AI App Builder Free Unlimited

AI App Builder Free Unlimited — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

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  Database dump

  A database dump contains a record of the table structure and/or the data from a database and is usually in the form of a list of SQL statements ("SQL dump"). A database dump is most often used for backing up a database so that its contents can be restored in the event of data loss. Corrupted databases can often be recovered by analysis of the dump. Database dumps are often published by free content projects, to facilitate reuse, forking, offline use, and long-term digital preservation. Dumps can be transported into environments with Internet blackouts or otherwise restricted Internet access, as well as facilitate local searching of the database using sophisticated tools such as grep.

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  Server-sent events

  Server-Sent Events (SSE) is a server push technology enabling a client to receive automatic updates from a server via an HTTP connection, and describes how servers can initiate data transmission towards clients once an initial client connection has been established. They are commonly used to send message updates or continuous data streams to a browser client and designed to enhance native, cross-browser streaming through a JavaScript API called EventSource, through which a client requests a particular URL in order to receive an event stream. The EventSource API is standardized as part of HTML Living Standard by the WHATWG. The media type for SSE is text/event-stream. All modern browsers support server-sent events: Firefox 6+, Google Chrome 6+, Opera 11.5+, Safari 5+, Microsoft Edge 79+, Brave. Since SSE does not use either persistent connections nor chunked transfer encoding, HTTP/1.1 is not a technical requirement. == History == The SSE mechanism was first specified by Ian Hickson as part of the "WHATWG Web Applications 1.0" proposal starting in 2004. In September 2006, the Opera web browser implemented the experimental technology in a feature called "Server-Sent Events". The W3C published Server-Sent Events as a Recommendation on February 3, 2015, after years of development through Working Drafts and Candidate Recommendations. == Example == == Technology == When sending high-frequency data , the server must manage backpressure to prevent saturating clients. This is mitigated in the following ways: Client-side buffering: Browsers have limited buffer space for incoming server-sent events Adaptive rate limiting: Servers can adjust event frequency and monitor connection health Event batching: Combining multiple events into larger and less frequent transmissions

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  Daylight Computer Co.

  Daylight Computer Co. is a Public Benefit Company that designs and manufactures devices that do not emit blue light or flicker. Anjan Katta, the company's founder and CEO, stated that he started the company to reduce his personal eyestrain and the distraction that came with conventional devices. The first device that the company released is the Daylight DC-1, a tablet using a monochrome transflective liquid-crystal display designed for outdoor use, while also being usable indoors with an amber backlight. The company's goal is to create a "healthy computer." == History == In June 2018, Anjan Katta began the process of designing a device that did not emit blue light or flicker. He was inspired by the Kindle stating that he wanted to create a device that was, "an analog object that happens to have digital magical capabilities.” By 2020, he created his first scientific prototype and created the first proof-of-concept prototype in 2021. In the early research and development stages of the device, Katta had spent $300,000 of his own money. Eventually, Katta obtained a $12 million investment from current and former executives of companies such as Oculus, Pinterest, and Dropbox. In 2024, the company held a launch party at the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park for the Daylight DC1, the company's first device. The event had roughly 200 attendees. Later that year, Daylight sold out its first run of 5,000 devices. The Daylight DC1 is a 1.2 pound tablet that runs its own operating system, SolOS, based on Android 13. It has a refresh rate of 60 Hz, fast enough to process video. In 2025, the product was demonstrated by Danny Jones on the Joe Rogan Experience. The company has been described by outlets such as Wired and VentureBeat as a "returning computing to hippie ideals" and being a product for "techno-hippies." The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

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  Flapit

  Flapit is a split-flap display that reveals real-time social media statistics such as Twitter followers or Yelp ratings. The product is designed to show off a bricks-and-mortar company's online community and increase its online presence by letting offline customers interact with the connected counter. The idea came from a product launched by the retailer C&A called the Fashion Like. The device can be customised via a web app and API to display any promotional messages, internal stats or discounts. It has 7 digits including numbers, letters and currency symbols Special messages such as Thank You or Like Us can be displayed on the first flap and are translated into Italian, German, French, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish and English. The Flapit counter was officially presented to the press at the CES Las Vegas 2015 and received favorable reviews from major specialised press

