Journal articles on the topic 'IPod (Digital music player)'

Use of the term “digital” has become ubiquitous. But what does it mean for a device to be “digital”? Computers process information by manipulating numbers (digits), and are therefore often referred to as digital systems. When the term “digital” is used to describe a device, the implication is that a computer is somehow involved. MP3 or iPod music players are digital devices, in that a computer was used to convert music to a numeric (digital) format so that it could be stored on a digital memory chip. This article will explore how computers capture real-world signals (such as acoustic speech signals), and why computer (digital) signal acquisition has advantages over older “analog” recording technologies. This article also will present information on potential error that can arise when converting analog signals to the digital domain.

This article concerns the decision taken in November 2004 by the French Competition Authority on Apple’s refusal to license its digital rights management (DRM) technology to a competitor in the downstream market for music downloads. The analysis here finds that neither the indispensability test spelled out in the Magill/IMS doctrine nor the new, controversial test advocated by the Commission for compulsory licensing of interoperability information in the 2004 Microsoft decision was applicable to the leveraging by Apple of its proprietary DRM technology into the music downloads market. The article draws on this analysis of the case to show that property rights and trade secrets in respect of DRM technologies have the potential to establish a "bottleneck’’ between content providers and media player manufacturers in the near future. To avoid such a bottleneck, the conclusions of the article suggest that interoperability and competition may be structurally supported and pursued either by more permissive "reverse-engineering’’ exceptions in the field of DRM software protection or, more effectively, by the collective establishment of an open DRM standard. In the absence of these structural remedies, compulsory licensing of proprietary DRM technology should remain subject to the "exceptional circumstances’’ doctrine made famous in the Magill judgment.

We describe an approach to modeling strategic variations in how people might select media content from an Apple iPod portable music player while driving. An experiment was conducted to determine the time required to select a target from a list using the scroll wheel on the iPod. It was found that a linear model accurately predicted the time to scroll through a list to a target. This model was then used in conjunction with a previously reported steering control model to derive a priori predictions for dual-task performance over the entire range of possible multitasking strategies. From this set of strategies, we then focused on identifying the fastest and the safest strategies for completing both a simple selection task and also a more complex selection task. It was found that the model predictions bracketed the observed human data from a recent study that investigated the effects of using an iPod while driving. Moreover, the analysis suggests that in order to compensate for the inherent risks of using devices that demand longer interaction episodes to complete a task, people might adjust their multitasking strategy by giving more time up to steering control while completing the secondary task.

Abstract: In the realm of digital media, music players have emerged as indispensable tools for organizing, managing, and enjoying personal music collections. This project aims to develop a comprehensive music player application that caters to the diverse needs of modern music enthusiasts. The proposed application will encompass a wide range of functionalities, including seamless music playback, efficient music organization, and personalized user experience. The proposed music player application will be developed using a modern software development framework, ensuring crossplatform compatibility and adherence to industry best practices. The application's architecture will be designed to handle large music libraries efficiently and provide a responsive user experience. The primary objective of this project is to develop a comprehensive music player application that caters to the diverse needs of modern music enthusiasts. The application will provide users with a seamless and enjoyable experience for organizing, managing, and playing their personal music collections. It will encompass a wide range of functionalities. The development of a versatile and user-friendly music player application holds significant value in the realm of digital media. By providing seamless music playback, efficient music organization, and a personalized user experience, this application will empower users to enjoy their music collections to the fullest.

Because of advancements in information technology and the emergence of various digital platforms, there have been significant changes in the way people consume music over the years. Gramophones, audio cassette players, CD and DVD players, and other analog devices that were popular in the past, have become nearly obsolete. The internet and, later, smartphones were the primary drivers of change in the late 1990s. Since the mid-2000s, social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube, as well as online audio stores and streaming platforms like Spotify, iTunes, Amazon Music, Pandora, and SoundCloud, have become the most popular ways for people to listen to music on their smartphones. The internet has a much larger selection of music than traditional sources such as vinyl records, audio cassettes, CD-DVDs, or iPods, which have limited song storage capacities. This study focuses on the growing popularity of online music consumption among Bangladeshi university students. Apart from that, the study sought to explore how university students enjoy music on digital platforms, the platforms they use, whether they use these platforms to consume, or share pirated music, and the devices they use to do so. The researcher interviewed students from various departments at Rajshahi University using a social survey method. According to the study, Rajshahi University students have given up traditional music consumption methods in favour of various digital platforms. In this university, Facebook, YouTube, and Spotify are the most popular platforms for both male and female young students to enjoy music. Music consumption via digital platforms has become an integral part of their daily lives. Students also use social media to share their favorite songs from digital platforms with their family and friends. According to the study, the majority of the students does not listen to music from pirated sources and prefer free sources over digital platforms.

In an age described by means of digital connectivity and the insatiable need for Music, the role of Music websites has turn out to be an increasing number of crucial. This article provides a top-level view of the improvement, design, technology and user experience of Music web sites and explores their important area in today's tune industry. It takes a historical angle and lines the course from the early days of on-line streaming services to the advanced platforms operating today. The dialogue delves into the intricacies of person interface design, specializing in factors such as navigation, playlists, and recommendation algorithms that beautify the person enjoy. Additionally, this article examines the era and explains the backend, backend, and analytics that support these structures. Understanding the complexities of track streaming requires cautious consideration of prison and ethical issues, together with copyright and artist compensation. Through information research and analysis, this text highlights tendencies and rising problems, providing insight into the future of the track website. Finally, this looks at highlights the important position music web sites play in permitting us to discover, consume and interact with song in the digital age. Keywords- Music player websites, Digital music consumption, Online streaming services, User interface design, Recommendation algorithms, Technology stack, Frontend frameworks, Backend languages, Copyright laws, Artist compensation

Recent Studies show that people respond to music, and this music and this music has a strong effect on human brain activity. The average urban human listens up to four hours of music every day. People listen to music based upon there mood and interests. This project focuses on creating an app to play users' songs based on their mood by capturing a facial expression. Computer visualization is an interdisciplinary field that helps to convey a high-level understanding of digital images or video to computers.. In this system, computer vision components are used to determine the user’s emotion by facial expression. When emotions are detected, the system plays a song of that emotion, saving a lot of user time by selecting and playing the songs themselves. Sentiment based music players also follow the details of the song and have genres like linear mode and random mode.

Dematerialization of artefacts and material objects is a relevant issue in consumer studies, especially when we consider the ongoing changes regarding the consumption of cultural goods. This article adopts a theory-of-practice approach to analyse the consequences of dematerialization on the practices of digital music consumption. From an empirical point of view, the article is based on data collected during research into the appropriation of digital music technologies and based on 25 in-depth narrative semi-structured interviews with young Italian digital music consumers. The analysis mainly focuses on the appropriation of three specific technologies involved into the contemporary consumption of music: the iPod, the external hard drive and the vinyl disc. In order to understand the role of materiality in the age of dematerialization, the article adopts the ‘circuit of practice’, an explicative model that enables empirical analysis and that is aimed at highlighting the changing relationships between materiality and social practices. The analysis shows that music digitalization does not mean less materiality in the actual practice of listeners, that material ‘stuffs’ still occupy a relevant position in digital music, and that materiality nowadays seems to ‘bite back’, being even more crucial in shaping consumers’ practices.

The rapid development in the field of information technology has resulted in a significant change in the way music is listened to. The current digital generation prefers to listen to music online through their digital devices. Thus, designing User Interface and User Experience on Mobile Music Player Applications using the User Centered Design method which consists of Plan the human centered process, Specify the context of use, Specify user and organizational requirements, and Produce design Solution. The target audience for this design is productive age children 15-35 years old with product limitations that only reach the prototype stage and feature services that are still lacking. The platform used is the android and ios mobile platform and UI design by making Wireframe of the application design.

