What is streaming media?

It's a method of delivering an audio or video signal to your computer over the Internet, and differs from the "normal" method of receiving Internet audio in one important way: instead of having to download a ".wav", ".mp3" or other type of file completely before being able to listen to it, you hear the sound as it arrives at your computer, and therefore do not have to wait for a complete download (which would be difficult with a live broadcast anyway!).

Icon description and required software

Depending on the station, it will probably use a different streaming media formats. The icon near the link of the desired stream indicates whichformat and software is required for viewing. Here are the icons description:

	- requires , please use this link to download a player
	- requires , please use this link to download a player
	- requires , please use this link to download a player
	- requires , please use this link to download a player
	- requires , please use this link to download a player
	- requires , such as , please use this link to download a player
	- requires such as , please use this link to download a player

QuickTime is a multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc. capable of handling various formats of digital video, media clips, sound, text, animation, music, and several types of interactive panoramic images. It is available for the Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems, and powers a variety of software packages such as iTunes.

RealAudio is a proprietary audio format developed by RealNetworks. It uses a variety of audio codecs, ranging from low-bitrate formats that can be used over dialup modems, to high-fidelity formats for music. It can also be used as a streaming audio format, that is played at the same time as it is downloaded. Many internet radio stations use RealAudio to stream their programming over the internet in real time.

Windows Media Player (WMP) is a digital media player and media library application developed by Microsoft that is used for playing audio, video and images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as on Pocket PC and Windows Mobile-based devices. Editions of Windows Media Player were also released for Mac OS, Mac OS X and Solaris, but have since been discontinued.
In addition to being a media player, Windows Media Player includes the ability to rip music from and copy music to compact discs, synchronize content with a digital audio player (MP3 player) or other mobile devices, and let users purchase or rent music from a number of online music stores.
Windows Media Player replaced an earlier piece of software simply called Media Player, adding features beyond simple video or audio playback.
The default file formats are Windows Media Video (WMV), Windows Media Audio (WMA), and Advanced Systems Format (ASF), and supports its own XML based playlist format called Windows Playlist (WPL). The Zune software which actually is a modified version of Windows Media Player, additionally supports AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) audio, and MPEG-4 and H.264 video formats out-of-the-box.

The Adobe Flash Player is a widely distributed multimedia and application player created and distributed by Macromedia (a division of Adobe Systems). Flash Player runs SWF files that can be created by the Adobe Flash authoring tool, Adobe Flex or a number of other Macromedia and third party tools.
Adobe Flash, or simply Flash, refers to both a multimedia authoring program and the Adobe Flash Player, written and distributed by Adobe, that uses vector and raster graphics, a native scripting language called ActionScript and bidirectional streaming of video and audio. Strictly speaking, Adobe Flash is the authoring environment and Flash Player is the virtual machine used to run the Flash files, but in colloquial language these have become mixed: "Flash" can mean either the authoring environment, the player, or the application files.
Flash Player has support for an embedded scripting language called ActionScript (AS), which is based on ECMAScript. ActionScript has evolved in flexibility and complexity since its inception and may now be compared in capability to JavaScript (another ECMA-based scripting language). ActionScript matured from a script without variables to one that supports object-oriented code.
The Flash Player was originally designed to display 2-dimensional vector animation, but has since become suitable for creating rich Internet applications and streaming video and audio. It uses vector graphics to minimize file size and create files that save bandwidth and loading time. Flash is a common format for games, animations, and GUIs embedded into web pages.
The Flash Player is shipped with some browsers and is available for modern browsers (such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Opera, and Mozilla Firefox) as a plugin. Each new version of the plugin is completely backwards-compatible.

High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) is a lossy data compression scheme for digital audio. It is an extension of Low Complexity AAC (LC-AAC), optimized for low-bitrate applications such as streaming audio through the use of either Spectral Band Replication (SBR) alone — this is HE-AACv1 or just HE-AAC — or SBR plus Parametric Stereo (PS) — a combination referred to as HE-AACv2.
HE-AAC was developed by the MPEG as part of the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) standard (MPEG-4 Part 3) under the name High Efficiency AAC, but implementations are sometimes marketed by vendors under different trademarks, such as aacPlus.

SurferNETWORK, one of the leading providers of Internet broadcasting services, and Clarkson will work together on research, technology transfer, education and training projects that will benefit both organizations.
Since 1998 SurferNETWORK has been one of the leading providers of complete Internet broadcasting services. SurferNETWORK has always been recognized as a technology leader in providing every specialized feature a broadcaster might need. Serving radio stations, the faith-based community, sports teams, universities, and more, SurferNETWORK offers a high quality audio or video stream that connects instantly using patented Lightning Stream(TM) technology.