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  Pulse-coupled networks

  Pulse-coupled networks or pulse-coupled neural networks (PCNNs) are neural models proposed by modeling a cat's visual cortex, and developed for high-performance biomimetic image processing. In 1989, Eckhorn introduced a neural model to emulate the mechanism of cat's visual cortex. The Eckhorn model provided a simple and effective tool for studying small mammal’s visual cortex, and was soon recognized as having significant application potential in image processing. In 1994, Johnson adapted the Eckhorn model to an image processing algorithm, calling this algorithm a pulse-coupled neural network. The basic property of the Eckhorn's linking-field model (LFM) is the coupling term. LFM is a modulation of the primary input by a biased offset factor driven by the linking input. These drive a threshold variable that decays from an initial high value. When the threshold drops below zero it is reset to a high value and the process starts over. This is different than the standard integrate-and-fire neural model, which accumulates the input until it passes an upper limit and effectively "shorts out" to cause the pulse. LFM uses this difference to sustain pulse bursts, something the standard model does not do on a single neuron level. It is valuable to understand, however, that a detailed analysis of the standard model must include a shunting term, due to the floating voltages level in the dendritic compartment(s), and in turn this causes an elegant multiple modulation effect that enables a true higher-order network (HON). A PCNN is a two-dimensional neural network. Each neuron in the network corresponds to one pixel in an input image, receiving its corresponding pixel's color information (e.g. intensity) as an external stimulus. Each neuron also connects with its neighboring neurons, receiving local stimuli from them. The external and local stimuli are combined in an internal activation system, which accumulates the stimuli until it exceeds a dynamic threshold, resulting in a pulse output. Through iterative computation, PCNN neurons produce temporal series of pulse outputs. The temporal series of pulse outputs contain information of input images and can be used for various image processing applications, such as image segmentation and feature generation. Compared with conventional image processing means, PCNNs have several significant merits, including robustness against noise, independence of geometric variations in input patterns, capability of bridging minor intensity variations in input patterns, etc. A simplified PCNN called a spiking cortical model was developed in 2009. == Applications == PCNNs are useful for image processing, as discussed in a book by Thomas Lindblad and Jason M. Kinser. PCNNs have been used in a variety of image processing applications, including: image segmentation, pattern recognition, feature generation, face extraction, motion detection, region growing, image denoising and image enhancement Multidimensional pulse image processing of chemical structure data using PCNN has been discussed by Kinser, et al. They have also been applied to an all pairs shortest path problem.

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  Friending and following

  Friending is the act of adding someone to a list of "friends" on a social networking service. The notion does not necessarily involve the concept of friendship. It is also distinct from the idea of a "fan"—as employed on the WWW sites of businesses, bands, artists, and others—since it is more than a one-way relationship. A "fan" only receives things. A "friend" can communicate back to the person friending. The act of "friending" someone usually grants that person special privileges (on the service) with respect to oneself. On Facebook, for example, one's "friends" have the privilege of viewing and posting to one's "timeline". Following is a similar concept on other social network services, such as Twitter and Instagram, where a person (follower) chooses to add content from a person or page to their newsfeed. Unlike friending, following is not necessarily mutual, and a person can unfollow (stop following) or block another user at any time without affecting that user's following status. The first scholarly definition and examination of friending and defriending (the act of removing someone from one's friend list, also called unfriending) was David Fono and Kate Raynes-Goldie's "Hyperfriendship and beyond: Friends and Social Norms on LiveJournal" from 2005, which identified the use of the term as both a noun and a verb by users of early social network site and blogging platform LiveJournal, which was originally launched in 1999. == Friend/follower count, friend collecting, and multiple accounts == The addition of people to a friend list without regard to whether one actually is their friend is sometimes known as friend whoring. Matt Jones of Dopplr went so far as to coin the expression "friending considered harmful" to describe the problem of focusing upon the friending of more and more people at the expense of actually making any use of a social network. Friend collecting is the adding of hundreds or thousands of friends/followers, a not uncommon order of magnitude on some social sites. As a result, many teen users feel pressured to heavily curate their posts, posting only carefully posed and edited photographs with well-thought-out captions. Some Instagram users will create a second account, known as a Finsta (short for "Fake Instagram"). A Finsta is typically private, and the owner only allows close friends to follow it. Since the follower count is kept down, the posts can be more candid and silly in nature. Users may also create multiple accounts based on their interests. Someone with a personal social media account might be a photographer and maintain a separate account for that. There is risk associated with following large numbers of people: scholars say that social anxiety could be an effect of managing a large social media network, as users can feel jealous and have a "fear of missing out". == Unfriending and