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A Call to End Format Wars, Boost On Demand and Untether Digital Downloads
A Call to End Format Wars, Boost On Demand and Untether Digital Downloads
Want to own the current Holy Grail invention of blue laser but are disappointed that no one format offers movies from all major studios? Want to watch any TV show or movie on demand but can’t find enough content available? Want to buy songs in open mp3 format but can’t find enough songs sold that way? You’re not alone, and the industry should know their customer better.
The music, television, movie and consumer electronics industries (hereafter collectively referred to as the industry) have been struggling with the rapid advance of technology and the new virtuality of content. Here are the top eight things the industry should do to harness the technology and recapture the simple tenet of giving the customer what they want.
1. End format wars.
When a new format is needed to advance the industry to the next level, there should be one and only one format that goes to market and becomes the standard. This applies to both online virtual formats and offline physical formats.
The current example in physical formats is Blu-ray vs. HD DVD. Two formats were necessary at first to spur competition, but the differences between them at this point are so negligible that ultimately one has to win for either to succeed. A standards body needs to exist to allow competition at first and to oversee a limited beta period to ensure customer opinions are factored in, but then to ultimately pick a winner before full-scale market launch. Companies should be required to register candidate formats in the early stages. The standards body should track investment and invention level of each candidate along the way. Then a winner should be chosen with a percentage of the licensing revenue going to all of the candidates commensurate with their investment and invention level. The candidates either agree to these terms from the get-go or they do not participate in determining and profiting from the next generation format.
The current example in virtual formats is mp3 vs. AAC vs. WMA vs. yet others for audio, and mpeg-4 (H.264) vs. WMV (VC-1) vs. yet others for video. The industry should have standardized on mp3 and mpeg-4 a long time ago to ensure that all content will be universally playable on every device.
Correcting this immediately is essential. The industry should get a standards body in place as soon as possible and declare much overdue industry standards, such as Blu-ray, mp3 and mpeg-4. The marketplace will rejoice, sales will skyrocket and the floodgates will open on the dam the industry itself has been one of the largest contributors to building.
2. Offer three consumption models.
a. Offer all content free with ads.
All content should be available on demand all the time free with ads. The best examples of this so far are music videos at mtv.com and music.yahoo.com and TV shows at in2tv.aol.com. The worst examples of this are the television networks who still insist on having their content time expire after only a short period of availability. Networks should use the ad model to make their entire catalog of shows, current and past, available for free all the time. All media stores, such as iTunes, should also introduce the option of listening to or watching a brief ad per 10 minutes of content or so in order to enjoy the entire content rather than just short preview clips.
b. Rent all content without ads for a fee.
This is the same as 2a only without the ads for a fee. The best examples of this so far are Netflix and Yahoo! Music Unlimited. With the former, for as low as $8.99 per month, you can rent any movie in the store, and that now includes some that can be watched directly online. With the latter, for as low as $5.99 per month, you can listen to every song in the store as many times as you want with no ads. All media stores and sites should offer this option.
c. Sell all content Digital Rights Management(DRM, or copy protection)-free.
There will still always be a market for owning content outright, such as for those times where you just don’t have an Internet connection or don’t want to be tethered to a server. In these cases, for both online virtual formats and offline physical formats, DRM simply should go. It has proven to hamper sales significantly due to treating everyday paying customers as if they are pirates, restricting them to play back the content on too few devices, giving them the chore of backing up and managing licenses on their computer and violating their fair use rights. DRM will always be defeatable and the industry simply needs to stop investing an inordinate amount of time and money into something that has a negative impact on their bottom line. The industry should abandon it and get back to the basic premise of allowing the customer the joy of experiencing the content they paid for without any strings attached. The best example of this so far is EMI which is now allowing media stores to sell their songs DRM-free.
3. Wireless Internet-enable all devices.
The computer cannot be the only access point. TVs, cable boxes, disc players, DVRs, game consoles, portables, boom boxes, phones, car head units – in short all playback devices – should come with built-in wireless connection to the Internet for access to content servers. The best examples of this so far are the Playstation 3 and the iPhone/iPod touch Wi-Fi Music Store.
4. Allow playlists to be defined and stored on the servers.
What 2a and 2b do is move us away from the need to store and manage our own copies of the content on our client devices (or on our shelves). Moving playlists off of the clients is a natural extension of that. When we can dial up all content including our favorite playlists on demand all the time anywhere we have an Internet connection, the convenience of not having to permanently store and backup our own copies of the data will start to prevail. The best example of this so far is Yahoo! Music Jukebox.
5. Offer movies by the chapter in addition to whole.
Just as the norm is now to be able to buy individual songs rather than just whole albums, the same option should be available for buying the individual chapters of movies. Doing so would offer the same advantages as individual song sales – the ability to collect favorite chapters at lower cost and storage use, the ability to direct-access chapters on playback and the ability to arrange favorite chapters from various movies into playlists. Note that this would require players to pre-cache the next chapter to ensure gapless chapter-to-chapter playback, but that is certainly doable.
6. Offer a choice of bitrates.
Highly compressed bitrates were fine at first, but there is no doubt that even with today’s bandwidth and storage (which will only grow with time), those who want to enjoy higher bitrates should have the option. With 2a and 2b, bandwidth is the primary factor, and clearly higher bitrates are possible even today. With 2c online formats, storage is also a factor, but even with today’s capacities some may choose quality over quantity for must-have content.
7. Piggyback audio on video for physical formats.
The industry moving to a new physical format is a big undertaking. Assuming a new HD format succeeds for video, then audio should just piggyback on that success. The video format will obviously have enough capacity for audio, and consumers will not have to buy additional players. Previous HD audio attempts of DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD failed for several reasons – separate audio-only players, no single digital connection such as HDMI, format war, etc. – all of which can be avoided once either Blu-ray or HD DVD is declared the standard. Albums in uncompressed PCM, both 2-channel stereo and multi-channel surround, with HD extras such as music videos, live concert footage and still photos all played through an existing player with single HDMI connection would be very compelling. With lossless compression such as Dolby TrueHD, perhaps entire album box sets could fit on one disc. These are exciting new possibilities.
8. Leverage viral marketing.
This is an extension of 2a. Provide url-addressability to free ad-coupled content that sites anywhere can provide links to – it essentially equates to free marketing for you. It doesn’t matter from where the eyeballs found the content, just that they found it. More eyeballs means more ad revenue in your pocket and more exposure that will lead to the eventual purchase of the content and related merchandise such as concert tickets, t-shirts, posters, action figures, toys, etc. A free ad-supported lure has always been necessary (radio and TV) for widespread exposure. The best examples of this so far are music videos at mtv.com and music.yahoo.com and TV shows at in2tv.aol.com. Music
These eight things would take the industry out of its current slump and carry it into unprecedented growth territory.
