1.
Sony
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Sony Corporation is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation that is headquartered in Kōnan, Minato, Tokyo. Its diversified business includes consumer and professional electronics, gaming, entertainment, the company is one of the leading manufacturers of electronic products for the consumer and professional markets. Sony was ranked 116th on the 2015 list of Fortune Global 500 and these make Sony one of the most comprehensive entertainment companies in the world. The group consists of Sony Corporation, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Financial Holdings and others. Sony is among the Semiconductor sales leaders by year and as of 2013, the companys current slogan is BE MOVED. Their former slogans were make. believe, like. no. other, Sony has a weak tie to the SMFG keiretsu, the successor to the Mitsui keiretsu. Sony began in the wake of World War II, in 1946, Masaru Ibuka started an electronics shop in a department store building in Tokyo. The company had $530 in capital and a total of eight employees, in the following year he was joined by his colleague, Akio Morita, and they founded a company called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo 東京通信工業. The company built Japans first tape recorder, called the Type-G, in 1958 the company changed its name to Sony. When Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo was looking for a name to use to market themselves, they strongly considered using their initials. The primary reason they did not is that the railway company Tokyo Kyuko was known as TTK, the company occasionally used the acronym Totsuko in Japan, but during his visit to the United States, Morita discovered that Americans had trouble pronouncing that name. Another early name that was tried out for a while was Tokyo Teletech until Akio Morita discovered that there was an American company already using Teletech as a brand name, the name Sony was chosen for the brand as a mix of two words. One was the Latin word sonus, which is the root of sonic and sound, and the other was sonny, a common slang term used in 1950s America to call a boy. In the 1950s Japan sonny boys, was a word into Japanese which connoted smart and presentable young men. The first Sony-branded product, the TR-55 transistor radio, appeared in 1955, at the time of the change, it was extremely unusual for a Japanese company to use Roman letters to spell its name instead of writing it in kanji. The move was not without opposition, TTKs principal bank at the time and they pushed for a name such as Sony Electronic Industries, or Sony Teletech. Akio Morita was firm, however, as he did not want the company tied to any particular industry. Eventually, both Ibuka and Mitsui Banks chairman gave their approval, according to Schiffer, Sonys TR-63 radio cracked open the U. S. market and launched the new industry of consumer microelectronics
2.
Personal digital assistant
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A personal digital assistant, also known as a handheld PC, or personal data assistant, is a mobile device that functions as a personal information manager. PDAs were largely discontinued in the early 2010s after the adoption of highly capable smartphones, in particular those based on iOS. Nearly all PDAs have the ability to connect to the Internet, a PDA has an electronic visual display, letting it include a web browser. All models also have audio capabilities, allowing usage as a media player. Most PDAs can access the Internet, intranets or extranets via Wi-Fi or Wireless Wide Area Networks, the first PDA was released in 1984 by Psion, the Organizer, followed by Psions Series 3, in 1991. The latter began to resemble the more familiar PDA style, including a full keyboard, the term PDA was first used on January 7,1992 by Apple Computer CEO John Sculley at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, referring to the Apple Newton. In 1994, IBM introduced the first PDA with full mobile phone functionality, the IBM Simon, then in 1996, Nokia introduced a PDA with full mobile phone functionality, the 9000 Communicator, which became the worlds best-selling PDA. The Communicator spawned a new category of PDAs, the PDA phone, another early entrant in this market was Palm, with a line of PDA products which began in March 1996. A typical PDA has a touchscreen for entering data, a card slot for data storage. PDAs with wireless data connections also typically include an email client, many of the original PDAs, such as the Apple Newton and Palm Pilot, featured a touchscreen for user interaction, having only a few buttons—usually reserved for shortcuts to often-used programs. Some touchscreen PDAs, including Windows Mobile devices, had a stylus to facilitate making selections. The user interacts with the device by tapping the screen to select buttons or issue commands, typical methods of entering text on touchscreen PDAs include, A virtual keyboard, where a keyboard is shown on the touchscreen. Text is entered by tapping the on-screen keyboard with a finger or stylus, an external keyboard connected via USB, Infrared port, or Bluetooth. Some users may choose a chorded keyboard for one-handed use, handwriting recognition, where letters or words are written on the touchscreen, often with a stylus, and the PDA converts the input to text. Recognition and computation of handwritten horizontal and vertical formulas, such as 1 +2 =, stroke recognition allows the user to make a predefined set of strokes on the touchscreen, sometimes in a special input area, representing the various characters to be input. The strokes are often simplified character shapes, making them easier for the device to recognize, one widely known stroke recognition system is Palms Graffiti. Despite research and development projects, end-users experience mixed results with handwriting recognition systems, some find it frustrating and inaccurate, while others are satisfied with the quality of the recognition. Touchscreen PDAs intended for use, such as the BlackBerry and Palm Treo, usually also offer full keyboards and scroll wheels or thumbwheels to facilitate data entry
3.
