1.
Ticker symbol
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A ticker symbol or stock symbol is an abbreviation used to uniquely identify publicly traded shares of a particular stock on a particular stock market. A stock symbol may consist of letters, numbers or a combination of both, ticker symbol refers to the symbols that were printed on the ticker tape of a ticker tape machine. Stock symbols are unique identifiers assigned to each security traded on a particular market, for example, AAPL is for Apple Inc. OODH is for Orion DHC, Inc. and HD is for Home Depot, a stock symbol can consist of letters, numbers, or a combination of both, and is a way to uniquely identify that stock. The symbols were kept as short as possible to reduce the number of characters that had to be printed on the ticker tape, the allocation of symbols and formatting convention is specific to each stock exchange. In the US, for example, stock tickers are typically between 1 and 4 letters and represent the name where possible. In Europe, most exchanges use three-letter codes, for example Dutch consumer goods company Unilever traded on the Amsterdam Euronext exchange has the symbol UNA, while in Asia, numbers are often used as stock tickers to avoid issues for international investors when using non-Latin scripts. For example, the bank HSBCs stock traded on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange has the ticker symbol 0005, symbols sometimes change to reflect mergers. Prior to the 1999 merger with Mobil Oil, Exxon used a spelling of the company XON as its ticker symbol. The symbol of the firm after the merger was XOM, symbols are sometimes reused, in the US the single-letter symbols are particularly sought after as vanity symbols. For example, since Mar 2008 Visa Inc. has used the symbol V that had previously used by Vivendi which had delisted. To fully qualify a stock, both the ticker and the exchange or country of listing needs to be known, on many systems both must be specified to uniquely identify the security. This is often done by appending the location or exchange code to the ticker, although stock tickers identify a security, they are exchange dependent, generally limited to stocks and can change. These limitations have led to the development of other codes in financial markets to identify securities for settlement purposes, the most prevalent of these is the International Securities Identifying Number. An ISIN uniquely identifies a security and its structure is defined in ISO6166, Securities for which ISINs are issued include bonds, commercial paper, stocks, and warrants. The ISIN identifies the security, not the exchange on which it trades, for instance, Daimler AG stock trades on twenty-two different stock exchanges worldwide, and is priced in five different currencies, it has the same ISIN on each, though not the same ticker symbol. ISIN cannot specify a particular trade in this case, and another identifier, following the introduction of the Sequence trading platform in 1996, EPICs were renamed Tradable Instrument Display Mnemonics, but they are still widely referred to as EPICs. Stocks can also be identified using their SEDOL number or their ISIN, in the United States, modern letter-only ticker symbols were developed by Standard & Poors to bring a national standard to investing
2.
NASDAQ
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The Nasdaq Stock Market is an American stock exchange. It is the second-largest exchange in the world by market capitalization, the exchange platform is owned by Nasdaq, Inc. which also owns the Nasdaq Nordic and Nasdaq Baltic stock market network and several other US stock and options exchanges. When it was founded, NASDAQ stood for the acronym of National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations, NASDAQ was founded in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers, which divested itself of NASDAQ in a series of sales in 2000 and 2001. The Nasdaq Stock Market is owned and operated by Nasdaq, Inc. the stocks of which were listed on its own stock exchange marketing July 2,2002, when the Nasdaq Stock Market began trading on February 8,1971, it was the worlds first electronic stock market. At first, it was merely a system and did not provide a way to perform electronic trades. The Nasdaq Stock Market helped lower the spread but was unpopular among brokerages which made much of their money on the spread. As late as 1987, the NASDAQ exchange was still referred to as OTC in media. Over the years, the Nasdaq Stock Market became more of a market by adding trade and volume reporting. The Nasdaq Stock Market attracted new companies such as Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, Oracle and Dell. Its main index is the NASDAQ Composite, which has published since its inception. In 1992, the Nasdaq Stock Market joined with the London Stock Exchange to form the first intercontinental linkage of securities markets, the National Association of Securities Dealers spun off the Nasdaq Stock Market in 2000 to form a publicly traded company. In 2006, the status of the Nasdaq Stock Market was changed from a market to a licensed national securities exchange. In 2007, Nasdaq merged with OMX, an exchange operator in the Nordic countries, expanded its global footprint. NASDAQ OMX could be looking to acquire the American exchanges cash equities business, at the time, NYSE Euronext’s market value was $9.75 billion. Nasdaq was valued at $5.78 billion, while ICE was valued at $9.45 billion. Late in the month, Nasdaq was reported to be considering asking either ICE or the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to join in what would probably have to be, if it proceeded, an $11–12 billion counterbid. The European Association of Securities Dealers Automatic Quotation System was founded as a European equivalent to the Nasdaq Stock Market and it was purchased by NASDAQ in 2001 and became NASDAQ Europe. Operations were shut down, however, as a result of the burst of the dot-com bubble, in 2007, NASDAQ Europe was revived as Equiduct, and is currently operating under Börse Berlin
3.