Article Tags:
Rtual Ormat, Tandar Body
China: Dazu: Brilliant Cultural Achievements and Spectacular Historical Sites
Since the time of Marco Polo, China has held a mystique that has fascinated travelers from around the world. Today, China is a world-class destination that offers several thousand years of history, brilliant cultural achievements, and spectacular historical sites. Over the past few years, China has become a traveler-friendly country, wide open to anyone with a curious mind and the spirit of adventure. Dazu, located in the province of Sichuan, offers travelers and residents alike the opportunity to view the more than 50,000 religious stone carvings, engravings, and bas-relief images located all over the countryside. Online resources provide an overview of this region’s history and suggest when and where to go to this magnificent city.
Other web sites provide vacationers with customs regulations and information on how to get a visa, what to pack, and how to get to your desired destination. If you plan to reserve your hotel room in advance, the Internet provides countless sites that include room rates and availability and enable you to make online reservations.
Dazu also boasts a lush, rolling countryside. It is filled with farmhouses, ponds, and numerous rice paddies. China’s national tourist office web site describes the local attractions and festivals, recommends restaurants and hotels, and provides the local news. So, if you want to go beyond visiting the Great Wall, the Summer Palace, and the Forbidden City, the World Wide Web is an excellent place to discover what more there is to offer in China.
Pop Culture: Popular or Populist? An Unpopular View
In a recent interview Fergal Sharkey, erstwhile Northern Ireland pop singer, lamented the fact that most recording artists receive only very low royalty incomes. Now the intention behind the production and release of a pop song, one might have thought, is to achieve sales. No doubt fans and mere observers alike can trot out lists of millions sold by The Beatles, Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, Madonna, Britney Spears or Michael Jackson. To quote a figure would be to use spurious accuracy, but it is certainly true that the majority of pop music releases do not in fact create profit for either the performer or the record company.
In the world of books, Jeffrey Archer, Dan Brown, J. K. Rowling, Sidney Sheldon and John Grisham might both spring to mind and also crowd out bookshop shelves. But, according to a recent assessment, amazon’s bookstore was offering several million titles, while the average bookshop stocks less than five thousand. My own two novels, Mission and A Fool’s Knot, briefly made the shelves of one retail chain but, like most books that achieve publication, my novels sell only in ones and twos, despite many hours spent promoting and marketing them via the internet. It is disappointing, but this fact neither belittles the books’ significance nor reduces my commitment to them. My motivation to write them stemmed from a desire to communicate, to examine relationships between certain social and political issues. I thus deal with subjects that would never appeal to a mass market and so I never expected sales to be high. The fact that they started low and stayed there, however, says much about what the books are not.
It was in a discussion about music that a friend asserted, without apparent doubt or question, that pop was merely an abbreviation for ‘popular’. Thus pop music is short for popular music. Pop culture similarly equates to popular culture. But this apparent platitude represents a position which, on inspection, is neither theoretically true nor even accurate. If most pop music doesn’t sell, isn’t played, certainly isn’t listened to, then the genre cannot be described as ‘popular’. If well over ninety per cent of published books never even make it into a bookshop, then again the pop culture to which they might aspire is not itself popular. Some pop music becomes popular, but very little, and most published material seems to lose money, rather than make it. Popularity is thus revealed to be an aspiration, not a reality or a property of so-called popular culture.
This leads directly to a conclusion that using the term ‘popular’ to imply ‘widely experienced’ is a misnomer. The correct term, linguistically, would be ‘populist’. The only sense in which ‘popular’ might be accurate is to imply that popular culture is easily comprehended, suitable for common people, thus suggesting a commodity that seeks a lowest common denominator, thus eschewing both passion and commitment, a position that would surely be rejected by those who produce or consume pop culture. If we label it populist, however, to indicate that as a commodity it is produced with an aspiration to popularity, then it adopts a position along an axis between pure commerce on the one hand and political posturing on the other. Richard Dawkins’s concept of the meme, a social virus spread by promotion, publicity and conformity then comes into play, revealing populist culture’s ability to create, assert and perpetuate normative behaviour.
A consequence of this analysis is to give the lie to any notion that equates quality or worth with popularity, or, vice-versa, uses the latter as an indicator of the former. ‘It has sold this many copies, therefore it must be good’ only holds if the song behind a Coca Cola advertisement is the best pop music ever created, Ronald MacDonald is the highest acclaimed dramatic character or a yellow scallop Shell represents mankind’s highest artistic achievement. Attempts to locate quality via achievement in the marketplace are thus undermined by their own validity. ‘I think therefore I am’ may be reinterpreted for a new age as ‘I sell therefore I excel’. Even a post-modernist who might eschew all consideration of critical worth would balk at the endpoint to which this false logic leads.
The phenomenal recent success of Susan Boyle on the ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ television show leads to another question. Irrespective of the quality of her voice, the improbability of her television appearance and, especially, the apparent surprise at her failure to win the competition, it seems fair to ask whether, via the potential of the internet, a social virus, a Dawkins meme, can be initiated and then successfully promulgated by design. Note here that this is not in itself an artistic endeavour, a piece of music, a book, a film or indeed anything that even approaches any concept of creativity, despite advertisers’ frequently claimed self-hype about the profusion of the talent within their profession.
The question thus is whether it is possible to create an advertisement that is designed to propagate like a virus via the internet. Why did Susan Boyle, a competitor on a light entertainment talent show, generate tens of millions of internet hits, feature worldwide on television news broadcasts and occupy the front pages of countless newspapers, thus dislodging minor stories such as wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, elections in Iran, nuclear ambitions in Iran and North Korea, scandals over British MPs’ expenses or even elections to the European parliament?
The interesting point here is not the phenomenon itself, but how it arose. Like other fodder fed to all-consuming pop culture, Susan Boyle will have her moment, minute or hour if she is lucky, be digested and, again if she has the good fortune, for this happens only rarely, will reappear via some future orifice to be granted nostalgia status, her achievements forgotten, her existence beatified, a state that can last only as long as the consumers of nostalgia – those who had the original experience – maintain their capacity to consume. The suggestion, obviously, is that pop culture dies with its audience.
And this is no mere side issue, no mere detail. Pop culture, because of its overtly economic and political role is, despite its apparently global presence, remarkably constrained in its penetration. It remains highly targeted, both geographically and demographically, and always wholly ephemeral. It’s the music that counts, we are often told, alongside a claim for quality on the grounds of popularity as indicated by sales. But ask an English speaker who is their favourite Russian band or what performer in Arabic comes to mind and one tends to be presented with an expression of complete incomprehension, as if the question were somehow invalid.