unfollowing == Unfriending is the act of removing someone from a friends list. On Facebook, this means the action is unilateral, meaning, the friendship is terminated on both sides. The act of unfriending is often used when one user was flirting and made the other uncomfortable. Unfollowing is a little different. When a user unfollows someone on Instagram or Twitter, it continues a one-sided relationship. Often, the unfollowed user doesn't realize they were unfollowed, so they continue the following. == Social network friending and friendship == There are distinct groups of "friends" that one can friend on a social networking service. The notion of a social network friend does not necessarily embody the concept of friendship. Although terminology has not yet evolved to distinguish the different types of social networking friends, they can be broken into the following three categories. friends who are actually known These are people that may be one's friends or family in real life, with whom one has regular interaction either on-line or off-line. organizational friends These are companies and other organizations who maintain a "friending" relationship as a contacts list. complete strangers These are social networking "friends" with whom one has no relationship at all. Within these categories "friends" can be made up of strong ties, weak existing ties, weak latent ties, and parasocial ties. Strong ties can be made up of close family members and friends where self-disclosure, intimacy and frequent content occur. Weak existing ties can be made up of acquaintances, co-workers and distance relatives with whom the user has inconsistent contact. Weak latent ties can be made up of people within a similar geographical location or profession that can be used as a potential future bridge to other connections. Parasocial ties can be made up of celebrities, public figures and media personas. Human nature is to reciprocate a friending, marking someone as a friend who has marked oneself as a friend. This is a social norm for social networking services. However, this leads to mixing up who is an actual friend, and who is a contact. Tagging someone as a "contact" who has marked one as a "friend" can be perceived as impolite. Other concerns about this issue are treated in Sherry Turkle's Alone Together which analyses many behavioral dynamics in social media friendships. Turkle defines herself as "cautiously optimistic", but expresses concern that distance communications may undermine genuine face-to-face spoken discourses, lessening people's expectations of one another. One social networking service, FriendFeed, allows one to friend someone as a "fake" friend. The person "fake" friended receives the usual notifications for friending, but that person's updates are not received. Gavin Bell, author of Building Social Web Applications, describes this mechanism as "ludicrous". Results from a 2007 survey the Center for the Digital Future stated that only 23% of internet users have at least one virtual friend whom they have only met online. Ideally the number of virtual friends is directly proportional to the use of the Internet, but the same survey showed 20% of heavy-users (more than 3 hours/day) who claimed an average of 8.7% online friends, reported at least one relationship that started virtually and migrated to in-person contact. This results and other concerning issues are included in the book Networked: The New Social Operating System co-written by Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman in 2012. == Ethical considerations == The act of "friending" someone on a social networking service has particular ethical implications for judges in the United States. Judicial codes of conducts in the various states generally incorporate some form of provision that judges should avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Whether this regulates and even prohibits judges "friending" attorneys that appear before them, and law enforcement personnel, has been the subject of some analysis by the judicial ethics panels of the various states. They haven't all agreed on the guidance that they have given to judges: The New York state Judicial Ethics committee in 2009 simply advised judges to employ caution, noting that the issue of "friending" someone on a social networking service is a publicly observable act that has little difference from other public behavior concerns judges already face. The Florida Judicial Ethics Advisory committee in 2009 noted that, judges being normal human beings, it was unavoidable for judges to form friendships without the responsibilities of their job. It prohibited judges from friending any attorneys that appeared before them, whilst allowing friending of those who do not, on the grounds that it may give the appearance to the general public (even if the substance is otherwise) that those attorneys who are friended hold special sway with the judge. A minority opinion of the committee asserted that there is a substantive difference between "friending" on a social networking service and actual friendship, and that the general public, being aware of the norms of social networking services, was capable of drawing this distinction and would not reasonably conclude either a special degree of influence or a violation of the code of judicial conduct. This minority opinion was outnumbered twice in 2009, both in the Judicial Ethics Advisory and in the Florida Supreme Court Judicial Ethics Advisory committee. The South Carolina judicial conduct committee in 2009 permitted judges to friend attorneys and law enforcement personnel, with the proviso that no judicial business should be conducted upon nor discussed via the social networking service. "... a judge should not become isolated from the community in which the judge lives.", the committee stated. The Kentucky Judicial Ethics committee in 2010 took the same position as the minority opinion in Florida. It urged judges to exercise caution, but recognized that the act of friending "does not, in and of itself, indicate the degree or intensity of a judge's relationship with the person who is the 'friend'