Palm OS
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Palm OS is a discontinued mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc. for personal digital assistants in 1996. Palm OS was designed for ease of use with a graphical user interface. It is provided with a suite of applications for personal information management. Later versions of the OS have been extended to support smartphones, several other licensees have manufactured devices powered by Palm OS. Following Palms purchase of the Palm trademark, the licensed version from ACCESS was renamed Garnet OS. In 2007, ACCESS introduced the successor to Garnet OS, called Access Linux Platform and in 2009, Palm OS was originally developed under the direction of Jeff Hawkins at Palm Computing, Inc. Palm was later acquired by U. S. Robotics Corp. which in turn was bought by 3Com. In January 2002, Palm set up a wholly owned subsidiary to develop and license Palm OS, PalmSource was then spun off from Palm as an independent company on October 28,2003. Palm became a licensee of Palm OS, no longer in control of the operating system. In September 2005, PalmSource announced that it was being acquired by ACCESS, in December 2006, Palm gained perpetual rights to the Palm OS source code from ACCESS. With this Palm can modify the operating system as needed without paying further royalties to ACCESS. Together with the May 2005 acquisition of rights to the Palm brand name. As a consequence, on January 25,2007, ACCESS announced a change to their current Palm OS operating system. Palm OS is a mobile operating system. Palm OS versions earlier than 5.0 run on Motorola/Freescale DragonBall processors, from version 5.0 onwards, Palm OS runs on ARM architecture-based processors. Included with the OS is also a set of standard applications, manufacturers are free to implement different features of the OS in their devices or even add new features. This version history describes the officially licensed version from Palm/PalmSource/ACCESS, all versions prior to Palm OS5 are based on top of the AMX68000 kernel licensed from KADAK Products Ltd. While this kernel is capable of multitasking, the terms
4.
Memory Stick
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Memory Stick is a removable flash memory card format, launched by Sony in October 1998, and is also used in general to describe the whole family of Memory Sticks. In December 2006, Sony added the Memory Stick PRO-HG, a speed variant of the PRO to be used in high-definition video. Memory Stick cards can be used in Sony PSP, Sony XDCAM EX camcorders via the MEAD-SD01 adapter, SanDisk and Lexar are among few third-party Memory Stick producers. Kingston offers universal microSD to Memory Stick Pro Duo adapters, the largest capacity Memory Stick currently available is 64 GB. According to Sony, the Memory Stick PRO has a maximum size of 2 TB. As of January 2010, it appears that Sony is beginning to support for SD/SDHC. All digital cameras and camcorders announced by Sony at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show can use SD, furthermore, Sony is releasing its own line of SD cards. Many claim this development as the end of the war between Memory Stick and SD card. However, Sony has not abandoned the format, and has indicated it will continue development of the format for the foreseeable future, a prime example is the development of WiFi transfers through a special Memory Stick Pro-Duo which is still in development. Typically, Memory Sticks are used as media for a portable device. For example, Sony digital compact cameras use Memory Stick for storing image files, with a Memory Stick-capable Memory card reader a user can copy the pictures taken with the Sony digital camera to a computer. A special Memory Stick can be inserted in the hindquarters of Sonys AIBO robot pet, the Sticks include a copy protection mechanism used by the robot, allowing users to write programs. These are referred to as programmable or programming, only 8 MB and 16 MB versions are available. Memory Sticks include a range of actual formats, including three different form factors. The original Memory Stick is approximately the size and thickness of a stick of chewing gum and it was available in sizes from 4 MB to 128 MB. It was available both with and without MagicGate support, the MagicGate supporting memory sticks were white colored, while the standard version was purple. The original Memory Stick is no longer manufactured, in response to the storage limitations of the original Memory Stick, Sony introduced the Memory Stick Select. The Memory Stick Select was two separate 128 MB partitions which the user could switch between using a switch on the card and this solution was fairly unpopular, but it did give users of older Memory Stick devices more capacity
5.
Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding
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Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding is a family of proprietary audio compression algorithms developed by Sony. MiniDisc was the first commercial product to incorporate ATRAC in 1992, ATRAC allowed a relatively small disc like MiniDisc to have the same running time as CD while storing audio information with minimal loss in perceptible quality. Improvements to the codec in the form of ATRAC3, ATRAC3plus, and ATRAC Advanced Lossless followed in 1999,2002, other MiniDisc manufacturers such as Sharp and Panasonic also implemented their own versions of the ATRAC codec. Sony has all but dropped the ATRAC related codecs in the USA and Europe, however, it is being continued in Japan and various other countries. ATRACs original 292 kbit/s bitrate was designed to be close to CD quality acoustically and this is the bitrate used on original MiniDiscs. Years later ATRAC was improved and is considered better than earlier versions at similar bitrates. This is in contrast to other codecs developed on computers with no regard for the constraints of portable hardware and these trade-offs are entirely logical on DSP systems, where memory is often at a premium compared to multiplier performance. Sony Walkmans offer better battery life when playing ATRAC files as compared to MP3 files, however, as Sony only pushed ATRAC compatibility in Sony Ericsson Walkman series phones in the Japanese market, it is not supported in GSM/UMTS market phones. Sonys Xplod series of car audio CD players support ATRAC CDs, minidiscs with ATRAC format songs have, in the past, been supported on Eclipse brand car stereos. ATRAC1 was first used in Sonys own theater format SDDS system in the 1990s, SDDS uses ATRAC1 with 8 channel encoding, and with a total encoding rate over all the channels of 1168 kbit/s. Two stacked quadrature mirror filters split the signal into 3 parts,0 to 5.5125 kHz 5.5125 to 11.025 kHz 11.025 to 22.05 kHz Full stereo encoding with a rate of 292 kbit/s. High-frequency lowpass depends on the complexity of the material, some encodings have content clear up to 22.05 kHz, ATRAC1 can also be used in mono mode, doubling recording time. FFmpeg has an implementation of an ATRAC1 decoder, like ATRAC1 and MP3, ATRAC3 is also a hybrid subband-MDCT encoder, but with several differences. Unlike nearly all formats, the transform length cannot be varied to optimize coding transients. Additionally, prior to quantization, tonal components are subtracted from the signal, during decoding, they are separately reconstructed and added back to reform the original MDCT coefficients. Sony claims the advantage of ATRAC3 is its coding efficiency. However, as ATRAC is a hybrid subband-MDCT codec that is very similar to MP3. LP2 Mode This uses a 132 kbit/s data rate, the quality of which is advertised to be similar to that of MP3 encoded at a bit rate
6.
Japan
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Japan is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea, the kanji that make up Japans name mean sun origin. 日 can be read as ni and means sun while 本 can be read as hon, or pon, Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet Land of the Rising Sun in reference to its Japanese name. Japan is an archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, the country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions. Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one, the population of 127 million is the worlds tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98. 5% of Japans total population, approximately 9.1 million people live in the city of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period, the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, from the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a period of isolation in the early 17th century. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the country has the worlds third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the worlds fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is also the worlds fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer, although Japan has officially renounced its right to declare war, it maintains a modern military with the worlds eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a country with a very high standard of living. Its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, in ancient China, Japan was called Wo 倭. It was mentioned in the third century Chinese historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms in the section for the Wei kingdom, Wa became disliked because it has the connotation of the character 矮, meaning dwarf. The 倭 kanji has been replaced with the homophone Wa, meaning harmony, the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nippon or Nihon and literally means the origin of the sun. The earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, at the start of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan introduced their country as Nihon
7.
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
8.
Windows Mobile
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Windows Mobile is a family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones and Pocket PCs. Its origins dated back to Windows CE in 1996, though Windows Mobile itself first appeared in 2000 as PocketPC2000 and it was renamed Windows Mobile in 2003, at which point it came in several versions and was aimed at business and enterprise consumers. By 2007, it was the most popular software in the U. S. In February 2010, facing competition from rival OSs including iOS and Android, as a result, Windows Mobile has been deprecated. Windows Phone is incompatible with Windows Mobile devices and software, the last version of Windows Mobile, released after the announcement of Windows Phone, was 6.5.5. After this, Microsoft ceased development on Windows Mobile, in order to concentrate on Windows Phone, similarly to its desktop counterpart, it comes bundled with a set of applications that perform basic tasks. Internet Explorer Mobile is the web browser, and Windows Media Player is the default media player used for playing digital media. The mobile version of Microsoft Office, is the office suite. Internet Connection Sharing, supported on compatible devices, allows the phone to share its Internet connection with computers via USB, Windows Mobile supports virtual private networking over PPTP protocol. Most devices with mobile connectivity also have a Radio Interface Layer, the Radio Interface Layer provides the system interface between the Cell Core layer within the Windows Mobile OS and the radio protocol stack used by the wireless modem hardware. This allows OEMs to integrate a variety of modems into their equipment, the user interface changed dramatically between versions, only retaining similar functionality. The Today Screen, later called the Home Screen, shows the current date, owner information, upcoming appointments, e-mails, the taskbar display the current time as well as the volume level. Devices with a cellular radio also show the strength on said taskbar. Windows Mobile is based on the Windows CE kernel and first appeared as the Pocket PC2000 operating system and it includes a suite of basic applications developed with the Microsoft Windows API, and is designed to have features and appearance somewhat similar to desktop versions of Windows. It allowed third party developers to develop software for Windows Mobile with no restrictions imposed by Microsoft, software applications were purchasable from Windows Marketplace for Mobile during the services lifespan. Most early Windows Mobile devices came with a stylus, which can be used to enter commands by tapping it on the screen, the primary touch input technology behind most devices were resistive touchscreens which often required a stylus for input. Later devices used capacitive sensing which does not require a stylus, along with touchscreens, a large variety of form factors existed for the platform. Some devices featured slideout keyboards, while others featured minimal face buttons, Microsofts work on handheld portable devices began with research projects in 1990, with the work on Windows CE beginning in 1992