Austin, Texas
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Austin is the capital of the U. S. state of Texas and the seat of Travis County. It is the 11th-most populous city in the U. S. and it is the fastest growing large city in the United States and the second most populous capital city after Phoenix, Arizona. As of the U. S. Census Bureaus July 1,2015 estimate and it is the cultural and economic center of the Austin–Round Rock metropolitan area, which had an estimated population of 2,056,405 as of July 1,2016. In the 1830s, pioneers began to settle the area in central Austin along the Colorado River, in 1839, the site was officially chosen to replace Houston as the new capital of the Republic of Texas and was incorporated under the name Waterloo. Shortly thereafter, the name was changed to Austin in honor of Stephen F. Austin, the Father of Texas and the republics first secretary of state. The city subsequently grew throughout the 19th century and became a center for government and education with the construction of the Texas State Capitol and the University of Texas at Austin. After a lull in growth from the Great Depression, Austin resumed its development into a city and, by the 1980s, it emerged as a center for technology. A number of Fortune 500 companies have headquarters or regional offices in Austin, including Amazon. com, cisco, eBay, Google, IBM, Intel, Oracle Corporation, Texas Instruments, 3M, and Whole Foods Market. Dells worldwide headquarters is located in nearby Round Rock, a suburb of Austin, residents of Austin are known as Austinites. They include a mix of government employees, college students, musicians, high-tech workers, blue-collar workers. The city also adopted Silicon Hills as a nickname in the 1990s due to an influx of technology. In the late 1800s, Austin was known as the City of the Violet Crown because of the glow of light across the hills just after sunset. Even today, many Austin businesses use the term Violet Crown in their name, Austin is known as a clean-air city for its stringent no-smoking ordinances that apply to all public places and buildings, including restaurants and bars. The FBI ranked Austin as the second-safest major city in the U. S. for the year 2012, U. S. News & World Report named Austin the best place to live in the U. S. in 2017. Austin, Travis County and Williamson County have been the site of habitation since at least 9200 BC. When settlers arrived from Europe, the Tonkawa tribe inhabited the area, the Comanches and Lipan Apaches were also known to travel through the area. Spanish colonists, including the Espinosa-Olivares-Aguirre expedition, traveled through the area for centuries, in 1730, three missions from East Texas were combined and reestablished as one mission on the south side of the Colorado River, in what is now Zilker Park, in Austin. The mission was in area for only about seven months
4.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
5.
Software
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Computer software, or simply software, is that part of a computer system that consists of data or computer instructions, in contrast to the physical hardware from which the system is built. In computer science and software engineering, computer software is all information processed by computer systems, programs, computer software includes computer programs, libraries and related non-executable data, such as online documentation or digital media. Computer hardware and software require each other and neither can be used on its own. At the lowest level, executable code consists of machine language instructions specific to an individual processor—typically a central processing unit, a machine language consists of groups of binary values signifying processor instructions that change the state of the computer from its preceding state. For example, an instruction may change the value stored in a storage location in the computer—an effect that is not directly observable to the user. An instruction may also cause something to appear on a display of the computer system—a state change which should be visible to the user. The processor carries out the instructions in the order they are provided, unless it is instructed to jump to a different instruction, the majority of software is written in high-level programming languages that are easier and more efficient for programmers, meaning closer to a natural language. High-level languages are translated into machine language using a compiler or an interpreter or a combination of the two, an outline for what would have been the first piece of software was written by Ada Lovelace in the 19th century, for the planned Analytical Engine. However, neither the Analytical Engine nor any software for it were ever created, the first theory about software—prior to creation of computers as we know them today—was proposed by Alan Turing in his 1935 essay Computable numbers with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem. This eventually led to the creation of the academic fields of computer science and software engineering. Computer science is more theoretical, whereas software engineering focuses on practical concerns. However, prior to 1946, software as we now understand it—programs stored in the memory of stored-program digital computers—did not yet exist, the first electronic computing devices were instead rewired in order to reprogram them. On virtually all platforms, software can be grouped into a few broad categories. There are many different types of software, because the range of tasks that can be performed with a modern computer is so large—see list of software. System software includes, Operating systems, which are collections of software that manage resources and provides common services for other software that runs on top of them. Supervisory programs, boot loaders, shells and window systems are parts of operating systems. In practice, an operating system bundled with additional software so that a user can potentially do some work with a computer that only has an operating system. Device drivers, which operate or control a particular type of device that is attached to a computer, utilities, which are computer programs designed to assist users in the maintenance and care of their computers
6.