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  Anonymous social media

  Anonymous social media is a subcategory of social media wherein the main social function is to share and interact around content and information anonymously on mobile and web-based platforms. Another key aspect of anonymous social media is that content or information posted is not connected with particular online identities or profiles. == Background == Appearing very early on the web as mostly anonymous-confession websites, this genre of social media has evolved into various types and formats of anonymous self-expression. One of the earliest anonymous social media forums was 2channel, which was first introduced online on May 30, 1999, as a Japanese text board forum. With the way digital content is consumed and created continuously changing, the trending shift from web to mobile applications is also affecting anonymous social media. This can be seen as anonymous blogging, or various other format based content platforms such as nameless question and answer online platforms like Ask.fm introduced mobile versions of their services. The number of new networks joining the anonymous social sharing scene continues to grow rapidly. == Degrees of anonymity == Across different forms of anonymous social media there are varying degrees of anonymity. Some applications, such as Librex, require users to sign up for an account, even though their profile is not linked to their posts. While these applications remain anonymous, some of these sites can sync up with the user's contact list or location to develop a context within the social community and help personalize the user's experience, such as Yik Yak or Secret. Other sites, such as 4chan and 2channel, allow for a purer form of anonymity as users are not required to create an account, and posts default to the username of "Anonymous". While users can still be traced through their IP address, there are anonymizing services like I2P or various proxy server services that encrypt a user's identity online by running it through different routers. Secret users must provide a phone number or email when signing up for the service, and their information is encrypted into their posts. Stylometry poses a risk to the anonymity or pseudonymity of social media users, who may be identifiable by writing style; in turn, they may use adversarial stylometry to resist such identification. == Controversy == Apps such as Formspring, Ask, Sarahah, Whisper, and Secret have elicited discussion around the rising popularity of anonymity apps, including debate and anticipation about this social sharing class. As more and more platforms join the league of anonymous social media, there is growing concern about the ethics and morals of anonymous social networking as cases of cyber-bullying, and personal defamation occurs. Formspring, also known as spring.me, and Ask.fm have both been associated with teen suicides as a result of cyberbullying on the sites. Formspring has been associated with at least three teen suicides and Ask.fm with at least five. For instance, the app Secret got shut down due to its escalated use of cyberbullying. The app Yik Yak has also helped to contribute to more cyberbullying situations and, in turn, was blocked on some school networks. Their privacy policy meant that users could not be identified without a subpoena, search warrant, or court order. Another app called After School also sparked controversy for its app design that lets students post any anonymous content. Due to these multiple controversies, the app has been removed from both Apple and Google app stores. As the number of people using these platforms multiplies, unintended uses of the apps have increased, urging popular networks to enact in-app warnings and prohibit the use for middle and high school students. 70% of teens admit to making an effort to conceal their online behavior from their parents. Even Snapchat has some relation to the health of children after using social media. This is an app that is meant to be quick and simple but in many ways it can be overwhelming. A person can post something, and it will be gone in seconds. Oftentimes, the post that was made was inappropriate and harmful to another person. It's a never-ending cycle. Some of these apps have also been criticized for causing chaos in American schools, such as lockdowns and evacuations. In order to limit the havoc caused, anonymous apps are currently removing all abusive and harmful posts. Apps such as Yik Yak, Secret, and Whisper are removing these posts by outsourcing the job of content supervision to oversea surveillance companies. These companies hire a team of individuals to inspect and remove any harmful or abusive posts. Furthermore, algorithms are also used to detect and remove any abusive posts the individuals may have missed. Another method used by the anonymous app named Cloaq to reduce the number of harmful and abusive posts is to limit the number of users that can register during a certain period. Under this system, all contents are still available to the public, but only registered users can post. Other websites such as YouTube have gone on to create new policies regarding anonymity. YouTube now does not allow anonymous comments on videos. Users must have a Google account to like, dislike, comment or reply to comments on videos. Once a sign-in user "likes" a video, it will be added to that user's 'Liked video playlist'. YouTube changed their "Liked video playlist" policy in December 2019, allowing a signed-in user to keep their "Liked video playlist" private. Historically, these controversies and the rise of cyberbullying have been blamed on the anonymous aspect of many social media platforms, but about half of US adult online harassment cases do not involve anonymity, and researchers have found that if targeted harassment exists offline it will also be found online, because online harassment is a reflection of existing prejudices. == As platforms for anonymous discussion == Anonymous social media can be used for political discussion in countries where political opinions opposed to the government are normally suppressed, and allow persons of different genders to communicate freely in cultures where such communication is not generally accepted. In the United States, the 2016 presidential election led to an increase in the use of anonymous social media websites to express political stances. Moreover, anonymous social media can also provide authentic connection to complete anonymous communication. There have been cases where these anonymous platforms have saved individuals from life-threatening situation or spread news about a social cause. Additionally, anonymous social websites also allow internet users to communicate while also safeguarding personal information from criminal actors and corporations that sell users' data. A study in 2017 on the content posted to 4chan's /pol/ board found that the majority of the content was unique, including 70% of the 1 million images included in the studied data set. == Revenue generated by anonymous social media == === Anonymous apps === Generating revenue from anonymous apps has been a discussion for investors. Since little information is collected about the users, it is difficult for anonymous apps to advertise to users. However some apps, such as Whisper, have found a method to overcome this obstacle. They have developed a "keyword-based" approach, where advertisements are shown to users depending on certain words they type. The app Yik Yak has been able to capitalize on the features they provide. Anonymous apps such a Chrends take the approach of using anonymity to provide freedom of speech. Telephony app Burner has regularly been a top grossing utilities app in the iOS and Android app stores using its phone number generation technology. Despite the success of some anonymous apps, there are also apps, such as Secret, which have yet to find a way to generate revenue. The idea of an anonymous app has also caused mixed opinions within investors. Some investors have invested a large sum of money because they see the potential revenue generated within these apps. Other investors have stayed away from investing these apps because they feel these apps bring more harm than good. === Anonymous sites === There are several sources to generate revenue for anonymous social media sites. One source of revenue is by implementing programs such as a premium membership or a gift-exchanging program. Another source of revenue is by merchandising goods and specific usernames to users. In addition, sites such as FMyLife, have implemented a policy where the anonymous site will receive 50% of profit from apps that makes money off it. In terms of advertisements, some anonymous sites have had troubles implementing or attracting them. There are several reasons for this problem. Anonymous sites, such as 4chan, have received few advertisement offers due to some of the contents it generates. Other anonymous sites, such as Reddit, have been ca

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  European Information Technology Observatory

  The European Information Technology Observatory (EITO) gathers information on European and global markets for information technology, telecommunications and consumer electronics. The EITO is managed by Bitkom Research GmbH, a wholly owned subsidiary of BITKOM, the German Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media. EITO is sponsored by Deutsche Telekom, KPMG and Telecom Italia. The research activities of the EITO Task Force are supported by the European Commission and the OECD. The EITO exists thanks to an initiative of Enore Deotto from MIlan and the support of Luis-Alberto Petit Herrera (Madrid), Jörg Schomburg (Hanover) and Günther Möller (Frankfurt). Between 1993 and 2007, the market reports were published as printed annual reports ("EITO yearbook"). Since 2008 the market reports are available in electronic version and can be purchased on the EITO online portal. Currently, the ICT market reports are divided in following categories: International Reports International Reports include ICT market information of all EITO countries and all market segments or only specific segments. The newest ICT Market Report 2013/14, published in October 2013, includes market data of 36 countries: 28 European markets, BRIC countries, Japan, Turkey and the US as well as a deep analysis of ICT market developments in 9 European countries. The detailed market data and forecasts are available for the period 2010–2014. Country Reports This category includes EITO reports on a single country's ICT market. The Country ICT Market Reports are published biannually for France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. Thematic Reports Thematic studies focusing on a specific topic. Customized Reports Market Reports made upon order.