This leads, unfortunately, to the conclusion that in fact the music is almost irrelevant, with the verses of songs, especially those relating to an inability to express personal feelings, being the most important element. It is this revealed as a genre that trades in self-identification and empathy, and can thus only operate in the consumer’s own language. When, for example, was the last time that a fully instrumental piece was an international commercial success? Can today’s pop culture generate another Tornado’s Telstar, a tune on an electric organ to celebrate a communications satellite launch? When might a song about death, having no drumbeat and accompanied by string quartet, top the charts? Would Franz Schubert be a hit today? Yes, if he, like Paul McCartney, had written Eleanor Rigby, a song whose quality might undermine my entire argument, if it were not for the existence, in the same era, of successes called Remember You’re A Womble and The Birdie Song.
This line of argument takes us into interesting territory. On the face of things, pop culture claims popularity. But most of the offerings in its genre are largely not popular, so it may only be described as populist, in that it aspires to the achievement of popularity. This renders a commodity that is already expressly designed to be commercial to adopt also an essentially political role, in that it can be a means of canalizing taste and opinion in an attempt to keep its market predictable. It also therefore must canalize its own means of expression, both in form and content.
It claims universality, but all but a tiny fraction of its products are both language and culture confined. It constantly claims originality but, in both form and content, styles and themes remain narrowly defined. Exceptions, such as Eleanor Rigby, Telstar, or even Stranger On The Shore, merely confirm the general rule. Like novelty acts in a variety show, they provide variety, but they can usually happen only once, their novelty hardly outliving the show. Meanwhile, within the necessary repetition of both form and content, elements usually not directly related to the artistic endeavour orbit the fringes to both create and endow identity, alternative personas to which consumers voluntarily adhere. Titles come and go, such as rock’n’roll, soul, dance, techno, disco, hip hop, indie, punk, heavy metal, rap, new age, urban, R&B, blues, country even jazz.
There is even something absurdly called ‘world music’, apparently to define music that is not in English, but implying that pop in English must arise on Mars, or at least not in this world. Each year or two a new label is added, apparently to allow each new subset of consumers to experience an illusory ownership of a culture they are effectively being force-fed. Then the names will disappear, perhaps to reappear briefly as nostalgia when their original consumers are old enough to lament their lost youth. I have concentrated my examples in the genre of pop music, but writing, drama, television and film would have worked equally well, but only if consideration is limited to those aspects which appeal to mass consumption. The consequent canalization of both form and content thus breeds a sense of social and cultural conformity which might be the exact opposite of originality, experience or artistic expression.
A couple of years ago I was prompted to write an article on the internet’s potential to democratise access to expression. I argued specifically that the internet might democratize publishing, but the point could also be made in relation to any endeavor aiming to communicate. I, like others fired by the enthusiasm of publication, and in my case in traditional book form, not via the internet, attempted to publicize my work in cyberspace and, indeed, achieved some of my goals. But two years on, and even with a second book published, the project can hardly be described as a success, unlike the books themselves, of course, which remain as they began, excellent. I was never so naïve to believe that books about personal and community identity being challenged by social change and economic development in rural Africa would be overnight best sellers. Quite the contrary: I was always aware of their specialism. But I did write them hoping that they would be read, however.
Now, in the light of my own failure in the very shadow of viral marketing’s obvious potential for success, I find myself questioning whether the internet might be fast degenerating into a tool to promote normative populism. This question is rendered more significant by recent search engine developments, where algorithms that weight connectivity and popularity claim to deliver more relevant search results. Surely this can only mean more normative and populist pressure and thus question further the internet claim to openness and freedom of expression. I must state here, to avoid any possible confusion, that I have no problem with democracy, no difficulty whatsoever with the idea that people should have what they want. It is force-feeding that is wrong, not the content of the feed. Equally, just as ‘might’ cannot automatically be right, ‘majority’ must never equate to dictatorship or domination, and ‘popularity’ must impose no norm.
But perhaps this tendency has been there from the start. The internet may have grown out of an expression of academic freedom, but its origins, as ARPANET, lay in a desire to improve the efficiency of the defense and weapons research in the United States, and, at the height of the Cold War, that was a fairly normative area. So maybe there is still hope for freedom of expression as long as we retain the right to go beyond page three of our query results. Be wary of the day, however, that sees a restriction of search engine hits being justified by an increase in relevance. There may be more at stake than unread books, or unpopular pop.
Voyagers is a set of ten short stories based on the experience of travel by Philip Spires, author of Mission and A Fool’s Knot, African novels set in Kenya.
A Call to End Format Wars, Boost On Demand and Untether Digital Downloads
A Call to End Format Wars, Boost On Demand and Untether Digital Downloads
Want to own the current Holy Grail invention of blue laser but are disappointed that no one format offers movies from all major studios? Want to watch any TV show or movie on demand but can’t find enough content available? Want to buy songs in open mp3 format but can’t find enough songs sold that way? You’re not alone, and the industry should know their customer better.
The music, television, movie and consumer electronics industries (hereafter collectively referred to as the industry) have been struggling with the rapid advance of technology and the new virtuality of content. Here are the top eight things the industry should do to harness the technology and recapture the simple tenet of giving the customer what they want.
1. End format wars.
When a new format is needed to advance the industry to the next level, there should be one and only one format that goes to market and becomes the standard. This applies to both online virtual formats and offline physical formats.
The current example in physical formats is Blu-ray vs. HD DVD. Two formats were necessary at first to spur competition, but the differences between them at this point are so negligible that ultimately one has to win for either to succeed. A standards body needs to exist to allow competition at first and to oversee a limited beta period to ensure customer opinions are factored in, but then to ultimately pick a winner before full-scale market launch. Companies should be required to register candidate formats in the early stages. The standards body should track investment and invention level of each candidate along the way. Then a winner should be chosen with a percentage of the licensing revenue going to all of the candidates commensurate with their investment and invention level. The candidates either agree to these terms from the get-go or they do not participate in determining and profiting from the next generation format.
The current example in virtual formats is mp3 vs. AAC vs. WMA vs. yet others for audio, and mpeg-4 (H.264) vs. WMV (VC-1) vs. yet others for video. The industry should have standardized on mp3 and mpeg-4 a long time ago to ensure that all content will be universally playable on every device.
Correcting this immediately is essential. The industry should get a standards body in place as soon as possible and declare much overdue industry standards, such as Blu-ray, mp3 and mpeg-4. The marketplace will rejoice, sales will skyrocket and the floodgates will open on the dam the industry itself has been one of the largest contributors to building.
