The world of human vocaloids

I realised that since I'm going to post a string of vids on Nico Dubbers, I should probably start off with an introduction to the world of human vocaloids but I got over enthusiastic and just published the videos straightaway.

Hopefully, this will be useful to people starting to get into them, so here we go~!

Vocaloid:
A vocaloid is a voice synthesizing program that can "sing" a song by allowing it's user to type in lyrics and "tuning" it into a melody. The program utilizes a voice bank that is "extracted" from an actual singer. There are a few official voice banks that Yamaha, the creator of vocaloid, has released. Each voice bank has been personified into an anime-like character. The first character to become a hit and make vocaloid successful is Miku Hatsune, voiced by Saki Fujita. There's a few others. If you're interested for more details, you should check out http://vocaloid.wikia.com/. It's a good place to start.

UTAU:
While youtube trawling for vocaloids, you may come across some covers marked as UTAU. This refers to fanmade vocaloids which are actually voice banks derived from the originals. E.g. adjusted to a different octave. Following the success of Miku Hatsune, both older and newer original vocaloids offer more choices for users, decreasing the influence of UTAU. An alternate form of UTAU does not involve the official Yamaha vocaloid program. It is a freeware developed for users to develop their own voice banks.

Human Vocaloid:
Human vocaloids are live singers with vocaloid-inspired avatars and typically do covers that are intended for any of the official/fanmade vocaloids.

Uttate Mita:
These are also live singers but do no use vocaloid-inspired avatars. It is this category that I'm currently spazzing over. They are ordinary people that upload their covers to Nico-Nico Douga just like what people do on youtube. Don't expect them to look like pop star idols because they're just typical everyday people like you and me. The fanbase for them has been growing to the point that they've become big enough to hold an official mini concert for some of the most popular singers.

Nico-Nico Douga
Asides the different singers, be it live or synthesized, there's also the definition or origin of Nico-Nico Douga. It's basically the Japan version of youtube with a twist. Viewers of a video on Nico-Nico Douga will see "marqueed" remarks made by previous commenters which gives the effect of watching the video with them. It made Nico-Nico Douga a hit video sharing website in Japan. It is also through here that the live singers I've come to fangirl over win their first "5 minutes of fame".

Except for the live concert, every of their other video I've come across did not reveal their face. The Japanese seems to be an intensely shy and mysterious group of people. T_T I'm dying of curiosity but it's so hard to search out their information when I don't know Japanese at all! Argh...