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  Doubao

  Doubao (Chinese: 豆包) is an artificial intelligence assistant developed by ByteDance. == History == The chatbot was launched in August 2023. By November 2024, it had become China's most popular AI chatbot, with approximately 60 million monthly active users according to industry analytics. == Design == Doubao is powered by Volcano Engine (Volcengine), 120 trillion tokens consumed per day. == Variants == === Dola === The international version of Doubao is Dola which was launched in August 2023 as Cici. Dola is powered by OpenAI's GPT series of large language models and by Google's Gemini.

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  Static web page

  A static web page, sometimes called a flat page or a stationary page, is a web page that is delivered to a web browser exactly as stored, in contrast to dynamic web pages which are generated by a web application. Consequently, a static web page displays the same information for all users, from all contexts, subject to modern capabilities of a web server to negotiate content-type or language of the document where such versions are available and the server is configured to do so. However, a webpage's JavaScript can introduce dynamic functionality which may make the static web page dynamic. == Overview == Static web pages are often HTML documents, stored as files in the file system and made available by the web server over HTTP (nevertheless URLs ending with ".html" are not always static). However, loose interpretations of the term could include web pages stored in a database, and could even include pages formatted using a template and served through an application server, as long as the page served is unchanging and presented essentially as stored. The content of static web pages remains stationary irrespective of the number of times it is viewed. Such web pages are suitable for the contents that rarely need to be updated, though modern web template systems are changing this. Maintaining large numbers of static pages as files can be impractical without automated tools, such as static site generators. Any personalization or interactivity has to run client-side, which is restricting. Cloud-based website builders, including Wix, Weebly, and Duda, offer no-code platforms for creating static and dynamic web pages through graphical interfaces, without requiring programming expertise. === Advantages === Provide improved security over dynamic websites (dynamic websites are at risk to web shell attacks if a vulnerability is present) Improved performance for end users compared to dynamic websites Fewer or no dependencies on systems such as databases or other application servers Cost savings from utilizing cloud storage, as opposed to a hosted environment Security configurations are easy to set up, which makes it more secure Static files can be cached by content delivery networks (CDNs) and other intermediate caches, which both reduces page load times at the user and also reduces load on the origin server. Static websites can have improved uptime, since they are still available through any available CDN exit node even when other CDN nodes or the origin webserver are temporarily offline. === Disadvantages === Dynamic functionality must be performed on the client side. After each update of a static website, some or all users may see old, stale, outdated previous versions instead of the latest version until the old version is flushed from CDNs and other caches. == Static site generators == Static site generators are applications that compile static websites - typically populating HTML templates in a predefined folder and file structure, with content supplied in a format such as Markdown or AsciiDoc. === Implementations === Jekyll (powers GitHub Pages) Middleman Hugo Next.js Astro.build Pelican Franklin

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  Technology company

  A technology company, or tech company, is a company that focuses primarily on the manufacturing, support, research and development of—most commonly computing, telecommunication and consumer electronics–based—technology-intensive products and services, which include businesses relating to digital electronics, software, optics, new energy, and Internet-related services such as cloud storage and e-commerce services. Big Tech refers to the 6 largest companies, both in the United States and globally, symbolized by the metonym 'Silicon Valley', where 4 of them are based. == Details == According to Fortune, as of 2020, the ten largest technology companies by revenue are: Apple Inc., Samsung, Foxconn, Alphabet Inc., Microsoft, Huawei, Dell Technologies, Hitachi, IBM, and Sony. Amazon has higher revenue than Apple, but is classified by Fortune in the retail sector. The most profitable listed in 2020 are Apple Inc., Microsoft, Alphabet Inc., Intel, Meta Platforms, Samsung, and Tencent. Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc. (owner of Google), Meta Platforms (owner of Facebook), Microsoft, and Amazon.com, Inc. are often referred to as the Big Five multinational technology companies based in the United States. These five technology companies dominate major functions, e-commerce channels, and information of the entire Internet ecosystem. As of 2017, the Big Five had a combined valuation of over $3.3 trillion and make up more than 40 percent of the value of the Nasdaq-100 index. Many large tech companies have a reputation for innovation, spending large sums of money annually on research and development. According to PwC's 2017 Global Innovation 1000 ranking, tech companies made up nine of the 20 most innovative companies in the world, with the top R&D spender (as measured by expenditure) being Amazon, followed by Alphabet Inc., and then Intel. As a result of numerous influential tech companies and tech startups opening offices in proximity to one another, a number of technology districts have developed in various areas across the globe. These include: Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area, Silicon Wadi in Israel, Silicon Docks in Dublin, Silicon Hills in Austin, Tech City in London; Digital Media City in Seoul, Zhongguancun in Beijing, Cyberjaya in Malaysia and Cyberabad in Hyderabad, India. As of 2026, Europe has six of the world's 100 most valuable tech companies, compared with 56 in the United States and 16 in China.

