1.
AOL
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AOL Inc. is an American multinational mass media corporation based in New York, a subsidiary of Verizon Communications. AOL was one of the pioneers of the Internet in the mid-1990s. It originally provided a service to millions of Americans, as well as providing a web portal, e-mail, instant messaging. At the height of its popularity, it purchased the media conglomerate Time Warner in the largest merger in U. S. history, AOL rapidly declined thereafter, partly due to the decline of dial-up to broadband. AOL was eventually spun off from Time Warner in 2009, with Tim Armstrong appointed the new CEO, under his leadership, the company invested in media brands and advertising technologies. On June 23,2015, AOL was acquired by Verizon Communications for $4.4 billion, in the following months, AOL also made a deal with Microsoft and acquired several tech properties, including Millennial Media and Kanvas to bolster their mobile ad-tech capabilities. AOL began in 1983, as a venture called Control Video Corporation. Its sole product was a service called GameLine for the Atari 2600 video game console. Subscribers bought a modem from the company for US$49.95, GameLine permitted subscribers to temporarily download games and keep track of high scores, at a cost of US$1 per game. The telephone disconnected and the game would remain in GameLines Master Module and playable until the user turned off the console or downloaded another game. In January 1983, Steve Case was hired as a consultant for Control Video on the recommendation of his brother. In May 1983, Jim Kimsey became a consultant for Control Video. Kimsey was brought in by his West Point friend Frank Caufield, in early 1985, von Meister left the company. The technical team consisted of Marc Seriff, Tom Ralston, Ray Heinrich, Steve Trus, Ken Huntsman, Janet Hunter, Dave Brown, Craig Dykstra, Doug Coward, in 1987, Case was promoted again to executive vice-president. Kimsey soon began to groom Case to take over the role of CEO, Kimsey changed the companys strategy, and in 1985, launched a dedicated online service for Commodore 64 and 128 computers, originally called Quantum Link. The Quantum Link software was based on software licensed from PlayNet, the service was different from other online services as it used the computing power of the Commodore 64 and the Apple II rather than just a dumb terminal. It passed tokens back and forth and provided a fixed price service tailored for home users, in May 1988, Quantum and Apple launched AppleLink Personal Edition for Apple II and Macintosh computers. In August 1988, Quantum launched PC Link, a service for IBM-compatible PCs developed in a joint venture with the Tandy Corporation, after the company parted ways with Apple in October 1989, Quantum changed the services name to America Online
2.
JPEG
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JPEG is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10,1 compression with little loss in image quality. JPEG compression is used in a number of file formats. These format variations are not distinguished, and are simply called JPEG. The term JPEG is an initialism/acronym for the Joint Photographic Experts Group, the MIME media type for JPEG is image/jpeg, except in older Internet Explorer versions, which provides a MIME type of image/pjpeg when uploading JPEG images. JPEG files usually have an extension of. jpg or. jpeg. JPEG/JFIF supports a maximum size of 65, 535×65,535 pixels. JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, the name of the committee created the JPEG standard. The Joint stood for ISO TC97 WG8 and CCITT SGVIII, in 1987 ISO TC97 became ISO/IEC JTC1 and in 1992 CCITT became ITU-T. Currently on the JTC1 side JPEG is one of two sub-groups of ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1, Subcommittee 29, Working Group 1 – titled as Coding of still pictures, on the ITU-T side ITU-T SG16 is the respective body. The original JPEG group was organized in 1986, issuing the first JPEG standard in 1992, which was approved in September 1992 as ITU-T Recommendation T.81 and in 1994 as ISO/IEC 10918-1. The JPEG standard specifies the codec, which defines how an image is compressed into a stream of bytes and decompressed back into an image, the Exif and JFIF standards define the commonly used file formats for interchange of JPEG-compressed images. JPEG standards are formally named as Information technology – Digital compression, ISO/IEC10918 consists of the following parts, Ecma International TR/98 specifies the JPEG File Interchange Format, the first edition was published in June 2009. The JPEG compression algorithm is at its best on photographs and paintings of scenes with smooth variations of tone. For web usage, where the amount of used for an image is important. JPEG/Exif is also the most common format saved by digital cameras, on the other hand, JPEG may not be as well suited for line drawings and other textual or iconic graphics, where the sharp contrasts between adjacent pixels can cause noticeable artifacts. Such images may be saved in a lossless graphics format such as TIFF, GIF, PNG
3.