Human resource management
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Human resource management is the management of human resources. It is designed to maximize employee performance in service of an employers strategic objectives, HR is primarily concerned with the management of people within organizations, focusing on policies and on systems. HR departments are responsible for overseeing employee benefits design, employee recruitment, training and development, performance appraisal, HR is a product of the human relations movement of the early 20th century, when researchers began documenting ways of creating business value through the strategic management of the workforce. Human Resources is a field focused on maximizing employee productivity. Human Resources professionals manage the capital of an organization and focus on implementing policies and processes. They can be specialists focusing in on recruiting, training, employee relations or benefits, Recruiting specialists are in charge of finding and hiring top talent. Training and development professionals ensure that employees are trained and have continuous development and this is done through training programs, performance evaluations and reward programs. Employee relations deals with concerns of employees when policies are broken, someone in benefits develops compensation structures, family leave programs, discounts and other benefits that employees can get. On the other side of the field are Human Resources Generalists or Business Partners and these human resources professionals could work in all areas or be labor relations representatives working with unionized employees. In startup companies, trained professionals may perform HR duties, academic and practitioner organizations may produce field-specific publications. Businesses are moving globally and forming more diverse teams and it is the role of human resources to make sure that these teams can function and people are able to communicate cross culturally and across borders. Due to changes in business, current topics in human resources are diversity, in the current global work environment, most companies focus on lowering employee turnover and on retaining the talent and knowledge held by their workforce. New hiring not only entails a high cost but also increases the risk of a newcomer not being able to replace the person who worked in a position before, HR departments strive to offer benefits that will appeal to workers, thus reducing the risk of losing corporate knowledge. The Human Resources field evolved first in 18th century Europe from an idea by Robert Owen. These men knew that people were crucial to the success of an organization and they expressed that the well being of employees led to perfect work. Without healthy workers, the organization would not survive, HR later emerged as a specific field in the early 20th century, influenced by Frederick Winslow Taylor. Taylor explored what he termed scientific management others later referred to Taylorism and he eventually keyed in on one of the principal inputs into the manufacturing process—labor—sparking inquiry into workforce productivity. Likewise in the United States, the worlds first institution of education dedicated to workplace studies — the School of Industrial
7.
Software patent
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According to the European Patent Office, there is no legal or conclusive definition for a software patent. According to the FFII, software patents should not exist under European law, globally the situation is more complex and reflects varying cultural views of invention itself. Most countries place some limits on the patenting of inventions involving software, for example, U. S. patent law excludes abstract ideas, and this has been used to refuse some patents involving software. There is a debate over the extent to which software patents should be granted, a patent is a set of exclusionary rights granted by a state to a patent holder for a limited period of time, usually 20 years. These rights are granted to patent applicants in exchange for their disclosure of the inventions, once a patent is granted in a given country, no person may make, use, sell or import/export the claimed invention in that country without the permission of the patent holder. Permission, where granted, is typically in the form of a license which conditions are set by the patent owner, to obtain a patent, inventors must file patent applications in each and every country in which they want a patent. For example, separate applications must be filed in Japan, China and these different countries and regional offices have different standards for granting patents. This is particularly true of software or computer-implemented inventions, especially where the software is implementing a business method, on 21 May 1962, a British patent application entitled A Computer Arranged for the Automatic Solution of Linear Programming Problems was filed. The invention was concerned with efficient memory management for the simplex algorithm, the patent was granted on August 17,1966 and seems to be one of the first software patents. Substantive law regarding the patentability of software and computer-implemented inventions, in Canada, courts have held that the use of a computer alone neither lends, nor reduces patentability of an invention. However, it is the position of the Canadian Patent Office that where a computer is an element of a patents claims. Article 52 EPC excludes programs for computers from patentability to the extent that a patent application relates to a program as such. Computer-implemented inventions that only solve a problem using a computer, rather than a technical problem, are considered unpatentable as lacking an inventive step. Nevertheless, the fact that an invention is useful in business does not mean it is not patentable if it solves a technical problem. Concerns have been raised that the new Unified Patent Court will be more open to patents generally. In April 2013, the German Parliament adopted a joint motion against the trend of patent offices to grant patents on software programs. Current case law in the UK states that an invention will only be regarded as an if it provides a contribution that is not excluded. A computer program implementing a process is therefore not an invention
8.
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
9.
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
10.
