much more expensive than what they bargained for.

Indigenous people also are finding it harder to do business. The Italians, robbed of their local currency the Lira, (more…)

One of the many ways I prowl for good content on the web is by listening to podcasts. Often though, good information is dispersed across several brief broadcasts from a variety of authors. Sometimes I’m in the gym running, sliding around the iPod’s clickwheel to select the next podcast; all while dodging other runners. An accident-prone endeavor to say the least.

Then I ran across smart playlists on Apple’s web site and realized that they could easily solved my problem. I set up two playlists named PodShort and PodLong.

In iTunes 7, smart playlists appear under File>>New Smart Playlist … For my PodShort smart playlist I configured it to pull up only podcasts with time less than ten minutes and a play count of zero, ordered randomly. For each additional rule click on the plus sign at the right-hand side. That playlist enabled me to hear commentary from six different podcasts (each around five minutes long) rapid fire without the need to pick and choose during my workout. And you guessed it, I use my PodLong list when I have a larger chunk of time available for research, it pulls up podcasts over ten minutes long.

My only gripe at this point is with volumes. Each podcast has a different loudness which means I had to pull out my iPod, turn off the lock, and adjust volume a couple of times. That should be something iTunes takes care of programmatically or through a set of enforced volume standards.

The biggest part of what makes Google’s Adwords and Adsense platforms successful is their unobtrusiveness. They’ve managed to present advertising alongside relevant content in a way that isn’t distracting, and has the real possibility of adding value (link farms aside). And that’s a basic tenet, businesses must add value to ethically exist.

But along comes Mr. Sponsor who isn’t getting the kind of conversion rates he wants from text ads. Maybe he’s seeing lots of pageviews but no clicks, or maybe his cost per click is sky high for the keywords he’s interested in. Rather than innovating his online brand through adding quality content or virally marketing, he chooses to research alternative advertising. Still wanting to target the online surfing community he stumbles upon voice advertising.

“Look!” Mr. Sponsor says during usability testing “he stopped what he was doing to click on our talking person, it’s already working!” What Mr. Sponsor doesn’t realize though? The tester was trying to figure out how to mute the talking advertisement so he could concentrate on the body text he was reading, and his heart is beating fast because his speakers were turned up loud.

Voice advertising can certainly play a role in selling goods and services online, but my recommendation is for it to come alive later in the exploration process when the visitor is looking for more detailed information. It’s a big faux pas to blast a visitor with your any blatant sales pitch in the first 3 seconds. That said, with the right timing voice advertising on the web can be very effective in creating more conversions. Make sure it adds value.

Cuddling up at home with a rented video is a classic weekend hobby for many of us. This year we’ve seen several companies begin to distribute those same videos via the inter-web directly to the home computer. In this commentary I’ll be focusing on two of them: Amazon’s Unbox and iTunes.

Amazon’s Unbox sports a few unique features. The first that caught my attention is that any video you buy they’ll store indefinitely on their servers and allow you to re-download as needed. Second, they’ve moved forward with delivery to Tivo boxes, which connects them directly to home entertainment systems. But their rental offering is where things get a little sticky. Lots of rentals are available from $.99 to $3.99, but they insist that once the video is started it must be finished in a 24 hour period. That’s ridiculous. Didn’t they learn from Blockbuster’s battle with Netflix that late fees don’t work anymore? Let alone going a step further by disabling the consumer’s ability to watch a video at all (after 24 hours from the first push of the play button).

Beyond that, DVDs typically offer bonus footage and featurettes along with the movie. This is an area Amazon Unbox and iTunes struggle with.

iTunes handles the whole rental situation by not offering a rental scheme at all. Their stance is buy a video or go without. The problem here is that buying a video online often is more expensive than buying the DVD, and it doesn’t include any additional features. Also if your hard drive is wiped for some reason you’ll have to re-purchase those videos to download them again.

Until online video renters discover how to distribute their content in a way that makes their suppliers and consumers happy the industry will see lackluster growth.

Connecting with nature is one of the best ways to rediscover the center of being. No, if you live by a city I’m not talking about stepping outside to listen to the traffic honking and grinding by. I’m talking about immersing yourself in the sounds of animals and plants in their natural habitats. Drifting away on the rising soundwaves of howling wolves or slipping into a deep sleep under the rustling and swaying trees are both great ways to rediscover a primal part of humanness.

Here’s a site that focuses on the preservation, discovery, and delivery of nature’s sounds and they do a great job. The Wild Sanctuary boasts “over 3,500 hours of wild soundscapes and nearly 15,000 species”. Their recordings are high quality and can make a living room feel like a jungle. The secret? Closing your eyes. Visiting the front page will start a continuous audio stream of natural noises to give you a sample.

What also caught my attention is their integration with Google Maps. Launching that part of the site opens up a brand new way to explore the world vicariously through recorded sights (if using Google Earth) and sounds. Some of the map scrolling can make the interface a bit awkward to use because the descriptor text and music can move off the screen, but I’m sure they’ll work that out as the service matures.

Earlier today I was listening to thunderstorms, this evening I just heard the bells of Notre Dame, and tonight I plan on listening to some monkeys in Africa . . . you get the idea :-}

The measure of how efficiently any body operates can be measured by the smoothness of interaction between its myriad parts. Human bodies have organs that interact via signals sent through the nervous system and through packages of nutrients and waste transferred in the bloodstream. When harmful bacteria or viruses enter the body, its resources respond immediately to slow and eventually destroy the foreign particles (remember this point, it’s important).

Zooming out to view any job function as a body, the same concepts of efficacy apply. Consider a typical office worker’s day filled with e-mails, phone calls, meetings, and spontaneous conversations. Communication takes place through wires and waves, and materials shift to different locations through mail and local trash pickup :-}

With so many parallels between bodily functions it’s only right to bring some common sense through the filter:

• If a virus or bacteria continues to fight against your immune system does your body give up? Certainly not. It either shifts to a different sort of antibody or calls in more white blood cells. Don’t let bureaucracy or contract nibbling (more…)