Brand
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A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or other feature that distinguishes one seller’s product from those of others. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising, however, the term has been extended to mean a strategic personality for a product or company, so that ‘brand’ now suggests the values and promises that a consumer may perceive and buy into. Branding is a set of marketing and communication methods that help to distinguish a company from competitors, the key components that form a brands toolbox include a brand’s identity, brand communication, brand awareness, brand loyalty, and various branding strategies. Brand equity is the totality of a brands worth and is validated by assessing the effectiveness of these branding components. To reach such an invaluable brand prestige requires a commitment to a way of doing business. A corporation who exhibits a strong brand culture is dedicated on producing intangible outputs such as customer satisfaction, reduced price sensitivity and customer loyalty. A brand is in essence a promise to its customers that they can expect long-term security, when a customer is familiar with a brand or favours it incomparably to its competitors, this is when a corporation has reached a high level of brand equity. Many companies are beginning to understand there is often little to differentiate between products in the 21st century. Branding remains the last bastion for differentiation, in accounting, a brand defined as an intangible asset is often the most valuable asset on a corporation’s balance sheet. The word ‘brand’ is often used as a referring to the company that is strongly identified with a brand. Marque or make are often used to denote a brand of motor vehicle, a concept brand is a brand that is associated with an abstract concept, like breast cancer awareness or environmentalism, rather than a specific product, service, or business. A commodity brand is a associated with a commodity. The word, brand, derives from Dutch brand meaning to burn and this product was developed at Dhosi Hill, an extinct volcano in northern India. Roman glassmakers branded their works, with Ennion being the most prominent, the Italians used brands in the form of watermarks on paper in the 13th century. Blind Stamps, hallmarks, and silver-makers marks are all types of brand, industrialization moved the production of many household items, such as soap, from local communities to centralized factories. When shipping their items, the factories would literally brand their logo or insignia on the barrels used, Bass & Company, the British brewery, claims their red-triangle brand as the worlds first trademark. Another example comes from Antiche Fornaci Giorgi in Italy, which has stamped or carved its bricks with the same proto-logo since 1731, cattle-branding has been used since Ancient Egypt. The term, maverick, originally meaning an un-branded calf, came from a Texas pioneer rancher, Sam Maverick, use of the word maverick spread among cowboys and came to apply to unbranded calves found wandering alone
4.
Microsoft
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Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite, and Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup, as of 2016, it was the worlds largest software maker by revenue, and one of the worlds most valuable companies. Microsoft was founded by Paul Allen and Bill Gates on April 4,1975, to develop and it rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Microsoft Windows. The companys 1986 initial public offering, and subsequent rise in its share price, since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made a number of corporate acquisitions. In May 2011, Microsoft acquired Skype Technologies for $8.5 billion, in June 2012, Microsoft entered the personal computer production market for the first time, with the launch of the Microsoft Surface, a line of tablet computers. The word Microsoft is a portmanteau of microcomputer and software, Paul Allen and Bill Gates, childhood friends with a passion for computer programming, sought to make a successful business utilizing their shared skills. In 1972 they founded their first company, named Traf-O-Data, which offered a computer that tracked and analyzed automobile traffic data. Allen went on to pursue a degree in science at Washington State University. The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systemss Altair 8800 microcomputer, Allen suggested that they could program a BASIC interpreter for the device, after a call from Gates claiming to have a working interpreter, MITS requested a demonstration. Since they didnt actually have one, Allen worked on a simulator for the Altair while Gates developed the interpreter and they officially established Microsoft on April 4,1975, with Gates as the CEO. Allen came up with the name of Micro-Soft, as recounted in a 1995 Fortune magazine article. In August 1977 the company formed an agreement with ASCII Magazine in Japan, resulting in its first international office, the company moved to a new home in Bellevue, Washington in January 1979. Microsoft entered the OS business in 1980 with its own version of Unix, however, it was MS-DOS that solidified the companys dominance. For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, branding it as MS-DOS, following the release of the IBM PC in August 1981, Microsoft retained ownership of MS-DOS. Since IBM copyrighted the IBM PC BIOS, other companies had to engineer it in order for non-IBM hardware to run as IBM PC compatibles. Due to various factors, such as MS-DOSs available software selection, the company expanded into new markets with the release of the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as well as with a publishing division named Microsoft Press. Paul Allen resigned from Microsoft in 1983 after developing Hodgkins disease, while jointly developing a new OS with IBM in 1984, OS/2, Microsoft released Microsoft Windows, a graphical extension for MS-DOS, on November 20,1985. Once Microsoft informed IBM of NT, the OS/2 partnership deteriorated, in 1990, Microsoft introduced its office suite, Microsoft Office
5.