World Wide Web
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The World Wide Web is an information space where documents and other web resources are identified by Uniform Resource Locators, interlinked by hypertext links, and can be accessed via the Internet. English scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 and he wrote the first web browser computer program in 1990 while employed at CERN in Switzerland. The Web browser was released outside of CERN in 1991, first to research institutions starting in January 1991. The World Wide Web has been central to the development of the Information Age and is the primary tool billions of people use to interact on the Internet, Web pages are primarily text documents formatted and annotated with Hypertext Markup Language. In addition to formatted text, web pages may contain images, video, audio, embedded hyperlinks permit users to navigate between web pages. Multiple web pages with a theme, a common domain name. Website content can largely be provided by the publisher, or interactive where users contribute content or the content depends upon the user or their actions, websites may be mostly informative, primarily for entertainment, or largely for commercial, governmental, or non-governmental organisational purposes. In the 2006 Great British Design Quest organised by the BBC and the Design Museum, Tim Berners-Lees vision of a global hyperlinked information system became a possibility by the second half of the 1980s. By 1985, the global Internet began to proliferate in Europe, in 1988 the first direct IP connection between Europe and North America was made and Berners-Lee began to openly discuss the possibility of a web-like system at CERN. Such a system, he explained, could be referred to using one of the meanings of the word hypertext. At this point HTML and HTTP had already been in development for two months and the first Web server was about a month from completing its first successful test. While the read-only goal was met, accessible authorship of web content took longer to mature, with the concept, WebDAV, blogs, Web 2.0. The proposal was modelled after the SGML reader Dynatext by Electronic Book Technology, a NeXT Computer was used by Berners-Lee as the worlds first web server and also to write the first web browser, WorldWideWeb, in 1990. By Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee had built all the necessary for a working Web, the first web browser. The first web site, which described the project itself, was published on 20 December 1990, jones stored it on a magneto-optical drive and on his NeXT computer. On 6 August 1991, Berners-Lee published a summary of the World Wide Web project on the newsgroup alt. hypertext. This date is confused with the public availability of the first web servers. The first server outside Europe was installed at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in Palo Alto, California, accounts differ substantially as to the date of this event
11.
Unisys
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Unisys Corporation is an American global information technology company based in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, that provides a portfolio of IT services, software, and technology. It is the proprietor of the Burroughs and UNIVAC line of computers. Unisys traces its roots back to the founding of American Arithmometer Company in 1886, Unisys predecessor companies also include the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation, which developed the worlds first commercial digital computers, the BINAC and the UNIVAC. In September 1986 Unisys was formed through the merger of the mainframe corporations Sperry and Burroughs, the name was chosen from over 31,000 submissions in an internal competition when Chuck Ayoub submitted the word Unisys which was composed of parts of the words united, information and systems. The merger was the largest in the industry at the time. At the time of the merger, Unisys had approximately 120,000 employees, michael Blumenthal became CEO and Chairman after the merger and resigned in 1990 after several years of losses. James Unruh, became the new CEO and Chairman after Blumenthals departure and continued in that role until 1997, by 1997, layoffs had reduced world-wide employee count to approximately 30,000. In addition to hardware, both Burroughs and Sperry had a history of working on U. S. government contracts, Unisys continues to provide hardware, software, and services to various government agencies. In 1988 the company acquired Convergent Technologies, makers of CTOS, joseph McGrath served as CEO and President from January,2005, until September,2008, he was never named chairman. On October 7,2008, J. Edward Coleman replaced J. McGrath as CEO and was named Chairman of the board as well. On November 10,2008, the company was removed from the S&P500 index as the market capitalization of the company had fallen below the S&P500 minimum of $4 billion. On October 6,2014, Unisys announced that Coleman would leave the company effective December 1,2014, Unisys share price immediately fell when this news became public. On January 1,2015, Unisys officially named Peter Altabef as its new president and CEO, paul Weaver, who was formerly Lead Independent Director, was named Chairman. Unisys promotes itself as an information technology company that solves complex IT challenges for some of the world’s largest companies. Including the CIA, FBI, INS, ICE, and the U. S. military, the company maintains a portfolio of over 1,500 U. S. and non-U. S. The companys mainframe line, Clearpath, is capable of running not only mainframe software, the Clearpath system is available in either a UNISYS 2200-based system or an MCP-based system. In 2014, Unisys phased out its CMOS processors, completing the migration of its ClearPath mainframes to Intel x86 chips, the company announced its new ClearPath Dorado 8380 and 8390 systems in May,2015, its most powerful Dorado systems ever. In 2014, CRN ranked Unisys Stealth on its list of Top 10 products for combatting advanced persistent threat, Platform among the Top 10 coolest servers of 2014
12.