This article presents practice-based research exploring the interplay of real-time music creation and competitive gameplay. Musically creative video games, apps, and sound art are first surveyed to highlight their characteristic avoidance of competitive game elements. The relationship between play, games, and musical activity is then examined with reference to theoretical perspectives from ludomusicology and game studies, revealing a series of mechanical and aesthetic design tensions emerging between competitive gameplay and music creation. Two original music games are presented to explore this interplay across contrasting design approaches: EvoMusic engenders an abstract competitive dialogue between the player and system for authorial control, while Idea presents a more explicit ludic framework with goals, progression, danger, and victory. The games are evaluated in a comparative user study to capture the player experience of composing within competitive game settings. Participant responses revealed conflicting expectations for ludic and compositional experiences. Idea was the preferred game, yet its strong ludic elements distracted from or disincentivized music creation; EvoMusic offered more focused music creation yet also a weaker gameplay experience for lacking these same competitive elements. This relationship reflects the theoretical design tensions suggested by ludomusical scholarship. Further, a majority of participants characterized EvoMusic as being simultaneously competitive and creatively stimulating. The implication is that competitive games can support music creation for certain players, though it remains challenging to satisfy expectations for both within any one system. Design recommendations are drawn from these insights, and the potential for future research into creative music games is discussed.

Portable video technology is a widely available new tool with potential to be used by pediatric otolaryngology practices for patient and family education. Podcasts are media broadcasts that employ this new technology. They can be accessed via the Internet and viewed either on a personal computer or on a handheld device, such as an iPod or an MP3 player. We wished to examine the feasibility of establishing a podcast-hosting Web site. We digitally recorded pediatric otologic procedures in the operating room and saved the digital files to DVDs. We then edited the DVDs at home with video-editing software on a personal computer. Next, spoken narrative was recorded with audio-recording software and combined with the edited video clips. The final products were converted into the M4V file format, and the final versions were uploaded onto our hospital's Web site. We then downloaded the podcasts onto a high-quality portable media player so that we could evaluate their quality. All of the podcasts are now on the hospital Web site, where they can be downloaded by patients and families at no cost. The site includes instructions on how to download the appropriate free software for viewing the podcasts on a portable media player or on a computer. Using this technology for patient education expands the audience and permits portability of information. We conclude that a home computer can be used to inexpensively create informative surgery demonstrations that can be accessed via a Web site and transferred to portable viewing devices with excellent quality.

AbstractTest anxiety is experienced by 10–40% of students. The physical symptoms associated with test anxiety may be more likely to be exhibited by elementary students. Progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) has been demonstrated to reduce physical symptoms of anxiety and could be used in the classroom, but teacher acceptability of PMR for test anxiety has not been assessed. This study used a vignette format to survey 404 first through fifth grade teachers on their acceptability of classroom-based PMR as an intervention for test anxiety. Good levels of acceptability were found for implementation with a school psychologist or counsellor, CD player, or digital music player. Special education teachers reported slightly lower levels of acceptability for using PMR in the digital music player scenario. With good levels of teacher acceptability of PMR to address test anxiety, school psychologists and counsellors may be more likely to recommend the use of PMR in classrooms. Implications for implementation of PMR to reduce test anxiety, study limitations, and suggestions for future research are discussed.

In the context of the digital era, video games, as an emerging form of entertainment, have become the focus of research in terms of their design and optimization of user experience. This study focuses on the application of digital music in games and its impact on player experience, aiming to reveal how music elements deepen the immersion and emotional resonance of games. According to the analysis, digital music significantly enhances game immersion and players' emotional engagement through dynamic music systems, close integration with game narratives, and innovative applications in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) games. In particular, games such as Traveler provide players with a unique empathic experience and deep emotional impact through well-designed music and sound interactions, demonstrating the central role of music in enhancing game narratives and building game worlds. However, the study also points out the technical, subjective, and culturally sensitive limitations of digital music in game design, challenges that need to be faced and overcome by future game developers and music creators alike.

The Assassin’s Creed video game series incorporates real-world historical elements. While some historically derived musical elements are referenced from the time period and geographic setting of the game, in the first game of the series, Assassin’s Creed 1 (2007), these historical snippets are subsumed within a modern musical setting emphasizing digital sound. The effect is a bleeding-over of ancient with modern that mirrors the plot of the game. This new spin on the time travel narrative creates a disconnect for the player and invokes disruption in a number of ways: through plots, visual distortions and sound/music effects. Musically, disruptions invoke a sense of aural discomfort in the player, which mimics aspects of the game narrative such as the protagonist’s physical distress. In order to better understand the interrelationship between these components, this article uses graphic transcriptions to categorize the musical, visual and narrative functions into fiction, interface and hypervisual/hypersonic components.

Digital games are a fertile ground for exploring novel computer music applications. While the lineage of game-based compositional praxis long precedes the advent of digital computers, it flourishes now in a rich landscape of music-making apps, sound toys and playful installations that provide access to music creation through game-like interaction. Characterising these systems is the pervasive avoidance of a competitive game framework, reflecting an underlying assumption that notions of conflict and challenge are somewhat antithetical to musical creativity. As a result, the interplay between competitive gameplay and musical creativity is seldom explored. This article reports on a comparative user evaluation of two original games that frame interactive music composition as a human–computer competition. The games employ contrasting designs so that their juxtaposition can address the following research question: how are player perceptions of musical creativity shaped in competitive game environments? Significant differences were found in system usability, and also creativity and ownership of musical outcomes. The user study indicates that a high degree of musical control is widely preferred despite an apparent cost to general usability. It further reveals that players have diverse criteria for ‘games’ which can dramatically influence their perceptions of musical creativity, control and ownership. These findings offer new insights for the design of future game-based composition systems, and reflect more broadly on the complex relationship between musical creativity, games and competition.

The article explores the affective consequences of the new mode of instant access to enormous levels of musical recordings in digital format. It is suggested that this “musical superabundance” might weaken the individual’s ability to be affected by music in everyday life, while at the same time leading to a renewed interest in collective experience, in ways which are not limited to established notions of musical “liveness”. According to a theory of affect influenced by Spinoza, what is at stake is the capacity of the body to be affected by music. The article proposes that a renegotiated relationship between collective and individual modes of experiencing music can be conceptualized with help of Spinoza’s distinction between two kinds of affections: actions and passions. After scrutinizing the interface of hardware like Apple’s Ipod and online services like Spotify, the article proceeds by discussing three musical practices which can all be understood as responses to the superabundance of musical recordings: (1) the ascetic practice of “No Music Day”; (2) the revival of cassette culture; (3) the “bass materialism” associated with the music known as dubstep. While none of these approaches provide any solution to the problem of abundance, they can still be understood as attempts to cultivate a “postdigital sensibility”. The article tries to conceptualize the postdigital in a way that transcends the narrower notion of “post-digital aesthetics” that has recently been gaining popularity. Finally, it is argued that such a sensibility has a political significance in its potential to subvert the contemporary processes of commodification.

The works produced within the music industry arepresented to their listeners on a digital platform,taking advantage of technology. The problems of thepast, such as pirated cassettes and CDs, have left theirplace to the problem of copyright protection on digitalplatforms today. Block chain is one of the mostreliable and preferred technologies in recent timesregarding data integrity and data security. In thisstudy, a blockzincir-based music wallet model isproposed for safe and legal listening of audio files.The user's selected audio files are converted intoblock chain structure using different techniques andalgorithms and are kept securely in the user's musicwallet. In the study, performance comparisons aremade with the proposed model application in terms ofthe length of time an ordinary audio player can addnew audio files to the list and the response times ofthe user. The findings suggest that the proposedmodel implementation has acceptable differences inperformance with an ordinary audio player.

This paper describes the development of a low cost, compact and portable automated piano player CantaPlayer. The system accepts digital MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) files as input and develops pushing actions against piano keys which in turn produces sounds of notes. CantaPlayer uses Pure Data, an audio processing software to parse MIDI files and serve as user interfaces. The parsed information will be sent to Arduino, an open source microcontroller platform, via serial communication. The Arduino I/O pins will be triggered based on the information from Pure Data of which connected transistors will be activated, acting as a switch to draw in larger power supply to power the solenoids. The solenoids will then push the respective piano keys and produce music. The performance of CantaPlayer is evaluated by examining the synchronousness of the note playing sequence for a source MIDI and the corresponding reproduced MIDI. Three types of MIDI playing sequence (scale, polyphonic and rapid note switching) were tested and the results were satisfactory.