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  Web3D

  Web3D, also called 3D Web, is a group of technologies to display and navigate websites using 3D computer graphics. These technologies enable applications such as online games, virtual reality experiences, interactive product demonstrations, and 3D data visualization directly within web browsers. The emergence of Web3D dates back to 1994, with the advent of VRML, a file format designed to store and display 3D graphical data on the World Wide Web. Modern Web3D is primarily powered by WebGL, a JavaScript API that enables hardware-accelerated 3D graphics rendering in web browsers without requiring plug-ins. == Pre-WebGL era == The emergence of Web3D dates back to 1994, with the advent of VRML, a file format designed to store and display 3D graphical data on the World Wide Web. In October 1995, at Internet World, Template Graphics Software demonstrated a 3D/VRML plug-in for the beta release of Netscape 2.0 by Netscape Communications. The Web3D Consortium was formed to further the collective development of the format. VRML and its successor, X3D, have been accepted as international standards by the International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission. The main drawback of the technology was the requirement to use third-party browser plug-ins to perform 3D rendering, which slowed the adoption of the standard. Between 2000 and 2010, one of these plug-ins, Adobe Flash Player, was widely installed on desktop computers and was used to display interactive web pages and online games and to play video and audio content. Several Flash-based frameworks appeared that used software rendering and ActionScript 3 to perform 3D computations such as transformations, lighting, and texturing. Most notable among them were Papervision3D and Away3D. Eventually, Adobe developed Stage3D, an API for rendering interactive 3D graphics with GPU-acceleration for its Flash player and AIR products, which was adopted by software vendors. In 2009, an open-source 3D web technology called O3D was introduced by Google. It also required a browser plug-in, but contrary to Flash/Stage3D, was based on JavaScript API. O3D was geared not only for games but also for advertisements, 3D model viewers, product demos, simulations, engineering applications, control and monitoring systems. == WebGL and glTF == WebGL (short for "Web Graphics Library") evolved out of the Canvas 3D experiments started by Vladimir Vukićević at Mozilla Foundation. Vukićević first demonstrated a Canvas 3D prototype in 2006. By the end of 2007, both Mozilla and Opera had made their own separate implementations. In early 2009, the nonprofit technology consortium Khronos Group started the WebGL Working Group, with initial participation from Apple, Google, Mozilla, Opera, and others. Version 1.0 of the WebGL specification was released in March 2011. Major advantages of the new technology include conformity with web standards and near-native 3D performance without the use of any browser plug-ins. Since WebGL is based on OpenGL ES, it works on mobile devices without any additional abstraction layers. For other platforms, WebGL implementations leverage ANGLE to translate OpenGL ES calls to DirectX, OpenGL, or Vulkan API calls. Among notable WebGL frameworks are A-Frame, which uses HTML-based markup for building virtual reality experiences; PlayCanvas, an open-source engine alongside a proprietary cloud-hosted creation platform for building browser games; Three.js, an MIT-licensed framework used to create demoscene from the early 2000s; Unity, which obtained a WebGL back-end in version 5; and Verge3D, which integrates with Blender, 3ds Max, and Maya to create 3D web content. With the rapid adoption of WebGL, a new problem arose—the lack of a 3D file format optimized for the Web. This issue was addressed by glTF, a format that was conceived in 2012 by members of the COLLADA working group. At SIGGRAPH 2012, Khronos presented a demo of glTF, which was then called WebGL Transmissions Format (WebGL TF). On 19 October 2015, the glTF 1.0 specification was released. Version 2.0 glTF uses a physically based rendering material model, proposed by Fraunhofer. Other upgrades include sparse accessors and morph targets for techniques such as facial animation, and schema tweaks and breaking changes for corner cases or performance, such as replacing top-level glTF object properties with arrays for faster index-based access. == Future == "WebGPU" is the working name for a potential web standard and JavaScript API for accelerated graphics and computing, aiming to provide "modern 3D graphics and computation capabilities". It is developed by the W3C "GPU for the Web" Community Group, with engineers from Apple, Mozilla, Microsoft, and Google, among others. WebGPU will not be based on any existing 3D API and will use Rust-like syntax for shaders.

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  Natural language understanding