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
13.
Adobe Systems
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Adobe Systems Incorporated /əˈdoʊbiː/ is an American multinational computer software company. The company is headquartered in San Jose, California, United States, Adobe has historically focused upon the creation of multimedia and creativity software products, with a more recent foray towards rich Internet application software development. It is best known for Photoshop, an image editing software, Acrobat Reader, Adobe was founded in February 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke, who established the company after leaving Xerox PARC in order to develop and sell the PostScript page description language. In 1985, Apple Computer licensed PostScript for use in its LaserWriter printers, as of 2015, Adobe Systems has about 13,500 employees, about 40% of whom work in San Jose. The name of the company, Adobe, comes from Adobe Creek in Los Altos, California, Adobes corporate logo features a stylized A and was designed by the wife of John Warnock, Marva Warnock, who is a graphic designer. Adobes first products after PostScript were digital fonts, which released in a proprietary format called Type 1. Apple subsequently developed a standard, TrueType, which provided full scalability and precise control of the pixel pattern created by the fonts outlines. In the mid-1980s, Adobe entered the software market with Illustrator. Illustrator, which grew from the firms in-house font-development software, helped popularize PostScript-enabled laser printers, Adobe Systems entered NASDAQ in 1986. Its revenue has grown from roughly $1 billion in 1999 to roughly $4 billion in 2012, Adobes fiscal years run from December to November. For example, the 2007 fiscal year ended on November 30,2007, in 1989, Adobe introduced what was to become its flagship product, a graphics editing program for the Macintosh called Photoshop. Stable and full-featured, Photoshop 1.0 was ably marketed by Adobe, in 1993, Adobe introduced PDF, the Portable Document Format, and its Adobe Acrobat and Reader software. PDF is now an International Standard, ISO 32000-1,2008, in December 1991, Adobe released Adobe Premiere, which Adobe rebranded as Adobe Premiere Pro in 2003. In 1992, Adobe acquired OCR Systems, Inc, in 1994, Adobe acquired Aldus and added PageMaker and After Effects to its product line later in the year, it also controls the TIFF file format. In 1995, Adobe added FrameMaker, the long-document DTP application, in 1996, Adobe Systems Inc added Ares Software Corp. In 2002, Adobe acquired Canadian company Accelio, on December 12,2005, Adobe acquired its main rival, Macromedia, in a stock swap valued at about $3. Adobe released Adobe Media Player in April 2008, on April 27, Adobe discontinued development and sales of its older HTML/web development software, GoLive in favor of Dreamweaver. Adobe offered a discount on Dreamweaver for GoLive users and supports those who still use GoLive with online tutorials, on June 1, Adobe launched Acrobat. com, a series of web applications geared for collaborative work
14.
Apple Inc.
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Apple is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services. Apples consumer software includes the macOS and iOS operating systems, the media player, the Safari web browser. Its online services include the iTunes Store, the iOS App Store and Mac App Store, Apple Music, Apple was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne in April 1976 to develop and sell personal computers. It was incorporated as Apple Computer, Inc. in January 1977, Apple joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average in March 2015. In November 2014, Apple became the first U. S. company to be valued at over US$700 billion in addition to being the largest publicly traded corporation in the world by market capitalization. The company employs 115,000 full-time employees as of July 2015 and it operates the online Apple Store and iTunes Store, the latter of which is the worlds largest music retailer. Consumers use more than one billion Apple products worldwide as of March 2016, Apples worldwide annual revenue totaled $233 billion for the fiscal year ending in September 2015. This revenue accounts for approximately 1. 25% of the total United States GDP.1 billion, the corporation receives significant criticism regarding the labor practices of its contractors and its environmental and business practices, including the origins of source materials. Apple was founded on April 1,1976, by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, the Apple I kits were computers single-handedly designed and hand-built by Wozniak and first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club. The Apple I was sold as a motherboard, which was less than what is now considered a personal computer. The Apple I went on sale in July 1976 and was market-priced at $666.66, Apple was incorporated January 3,1977, without Wayne, who sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800. Multimillionaire Mike Markkula provided essential business expertise and funding of $250,000 during the incorporation of Apple, during the first five years of operations revenues grew exponentially, doubling about every four months. Between September 1977 and September 1980 yearly sales grew from $775,000 to $118m, the Apple II, also invented by Wozniak, was introduced on April 16,1977, at the first West Coast Computer Faire. It differed from its rivals, the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, because of its character cell-based color graphics. While early Apple II models used ordinary cassette tapes as storage devices, they were superseded by the introduction of a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drive and interface called the Disk II. The Apple II was chosen to be the platform for the first killer app of the business world, VisiCalc. VisiCalc created a market for the Apple II and gave home users an additional reason to buy an Apple II. Before VisiCalc, Apple had been a distant third place competitor to Commodore, by the end of the 1970s, Apple had a staff of computer designers and a production line