Spotify, born in Sweden in 2006, has reshaped the way people consume music in the digital age. As it has grown to become a major player in the music streaming industry, understanding its position and business model becomes crucial. This paper demonstrates the broader Music application market and overview. Employing the SWOT analytical framework, this paper undertakes a comprehensive assessment of Spotify's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Grounded in this analysis, this paper underscores the potential of diversifying into emergent domains such as education and wellness to augment user engagement and streamline operational expenses. Under the fierce market competition, the paper emphasizes the necessity for Spotify to strengthen its differentiation strategy within the music application sphere.

Introductory courses such as General Chemistry I, General Physics General Biology and I need special attention as students taking these courses are usually in their first year of the university. In addition to the language barrier for most of them, they also face other difficulties if these elementary courses are taught traditionally. Changing the routine method of teaching of these courses is therefore mandated. In this regard, podcasting of chemistry lectures was used as an add-on to the traditional and non-traditional methods of teaching chemistry to science and non-science students. Podcasts refer to video files that are distributed in a digital format through the Internet using personal computers or mobile devices. The pedagogical strategy is another way of identifying podcasts. Three distinct teaching approaches are evident in the current literature and include receptive viewing, problem-solving, and created video podcasts. Originally, podcasting was the name given to audio files played on Apple’s iPod portable media player. The digital format and dispensing of video podcasts have stabilized over the past eight years, the type of podcasts vary considerably according to their purpose, the degree of segmentation, pedagogical strategy, and academic focus. In this regard, the whole syllabus of “General Chemistry I” course was developed as podcasts, which were delivered to students throughout thesemester. Students used the podcasted files extensively during their studies, especially as part of their preparations for exams. Feedback of students strongly supported the idea of using podcasting as it reflected its effect on the overall understanding of the subject and a consequent improvement of their grades.

Designing adaptive games for individual emotional experiences is a tricky task, especially when detecting a player’s emotional state in real time requires physiological sensing hardware and signal processing software. There is currently a lack of software that can identify and learn how emotional states in games are triggered. To address this problem, we developed a system capable of understanding the fundamental relations between emotional responses and their eliciting events. We propose time-evolving Affective Reaction Models (ARM), which learn new affective reactions and manage conflicting ones. These models are then meant to provide information on how a set of predetermined game parameters (e.g., enemy and item spawning, music and lighting effects) should be adapted, to modulate the player’s emotional state. In this paper, we propose and describe a framework for modulating player emotions and the main components involved in regulating players’ affective experience. We expect our technique will allow game designers to focus on defining high-level rules for generating gameplay experiences instead of having to create and test different content for each player type.

Di era modern ini kehidupan manusia hampir tidak dapat dipisahkan dengan musik. Perkembangan dunia digital pun cukup berpengaruh terhadap perkembangan musik. MP3 merupakan format file musik yang sangat banyak diminati karena ukuran filenya yang kecil namun memiliki kualitas suara yang cukup bagus. Seiring perkembangan teknologi, kita bisa mendengarkan musik dengan berbagai macam perangkat seperti mobile phone, laprop, komputer, Music player dan lain-lain. Saat ini banyak sekali program MP3 Player yang disediakan oleh para pengembang baik yang bersifat gratis maupun berbayar. Kebanyakan orang hanya bergantung pada program yang sudah ada pada sistem operasi yang mereka install pada perangkat komputer mereka. Sehingga ide-ide kreatif para mahasiswa terutama pada bidang design user interface kurang berkembang. Kali ini akan dideskripsikan bagaimana merancang suatu program MP3 Player yang dapat digunakan pada perangkat komputer dengan sistem operasi windows 7 atau windows 8. Dengan merancang Program MP3 Player dengan Visual C# 2010 ini, diharapkan para mahasiswa dapat membuat sendiri MP3 Player yang sederhana dan sesuai dengan keinginannya. Bahasa pemodelan UML memiliki beberapa konsep dasar yang merupakan standar dalam berbagai pendekatan dalam solusi pemodelan. Konsep-konsep tersebut digunakan dalam penyeragaman analisa, perancangan, dan implementasi berbagai sistem perangkat lunak. Dengan menggunakan UML ini sebagai tools akan lebih memudahkan baik dalam perancangan maupun dalam memahami kebutuhankebutuhan user pada suatu program.

In 21st century, with the leaping advances in science and technology, computers and the rapid development of science and technology industry, formed by combining human intelligence and high-tech digital content industry that corresponds to the rapid development, and developing at an astonishing speed into a pillar industry of the knowledge economy in the new century. It is well known that digital media are based on digitized text, sound, images, Graphics, animation and video images as information carriers, through means of dissemination and development of science and technology. Basic characteristics of digital media arts: Cross uses online media which contains computer-animated production, the television advertising shoot, digital music player, there are activities such as online games, virtual reality, network, performance art, video, interactive installations and DV (digital video). This paper discusses the present status of digital media art, features, applications in education, vocational orientation and analysis of the development trend.

Objective: The study aims to compare the maximum sound output capabilities of different earphone types/music style combinations. The study also intends to assess the preferred listening levels (PLL) of test subjects using different earphone types with background noise accession. The study also seeks to determine the presence or absence of a threshold shift on headphone/music style combination PLL’s that exceed the recommended noise limit.
 Methods
 Study Design: Experimental Study
 Setting: Tertiary Government Hospital
 Subjects: Thirty (30) hearing healthy volunteers were sampled from hospital staff aged 18-40 years, with no known history of ear pathology and/or use of any known ototoxic drugs, with normal otoscopy and audiograms of less than 20dB from 125Hz to 8000Hz, and no exposure to loud noise from any source within the previous 3 days.
 The sound pressure levels (SPL) delivered by three (3) types of earphones (earbud type, in-ear type, supra-aural type) were measured at maximum volume setting of a personal media player (iPod, Apple Inc.), while playing different music genres. The test subjects were asked to listen at their preferred listening levels (PLL) using the different types of earphones at increasing background noise accession.
 Results: The earbud type averaged the greatest SPL among the earphone types, and pop music averaged the greatest SPL among the music styles. Comparison of the maximum output capabilities revealed that there was a significant difference among different brands of earphones of the same type. However, no significant difference were found among songs of similar music style and across different music styles in all earphones except the in-ear type. PLL average was at 90.4dB in a silent environment with increasing intensity as background noise accentuated. Supra-aural earphones registered the least increase in PLL in a loud environment, due to its higher background noise-attenuating capabilities.
 Conclusion: Having a significant difference among earphone types with regard their maximum output capabilities, it is recommended to check the specifications of the earphone type one intends to use. In using personal media players (PMP), the volume should be set at the lowest comfortable level. While choice of music style remains the discretion of the listener, the choice of music style should be considered for long periods of listening. Because the PLL of test subjects were alarmingly high, the authors recommend intervention in their listening habits. Background noise attenuating capabilities of earphones play a factor in reducing excessive sound energy from reaching the ear, reducing the PLL, and decreasing the risk for noise-induced hearing loss.
 Keywords: earphones, music styles, personal media players, preferred listening levels, recreational noise, noise-induced hearing loss

A user's facial expressions can reveal his or her level of emotion. These expressions can be obtained from the system's camera's live feed. In the area of computer vision (CV) and machine learning (ML), a lot of research is being done to train machines to recognize different human emotions or moods. Machine learning offers a variety of methods for detecting human emotions. A review of existing music systems revealed that many music applications rely on the user's past listening choices rather than recommending songs based on their current emotion. The goal of this project is to identify emotions in human faces using real-time data and to suggest songs according on those emotions. Music is a great unifier. It binds us despite our differences in ages, backgrounds, languages, interests and levels of income. Due to its accessibility and ability to be used alongside daily activities, travel, sports, and other activities, music players and other streaming apps are in high demand. Digital music has emerged as the main form of consumer content that many young people are looking for because to the quick growth of mobile networks and digital multimedia technology. Music is frequently used by people as a tool for mood control, specifically to improve mood, boost energy, or soothe tension. Additionally, listening to the correct music at the right moment can help with mental wellness. So, music and feelings in people are closely related. As a result, the proposed system is an interactive platform for suggesting music depending on user’s present emotional state. This also could be a great feature to be incorporated in existing music player applications.