2. Offer three consumption models.
a. Offer all content free with ads.
All content should be available on demand all the time free with ads. The best examples of this so far are music videos at mtv.com and music.yahoo.com and TV shows at in2tv.aol.com. The worst examples of this are the television networks who still insist on having their content time expire after only a short period of availability. Networks should use the ad model to make their entire catalog of shows, current and past, available for free all the time. All media stores, such as iTunes, should also introduce the option of listening to or watching a brief ad per 10 minutes of content or so in order to enjoy the entire content rather than just short preview clips.
b. Rent all content without ads for a fee.
This is the same as 2a only without the ads for a fee. The best examples of this so far are Netflix and Yahoo! Music Unlimited. With the former, for as low as $8.99 per month, you can rent any movie in the store, and that now includes some that can be watched directly online. With the latter, for as low as $5.99 per month, you can listen to every song in the store as many times as you want with no ads. All media stores and sites should offer this option.
c. Sell all content Digital Rights Management(DRM, or copy protection)-free.
There will still always be a market for owning content outright, such as for those times where you just don’t have an Internet connection or don’t want to be tethered to a server. In these cases, for both online virtual formats and offline physical formats, DRM simply should go. It has proven to hamper sales significantly due to treating everyday paying customers as if they are pirates, restricting them to play back the content on too few devices, giving them the chore of backing up and managing licenses on their computer and violating their fair use rights. DRM will always be defeatable and the industry simply needs to stop investing an inordinate amount of time and money into something that has a negative impact on their bottom line. The industry should abandon it and get back to the basic premise of allowing the customer the joy of experiencing the content they paid for without any strings attached. The best example of this so far is EMI which is now allowing media stores to sell their songs DRM-free.
3. Wireless Internet-enable all devices.
The computer cannot be the only access point. TVs, cable boxes, disc players, DVRs, game consoles, portables, boom boxes, phones, car head units – in short all playback devices – should come with built-in wireless connection to the Internet for access to content servers. The best examples of this so far are the Playstation 3 and the iPhone/iPod touch Wi-Fi Music Store.
4. Allow playlists to be defined and stored on the servers.
What 2a and 2b do is move us away from the need to store and manage our own copies of the content on our client devices (or on our shelves). Moving playlists off of the clients is a natural extension of that. When we can dial up all content including our favorite playlists on demand all the time anywhere we have an Internet connection, the convenience of not having to permanently store and backup our own copies of the data will start to prevail. The best example of this so far is Yahoo! Music Jukebox.
5. Offer movies by the chapter in addition to whole.
Just as the norm is now to be able to buy individual songs rather than just whole albums, the same option should be available for buying the individual chapters of movies. Doing so would offer the same advantages as individual song sales – the ability to collect favorite chapters at lower cost and storage use, the ability to direct-access chapters on playback and the ability to arrange favorite chapters from various movies into playlists. Note that this would require players to pre-cache the next chapter to ensure gapless chapter-to-chapter playback, but that is certainly doable.
6. Offer a choice of bitrates.
Highly compressed bitrates were fine at first, but there is no doubt that even with today’s bandwidth and storage (which will only grow with time), those who want to enjoy higher bitrates should have the option. With 2a and 2b, bandwidth is the primary factor, and clearly higher bitrates are possible even today. With 2c online formats, storage is also a factor, but even with today’s capacities some may choose quality over quantity for must-have content.
7. Piggyback audio on video for physical formats.
The industry moving to a new physical format is a big undertaking. Assuming a new HD format succeeds for video, then audio should just piggyback on that success. The video format will obviously have enough capacity for audio, and consumers will not have to buy additional players. Previous HD audio attempts of DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD failed for several reasons – separate audio-only players, no single digital connection such as HDMI, format war, etc. – all of which can be avoided once either Blu-ray or HD DVD is declared the standard. Albums in uncompressed PCM, both 2-channel stereo and multi-channel surround, with HD extras such as music videos, live concert footage and still photos all played through an existing player with single HDMI connection would be very compelling. With lossless compression such as Dolby TrueHD, perhaps entire album box sets could fit on one disc. These are exciting new possibilities.
8. Leverage viral marketing.
This is an extension of 2a. Provide url-addressability to free ad-coupled content that sites anywhere can provide links to – it essentially equates to free marketing for you. It doesn’t matter from where the eyeballs found the content, just that they found it. More eyeballs means more ad revenue in your pocket and more exposure that will lead to the eventual purchase of the content and related merchandise such as concert tickets, t-shirts, posters, action figures, toys, etc. A free ad-supported lure has always been necessary (radio and TV) for widespread exposure. The best examples of this so far are music videos at mtv.com and music.yahoo.com and TV shows at in2tv.aol.com. Music
These eight things would take the industry out of its current slump and carry it into unprecedented growth territory.
Article Tags:
Rtual Ormat, Tandar Body
Trains in France
France is the dream destination of many people around the world who are in love with art, sculpture and European culture. If you are planning to travel across France and get soaked in the spirit of the country, train travel is an ideal option as it not only offers comfort of travel but also a splendid view of French countryside and its cities.
History
The French rail network has an illustrious history dating back to to the 19th century. The first railway track in France opened up in 1832 but it was not after a law legitimizing railways was passed in 1842, did the French rail network really take off.
The first lines branched out of the capital of France, Paris to connect all the major cities of the time. Progress was slow as a lot of factors like the wars and the preference for a water transport system took precedence. In 1910, kissing was prohibited on French trains as it caused delays!
As time went on, a combined partnership of government initiative at large and private enterprises took the construction of the rail network forward, resulting in one of the thickest networks in Europe by 1914, with a largest range of 60,000 km. Most of these lines were of the narrow gauge type.
After the two world wars, road line development affected the railways a lot and the progress slowed down. Thanks to the nationalization of the network by the socialist government and establishment of a central authority called Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais (SNCF) (French National railway). The development since then has resulted in closing of the narrow gauge lines and electrification of the routes which has 32,000 km of route under its control. Out of all this, 1,800 km is a high velocity line and 14,500 km is fully electrified.
Presently, about 14,000 trains run across the length and breadth of the ‘Hexagon’ shaped land of France. This includes the fleet of TGV(‘Train à Grande Vitesse‘) meaning high-speed trains. They connect all the major city centers of France, zooming past at speeds of nearly 200 miles per hour.
The Channel Tunnel
One of the modern seven wonders of the world is the Channel Tunnel undersea rail line link that connects France with England. A technological wonder of the 20th century, it is 31.4 miles long and passes from beneath the English channel connecting Coquelles, close to Calais in Northern France with Folkestone, Kent in England.