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IBM
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International Business Machines Corporation is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States, with operations in over 170 countries. The company originated in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and was renamed International Business Machines in 1924, IBM manufactures and markets computer hardware, middleware and software, and offers hosting and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology. IBM is also a research organization, holding the record for most patents generated by a business for 24 consecutive years. IBM has continually shifted its business mix by exiting commoditizing markets and focusing on higher-value, also in 2014, IBM announced that it would go fabless, continuing to design semiconductors, but offloading manufacturing to GlobalFoundries. Nicknamed Big Blue, IBM is one of 30 companies included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and one of the worlds largest employers, with nearly 380,000 employees. Known as IBMers, IBM employees have been awarded five Nobel Prizes, six Turing Awards, ten National Medals of Technology, in the 1880s, technologies emerged that would ultimately form the core of what would become International Business Machines. On June 16,1911, their four companies were amalgamated in New York State by Charles Ranlett Flint forming a fifth company, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company based in Endicott, New York. The five companies had 1,300 employees and offices and plants in Endicott and Binghamton, New York, Dayton, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, Washington, D. C. and Toronto. They manufactured machinery for sale and lease, ranging from commercial scales and industrial time recorders, meat and cheese slicers, to tabulators and punched cards. Thomas J. Watson, Sr. fired from the National Cash Register Company by John Henry Patterson, called on Flint and, Watson joined CTR as General Manager then,11 months later, was made President when court cases relating to his time at NCR were resolved. Having learned Pattersons pioneering business practices, Watson proceeded to put the stamp of NCR onto CTRs companies and his favorite slogan, THINK, became a mantra for each companys employees. During Watsons first four years, revenues more than doubled to $9 million, Watson had never liked the clumsy hyphenated title of the CTR and in 1924 chose to replace it with the more expansive title International Business Machines. By 1933 most of the subsidiaries had been merged into one company, in 1937, IBMs tabulating equipment enabled organizations to process unprecedented amounts of data, its clients including the U. S. During the Second World War the company produced small arms for the American war effort, in 1949, Thomas Watson, Sr. created IBM World Trade Corporation, a subsidiary of IBM focused on foreign operations. In 1952, he stepped down after almost 40 years at the company helm, in 1957, the FORTRAN scientific programming language was developed. In 1961, IBM developed the SABRE reservation system for American Airlines, in 1963, IBM employees and computers helped NASA track the orbital flight of the Mercury astronauts. A year later it moved its headquarters from New York City to Armonk. The latter half of the 1960s saw IBM continue its support of space exploration, on April 7,1964, IBM announced the first computer system family, the IBM System/360
16.
Axis Communications
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Axis Communications originally started out as an IT company selling print servers. It then applied its knowledge in networks and embedded computing to develop network cameras for the security industry, most of its products contain an embedded computer with some flash memory and run a custom version of Linux. One of its major breakthroughs in technology was the development of JFFS, Axis Communications was founded in 1984 by Martin Gren, Mikael Karlsson and Keith Bloodworth in Lund, Sweden. The company developed and sold protocol converters and printer interfaces for the connection of PC printers in IBM mainframe, in 1991, Axis Communications introduced a multi-protocol print server supporting both TCP/IP and NetWare. In 1995, the company introduced a file server independent, multi-protocol CD-ROM server, supporting TCP/IP and Windows, for Ethernet networks, also by 1995, Axis Communications had opened sales offices in Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo, Japan. In 1996, Axis Communications introduced the industrys first network camera and this was followed in 1999 by the AXIS2100 which was the first volume product using an embedded Linux. In 2004, the introduced the AXIS206, the then smallest network camera. Axis Communications introduced its first product with ONVIF support in 2009, there are now over 600 ONVIF conformant products available. Axis Communications operates