With the fast developing portable digital audio player, the copyright protection of music faces a severe challenge. Audio watermarking is an efficient approach to solve this problem. In order to improve the performance of real-time processing, a new real-time audio watermarking based on fast MCLT is presented. Algorithms, which use of quantitative method, can be realized watermark blind detection. The experiment results show that the algorithm, which is utilized in the copyright protection, meet the timely processing requirements. Embedded of watermark audio have obviously robustness and transparency compared to the traditional methods. Furthermore, it can against MP3 compression attacks efficiently.

Abstract: The work portrayed the advancement of emotion-based Music Player, which is a web application implied for a wide range of clients, explicitly the music sweethearts. With the convenience of music players and other streaming apps, people can listen to music anytime, anywhere, and engage in various activities such as traveling, sports, or daily routines. The advancement of mobile networks and digital multimedia technologies has made digital music the most sought-after consumer content by young people. Moreover, listening to the appropriate music at the right time has the potential to enhance mental well-being. Human inclination assumes an indispensable part as of late. Emotion depends on human sentiments which can be both communicated or not. Emotion communicates the human's singular way of behaving which can be in various forms. The target of this project is to separate elements from the human face and recognize the emotion and play music as per the emotion identified. Be that as it may, many existing/strategies utilize past information to recommend music and different calculations utilized no Facial articulations are caught by a nearby catching gadget or an inbuilt web camera. Here we utilize a calculation for the acknowledgment of the component from the emotion we caught. Many music recommendation systems use content-based or collaborative-based recommendations. However, the choice of music for a user is not only based on his historical preference of the user. But also based on the mood of that user. This project proposes an emotion-based music recommendation that detects the emotion of a user from the webcam and plays the songs based on the user’s mood. In particular, the emotion of a user is classified and predicted the emotion and automatically redirects to the music page. This emotional information is stored in welldefined arrays. Thus, the model can predict the emotion and accuracy can be increased using these data.

Quadrilles were a popular genre of group dancing in the nineteenth century. Existing melodies were normally used to accompany the dancing sessions, but the monotony of their repetition and the cost of a professional piano player capable of improvising were an issue. Thus, the idea of a “machine” that would be able to endlessly produce quadrille music at no cost was suggesting itself. The Quadrille Melodist, a paper-based system for the generation of piano pieces, was published in nineteenth-century Victorian London by John Clinton, a “professor in the Royal Academy of Music.” Already in 1650, Athanasius Kircher proposed in his Musurgia Universalis a device consisting of stripes with short snippets of music that could be used to create combinatorial pieces and variations. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, a whole genre of quasi-algorithmic compositions was emerging, spurred by the popularity of such works as the Musikalisches Würfelspiel, a piece attributed to Mozart. In this article, I analyze the Quadrille Melodist against the background of the history of combinatorial music. I contrast its unique features with other predigital, as well as later digital, music systems and discuss its design with respect to the phenomenon of predictability in dance music. Additionally, I discuss reasons for the circumstance that the historically advertised number of possible quadrilles, 428 million, is much smaller than the real number of combinations.

Once room acoustical reflections data are extracted from a physical space or a model, and are encapsulated in a 3D impulse response, they can be used to render immersive sound fields in real time. A range of possibilities then opens for creative use of acoustics in music. A skilled virtual acoustics designer-engineer may rebalance digital signals representing the room response to situate player and listener on the stage or at the back of the auditorium, may modify and arrange temporal segments to re-imagine the aural dimensions of the space, and apply gain and directional placement to shape the impression of immersive presence, adapting acoustics to musicians’ creative needs. In the process of building an idealized acoustical environment for the music, techniques of sound reinforcement and of rendering room acoustics are combined to balance presence with ambience and to deliver a sensation of acoustical power with lift-off. The means exist to move beyond acoustical realism into fictionalized acoustics.

INTRODUCTION
 This paper partly envisages the research results of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) project (see Acknowledgements). The task is to create an innovative digital game in the cross-cutting genres of art game and educational game. The game presents the specific aspects of digital art games and their historical background. Work on the new game will be carried out in a collaboration of the researcher, Dr.art. Ieva Gintere (Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences, Latvia) and the game artist, Mag.art. Kristaps Biters (Latvia). The game is being created in the framework of a Post-doctoral project led by Ieva Gintere during 2018-2021.
 MATERIALS AND METHODS
 Unity3d for game design. Blender 3d object design. Audacity and Abletone music generation and editing. Photoshop, illustrator for game texture, art design.
 RESULTS
 The study presents an insight into contemporary digital game theory and a new threefold method of game creation named RKTR (research / knowledge transfer / research). In this model, the game is created on the basis of research and knowledge transfer: knowledge gained in the research process is transferred to the players. The game also functions as a platform of new knowledge construction as the secondary task of the game is to collect the results of the players in order to analyse the new creative tendencies and to foresee the art trends of tomorrow.
 The proposed method focused on the aspect of knowledge transfer is constructed as a three-level spiral:
 - research-based game creation (the game is based on the results of research),- knowledge transfer (the game transfers the research results to the player),- use of the gameplay results in research (the game creators collect the data of the gameplay for new research).
 The existing game designers and theoreticians carry out research in action where the game design is united with the game research. In the discourse of digital gaming, this is a widespread method. However, there is a missing part in this model. Knowledge gained in this type of research does not flow beyond the circle of the game’s creators and researchers. This knowledge stays within the society of the game’s designers and researchers, and functions as a tool for their future work. Knowledge is an instrument for experts, and it is not transferred to the regular player. The existing model of a research-based game helps to obtain formal and professional knowledge: it is a know-how, it tells a designer how to build a game, but it is not meant for the player. The aim of the new digital game that is being created in this project, is to connect the research results with the player so that the knowledge acquired in the research process is effectively transferred to the general public.
 DISCUSSION
 Taking into account that art today is largely interactive, the new art game will let its user play with trends of digital art such as noise, generative art and others, and to create new ones. The aim of this project is to raise the interest of a wide-ranging public for contemporary art and to point out the newest creative tendencies in art. The game would develop the creative skills of players and teach them the current trends in digital art. At the same time the game would project the inheritance of art from the age of modernism into the digital world by teaching the player to recognize it (for instance, generative art is a successor to the Fluxus movement in modernism). The new art game is intended to educate the player and to stimulate his/her creative forces.
 The Design Science Research method is being used in this study in order to cross-cut such remote fields as the general public, the arthouse world, codes of modern art and the tastes of the general public. The Design Science Research method helps boost efficiency and interest towards contemporary art games. It intends to integrate seemingly distant disciplines and seeks parallels in different areas in order to gain new knowledge and adapt fresh approaches. By finding common aspects in different areas, Design Science Research fuses areas and invites new trends into a research field.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
 This study has been supported by a grant from the European Regional Development Fund research “Leveraging ICT product innovations by enhancing codes of modern art” No. 1.1.1.2/VIAA/1/16/106 within the Activity 1.1.1.2 “Post-doctoral Research Aid” of the Specific Aid Objective 1.1.1 “To increase the research and innovative capacity of scientific institutions in Latvia and the ability to attract external financing, investing in human resources and infrastructure” of the Operational Program “Growth and Employment”. Homepage of the research: http://va.lv/en/research/research/leveraging-ict-product-innovations-enhancing-codes-modern-art

The Audio Research Platform developed by the ÉTS-EERS Industrial Research Chair in In-Ear technologies is a digital audio processing wearable device that features a powerful Digital Signal Processor and a pair of wired earplugs featuring outer- and inner-ear microphones as well as miniaturize loudspeaker. ARP has been used since over the last 2 decades by CRITIAS to develop new algorithms for advanced hearing protection and communication in noise, as well as in-ear audio sensing. In this adaptation, the ARP enables transparent hearing of ambient sounds, simulates varying degrees of hearing loss, and includes a tinnitus simulator. ARP also functions as a personal music player, monitoring playback levels and displaying the “Age of your ears”) a metric recently proposed by CRITIAS), predicting accelerated auditory aging from excessive music playback. In the playback mode, wearers experience pre-recorded noise, prompting vocal adjustments known as the “Lombard Effect.” ARP analyzes the wearer's voice using the outer-ear microphone, illustrating level and pitch shifts in speech due to a noisy environment. This paper details ARP's technical aspects, positioning it as a powerful tool to inform the public about noise-induced hearing loss and promote awareness and prevention through enjoyable real-time demonstrations.