The deepest point of the tunnel is 75 m in depth and it has the world record for the longest part of such a tunnel situated under the sea. Conveyance through the tunnel is carried by the Eurostar high-speed trains.
In recent years, there have been a few fire problems in the tunnel but the authorities are constantly working to make the route safer. So if you want to travel from France to England, you have plenty of choices. You could fly over the sea, travel by ferry on the sea or you can go below the sea by the Chunnel (short for Channel + tunnel)!
Booking Tickets, Passes and Travel
If you want to travel by train in France, you have a variety of options available like the TGV (High Speed) , the Trans-Europe trains that connect France with the neighboring countries and the ‘Corail’ Trains which are low speed compared to TGV but connect Paris with all the major destinations.
It is a good practice to carry a rail timetable booklet with you that lists all the train timings across France and is easily available at all the major train stations. It’s better to book tickets in advance if you want a sleeper berth or if you need a first class ticket. Ticket machines are available on all the platforms, where you need to insert your ticket before boarding or else you may be considered a stowaway! Most of the trains provide a restaurant wagon facility, which serve multiple cuisines.
The first option TGV is the premiere and fastest network headquartered in Paris, connecting 150 cities across France with on-line booking facilities. It holds the rare record, of having the fastest pace record of 320 mph and also the fastest average pace record for passenger trains in the world. Booking facility is available up to 60 days in advance. TGV has a strict no-smoking policy and is speedier than air travel in this country. In November, 2003, TGV clocked its 1 billionth passenger and is second in race to Japan’s ‘Shinkansen’ which completed a tally of 5 billion passengers in 2000.
The second option is the Trans-European train network called Eurail or France rail and Eurostar. They offer a pass facility that allows you to travel throughout Europe, as well as inland France destinations on its route at much cheaper prices. A single country pass costs around $50 and offers you up to 8 days of travel in a month in every country. The global pass costs somewhere around $500 giving you access to 21 countries with varying types of travel packages. It’s called the ‘Eurail Global Pass’ which is available through on-line booking. The pass is preferred by people who are on a tour to Europe as it connects almost all the major capitals and cities and therefore is a hassle free travel solution cheaper than air travel across Europe.
The third option is the Corail carriage, predecessor of the TGV, which in spite of slowly being phased out, still ply on routes not connected by TGV. They are medium speed trains but are very comfortable for travel.
The major train routes are Paris – Nice via Lyon, Paris-Luxembourg, Paris-Brussels and almost all combination-routes connecting the major cities of Europe are available. For international travel across Europe, make sure you have your passports and relevant visas required in place. Thus trains in France are your portals to Europe exploration. Bon Voyage!
A Call to End Format Wars, Boost On Demand and Untether Digital Downloads
A Call to End Format Wars, Boost On Demand and Untether Digital Downloads
Want to own the current Holy Grail invention of blue laser but are disappointed that no one format offers movies from all major studios? Want to watch any TV show or movie on demand but can’t find enough content available? Want to buy songs in open mp3 format but can’t find enough songs sold that way? You’re not alone, and the industry should know their customer better.
The music, television, movie and consumer electronics industries (hereafter collectively referred to as the industry) have been struggling with the rapid advance of technology and the new virtuality of content. Here are the top eight things the industry should do to harness the technology and recapture the simple tenet of giving the customer what they want.
1. End format wars.
When a new format is needed to advance the industry to the next level, there should be one and only one format that goes to market and becomes the standard. This applies to both online virtual formats and offline physical formats.
The current example in physical formats is Blu-ray vs. HD DVD. Two formats were necessary at first to spur competition, but the differences between them at this point are so negligible that ultimately one has to win for either to succeed. A standards body needs to exist to allow competition at first and to oversee a limited beta period to ensure customer opinions are factored in, but then to ultimately pick a winner before full-scale market launch. Companies should be required to register candidate formats in the early stages. The standards body should track investment and invention level of each candidate along the way. Then a winner should be chosen with a percentage of the licensing revenue going to all of the candidates commensurate with their investment and invention level. The candidates either agree to these terms from the get-go or they do not participate in determining and profiting from the next generation format.
The current example in virtual formats is mp3 vs. AAC vs. WMA vs. yet others for audio, and mpeg-4 (H.264) vs. WMV (VC-1) vs. yet others for video. The industry should have standardized on mp3 and mpeg-4 a long time ago to ensure that all content will be universally playable on every device.
Correcting this immediately is essential. The industry should get a standards body in place as soon as possible and declare much overdue industry standards, such as Blu-ray, mp3 and mpeg-4. The marketplace will rejoice, sales will skyrocket and the floodgates will open on the dam the industry itself has been one of the largest contributors to building.
2. Offer three consumption models.
a. Offer all content free with ads.
All content should be available on demand all the time free with ads. The best examples of this so far are music videos at mtv.com and music.yahoo.com and TV shows at in2tv.aol.com. The worst examples of this are the television networks who still insist on having their content time expire after only a short period of availability. Networks should use the ad model to make their entire catalog of shows, current and past, available for free all the time. All media stores, such as iTunes, should also introduce the option of listening to or watching a brief ad per 10 minutes of content or so in order to enjoy the entire content rather than just short preview clips.
b. Rent all content without ads for a fee.
This is the same as 2a only without the ads for a fee. The best examples of this so far are Netflix and Yahoo! Music Unlimited. With the former, for as low as $8.99 per month, you can rent any movie in the store, and that now includes some that can be watched directly online. With the latter, for as low as $5.99 per month, you can listen to every song in the store as many times as you want with no ads. All media stores and sites should offer this option.
c. Sell all content Digital Rights Management(DRM, or copy protection)-free.
There will still always be a market for owning content outright, such as for those times where you just don’t have an Internet connection or don’t want to be tethered to a server. In these cases, for both online virtual formats and offline physical formats, DRM simply should go. It has proven to hamper sales significantly due to treating everyday paying customers as if they are pirates, restricting them to play back the content on too few devices, giving them the chore of backing up and managing licenses on their computer and violating their fair use rights. DRM will always be defeatable and the industry simply needs to stop investing an inordinate amount of time and money into something that has a negative impact on their bottom line. The industry should abandon it and get back to the basic premise of allowing the customer the joy of experiencing the content they paid for without any strings attached. The best example of this so far is EMI which is now allowing media stores to sell their songs DRM-free.
3. Wireless Internet-enable all devices.
The computer cannot be the only access point. TVs, cable boxes, disc players, DVRs, game consoles, portables, boom boxes, phones, car head units – in short all playback devices – should come with built-in wireless connection to the Internet for access to content servers. The best examples of this so far are the Playstation 3 and the iPhone/iPod touch Wi-Fi Music Store.