offices in more than 40 countries and employs over 1,600 people, according to a 2013 market research report by industry analyst house IHS Research, Axis Communications is the global market leader in the network camera and video encoder markets. Installations include the City of Houston, Sydney Airport, Moscow Metro, canon’s entire portfolio of network video solutions is marketed by Axis Communications in the EMEA region and in North America since September 1,2016 and October 1,2016 respectively. Axis Communications develops and sells network cameras for many applications, products include PTZ, vandal resistant, thermal, outdoor, HDTV, wireless, motion detection and progressive scan cameras. It introduced the industry′s first thermal network camera, the AXIS Q1910, in January 2010 and the industry′s first HDTV network camera, P-Iris maintains image quality by continuously adjusting the iris position. This position, also referred to as a specific f-number, is where the lens works best, P-Iris was developed by Axis Communications and the Japanese lens maker Kowa. If the iris closes too much in bright situations this causes diffraction in the image, a smaller pixel can’t gather as much light as a larger pixel as it has less surface. This results in a need to be able to precisely adjust the levels of light coming into megapixel, the first product incorporating P-Iris technology was the AXIS P1346 network camera. Corridor format is a video format for HDTV network cameras making full use of the 16,9 aspect ratio when monitoring narrow view areas such as staircases, hallways. When using the regular landscape video surveillance format for narrow view areas, corridor format technology turns the 16,9 aspect ratio into 9,16 while HDTV standards such as full frame rate and resolution are maintained. Either the HDTV network camera is installed sideways or the 3-axis lens is rotated 90 degrees when mounting the camera, then the video image is rotated back 90 degrees by the internal camera software
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Macromedia
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Macromedia was an American graphics, multimedia and web development software company headquartered in San Francisco, California that produced such products as Flash and Dreamweaver. Its rival, Adobe Systems, acquired Macromedia on December 3,2005, Macromedia originated in the 1992 equal merger of Authorware Inc. and MacroMind-Paracomp. Director, an interactive multimedia-authoring tool used to make presentations, animations, CD-ROMs and information kiosks, Authorware was Macromedia’s principal product in the interactive learning market. Macromedia created Shockwave, a Director-viewer plugin for web browsers, the first multimedia playback in Netscape’s browser was a Director plug-in. Macromedia licensed Suns Java Programming Language in October 1995, in 1996, Macromedia purchased Future Wave Software and the product now known as Flash. By 2002 Macromedia produced more than 20 products and had 30 offices in 13 different countries, in January 1995, Macromedia acquired Altsys Corporation after Adobe Systems announced a merger with Altsys’ business partner, the Aldus Corporation. Altsys was the developer of the vector-drawing program FreeHand, which had been licensed by Aldus for marketing, with Macromedia’s acquisition of Altsys, it received FreeHand thus expanding its product line of multimedia graphics software to include illustration and design graphics software. FreeHands vector graphics rendering engine and other components within the program would prove useful to Macromedia in the development of web products like Fireworks. Macromedia made two acquisitions in 1996, first, in March 1996, Macromedia acquired iBand Software, makers of the fledgling Backstage HTML authoring-tool and application-server. Macromedia developed a new HTML-authoring tool, Macromedia Dreamweaver, around portions of the Backstage codebase, at the time, most professional web authors preferred to code HTML by hand using text editors because they wanted full control over the source. Macromedia acquired FutureWave Software, in November,1996, makers of FutureSplash Animator, because of the small size of the FutureSplash viewer application, it was particularly suited for download over the Web, where most users, at the time, had low-bandwidth connections. Macromedia renamed Splash to Macromedia Flash, and following the lead of Netscape, as of 2005, more computers worldwide had the Flash Player installed than any other Web media format, including Java, QuickTime, RealNetworks and Windows Media Player. Macromedia continued on the merger and acquisition trail, in December 1999, later that year, Macromedia also acquired help authoring software company eHelp Corporation, whose products included RoboHelp & RoboDemo. On April 18,2005, Adobe Systems announced an agreement to acquire Macromedia in a stock swap valued at about $3.4 billion on the last trading-day before the announcement. The acquisition took place on December 3,2005, and Adobe integrated the operations, networks. A similar suit had been filed in July, the class-action suit was dismissed by a federal judge on May 19,1998. On August 10,2000, Adobe System Incorporated claimed that the San Francisco-based Macromedia violated two of its patents on tabbed palettes, Macromedia countered with a claim that Adobe infringed on Macromedias patents for a draw-based editor for Web pages and a hierarchical structure editor for Web sites. In July 2002, Adobe and Macromedia reached an agreement that all claims in this series of patent suits
18.