This paper explains potential benefits of indirect biofeedback used within interactive virtual environments, and reflects on an earlier study that allowed for the dynamic modification of a virtual environment's graphic shaders, music and artificial intelligence, based on the biofeedback of the player. The aim was to determine which augmented effects aided or discouraged engagement in the game. Conversely, biofeedback can help calm down rather than stress participants, and attune them to different ways of interacting within a virtual environment. Other advantages of indirect biofeedback might include increased personalization, thematic object creation, atmospheric augmentation, filtering of information, and tracking of participants' understanding and engagement. Such features may help designers create more intuitive virtual environments with more thematically appropriate interaction while reducing cognitive loading on the participants. Another benefit would be more engaged clients with a better understanding of the richness and complexity of a digital environment.

The culture in Indonesia is very diverse, one of which is traditional songs. However, knowledge of traditional songs is still small. Digital Games can spread knowledge about traditional songs, one of which is Central Javanese traditional songs. However, the Game that is made still has static difficulties, so the Game cannot follow the player's ability, resulting in the player feeling bored and not wanting to continue the Game. To generate dynamic difficulties, methods in artificial intelligence can be applied to Games, one of which is Fuzzy. So in this study proposed the application of dynamic difficulties using Fuzzy Logic in music Games / Rhythm Games. Fuzzy Logic is built based on mathematical values and represents uncertainty, where this logic imitates the human way of thinking. Fuzzy Logic can convert crisp input values into fuzzy sets by performing fuzzification. After the input value is converted, the input will be entered into the set of rules provided. Each rule produces a different output. After the process is complete, the output value will be converted back to the crisp output value. Based on the research conducted, it is found that Fuzzy Logic can be applied to music Games where the Game can follow the player's ability based on the given rules.

Studies have revealed that in the age of digital media, popular culture has emerged as a powerful phenomenon. With this in mind, this article critically examines how media is the key player in promoting and reinforcing popular culture. Further, it illuminates the cultural shift with urbanization and industrial progress. In this regard, available literature of the past twenty years has been critically reviewed. This piece of research confers different sources of popular culture such as movies, TV programs, online video gaming, politics, music, sports, advertisements, e-commerce, and mobile applications and describes the significant role of the media in popularizing and endorsing it. This study concludes that the media has played a significant role in cultural change and that the media and pop culture are inter-reliant. This study also suggests that popular culture has a significant influence and power that can be helpful for agenda setting and cultural diplomacy. Pop culture is dynamic and the media plays a crucial role in promoting popular culture.

The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a new era of technology, pushing everything online and necessitating human adaptation to computers. Industry 4.0 proved invaluable during this pandemic, with Artificial Intelligence (AI) emerging as a key player, particularly in the beloved South Korean music industry, which enjoys international acclaim. The pandemic played a significant role in the increased use of AI within the K-POP industry, with the emergence of the Aespa Girl Group being a pivotal moment in shaping a futuristic concept. This research aims to investigate the recent surge in AI usage as a futuristic K-Pop concept through a qualitative literature study method. This paper contends that AI has the potential to profoundly impact Korean cultural diplomacy, serving as a game-changing element in the realm of digital diplomacy. While AI has traditionally been applied in high-context scenarios, such as search engines or high-tech automotive control systems, its application in cultural contexts could propel South Korea's cultural diplomacy to unprecedented heights, rendering the concept difficult for other nations to replicate.

The work is aimed at solving the problems of easy trapping into local extremes and slow convergence speed of the traditional music teaching evaluation system on Backpropagation Neural Network (BPNN). The traditional note recognition methods are susceptible to high noise complexity. Firstly, the Levenberg Marquardt (LM) algorithm is used to optimize the BPNN; secondly, an improved endpoint detection algorithm is proposed by short-term energy difference, which can accurately identify the time value of each note in the piano playing audio. By the traditional frequency domain analysis method, a radical frequency extraction algorithm is proposed by the improved standard harmonic method, which can accurately identify the note’s pitch. Finally, a piano performance evaluation model by BPNN is implemented, and the model is implemented by the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) system. This evaluation model can be used to correct the errors of students’ performances in the piano music teaching process and to perform overall evaluation, rhythm evaluation, and expressive evaluation. Teachers and students play minuet to collect experimental samples to train BPNN and test the performance of the evaluation model. The practical result shows that (1) after 3000 times of training, the neural network error is less than 0.01, and the network converges; (2) the evaluation results of the piano performance evaluation model designed are basically in line with the actual level of the performer and have specific feasibility; and (3) the optimized BPNN is used to correct errors during performances with an accuracy rate of 94.3%, which is 5.25% higher than the traditional method. The error correction accuracy rate for pitch is 92.9%, which is 5.21% higher than the traditional method. The optimized BPNN has significantly improved the error correction accuracy of the notes and pitches played by the player. The model can effectively help piano beginners correct errors and improve the accuracy and efficiency of the practice. The purpose of this study is to alleviate the scarcity of piano teachers, reduce the work intensity of piano teachers, realize automatic error correction and objective evaluation of playing, and provide necessary technical support for improving the efficiency of piano music teaching.

This article describes a software implementation dealing with the ancient Basque musical tradition of the txalaparta. The research is different from earlier studies of the txalaparta in that, by digitizing the instrument and its performance rules, we have had to formalize and make explicit conventions that hitherto have been tacit knowledge of improvisational practice. Analysis through software development is an unusual case of musicological analysis as it demands clarity and precision, and often requires multidisciplinary approaches to understand the studied subject. We have developed software in order to analyze and understand a practice that has received little musicological analysis. By expounding musical patterns and performers' behaviors that have hitherto been difficult to analyze, we reveal the social and cultural aspects of performance practice. The txalaparta is a two-performer instrument and the software produces txalaparta rhythms and plays along with a human player, while learning and adapting to the player's style. The system helps novices to explore the rules of the txalaparta and more-experienced performers to approach the instrument from a new perspective. In this research we have applied a user-centered approach, where feedback from players using the digital txalaparta was collected. This feedback allowed us to approach the reflective vision of txalaparta players and their thoughts on the results of our research.

The keyboard is one of the most popular and enduring musical interfaces ever created. Today, the keyboard is most closely associated with the acoustic piano and the electronic keyboards inspired by it, which share the essential feature of being discrete: Notes are defined temporally by their onset and release only, with little control over each note beyond velocity and timing. Many keyboard instruments have been invented, however, that let the player continuously shape each note. This article provides a review of keyboards whose keys allow continuous control, from early mechanical origins to the latest digital controllers and augmented instruments. Two of the author’s own contributions will be described in detail: a portable optical scanner that can measure continuous key angle on any acoustic piano, and the TouchKeys capacitive multi-touch sensors, which measure the position of fingers on the key surfaces. These two instrument technologies share the trait that they transform the keys of existing keyboards into fully continuous controllers. In addition to their ability to shape the sound of a sustaining note, both technologies also give the keyboardist new dimensions of articulation beyond key velocity. Even in an era of new and imaginative musical interfaces, the keyboard is likely to remain with us for the foreseeable future, and the incorporation of continuous control can bring new levels of richness and nuance to a performance.

