An innovative investigation of the inner workings of Spotify that traces the transformation of audio files into streamed experience. Spotify provides a streaming service that has been welcomed as disrupting the world of music. Yet such disruption always comes at a price. Spotify Teardown contests the tired claim that digital culture thrives on disruption. Borrowing the notion of "teardown" from reverse-engineering processes, in this book a team of five researchers have playfully disassembled Spotify's product and the way it is commonly understood. Spotify has been hailed as the solution to illicit downloading, but it began as a partly illicit enterprise that grew out of the Swedish file-sharing community. Spotify was originally praised as an innovative digital platform but increasingly resembles a media company in need of regulation, raising questions about the ways in which such cultural content as songs, books, and films are now typically made available online. Spotify Teardown combines interviews, participant observations, and other analyses of Spotify's "front end" with experimental, covert investigations of its "back end." The authors engaged in a series of interventions, which include establishing a record label for research purposes, intercepting network traffic with packet sniffers, and web-scraping corporate materials. The authors' innovative digital methods earned them a stern letter from Spotify accusing them of violating its terms of use; the company later threatened their research funding. Thus, the book itself became an intervention into the ethics and legal frameworks of corporate behavior.

Get up and running with the fundamentals of Amazon Alexa and build exciting IoT projects Key Features Gain hands-on experience of working with Amazon Echo and Alexa Build exciting IoT projects using Amazon Echo Learn about voice-enabled smart devices Book DescriptionAmazon Echo is a smart speaker developed by Amazon, which connects to Amazon's Alexa Voice Service and is entirely controlled by voice commands. Amazon Echo is currently being used for a variety of purposes such as home automation, asking generic queries, and even ordering a cab or pizza. Alexa Skills Projects starts with a basic introduction to Amazon Alexa and Echo. You will then deep dive into Alexa Programming concepts such as Intents, Slots, Lambdas and maintaining your skill's state using DynamoDB. You will get a clear understanding of how some of the most popular Alexa Skills work, and gain experience of working with real-world Amazon Echo applications. In the concluding chapters, you will explore the future of voice-enabled applications and their coverage with respect to the Internet of Things. By the end of the book, you will have learned to design Alexa Skills for specific purposes and interact with Amazon Echo to execute these skills. What you will learn Understand how Amazon Echo is already being used in various domains Discover how an Alexa Skill is architected Get a clear understanding of how some of the most popular Alexa Skills work Design Alexa Skills for specific purposes and interact with Amazon Echo to execute them Gain experience of programming for Amazon Echo Explore future applications of Amazon Echo and other voice-activated devices Who this book is forAlexa Skills Projects is for individuals who want to have a deep understanding of the underlying technology that drives Amazon Echo and Alexa, and how it can be integrated with the Internet of Things to develop hands-on projects.

Below the level of the musical note lies the realm of microsound, of sound particles lasting less than one-tenth of a second. Recent technological advances allow us to probe and manipulate these pinpoints of sound, dissolving the traditional building blocks of music -- notes and their intervals -- into a more fluid and supple medium. The sensations of point, pulse (series of points), line (tone), and surface (texture) emerge as particle density increases. Sounds coalesce, evaporate, and mutate into other sounds.Composers have used theories of microsound in computer music since the 1950s. Distinguished practitioners include Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis. Today, with the increased interest in computer and electronic music, many young composers and software synthesis developers are exploring its advantages. Covering all aspects of composition with sound particles, Microsound offers composition theory, historical accounts, technical overviews, acoustical experiments, descriptions of musical works, and aesthetic reflections. The book is accompanied by an audio CD of examples.

About This Book Enable a full cost-effective unified communications server solution Go from a single server configuration to a multi-site deployment Implement the Call Center module and take advantage of all the VoIP and Unified Communications features available Who This Book Is ForThis book is aimed at those who want to learn how to set up an Elastix Unified Communications Server without losing ground on Unified Communications and Voice over IP.

"GarageBand X - How it Works" from the GEM series (Graphically Enhanced Manuals) explains Apple's popular music production application "GarageBand" with rich illustrations and diagrams that are not found in any other manual (this is the only manual available). This 321 pages letter size book presents this software application in great detail with that easy to understand, visual approach.- What are Graphically Enhanced Manuals (GEM)? They're a new type of manual with a visual approach that helps you UNDERSTAND a program, not just LEARN it. No need to read through 500 of pages of dry text explanations. Rich graphics and diagrams help you to get that "aha" effect and make it easy to comprehend difficult concepts. The Graphically Enhanced Manuals help you master a program much faster with a much deeper understanding of concepts, features and workflows in a very intuitive way that is easy to understand.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking For Dummies, 4E will introduce readers to everything they need to know to get started with this advanced voice recognition software. Readers will get the most up-to-date information on the latest version of the software. PART I: Hatching and Launching Your Dragon Software Chapter 1: Preparing for Dragons Chapter 2: Basic Training Chapter 3: Launching and Controlling Your Dragon PART II: Fire-Breathing 101 Chapter 4: Basic Dictating Chapter 5: Selecting, Editing, and Correcting in the NaturallySpeaking Window Chapter 6: Fonts, Alignment, and All That: Formatting Your Document Chapter 7: Proofreading and Listening to Your Text Chapter 8: Using Recorded Speech Chapter 9: Mobile Edition and NaturallyMobile Recorder PART III: Giving Your Applications Wings Chapter 10: Dictating into Other Applications Chapter 11: Controlling Your Desktop and Windows by Voice Chapter 12: Using NaturalWord for Word and WordPerfect Chapter 13: A Dragon Online Chapter 14: Dragon Your Data Around Chapter 15: Staying Organized on the Move PART IV: Precision Flying Chapter 16: Feeding Your Dragon: RAM, Disk Space, and Speed Chapter 17: Speaking More Clearly to Your Dragon Chapter 18: Additional Training and Vocabulary Building Chapter 19: Improving Audio Input Chapter 20: Dealing with Change Chapter 21: Having Multiple Users or Vocabularies Chapter 22: Creating Your Own Commands Chapter 23: Taking Draconian Measures: Workarounds for Problems PART V: The Part of Tens Chapter 24: Ten Common Problems Chapter 25: Ten Time-and-Sanity-Saving Tips Chapter 26: Ten Mistakes to Avoid Chapter 27: Ten Stupid Dragon Tricks

The only manual for Logic Remote, covering all the features of this companion app for the new "Logic Pro X." "Logic Remote (iPad) - How it Works" from the GEM series (Graphically Enhanced Manuals) explains Apple's brand new iPad app "Logic Remote" with rich illustrations and diagrams that are not found in any other manual or even in Apple's own documentation. This 68 pages letter size book presents this software application in great detail with that easy to understand, visual approach. This book is in fact the only comprehensive manual for this app.
What are Graphically Enhanced Manuals (GEM)?
They're a new type of manual with a visual approach that helps you UNDERSTAND a program, not just LEARN it. No need to read through 500 of pages of dry text explanations. Rich graphics and diagrams help you to get that "aha" effect and make it easy to comprehend difficult concepts. The Graphically Enhanced Manuals help you master a program much faster with a much deeper understanding of concepts

Spoken Dialogue Systems Technology and Design covers key topics in the field of spoken language dialogue interaction from a variety of leading researchers. It brings together several perspectives in the areas of corpus annotation and analysis, dialogue system construction, as well as theoretical perspectives on communicative intention, context-based generation, and modelling of discourse structure. These topics are all part of the general research and development within the area of discourse and dialogue with an emphasis on dialogue systems; corpora and corpus tools and semantic and pragmatic modelling of discourse and dialogue.