BlackBerry Limited
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QNX, a subsidiary of BlackBerry, produces automotive software. BlackBerrys software and hardware products are used worldwide by various agencies and by car makers. The company is headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada and it was founded by Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin in 1984. Fregin left the company in 2007, in 1992 Lazaridis hired Jim Balsillie, and Lazaridis and Balsillie served as co-CEOs until January 22,2012. In November 2013, John S. Chen took over as CEO and his strategy is to subcontract manufacturing to Foxconn, and to focus on software technology. Research In Motion Limited was founded in March 1984 by Mike Lazaridis, at the time, Lazaridis was an engineering student at the University of Waterloo while Fregin was an engineering student at the University of Windsor. In 1990, RIM introduced the DigiSync Film KeyKode Reader, in 1991, RIM introduced the first Mobitex protocol converter. In 1992, RIM introduced the first Mobitex point-of-sale solution, a converter box that interfaced with existing point-of-sale terminal equipment to enable wireless communication. In 1993, RIM introduced the RIMGate, the first general purpose Mobitex X.25 gateway, in the same year, RIM launched Ericsson Mobidem AT and Intel wireless modem containing RIM modem firmware. In 1994, RIM introduced the first Mobitex mobile point-of-sale terminal, in the same year, RIM received the Emmy Award for Technical Innovation and the KPMG High Technology Award. In 1995, RIM introduced Freedom, the first Type II PCMCIA radio modem for Mobitex, in 1995, RIM was financed by Canadian institutional and venture capital investors through a private placement in the privately held company. A total of C$30,000,000 in pre-IPO financing was raised by the prior to its initial public offering on the Toronto Stock Exchange in January 1998 under the symbol RIM. In 1996, RIM introduced the Inter@ctive Pager, the first two-way messaging pager, the company worked with RAM Mobile Data and Ericsson to turn the Ericsson-developed Mobitex wireless data network into a two-way paging and wireless e-mail network. Pivotal in this development was the release of the Inter@ctive Pager 950, about the size of a bar of soap, this device competed against the Skytel two-way paging network developed by Motorola. In 1999, RIM introduced the BlackBerry 850 pager, the introduction of the BlackBerry set the stage for future enterprise-oriented products from the company, such as the BlackBerry 957 in April 2000, the first BlackBerry smartphone. During fiscal 1999-2001, total assets declared in the RIMs balance sheet grew eight-fold due to massive capacity expansion, the introduction of the Pearl series was highly successful, as was the subsequent Curve 8300 series and Bold 9000. Extensive carrier partnerships fuelled the expansion of BlackBerry users globally in both enterprise and consumer markets. Despite the arrival of the first Apple iPhone in 2007, BlackBerry sustained unprecedented market share growth well into 2011, the Storm sold well but suffered from mixed to poor reviews and poor customer satisfaction
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United States Patent and Trademark Office
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The USPTO is unique among federal agencies because it operates solely on fees collected by its users, and not on taxpayer dollars. The USPTO is based in Alexandria, Virginia, after a 2005 move from the Crystal City area of neighboring Arlington, the head of the USPTO is Michelle K. Lee. She took up her new role on January 13,2014, on March 13, she formally took office as Director after being nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the U. S. Senate. She formerly served as the Director of the USPTOs Silicon Valley satellite office, the USPTO cooperates with the European Patent Office and the Japan Patent Office as one of the Trilateral Patent Offices. The USPTO mission is to maintain a permanent, interdisciplinary historical record of all U. S. patent applications in order to fulfill objectives outlined in the United States Constitution. The legal basis for the United States patent system is Article 1, Section 8, an additional building in Arlington, Virginia, was opened in 2009. The USPTO was expected by 2014 to open its first ever satellite offices in Detroit, Dallas, Denver, the first satellite office opened in Detroit on July 13,2012. In 2013, due to the sequestration, the satellite office for Silicon Valley. However, renovation and infrastructure updates continued after the sequestration, and the Silicon Valley location is due to open in San Jose City Hall in mid-2015. As of September 30,2009, the end of the U. S. governments fiscal year, of those,6,242 were patent examiners and 388 were trademark examining attorneys, the rest are support staff. They are generally newly graduated scientists and engineers, recruited from universities around the nation. They hold degrees in scientific disciplines, but who do not necessarily hold law degrees. Unlike patent examiners, trademark examiners must be licensed attorneys, all examiners work under a strict, count-based production system. For every application, counts are earned by composing, filing, and mailing a first office action on the merits, the Patent Operations of the office is divided into nine different technology centers that deal with various arts. Prior to 2012, decisions of patent examiners may be appealed to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences, the United States Supreme Court may ultimately decide on a patent case. Similarly, decisions of trademark examiners may be appealed to the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, with subsequent appeals directed to the Federal Circuit, under the America Invents Act, the BPAI was converted to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board or PTAB. In recent years, the USPTO has seen increasing delays between when a patent application is filed and when it issues, to address its workload challenges, the USPTO has undertaken an aggressive program of hiring and recruitment. The USPTO hired 1,193 new patent examiners in Fiscal Year 2006,1,215 new examiners in fiscal 2007, in 2006, USPTO instituted a new training program for patent examiners called the Patent Training Academy
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