Using of ICT in the process of University studies is becoming very meaningful. On the one hand, the newest ICT are changing rapidly, on the other hand, we cannot deny that using them is inevitable. In the latter years, students better prepared in ICT field fill Lithuanian uni-versities. However, such assertion is conditional. After graduating from comprehensive schools, students have quite good skills in ICT field. However, the ability of using computers or other computer equipment, devices and instruments is not the same as directly applying them for learning or study needs. University studies differ, in fact, from education process in comprehensive school. Student must constantly work with different information, be able to find it, analyse and so on. Moreover, all this requires self- independence. Quite often students encounter with serious information management difficulties: are not able to find necessary information, cannot use scientific information data basis, search systems and so on. There-fore, fixation of a current state, analysing in different sections and ways, is inevitably very important. It is necessary to constantly watch, research student and teachers’ demands in ICT appliance field. Thus, the object of our research is the ability of the first and fourth-year undergradu-ates to use information and communication technologies. The aim of research is to gain in-formation concerning the first and fourth-year students’ opinion on the application of ICT in the process of studies. The research A Student and Information and Communication Technol-ogies was conducted in January – March, 2010. Research sample consisted of 663 respond-ents who were 1st year university students and of 322 respondents who were 4th year univer-sity students. In total – 985 respondents. To collect the required data, an anonymous questionnaire including four main blocks was prepared. Questionnaire arranged by Australian researchers was used as a research in-strument (Kennedy, Judd, Churchward, Gray, Kerri-Lee Krause, 2008). Questionnaire com-prises four main blocks: demographic information (5 items), access to hardware and the In-ternet (13 items), use of abilities and skills with technology based tools (Computer: 11 items; Web: 18 items; Mobile phones: 8 items) and preferences for the use of technology based tools in University studies (19 items). Mentioned instrument was partially modified taking into ac-count the study specifics of Lithuanian universities. To analyze research data, the measures of descriptive statistics (absolute and relative frequencies, popularity/usefulness/necessity indexes) have been applied. Generalizing the research Student and information communication technologies re-sults, we can claim, that: • Respondents have practically unlimited possibilities for using mobile phone, com-puter, internet and USB memory stick. • Relatively new and rather expensive digital technologies, such as iPod touch, e-library, palm computer, GPS navigator and other are still slightly used. • Computer has become the means of everyday necessity. It is intensively used both for studies and for leisure. Boys use more complex computer functions than girls do. • Respondents usually use the internet for communication, information search and for e-mail services. Boys use the internet more variously than girls. • Computer technology usage possibility analysis in the aspect of courses showed that statistically significant difference having existed between first year students, who have graduated from city and region schools, disappeared in the fourth course. • The fourth year students comparing to the first year students are becoming more conscious and are using computer more for learning purposes, however, using computer for leisure (playing games, watching films, listening to music on the inter-net) is more characteristic to the first year students. Key words: ICT, study process, analysis of experience, science education.

This research is motivated by a marimba instrument soloist in performing his repertoire must be able to become a reliable music player and make a positive contribution to music lovers. This study aims to describe the solo playing technique by interpreting the Concerto in G Major RV 310 repertoire through the two mallet technique with string quartet accompaniment and realizing the solo play by interpreting the A Whole New World repertoire through the four mallet technique with the Marimba Instrument according to the needs of today's performances. The repertoire presented is the repertoire of Concerto in G Major Rv 310 and A Whole New World. This repertoire has been considered to be played according to the great or achievement of the percussion instrument. The research approach used in this study is a qualitative approach that is useful for analyzing phenomena and for interpreting data. Based on the repertoire analysis of Concerto in G Major Rv 310, several obstacles were found in playing it, namely there was a double stroke technique played in an allegro tempo. The repertoire of the Concerto in G Major Rv 310 baroque era, there is a lot of ornamentation on the melody, and the phrases of songs that have a clear theme. While the repertoire of A Whole New World is classified as modern music (popular) which is a simple choral composition that is logical and easy to digest. Keywords: description, interpretation, instrument, marimba. AbstrakPenelitian ini dilatarbelakangi oleh seorang solis instrumen marimba dalam mempertunjukkan repertoarnya harus mampu menjadi pemain musik yang handal dan memberikan konstribusi positif kepada penikmat musik. Penelitian ini bertujuan mendeskripsikan teknik permainan solis dengan cara menginterpretasikan repertoar Concerto in G Major RV 310 melalui teknik dua mallet dengan iringan kwartet string dan mewujudkan permainan solis dengan cara menginterpretasikan repertoar A Whole New World melalui teknik empat mallet dengan instrumen marimba sesuai dengan kebutuhan pertunjukan saat ini. Repertoar yang disajikan yaitu repertoar Concerto in G Major Rv 310 dan A Whole New World. Repertoar ini telah dipertimbangkan untuk dimainkan sesuai dengan great atau capaian instrument perkusi. Pendekatan penelitian yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah pendekatan kualitatif yang berguna untuk menganalisis fenomena dan untuk menginterpretasikan data. Berdasarkan analisis repertoar Concerto in G Major Rv 310, ditemukan beberapa kendala dalam memainkannya, yaitu terdapat teknik double stroke yang dimainkan dalam tempo allegro. Repertoar Concerto in G Major Rv 310 zaman barok, banyak terdapat ornamentasi pada melodi, dan frase lagu-lagu yang memiliki tema yang jelas. Sedangkan repertoar A Whole New World tergolong musik modern (popular) yang mudah dipahami.Kata Kunci: deskripsi, interpretasi, instrumen, marimba. Authors:Ade Febri Yulfita : Institut Seni Indonesia PadangpanjangFerry Herdianto : Institut Seni Indonesia Padangpanjang References:Arsyad, J., Putrianti, A., & Khadijah, K. (2020). Implementasi Alat Musik Perkusi Dalam Kemampuan Mengelola Emosional Anak Usia Dini di RA Az-Zahwa. Jurnal Raudhah, 8(2).Batallas, P.M. (2013). La marimba como Patrimonio Cultural Inmaterial. Fuente: Trabajo De Campo.David Samuel. (1982). Musical Approach to For Mallet Tecnique Volume 1. New York: New York Press.Dewatara, G. W., & Agustin, S. M. (2019). Pemasaran Musik pada Era Digital Digitalisasi Industri Musik dalam Industri 4.0 di Indonesia. WACANA: Jurnal Ilmiah Ilmu Komunikasi, 18(1), 1-10.Herdianto, F. (2021). Pertunjukan Solis Marimba dengan Repertoar The Variantions on Theme (From The Malay’s “Pucuk Pisang”). Jurnal Sitakara, 6(1), 1-12.Herfanda, F. R. (2014). Bentuk pertunjukan musik perkusi Paguyuban Sayung Hore (PSH) di Semarang. Jurnal Seni Musik, 3(1).Hoffman, G., & Weinberg, G. (2010, May). Gesture-based human-robot jazz improvisation. In 2010 IEEE international conference on robotics and automation (pp. 582-587). IEEE.Hugh M. Miller. (1996). Pengantar Apresiasi Musik. Terjemahan B.Triyono PS. Yogyakarta: Institut Seni Indonesia Yogyakarta.Sinaga, S. S. (2017). Pemanfaatan Pemutaran Musik Trhadap Psikologis Pasien Pada Klinik Ellena Skin Care Di Kota Surakarta. Jurnal Seni Musik, 6(2).Moleong, Lexy J. (2010). Metodologi Penelitian Kualitatif. Bandung: Remaja Rosdakarya.Prier Sj, Karl –Edmund. (1993). Sejarah Musik Jilid 2. Pusat Musik Liturgi: Yogyakarta.Pono, Banoe. (1984). Pengantar Alat Musik. Jakarta: CV Baru.Yang, N., Savery, R., Sankaranarayanan, R., Zahray, L., & Weinberg, G. (2020). Mechatronics-driven musical expressivity for robotic percussionists. arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.14850.Saryono dan Anggraeni, Mekar Dwi. (2010). Metodologi Penelitian Kualitatif Dalam Bidang Kesehatan. Yogyakarta: Nuha Medika.Sugiyono. (2014). Metode Penelitian Kuantitatif, Kualitatif dan R dan D. Bandung: Alfabeta.