Internet Archive
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The Internet Archive is a San Francisco–based nonprofit digital library with the stated mission of universal access to all knowledge. As of October 2016, its collection topped 15 petabytes, in addition to its archiving function, the Archive is an activist organization, advocating for a free and open Internet. Its web archive, the Wayback Machine, contains over 150 billion web captures, the Archive also oversees one of the worlds largest book digitization projects. Founded by Brewster Kahle in May 1996, the Archive is a 501 nonprofit operating in the United States. It has a budget of $10 million, derived from a variety of sources, revenue from its Web crawling services, various partnerships, grants, donations. Its headquarters are in San Francisco, California, where about 30 of its 200 employees work, Most of its staff work in its book-scanning centers. The Archive has data centers in three Californian cities, San Francisco, Redwood City, and Richmond, the Archive is a member of the International Internet Preservation Consortium and was officially designated as a library by the State of California in 2007. Brewster Kahle founded the Archive in 1996 at around the time that he began the for-profit web crawling company Alexa Internet. In October 1996, the Internet Archive had begun to archive and preserve the World Wide Web in large quantities, the archived content wasnt available to the general public until 2001, when it developed the Wayback Machine. In late 1999, the Archive expanded its collections beyond the Web archive, Now the Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software. It hosts a number of projects, the NASA Images Archive, the contract crawling service Archive-It. According to its web site, Most societies place importance on preserving artifacts of their culture, without such artifacts, civilization has no memory and no mechanism to learn from its successes and failures. Our culture now produces more and more artifacts in digital form, the Archives mission is to help preserve those artifacts and create an Internet library for researchers, historians, and scholars. In August 2012, the Archive announced that it has added BitTorrent to its file download options for over 1.3 million existing files, on November 6,2013, the Internet Archives headquarters in San Franciscos Richmond District caught fire, destroying equipment and damaging some nearby apartments. The nonprofit Archive sought donations to cover the estimated $600,000 in damage, in November 2016, Kahle announced that the Internet Archive was building the Internet Archive of Canada, a copy of the archive to be based somewhere in the country of Canada. The announcement received widespread coverage due to the implication that the decision to build an archive in a foreign country was because of the upcoming presidency of Donald Trump. Kahle was quoted as saying that on November 9th in America and it was a firm reminder that institutions like ours, built for the long-term, need to design for change. For us, it means keeping our cultural materials safe, private and it means preparing for a Web that may face greater restrictions
6.
SilverFast
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SilverFast is the name of a family of software for image scanning and processing, including photos, documents and slides, developed by LaserSoft Imaging. SilverFast was introduced in 1995, Version 3.0 was finished in December 1996 and it is the only software supporting the Heidelberg scanner on Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7. Some scanner manufacturers bundle their hardware with SilverFast, in 2011 version 8 was introduced, and HDR imaging software followed in 2012. Optional, 1)Multi-Exposure, 2)ICC Printer Calibration, 3)PhotoProof, 4)ColorServer It can be used as an application, as a Photoshop plug-in. It contains features for reading the data from the camera, for processing, optimizing. SilverFast DC Pro has the functionality of the scanner-software SilverFast Ai for digital images, supported are the standard image formats such as JPEG and TIFF, and unprocessed raw image format. The access to the raw data permits manual color correction or sharpening instead of using the automatic adjustment. SilverFast DC supports Adobe DNG and many models, some optimized by special camera profiles. With the included IT8-target, individual ICC profiles can be self-made for every camera, SilverFast DC Pro also has automated color optimization AACO, support for JPEG2000, unsharpmasking USMPlus, CloneTool, and an improved PrinTao module with text and layout functions. SilverFast HDR is a program for processing 48-bit raw images. Many newer scanners are able to output the image directly with all existing data instead of breaking it down to 24-bit and this 48-bit raw image can be saved immediately and digital processing performed later. SilverFast HDR can be used as a native plug-in for Adobe Photoshop, as a universal TWAIN module, the HDR Studio has AACO, JPEG2000, USMPlus, CloneTool and PrinTao. With version 6.6.1 any SilverFast HDR version supports the proprietary RAW data format HDRi and these 64-bit HDRi color files and 32-bit HDRi greyscale files contain additional 16-bit infrared RAW data besides the 48-bit color RAW data and 16-bit greyscale RAW data respectively. Therefore, a scanner with a channel available to the software is necessary. This RAW format can keep any readable image information for later post-processing, the acronym HDR as used by SilverFast is not related to High-dynamic-range imaging, a widely used technique to increase the dynamic range of images. The data format is, The SilverFast Archive Suite includes SilverFast Ai IT8 and this package is suitable for archiving slides, negatives, and photos, whereas the post processing can take place anytime after scanning. Templates can be used to make workflow easier and faster by reducing similar, PrinTao has predefined templates to which the user can add self-made ones. The PrinTao module is already included in the SilverFast Ai / DC / HDR Studio versions and this is accomplished by scanning the original multiple times with different exposure times, increasing the dynamic range and preserving detail in the light and shadow areas of the image
7.