4. Allow playlists to be defined and stored on the servers.
What 2a and 2b do is move us away from the need to store and manage our own copies of the content on our client devices (or on our shelves). Moving playlists off of the clients is a natural extension of that. When we can dial up all content including our favorite playlists on demand all the time anywhere we have an Internet connection, the convenience of not having to permanently store and backup our own copies of the data will start to prevail. The best example of this so far is Yahoo! Music Jukebox.
5. Offer movies by the chapter in addition to whole.
Just as the norm is now to be able to buy individual songs rather than just whole albums, the same option should be available for buying the individual chapters of movies. Doing so would offer the same advantages as individual song sales – the ability to collect favorite chapters at lower cost and storage use, the ability to direct-access chapters on playback and the ability to arrange favorite chapters from various movies into playlists. Note that this would require players to pre-cache the next chapter to ensure gapless chapter-to-chapter playback, but that is certainly doable.
6. Offer a choice of bitrates.
Highly compressed bitrates were fine at first, but there is no doubt that even with today’s bandwidth and storage (which will only grow with time), those who want to enjoy higher bitrates should have the option. With 2a and 2b, bandwidth is the primary factor, and clearly higher bitrates are possible even today. With 2c online formats, storage is also a factor, but even with today’s capacities some may choose quality over quantity for must-have content.
7. Piggyback audio on video for physical formats.
The industry moving to a new physical format is a big undertaking. Assuming a new HD format succeeds for video, then audio should just piggyback on that success. The video format will obviously have enough capacity for audio, and consumers will not have to buy additional players. Previous HD audio attempts of DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD failed for several reasons – separate audio-only players, no single digital connection such as HDMI, format war, etc. – all of which can be avoided once either Blu-ray or HD DVD is declared the standard. Albums in uncompressed PCM, both 2-channel stereo and multi-channel surround, with HD extras such as music videos, live concert footage and still photos all played through an existing player with single HDMI connection would be very compelling. With lossless compression such as Dolby TrueHD, perhaps entire album box sets could fit on one disc. These are exciting new possibilities.
8. Leverage viral marketing.
This is an extension of 2a. Provide url-addressability to free ad-coupled content that sites anywhere can provide links to – it essentially equates to free marketing for you. It doesn’t matter from where the eyeballs found the content, just that they found it. More eyeballs means more ad revenue in your pocket and more exposure that will lead to the eventual purchase of the content and related merchandise such as concert tickets, t-shirts, posters, action figures, toys, etc. A free ad-supported lure has always been necessary (radio and TV) for widespread exposure. The best examples of this so far are music videos at mtv.com and music.yahoo.com and TV shows at in2tv.aol.com. Music
These eight things would take the industry out of its current slump and carry it into unprecedented growth territory.
Article Tags:
Rtual Ormat, Tandar Body
Sophie’s Voice
It should have been clear from the very outset after Sophie, our train manager welcomed us all aboard the London-bound Eurostar from Paris that this was not going to be a regular, uneventful trip. There was something just a little too sing-songy in her tannoyed “bienvenue”, wishing us a pleasant journey and volunteering to answer any questions we might have had, to augur any thing other than premonitory misgivings. But those were easily ignored.
Although it’s generally meant as a polite yet ultimately meaningless platitude, such an invitation awakes the pedant in even the most mild-mannered traveller, especially one with a low concentration threshold, and to whom questions spring to mind which would tax the genteel patience of the undoubtedly delightful Sophie, even if she were a Saint.
Did the woman really know what sort of Pandora’s box she was opening I mused to myself. After all to anyone with even the slightest smidgeon of sophistry, Sophie’s was an incitement to full blown pedantry.
Dangerous territory indeed, particularly as the burning question on my lips that morning – after I had been roused from my slumber by the dawn chorus, – was why do cuckoos cuckoo? And nobody had as yet been able to provide me with a reply.
Staring out at the scenery as we hurtled through northern France at a mighty 300km per hour, I was mulling over the possibility of seeking out Sophie to find out whether indeed she had any idea of the answer. But before I could give it another thought, the train unexpectedly ground to a halt.
Now the Paris-London Eurostar trip is something of a modern marvel. It only takes two hours and 15 minutes to complete the around 400km trip, city centre to city centre. That’s thanks largely to the British finally having got their act together after more than a decade to build a new high-speed track running in to St Pancras.
From 1996 until November last year, the trains used existing lines into Waterloo and after zipping through northern France, the Eurostar would then trundle along the remaining 90kms the other side of the channel at an embarrassingly almost 19th century speed.
Thankfully that’s all been confined to the pages of history, although the recent opening of the new link hasn’t been without its hiccoughs. Just last month passengers from London to Paris spent a night discovering the joys of low speed travel on the high-speed link when the journey turned into a 12-hour nightmare with two changes of trains.
So when the unscheduled stoppage was followed-up moments later by Sophie’s dulcet tones, a warning bell rang out.
She informed us ominously that the train had not yet been cleared for entering the tunnel – exactly the same explanation that had eventually been offered to passengers of that 12-hour marathon. In fact Eurostar’s operators, must have learned something from that incident, because Sophie promised she would get back to us with more news as soon as possible. The lack of information had been one of the major criticisms leveled at the company back in April.
And sure enough, moments later, she was on the tannoy to say that there had been an “incendiary incident’ – obviously Eurostarspeak for a “fire” – in the service tunnel, and the train would be held in position until cleared to go through – estimated to be around 50 minutes.
More insincere platitudes followed but delivered with such heartfelt apologies that clearly Euroastar must be doing something right in its recruitment policy for train managers. And then we left with deafening silence.
The seconds quickly yawned into those promised 50 minutes with murmuring passengers wondering why the train hadn’t been stopped at a station rather than in the middle of nowhere. At least then the nicotine-hungry would have been able to pop out for a quick cigarette break or others could simply have stretched their legs in the fresh air.
Ah no, obviously Eurostar couldn’t possibly know what was happening further down the line as the hopeless lack of communication had proved back in April – especially in these days of instant messaging. And if to prove such a point, an initial call to those waiting to meet me at the other end, resulted in my discovering that according to the notice board the train was still scheduled to arrive on time.
Time up and waiting over, the incendiary incident appeared to be under control and we were on our way again. Minutes later our train manager piped up to confirm that we were moving – just in case we had had any doubts presumably. “Attagirl Sophie, there’s nothing like telling us what we wanted to hear and already know.”
Sadly the sing-songy note had disappeared from her voice to be replaced with a slightly embarrassed tone and the offer to contact her if connections had been missed. The implied and fervent hope seemed to be that passengers wouldn’t prevail too much for the proffered information.