  Natural language understanding (NLU) or natural language interpretation (NLI) is a subset of natural language processing in artificial intelligence that deals with machine reading comprehension. NLU has been considered an AI-hard problem. There is considerable commercial interest in the field because of its application to automated reasoning, machine translation, question answering, news-gathering, text categorization, voice-activation, archiving, and large-scale content analysis. == History == The program STUDENT, written in 1964 by Daniel Bobrow for his PhD dissertation at MIT, is one of the earliest known attempts at NLU by a computer. Eight years after John McCarthy coined the term artificial intelligence, Bobrow's dissertation (titled Natural Language Input for a Computer Problem Solving System) showed how a computer could understand simple natural language input to solve algebra word problems. A year later, in 1965, Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT wrote ELIZA, an interactive program that carried on a dialogue in English on any topic, the most popular being psychotherapy. ELIZA worked by simple parsing and substitution of key words into canned phrases and Weizenbaum sidestepped the problem of giving the program a database of real-world knowledge or a rich lexicon. Yet ELIZA gained surprising popularity as a toy project and can be seen as a very early precursor to current commercial systems such as those used by Ask.com. In 1969, Roger Schank at Stanford University introduced the conceptual dependency theory for NLU. This model, partially influenced by the work of Sydney Lamb, was extensively used by Schank's students at Yale University, such as Robert Wilensky, Wendy Lehnert, and Janet Kolodner. In 1970, William A. Woods introduced the augmented transition network (ATN) to represent natural language input. Instead of phrase structure rules ATNs used an equivalent set of finite-state automata that were called recursively. ATNs and their more general format called "generalized ATNs" continued to be used for a number of years. In 1971, Terry Winograd finished writing SHRDLU for his PhD thesis at MIT. SHRDLU could understand simple English sentences in a restricted world of children's blocks to direct a robotic arm to move items. The successful demonstration of SHRDLU provided significant momentum for continued research in the field. Winograd continued to be a major influence in the field with the publication of his book Language as a Cognitive Process. At Stanford, Winograd would later advise Larry Page, who co-founded Google. In the 1970s and 1980s, the natural language processing group at SRI International continued research and development in the field. A number of commercial efforts based on the research were undertaken, e.g., in 1982 Gary Hendrix formed Symantec Corporation originally as a company for developing a natural language interface for database queries on personal computers. However, with the advent of mouse-driven graphical user interfaces, Symantec changed direction. A number of other commercial efforts were started around the same time, e.g., Larry R. Harris at the Artificial Intelligence Corporation and Roger Schank and his students at Cognitive Systems Corp. In 1983, Michael Dyer developed the BORIS system at Yale which bore similarities to the work of Roger Schank and W. G. Lehnert. The third millennium saw the introduction of systems using machine learning for text classification, such as the IBM Watson. However, experts debate how much "understanding" such systems demonstrate: e.g., according to John Searle, Watson did not even understand the questions. John Ball, cognitive scientist and inventor of the Patom Theory, supports this assessment. Natural language processing has made inroads for applications to support human productivity in service and e-commerce, but this has largely been made possible by narrowing the scope of the application. There are thousands of ways to request something in a human language that still defies conventional natural language processing. According to Wibe Wagemans, "To have a meaningful conversation with machines is only possible when we match every word to the correct meaning based on the meanings of the other words in the sentence – just like a 3-year-old does without guesswork." == Scope and context == The umbrella term "natural language understanding" can be applied to a diverse set of computer applications, ranging from small, relatively simple tasks such as short commands issued to robots, to highly complex endeavors such as the full comprehension of newspaper articles or poetry passages. Many real-world applications fall between the two extremes, for instance text classification for the automatic analysis of emails and their routing to a suitable department in a corporation does not require an in-depth understanding of the text, but needs to deal with a much larger vocabulary and more diverse syntax than the management of simple queries to database tables with fixed schemata. Throughout the years various attempts at processing natural language or English-like sentences presented to computers have taken place at varying degrees of complexity. Some attempts have not resulted in systems with deep understanding, but have helped overall system usability. For example, Wayne Ratliff originally developed the Vulcan program with an English-like syntax to mimic the English speaking computer in Star Trek. Vulcan later became the dBase system whose easy-to-use syntax effectively launched the personal computer database industry. Systems with an easy-to-use or English-like syntax are, however, quite distinct from systems that use a rich lexicon and include an internal representation (often as first order logic) of the semantics of natural language sentences. Hence the breadth and depth of "understanding" aimed at by a system determine both the complexity of the system (and the implied challenges) and the types of applications it can deal with. The "breadth" of a system is measured by the sizes of its vocabulary and grammar. The "depth" is measured by the degree to which its understanding approximates that of a fluent native speaker. At the narrowest and shallowest, English-like command interpreters require minimal complexity, but have a small range of applications. Narrow but deep systems explore and model mechanisms of understanding, but they still have limited application. Systems that attempt to understand the contents of a document such as a news release beyond simple keyword matching and to judge its suitability for a user are broader and require significant complexity, but they are still somewhat shallow. Systems that are both very broad and very deep are beyond the current state of the art. == Components and architecture == Regardless of the approach used, most NLU systems share some common components. The system needs a lexicon of the language and a parser and grammar rules to break sentences into an internal representation. The construction of a rich lexicon with a suitable ontology requires significant effort, e.g., the Wordnet lexicon required many person-years of effort. The system also needs theory from semantics to guide the comprehension. The interpretation capabilities of a language-understanding system depend on the semantic theory it uses. Competing semantic theories of language have specific trade-offs in their suitability as the basis of computer-automated semantic interpretation. These range from naive semantics or stochastic semantic analysis to the use of pragmatics to derive meaning from context. Semantic parsers convert natural-language texts into formal meaning representations. Advanced applications of NLU also attempt to incorporate logical inference within their framework. This is generally achieved by mapping the derived meaning into a set of assertions in predicate logic, then using logical deduction to arrive at conclusions. Therefore, systems based on functional languages such as Lisp need to include a subsystem to represent logical assertions, while logic-oriented systems such as those using the language Prolog generally rely on an extension of the built-in logical representation framework. The management of context in NLU can present special challenges. A large variety of examples and counter examples have resulted in multiple approaches to the formal modeling of context, each with specific strengths and weaknesses.