The current digital landscape is based on platform capitalism and on the cloud concept in which different services (music platforms, instant messaging services, live music companies, sellers, device companies, music major labels, radio players) try to control music/sound circulation. The new century started with the development of new devices — the iPod, smartphones, AI speakers — and distribution modes (podcasting, streaming) and the emergence of voice interaction to control devices. In this context, this paper develops a value chain defining the diverse key intermediaries in the management, accumulation, distribution, and access to information phases.

This paper is included in the First Monday Special Issue: Music and the Internet, published in July 2005. Special Issue editor David Beer asked authors to submit additional comments regarding their articles. This article complements two works that I wrote around the same time—in Popular Music and Society ("E-commerce Business Models for the Music Industry", volume 27, number 2), and—along with Bruce Wrenn—in the International Journal on Media Management ("A Broadcasting Model for the Music Industry", volume 3, number 2). Technological, social and legal changes have continued to shape the development of business models in the music industry. Notably, Apple Computer’s iTunes service has been extremely successful with over 250 millions songs being downloaded and paid for. Today, some iPOD players are capable of storing 75,000 songs. Other major developments include the development of a download service (at 88 cents per song) by Wal-Mart, the world’s largest company. And, Napster has been re-invented as a subscription site. Alternative approaches to copyright have been developed, most notably by the Creative Commons project. I believe that the most interesting technological challenges today revolve around how technology can be used to help us decide—or decide for us)—what to listen to. Research on music information retrieval systems will no doubt lead to developments that make the way we access music today seem cumbersome. Considerable attention has been given to the legal implications arising from the distribution of music in a digital format via the Internet. However, less attention has been paid to the technological and social drivers of change in the music industry. This paper attempts to demonstrate the significant impact that social and technological forces have on the music industry, especially regarding lowering barriers to entry.