Image
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Images may be two-dimensional, such as a photograph or screen display, or three-dimensional, such as a statue or hologram. They may be captured by optical devices – such as cameras, mirrors, lenses, telescopes, microscopes, etc. and natural objects and phenomena, such as the human eye or water. The word image is used in the broader sense of any two-dimensional figure such as a map, a graph. A volatile image is one that only for a short period of time. This may be a reflection of an object by a mirror, a fixed image, also called a hard copy, is one that has been recorded on a material object, such as paper or textile by photography or any other digital process. A mental image exists in a mind, as something one remembers or imagines. The subject of an image need not be real, it may be a concept, such as a graph, function. For example, Sigmund Freud claimed to have dreamed purely in aural-images of dialogs, a still image is a single static image, as distinguished from a kinetic image. This phrase is used in photography, visual media and the industry to emphasize that one is not talking about movies. A film still is a taken on the set of a movie or television program during production. In literature, imagery is a picture which appeals to the senses. It can both be figurative and literal, a moving image is typically a movie or video, including digital video. It could also be an animated display such as a zoetrope, library of Congress – Format Descriptions for Still Images Image Processing – Online Open Research Group Legal Issues Regarding Images Image Copyright Case
8.
GIF
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The format supports up to 8 bits per pixel for each image, allowing a single image to reference its own palette of up to 256 different colors chosen from the 24-bit RGB color space. It also supports animations and allows a separate palette of up to 256 colors for each frame, GIF images are compressed using the Lempel–Ziv–Welch lossless data compression technique to reduce the file size without degrading the visual quality. This compression technique was patented in 1985, controversy over the licensing agreement between the software patent holder, Unisys, and CompuServe in 1994 spurred the development of the Portable Network Graphics standard. By 2004 all the relevant patents had expired, CompuServe introduced the GIF format in 1987 to provide a color image format for their file downloading areas, replacing their earlier run-length encoding format, which was black and white only. The original version of the GIF format was called 87a, in 1989, CompuServe released an enhanced version, called 89a, which added support for animation delays, transparent background colors, and storage of application-specific metadata. The 89a specification also supports incorporating text labels as text, but as there is control over display fonts. The two versions can be distinguished by looking at the first six bytes of the file, which, CompuServe encouraged the adoption of GIF by providing downloadable conversion utilities for many computers. By December 1987, for example, an Apple IIGS user could view pictures created on an Atari ST or Commodore 64, GIF was one of the first two image formats commonly used on Web sites, the other being the black-and-white XBM. In September 1995 Netscape Navigator 2.0 added Animated GIF support, the feature of storing multiple images in one file, accompanied by control data, is used extensively on the Web to produce simple animations. As a noun, the word GIF is found in the editions of many dictionaries. In 2012, the American wing of the Oxford University Press recognized GIF as a verb as well, meaning to create a GIF file, as in GIFing was perfect medium for sharing scenes from the Summer Olympics. The presss lexicographers voted it their word of the year, saying that GIFs have evolved into a tool with serious applications including research, in May 2015 Facebook added GIF support, even though they originally didnt support them on their site. The creators of the format pronounced the word as jif with a soft G /ˈdʒɪf/ as in gin, the word is now also widely pronounced with a hard G /ˈɡɪf/ as in gift. The American Heritage Dictionary cites both, indicating jif as the pronunciation, while Cambridge Dictionary of American English offers only the hard-G pronunciation. Merriam-Websters Collegiate Dictionary and the OED cite both pronunciations, but place gif in the default position, the New Oxford American Dictionary gave only jif in its 2nd edition but updated it to jif, gif in its 3rd edition. The disagreement over the pronunciation led to heated Internet debate, the White House and TV program Jeopardy. Also waded into the debate during 2013, GIFs are suitable for sharp-edged line art with a limited number of colors. This takes advantage of the formats lossless compression, which favors flat areas of color with well defined edges
9.