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  DiscoVision

  DiscoVision is the name of several things related to the video LaserDisc format. It was the original name of the "Reflective Optical Videodisc System" format later known as "LaserVision" or LaserDisc. == Description == MCA DiscoVision, Inc. was a division of entertainment giant MCA (Music Corporation of America), established in 1969 to develop and sell an optical videodisc system. MCA released discs pressed in Carson and Costa Mesa, California on the DiscoVision label from the format's Atlanta, Georgia launch in 1978 to 1982 and the release of the film The Four Seasons. DiscoVision titles included films from Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, and Disney content. Agreements were made with Columbia Pictures and United Artists, though no discs were released on the DiscoVision label from either studio. Most of these companies later established their own labels for the format, the first being Paramount with a dozen movies released on the Paramount Home Video label in the summer of 1981. The successor to MCA DiscoVision, DiscoVision Associates (DVA), was the result of a partnership between IBM and MCA. It was hoped that the merger would provide the basis for improvement of the quality of DiscoVision pressings, but no appreciable improvement ever took hold. In 1981, responsibility for the laser videodisc was sold to Pioneer Electronic Corporation, after MCA Discovision had previously started a partnership in 1977 with Pioneer, Universal Pioneer, to produce the Pioneer PR-7820 player (the first industrial model of DiscoVision player from 1978), as well as establishing disc pressing plants in Japan. As part of the partnership, Pioneer, in association with MCA, had a disc replication facility in Kofu, Japan that produced discs. Some of the last DiscoVision label discs were manufactured by Pioneer in Japan. In the same year, MCA discontinued their DiscoVision branding, due to the sale of the technology to Pioneer (who then rebranded the format as LaserDisc) and in turn rebranded their laserdisc releases, now fabricated by Pioneer, under the MCA Videodisc banner; this was changed to the "MCA Home Video" name for both its VHS and videodisc releases. Some of DiscoVision's technical staff went on to form MCA Video Games, in an effort to produce video game cartridges. DiscoVision Associates later evolved into a patent holding company which manages and licenses intellectual property related to LaserDisc, Compact Disc, and optical disc technologies, as well as other non-disc related fields. In 1989, Pioneer acquired DiscoVision Associates where it continues to license its technologies independently. As the portfolio of patent expired, the presence of DiscoVision became less visible. However, it established the success of a patent holding company, which other companies are stimulated to generate royalty income from their own patent portfolio.

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  Web engineering

  The World Wide Web has become a major delivery platform for a variety of complex and sophisticated enterprise applications in several domains. In addition to their inherent multifaceted functionality, these Web applications exhibit complex behaviour and place some unique demands on their usability, performance, security, and ability to grow and evolve. However, a vast majority of these applications continue to be developed in an ad hoc way, contributing to problems of usability, maintainability, quality and reliability. While Web development can benefit from established practices from other related disciplines, it has certain distinguishing characteristics that demand special considerations. In recent years, there have been developments towards addressing these considerations. Web engineering focuses on the methodologies, techniques, and tools that are the foundation of Web application development and which support their design, development, evolution, and evaluation. Web application development has certain characteristics that make it different from traditional software, information systems, or computer application development. Web engineering is multidisciplinary and encompasses contributions from diverse areas: systems analysis and design, software engineering, hypermedia/hypertext engineering, requirements engineering, human-computer interaction, user interface, data engineering, information science, information indexing and retrieval, testing, modelling and simulation, project management, and graphic design and presentation. Web engineering is neither a clone nor a subset of software engineering, although both involve programming and software development. While Web Engineering uses software engineering principles, it encompasses new approaches, methodologies, tools, techniques, and guidelines to meet the unique requirements of Web-based applications. == As a discipline == Proponents of Web engineering supported the establishment of Web engineering as a discipline at an early stage of Web. Major arguments for Web engineering as a new discipline are: Web-based Information Systems (WIS) development process is different and unique. Web engineering is multi-disciplinary; no single discipline (such as software engineering) can provide a complete theory basis, body of knowledge and practices to guide WIS development. Issues of evolution and lifecycle management when compared to more 'traditional' applications. Web-based information systems and applications are pervasive and non-trivial. The prospect of Web as a platform will continue to grow and it is worth being treated specifically. However, it has been controversial, especially for people in other traditional disciplines such as software engineering, to recognize Web engineering as a new field. The issue is how different and independent Web engineering is, compared with other disciplines. Main topics of Web engineering include, but are not limited to, the following areas: === Modeling disciplines === Business Processes for Applications on the Web Process Modelling of Web applications Requirements Engineering for Web applications B2B applications === Design disciplines, tools, and methods === UML and the Web Conceptual Modeling of Web Applications (aka. Web modeling) Prototyping Methods and Tools Web design methods CASE Tools for Web Applications Web Interface Design Data Models for Web Information Systems === Implementation disciplines === Integrated Web Application Development Environments Code Generation for Web Applications Software Factories for/on the Web Web 2.0, AJAX, E4X, ASP.NET, PHP and Other New Developments Web Services Development and Deployment === Testing disciplines === Testing and Evaluation of Web systems and Applications. Testing Automation, Methods, and Tools. === Applications categories disciplines === Semantic Web applications Document centric Web sites Transactional Web applications Interactive Web applications Workflow-based Web applications Collaborative Web applications Portal-oriented Web applications Ubiquitous and Mobile Web Applications Device Independent Web Delivery Localization and Internationalization of Web Applications Personalization of Web Applications == Attributes == === Web quality === Web Metrics, Cost Estimation, and Measurement Personalisation and Adaptation of Web applications Web Quality Usability of Web Applications Web accessibility Performance of Web-based applications === Content-related === Web Content Management Content Management System (CMS) Multimedia Authoring Tools and Software Authoring of adaptive hypermedia == Education == Master of Science: Web Engineering as a branch of study within the MSc program Web Sciences at the Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria Diploma in Web Engineering: Web Engineering as a study program at the International Webmasters College (iWMC), Germany

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