As the train pulled into St Pancras just 70 minutes after it had apparently already arrived, Sophie was back on the tannoy for a final time to thank us for our understanding – as if we had been given any choice in the matter – and not to offer us any compensation.
Thanks Eurostar, and thank you Sophie. And by the way, why do cuckoos cuckoo?
Tokyo Shows Its Conservationist Colours
“Tokyo to get serious on eco-tourism”. This recent headline in a Japanese newspaper must have made many readers wonder whether they were falling victim to a belated April fool’s joke.
Most people are about as likely to associate Japan’s concrete capital with eco-tourism as they are to recommend an abattoir as a suitable spot for a vegetarian restaurant.
Yes, the city has cleaned up its act since the smoggy nadir of the 1970s, but it is still seen as a polluted, overpopulated megopolis in which Mother Nature has long since been suffocated by exhaust fumes and laid to rest in a Tarmac coffin.
Complain about cramped, ill-planned housing and you won’t hear a murmur of dissent. Mention the eyesore of the elevated expressways and you will receive a sympathetic shake of the head. Enthuse about the raucous clanging of Pachinko parlours and the neon-fire of the entertainment districts and you might even get a knowing smile of recognition.
But talk about the tranquility of Tokyo’s pristine golden beaches, virgin forests and countless endangered species and most listeners will think you have been out too long in the sun.
That is because few people have heard of the Ogasawara islands, which fall under the metropolitan government’s jurisdiction even though they are located in the tropics almost 1,000km south of the city.
Remote, sparsely populated and happily underdeveloped, this tiny island chain is known as the Galapagos of the Orient because it is home to 44 types of flora and fauna listed in the red data book of endangered species, including the Ogasawara flying fox, the Bonin wood pigeon and Munintsutsuji azalea.
Despite this impressive moniker, the islands have long been one of Tokyo’s best-kept secrets. The entire chain is home to fewer people than the 13,000 who occupy an average square kilometre in the city, and the day-long boat trip needed to reach its shores used to deter all but the most dedicated of tourists.
But to the alarm of conservationists and a portion of the islands’ residents, the attractions of whale watching, swimming with dolphins and diving among coral reefs have pushed up visitor numbers in recent years to more than 25,000.
Even though most profess to be eco-tourists, the fragile island environment has started to suffer. The first signs were the dirty red and brown footprints that appeared on the golden sands of uninhabited Minami island a few years ago.
Then came reports that fossils and shells were being spirited from the shore in contravention of a ban on the removal of any plants, animals or minerals from the national park.
But the biggest concern was over plans to build an airport, an issue that caused splits inside the government and the local community. One group of Ogasawara residents had been calling for a landing strip for years so that their trips to the mainland could be made easier.
In 1991, the transport ministry gave its blessing, as it did at that time to just about any public works project that would channel money to the ruling Liberal Democratic party’s friends in the construction industry.
But local conservationists and the environment ministry have fought back by raising the spectre of rare Ogasawara buzzards being sucked into the engines of planes carrying hordes of tourists.
The populist Tokyo governor, Shintaro Ishihara – best known for his strident nationalism and anti-foreigner remarks – has reinvented himself as a conservationist to enter the fray.
In November, the municipal government vetoed the airport plans, which would have cost the cash-strapped city 100bn yen. And next month, Ishihara will travel to Ogasawara village to launch a new system to restrict tourist numbers and routes to the most sensitive sites – such as the rare karst limestone cliffs of Minami island and the virgin forests of Haha island.
The plan, which also includes training for eco-guides, is based on a similar policy in the real Galapagos islands, which the governor visited last summer.
So it is no joke that Tokyo has found a distant outlet to show its conservationist colours. All the municipal government needs to do now is clean up its housing, bring the expressways down to earth and remove the grim concrete banks of its rivers and it might even start attracting a few more tourists to the city itself.
A Call to End Format Wars, Boost On Demand and Untether Digital Downloads
A Call to End Format Wars, Boost On Demand and Untether Digital Downloads
Want to own the current Holy Grail invention of blue laser but are disappointed that no one format offers movies from all major studios? Want to watch any TV show or movie on demand but can’t find enough content available? Want to buy songs in open mp3 format but can’t find enough songs sold that way? You’re not alone, and the industry should know their customer better.
The music, television, movie and consumer electronics industries (hereafter collectively referred to as the industry) have been struggling with the rapid advance of technology and the new virtuality of content. Here are the top eight things the industry should do to harness the technology and recapture the simple tenet of giving the customer what they want.
1. End format wars.
When a new format is needed to advance the industry to the next level, there should be one and only one format that goes to market and becomes the standard. This applies to both online virtual formats and offline physical formats.
The current example in physical formats is Blu-ray vs. HD DVD. Two formats were necessary at first to spur competition, but the differences between them at this point are so negligible that ultimately one has to win for either to succeed. A standards body needs to exist to allow competition at first and to oversee a limited beta period to ensure customer opinions are factored in, but then to ultimately pick a winner before full-scale market launch. Companies should be required to register candidate formats in the early stages. The standards body should track investment and invention level of each candidate along the way. Then a winner should be chosen with a percentage of the licensing revenue going to all of the candidates commensurate with their investment and invention level. The candidates either agree to these terms from the get-go or they do not participate in determining and profiting from the next generation format.
The current example in virtual formats is mp3 vs. AAC vs. WMA vs. yet others for audio, and mpeg-4 (H.264) vs. WMV (VC-1) vs. yet others for video. The industry should have standardized on mp3 and mpeg-4 a long time ago to ensure that all content will be universally playable on every device.
Correcting this immediately is essential. The industry should get a standards body in place as soon as possible and declare much overdue industry standards, such as Blu-ray, mp3 and mpeg-4. The marketplace will rejoice, sales will skyrocket and the floodgates will open on the dam the industry itself has been one of the largest contributors to building.
2. Offer three consumption models.
a. Offer all content free with ads.
All content should be available on demand all the time free with ads. The best examples of this so far are music videos at mtv.com and music.yahoo.com and TV shows at in2tv.aol.com. The worst examples of this are the television networks who still insist on having their content time expire after only a short period of availability. Networks should use the ad model to make their entire catalog of shows, current and past, available for free all the time. All media stores, such as iTunes, should also introduce the option of listening to or watching a brief ad per 10 minutes of content or so in order to enjoy the entire content rather than just short preview clips.
b. Rent all content without ads for a fee.
This is the same as 2a only without the ads for a fee. The best examples of this so far are Netflix and Yahoo! Music Unlimited. With the former, for as low as $8.99 per month, you can rent any movie in the store, and that now includes some that can be watched directly online. With the latter, for as low as $5.99 per month, you can listen to every song in the store as many times as you want with no ads. All media stores and sites should offer this option.
c. Sell all content Digital Rights Management(DRM, or copy protection)-free.