Client (computing)
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A client is a piece of computer hardware or software that accesses a service made available by a server. The server is often on another system, in which case the client accesses the service by way of a network. The term applies to the role that programs or devices play in the client–server model, a client is a computer program that, as part of its operation, relies on sending a request to another computer program. For example, web browsers are clients that connect to web servers, email clients retrieve email from mail servers. Online chat uses a variety of clients, which depending on the chat protocol being used. Multiplayer video games or online video games may run as a client on each computer, the term client may also be applied to computers or devices that run the client software or users that use the client software. A client is part of a model, which is still used today. Clients and servers may be computer programs run on the same machine, combined with Internet sockets, programs may connect to a service operating on a possibly remote system through the Internet protocol suite. Servers wait for clients to initiate connections that they may accept. The term was first applied to devices that were not capable of running their own stand-alone programs and these dumb terminals were clients of the time-sharing mainframe computer. In one classification, client computers and devices are either fat clients, thin clients, or hybrid clients. A fat client, also known as a client or thick client, is a client that performs the bulk of any data processing operations itself. The personal computer is an example of a fat client, because of its relatively large set of features and capabilities. For example, a running a CAD program that ultimately shares the result of its work on a network is a fat client. A thin client is a sort of client. Thin clients use the resources of the host computer, a thin client generally only presents processed data provided by an application server, which performs the bulk of any required data processing. A device using web application is a thin client, a hybrid client is a mixture of the above two client models. Similar to a fat client, it processes locally, but relies on the server for storing persistent data and this approach offers features from both the fat client and the thin client
10.
Image compression
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Image compression is a type of data compression applied to digital images, to reduce their cost for storage or transmission. Algorithms may take advantage of visual perception and the properties of image data to provide superior results compared with generic compression methods. Image compression may be lossy or lossless, lossless compression is preferred for archival purposes and often for medical imaging, technical drawings, clip art, or comics. Lossy compression methods, especially used at low bit rates. Lossy methods are suitable for natural images such as photographs in applications where minor loss of fidelity is acceptable to achieve a substantial reduction in bit rate. Lossy compression that produces negligible differences may be called visually lossless, the selected colors are specified in the color palette in the header of the compressed image. Each pixel just references the index of a color in the color palette and this is the most commonly used method. In particular, a Fourier-related transform such as the Discrete Cosine Transform is widely used, N. Ahmed, T. Natarajan and K. R. Rao, Discrete Cosine Transform, IEEE Trans. The DCT is sometimes referred to as DCT-II in the context of a family of discrete cosine transforms, the more recently developed wavelet transform is also used extensively, followed by quantization and entropy coding. Other names for scalability are progressive coding or embedded bitstreams, despite its contrary nature, scalability also may be found in lossless codecs, usually in form of coarse-to-fine pixel scans. Scalability is especially useful for previewing images while downloading them or for providing quality access to e. g. databases. There are several types of scalability, Quality progressive or layer progressive, resolution progressive, First encode a lower image resolution, then encode the difference to higher resolutions. Component progressive, First encode grey, then color, certain parts of the image are encoded with higher quality than others. This may be combined with scalability, compressed data may contain information about the image which may be used to categorize, search, or browse images. Such information may include color and texture statistics, small preview images, Compression algorithms require different amounts of processing power to encode and decode. Some high compression algorithms require high processing power, the quality of a compression method often is measured by the Peak signal-to-noise ratio. Image compression from MIT OpenCourseWare Image Coding Fundamentals A study about image compression Data Compression Basics FAQ, from comp. compression IPRG Open group related to image processing research resources