Introduction This year, 2008, marks the tenth anniversary of the portable MP3 player. MPMan F10, the first such device to utilise the MP3-encoding format, was launched in March 1998 (Smith). However it was not until April 2003 when Apple Inc launched the iPod that the market began the massive growth that has made the devices almost ubiquitous in everyday life. In 2006 iPods were rated as more popular than beer amongst college students in the United States, according to Student Monitor. Beer had only previously surpassed in popularity once before, in 1997, by the Internet (Zeff). This year will also see the launch in Australia of the latest offering in this line of products – the iPhone – which incorporates the popular MP3 player in an advanced mobile phone. The iPhone features a touch-sensitive flat screen that serves as the interface for its operating system. While the design is striking, it also generates accessibility problems. There are obvious implications for those with vision impairments when there are no physical markers to point towards the phone’s functions (Crichton). This article critically examines the promise of Internet-based digital technology to open up the world to people with disabilities, and the parallel danger that the social construction of disability in the digital environment will simply come to mirror pre-existing analogue discrimination. This paper explores how technologies and innovations designed to improve access by the disabled actually enhance access for all users. The first part of the paper focuses on ‘Web 2.0’ and digital access for people with disability, particularly those with vision impairment. The online software that drives the iPod and iPhone and exclusively delivers content to these devices is iTunes. While iTunes seems on the surface to provide enormous opportunity for the vision impaired to access a broad selection of audio content, its design actually works to inhibit access to the platform for this group. Apple promotes the use of iTunes in educational settings through the iTunes U channel, and this potentially excludes those who have difficulty with access to the technology. Critically, it is these excluded people who, potentially, could benefit the most from the new technology. We consider the difficulty experienced by users of screen readers and braille tablets in relation to iTunes and highlight the potential problems for universities who seek to utilise iTunes U. In the second part of the paper we reframe disability accessibility as a principle of universal access and design and outline how changes made to assist users with disability can enhance the learning experience of all students using the Lectopia lecture recording and distribution system as an example. The third section of the paper situates these digital developments within the continuum of disability theory deploying Finkelstein’s three stages of disability development. The focus then shifts to the potential of online virtual worlds such as Second Life to act as a place where the promise of technology to mediate for disability might be realised. Goggin and Newell suggest that the Internet will not be fully accessible until disability is considered a cultural identity in the same way that class, gender and sexuality are. This article argues that accessibility must be addressed through the context of design and shared open standards for digital platforms. Web 2.0 and Accessibility The World Wide Web based its successful development on a set of common standards that worked across different software and operating systems. This interoperability held out great opportunity for the implementation of enabling software for those with disability, particularly sight and hearing impairments. The increasing sophistication and diversification of online content has confounded this initial promise. Websites have become more complex, particularly with the rise of ‘Web 2.0’ and the associated trends in coding and website design. This has aggravated attempts to mediate this content for a disabled audience through software (Zajicek). As Wood notes, ‘these days many computers are used principally to access the Internet – and there is no telling what a blind person will encounter there’. As the content requiring translation – either from text into audio or onto a braille tablet, or from audio into text captions – become less standardised and more complex, it becomes both harder for software to act as a translator, and harder to navigate this media once translated. This is particularly the case when links are generated ‘on the fly’ for each view of a website and where images replace words as hyperlinks. These problems can trace their origin to before the development of the World Wide Web. Reihing, addressing another Apple product in 1987 notes: The Apple Macintosh is particularly hard to use because it depends heavily on graphics. Some word processors ‘paint’ pictures of letters on the screen instead of using standard computer codes, and speech or braille devices can’t cope (in Goggin and Newell). Web 2.0 sites loaded with Ajax and other forms of Java scripting present a particular challenge for translation software (Zajicek). iTunes, an iconic Web 2.0 application, is a further step away from easily translated content as proprietary software that while operating though the Internet, does not conform to Web standards. Many translation software packages are unable to read the iTunes software at all or are limited and only able to read part of the page, but not enough of it to use the program (Furendal). As websites utilising ‘Web 2.0’ technology increase in popularity they become less attractive to users who are visually impaired, particularly because the dynamic elements can not be accessed using screen readers provided with the operating system (Bigham, Prince and Ladner). While at one level this presents an inability for a user with a disability to engage with the popular software, it also meant that universities seeking to use iTunes U to deliver content were excluding these students. To Apple’s credit they have taken some of these access concerns on board with the recent release of both the Apple operating system and iTunes, to better enable Apple’s own access software to translate the iTunes screen for blind users. However this also illustrates the problems with this type of software operating outside of nominated standards as there are still serious problems with access to iTunes on Microsoft’s dominant Windows operating system (Furendal). While Widows provides its own integrated screen reading software, the company acknowledges that this is not sufficiently powerful for regular use by disabled users who will need to use more specialised programs (Wood). The recent upgrade of the standard Windows operating system from XP to Vista seems to have abandoned the previous stipulation that there was a keyboard shortcut for each operation the system performed – a key requirement for those unable to use a visual interface on the screen to ‘point and click’ with a mouse (Wood). Other factors, such as the push towards iTunes U, explored in the next section, explain the importance of digital accessibility for everyone, not just the disabled as this technology becomes ubiquitous. The use of Lectopia in higher education demonstrates the value of flexibility of delivery to the whole student population, inclusive of the disabled. iPods and Higher Education iTunes is the enabling software supporting the iPod and iPhone. As well as commercial content, iTunes also acts as a distribution medium for other content that is free to use. It allows individuals or organisations to record and publish audio and video files – podcasts and vodcasts – that can be automatically downloaded from the Internet and onto individual computers and iPods as they become available. Significantly this technology has provided opportunities for educational use. iTunes U has been developed by Apple to facilitate the delivery of content from universities through the service. While Apple has acknowledged that this is, in part, a deliberate effort to drive the uptake of iTunes (Udell), there are particular opportunities for the distribution of information through this channel afforded by the technology. Duke University in the United States was an early adopter, distributing iPods to each of its first-year students for educational use as early as 2004 (Dean). A recent study of students at The University of Western Australia (UWA) by Williams and Fardon found that students who listen to lectures through portable media players such as iPods (the ‘Pod’ in iPod stands for ‘portable on demand’) have a higher attendance rate at lectures than those who do not. In 1998, the same year that the first portable MP3 player was being launched, the Lectopia (or iLecture) lecture recording and distribution system was introduced in Australia at UWA to enable students with disabilities better access to lecture materials. While there have been significant criticisms of this platform (Brabazon), the broad uptake and popularity of this technology, both at UWA and at many universities across Australia, demonstrates how changes made to assist disability can potentially help the broader community. This underpins the concept of ‘universal design’ where consideration given to people with disability also improves the lives of people without disability. A report by the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, examined the accessibility of digital technology. Disability issues, such as access to digital content, were reframed as universal design issues: Disability accessibility issues are more accurately perceived in many cases as universal access issues, such that appropriate design for access by people with disabilities will improve accessibility and usability for … the community more generally. The idea of universal access was integral to Tim Berners-Lee’s original conception of the Web – however the platform has developed into a more complex and less ordered environment that can stray from agreed standards (Edwards, "Stop"). iTunes comes with its own accessibility issues. Furendal demonstrated that its design has added utility for some impairments notably dyslexia and colour blindness. However, as noted above, iTunes is highly problematic for those with other vision impairment particularly the blind. It is an example of the condition noted by Regan: There exists a false perception among designers that accessibility represents a restriction on creativity. There are few examples that exist in the world that can dissuade designers of this notion. While there are no technical reasons for this division between accessibility and design, the notion exists just the same. The invisibility of this issue confirms that while an awareness of differing abilities can assist all users, this blinkered approach to diverse visual acuities is not only blocking social justice imperatives but future marketing opportunities. The iPhone is notable for problems associated with use by people with disabilities, particularly people with hearing (Keizer) and vision impairments (Crichton). In colder climates the fact that the screen would not be activated by a gloved hand has also been a problem, its design reflects bias against not just the physically impaired. Design decisions reflect the socially constructed nature of disability where disability is related to how humans have chosen to construct the world (Finkelstein ,"To Deny"). Disability Theory and Technology Nora Groce conducted an anthropological study of Martha’s Vineyard in the United States. During the nineteenth century the island had an unusually high incidence of deafness. In response to this everyone on the island was able to communicate in sign language, regardless of the hearing capability, as a standard mode of communication. As a result the impairment of deafness did not become a disability in relation to communication. Society on the island was constructed to be inclusive without regard to a person’s hearing ability. Finkelstein (Attitudes) identified three stages of disability ‘creation’ to suggest disability (as it is defined socially) can be eradicated through technology. He is confident that the third phase, which he argues has been occurring in conjunction with the information age, will offset many of the prejudicial attitudes established during the second phase that he characterised as the industrial era. Digital technologies are often presented as a way to eradicate disability as it is socially constructed. Discussions around the Web and the benefits for people with disability usually centre on accessibility and social interaction. Digital documents on the Internet enable people with disability greater access than physical spaces, such as libraries, especially for the visually impaired who are able to make use of screen readers. There are more than 38 million blind people who utilise screen reading technology to access the Web (Bigham, Prince and Ladner). A visually impaired person is able to access digital texts whereas traditional, analogue, books remain inaccessible. The Web also allows people with disability to interact with others in a way that is not usually possible in general society. In a similar fashion to arguments that the Web is both gender and race neutral, people with disability need not identify as disabled in online spaces and can instead be judged on their personality first. In this way disability is not always a factor in the social encounter. These arguments however fail to address several factors integral to the social construction of disability. While the idea that a visually impaired person can access books electronically, in conjunction with a screen reader, sounds like a disability-free utopia, this is not always the case as ‘digital’ does not always mean ‘accessible’. Often digital documents will be in an image format that cannot be read by the user’s screen reader and will need to be converted and corrected by a sighted person. Sapey found that people with disabilities are excluded from informational occupations. Computer programming positions were fourth least likely of the 58 occupations examined to employ disabled people. As Rehing observed in 1987, it is a fantasy to think that accessibility for blind people simply means turning on a computer (Rehing in Goggin and Newell). Although it may sound empowering for people with disability to interact in an environment where they can live out an identity different from the rhythm of their daily patterns, the reality serves to decrease the visibility of disability in society. Further, the Internet may not be accessible for people with disability as a social environment in the first place. AbilityNet’s State of the eNation Web Accessibility Report: Social Networking Sites found a number of social networking sites including the popular MySpace and Facebook are inaccessible to users with a number of different disabilities, particularly those with a visual impairment such as blindness or a cognitive disability like dyslexia. This study noted the use of ‘Captcha’ – ‘Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart’ – technology designed to differentiate between a person signing up for an account and an automated computer process. This system presents an image of a word deliberately blurred and disfigured so that it cannot be readily identified by a computer, which can only be translated by a human user. This presents an obstacle to people with a visual impairment, particularly those relying on transcription software that will, by design, not be able to read the image, as well as those with dyslexia who may also have trouble translating the image on the screen. Virtual Worlds and New Possibilities The development of complex online virtual worlds such as Second Life presents their own set of challenges for access, for example, the use of Captcha. However they also afford opportunity. With over a million residents, there is a diversity of creativity. People are using Second Life to try on different identities or campaign for causes relevant in the real world. For example, Simon Stevens (Simon Walsh in SL), runs the nightclub Wheelies in the virtual world and continues to use a wheelchair and helmet in SL – similar to his real-life self: I personally changed Second Life’s attitude toward disability when I set up ‘Wheelies’, its first disability nightclub. This was one of those daft ideas which grew and grew and… has remained a central point for disability issues within Second Life. Many new Disabled users make contact with me for advice and wheelies has helped some of them ‘come out’ and use a wheelchair (Carter). Able-bodied people are also becoming involved in raising disability awareness through Second Life, for example Fez Richardson is developing applications for use in Second Life so that the non-disabled can experience the effects of impairment in this virtual realm (Cassidy) Tertiary Institutions are embracing the potential of Second Life, utilising the world as a virtual classroom. Bates argues that Second Life provides a learning environment free of physical barriers that has the potential to provide an enriched learning experience for all students regardless of whether they have a disability. While Second Life might be a good environment for those with mobility impairment there are still potential access problems for the vision and hearing impaired. However, Second Life has recently become open source and is actively making changes to aid accessibility for the visually impaired including an audible system where leaves rustle to denote a tree is nearby, and text to speech software (Sierra). Conclusion Goggin and Newell observe that new technology is a prominent component of social, cultural and political changes with the potential to mitigate for disability. The uneven interface of the virtual and the analogue, as demonstrated by the implementation and operation of iTunes, indicates that this mitigation is far from an inevitable consequence of this development. However James Edwards, author of the Brothercake blog, is optimistic that technology does have an important role in decreasing disability in wider society, in line with Finkelstein’s third phase: Technology is the last, best hope for accessibility. It's not like the physical world, where there are good, tangible reasons why some things can never be accessible. A person who's blind will never be able to drive a car manually; someone in a wheelchair will never be able to climb the steps of an ancient stone cathedral. Technology is not like the physical world – technology can take any shape. Technology is our slave, and we can make it do what we want. With technology there are no good reasons, only excuses (Edwards, "Technology"). Internet-based technologies have the potential to open up the world to people with disabilities, and are often presented as a way to eradicate disability as it is socially constructed. While Finkelstein believes new technologies characteristic of the information age will offset many of the prejudicial attitudes established during the industrial revolution, where technology was established around able-bodied norms, the examples of the iPhone and Captcha illustrate that digital technology is often constructed in the same social world that people with disability are routinely disabled by. The Lectopia system on the other hand enables students with disabilities to access lecture materials and highlights the concept of universal access, the original ideology underpinning design of the Web. Lectopia has been widely utilised by many different types of students, not just the disabled, who are seeking flexibility. While we should be optimistic, we must also be aware as noted by Goggin and Newell the Internet cannot be fully accessible until disability is considered a cultural identity in the same way that class, gender and sexuality are. Accessibility is a universal design issue that potentially benefits both those with a disability and the wider community. References AbilityNet Web Accessibility Team. State of the eNation Web Accessibility Reports: Social Networking Sites. AbilityNet. January 2008. 12 Apr. 2008 ‹http://www.abilitynet.org.uk/docs/enation/2008SocialNetworkingSites.pdf›. Bates, Jacqueline. "Disability and Access in Virtual Worlds." 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