There will still always be a market for owning content outright, such as for those times where you just don’t have an Internet connection or don’t want to be tethered to a server. In these cases, for both online virtual formats and offline physical formats, DRM simply should go. It has proven to hamper sales significantly due to treating everyday paying customers as if they are pirates, restricting them to play back the content on too few devices, giving them the chore of backing up and managing licenses on their computer and violating their fair use rights. DRM will always be defeatable and the industry simply needs to stop investing an inordinate amount of time and money into something that has a negative impact on their bottom line. The industry should abandon it and get back to the basic premise of allowing the customer the joy of experiencing the content they paid for without any strings attached. The best example of this so far is EMI which is now allowing media stores to sell their songs DRM-free.
3. Wireless Internet-enable all devices.
The computer cannot be the only access point. TVs, cable boxes, disc players, DVRs, game consoles, portables, boom boxes, phones, car head units – in short all playback devices – should come with built-in wireless connection to the Internet for access to content servers. The best examples of this so far are the Playstation 3 and the iPhone/iPod touch Wi-Fi Music Store.
4. Allow playlists to be defined and stored on the servers.
What 2a and 2b do is move us away from the need to store and manage our own copies of the content on our client devices (or on our shelves). Moving playlists off of the clients is a natural extension of that. When we can dial up all content including our favorite playlists on demand all the time anywhere we have an Internet connection, the convenience of not having to permanently store and backup our own copies of the data will start to prevail. The best example of this so far is Yahoo! Music Jukebox.
5. Offer movies by the chapter in addition to whole.
Just as the norm is now to be able to buy individual songs rather than just whole albums, the same option should be available for buying the individual chapters of movies. Doing so would offer the same advantages as individual song sales – the ability to collect favorite chapters at lower cost and storage use, the ability to direct-access chapters on playback and the ability to arrange favorite chapters from various movies into playlists. Note that this would require players to pre-cache the next chapter to ensure gapless chapter-to-chapter playback, but that is certainly doable.
6. Offer a choice of bitrates.
Highly compressed bitrates were fine at first, but there is no doubt that even with today’s bandwidth and storage (which will only grow with time), those who want to enjoy higher bitrates should have the option. With 2a and 2b, bandwidth is the primary factor, and clearly higher bitrates are possible even today. With 2c online formats, storage is also a factor, but even with today’s capacities some may choose quality over quantity for must-have content.
7. Piggyback audio on video for physical formats.
The industry moving to a new physical format is a big undertaking. Assuming a new HD format succeeds for video, then audio should just piggyback on that success. The video format will obviously have enough capacity for audio, and consumers will not have to buy additional players. Previous HD audio attempts of DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD failed for several reasons – separate audio-only players, no single digital connection such as HDMI, format war, etc. – all of which can be avoided once either Blu-ray or HD DVD is declared the standard. Albums in uncompressed PCM, both 2-channel stereo and multi-channel surround, with HD extras such as music videos, live concert footage and still photos all played through an existing player with single HDMI connection would be very compelling. With lossless compression such as Dolby TrueHD, perhaps entire album box sets could fit on one disc. These are exciting new possibilities.
8. Leverage viral marketing.
This is an extension of 2a. Provide url-addressability to free ad-coupled content that sites anywhere can provide links to – it essentially equates to free marketing for you. It doesn’t matter from where the eyeballs found the content, just that they found it. More eyeballs means more ad revenue in your pocket and more exposure that will lead to the eventual purchase of the content and related merchandise such as concert tickets, t-shirts, posters, action figures, toys, etc. A free ad-supported lure has always been necessary (radio and TV) for widespread exposure. The best examples of this so far are music videos at mtv.com and music.yahoo.com and TV shows at in2tv.aol.com. Music
These eight things would take the industry out of its current slump and carry it into unprecedented growth territory.
Article Tags:
Rtual Ormat, Tandar Body
Headaches Defined and Treatments that Actually Work
Headaches Defined and Treatments that Actually Work
Headaches are quite common. Everybody gets them, albeit some are more severe than others and some can indicate something more severe. Everyone has had them – sinus and allergy headaches, migraines, etc… This article will answer the questions of what causes them and how we should treat them.
Tension and allergy related headaches. When you feel pressure in your sinus areas or if you feel pressure around the top part of your head this is what you are experiencing. They are usually a dull bothersome ache that feels like a weight hanging from that area. They also tend to slow your reactions and make you lethargic. They can last from a few hours to a few days.
Allergy headaches are usually associated with sneezing, stuffy nose, and can drain from one side to the other. Treatment for these headaches is similar – acetaminophnen (ibuprofen) usually works to reduce the severity of this headache. Also, Claritin works well for alergy related symptoms. For more severe tension headaches doctors have been known to use oxygen machines and a few injectable drugs that give a more immediate effect.
Migraines. These can be quite serious and are by far the most painful. They feel like a burst blood vessel or artery as they have a pulsing feel to them. They can be so painful that they can make you sick to your stomach (nausea), cause light sensativity and even virtigo. Migraines are quite prevalent and can also indicate something more severe like a brain tumor, a weakened blood vessel, abnormal changes in blood pressure and pH, etc… Repeated patterns of migraines or other headaches should be brought to the attention of your doctor for this reason. Your body many times will tell you when something is wrong and a abnormal or irregular headache or bodyache that has become chronic is a good indication that something may be off. It may be as simple as a hormonal imbalance, new stress, etc… Regardless, your doctor knows best and it should be brought to their attention. There are over the counter products that contain pain relievers and caffeine that may work. Doctors usually prescribe beta blockers, calcium channel blockers, and other various narcotics.
Cluster or frontal headaches. These tend to be due to stress and the work environment usually. Glare from your computer monitor, strain from wearing the wrong prescription or incorrect and outdated prescription corrective lenses. I can’t stress this enough. Once a year, every year, go and get a routine eye exam. Your eyes will be healthier and you will be glad you did. These headaches tend to have a very sharp, stabbing pain. They tend to occur more often in males and are shortest in duration. Usually over the counter medicines are very helpful with these headaches. For more severe forms doctors will prescribe narcotics and similar.
These are the main types of headaches and treatments for them. Many doctors have lately found mental relaxation techniques like Yoga to be quite helpful in reducing and preventing headaches. This article is for information purposes only. For correct dignosis and medical advice you should seek the appropriately trained physician as they can best test, evaluate and recommend a course of treatment for you. If you experience irregular, sharp and severe headaches that are new, get to a doctor or hospital right away as it could be an indication of or a precursor of a stroke, aneurysm
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