AI Email Message Generator

AI Email Message Generator — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

  • Intelligent database

    Intelligent database

    Until the 1980s, databases were viewed as computer systems that stored record-oriented and business data such as manufacturing inventories, bank records, and sales transactions. A database system was not expected to merge numeric data with text, images, or multimedia information, nor was it expected to automatically notice patterns in the data it stored. In the late 1980s the concept of an intelligent database was put forward as a system that manages information (rather than data) in a way that appears natural to users and which goes beyond simple record keeping. The term was introduced in 1989 by the book Intelligent Databases by Kamran Parsaye, Mark Chignell, Setrag Khoshafian and Harry Wong. The concept postulated three levels of intelligence for such systems: high level tools, the user interface and the database engine. The high level tools manage data quality and automatically discover relevant patterns in the data with a process called data mining. This layer often relies on the use of artificial intelligence techniques. The user interface uses hypermedia in a form that uniformly manages text, images and numeric data. The intelligent database engine supports the other two layers, often merging relational database techniques with object orientation. In the twenty-first century, intelligent databases have now become widespread, e.g. hospital databases can now call up patient histories consisting of charts, text and x-ray images just with a few mouse clicks, and many corporate databases include decision support tools based on sales pattern analysis.

    Read more →
  • Gaumina

    Gaumina

    Gaumina is the largest interactive agency in the Baltics, providing services of web design, web development, online advertising, video, multimedia, mobile and viral. The company works on projects for Procter & Gamble, Nokia, Nissan, Unilever, YX Energi, 7 Up, Vodafone, MTV, Dunnes Stores, Philip Morris, FIBA Europe as well as Irish public sector. == History == Founded in 1998, Gaumina accounts for 39 percent of the Lithuanian interactive market and has completed more than 2,000 online projects. Since 2004 the company has been operating in the UK and Ireland as Gaumina.co.uk. In 2007 Gaumina gained wide media coverage for winning three awards in three days. A website developed by Gaumina won the Best Social Networking website award at the same the Irish Golden Spiders awards. A website developed by Gaumina was named among the 21 best European multimedia projects of 2007 in the final of Europrix Top Talent Award in Austria. The company was also named one of the winners of the national Innovation Prize 2007, awarding the Lithuania's most innovative companies, in the category of Innovative Enterprise. The agency was named "Digital Agency of the Year" by International advertising festival Golden Hammer in September 2008. The agency also won the main prize at the best at Best Use of Film, Digital Animation or Motion Graphics category by the Irish Golden Spider awards in November 2008. Gaumina is currently managed by CEO Darius Bagdžiūnas.

    Read more →
  • Influencer speak

    Influencer speak

    Influencer speak is a speech pattern commonly associated with English-speaking digital content creators, particularly on platforms such as TikTok. This style is characterized by linguistic features such as uptalk, where intonation rises at the end of declarative sentences, and vocal fry, a low, creaky vibration in speech. These features are often used to engage audiences. == Characteristics == Influencer speak is commonly associated with: Uptalk – a rising intonation at the end of statements Vocal fry – a creaky sound often occurring at the end of sentences Use of filler words and slang – contributes to a conversational tone that resonates with audiences == Origins == The origins of "influencer speak" are linked to the "Valley Girl" accent, which became prominent in the 1980s. This earlier style included features such as uptalk and vocal fry, which have been adapted for digital platforms. Linguists have noted that these patterns are often led by young women, who are recognized as linguistic innovators in sociolinguistic research. == Sociolinguistic significance == "Influencer speak" is used to maintain audience engagement. Features such as uptalk help speakers retain the "conversational floor," ensuring continuous attention from listeners. A study conducted by UCLA researchers has shown that creators adjust their speech styles based on the platform and audience. For example, a comedic tone may be emphasized on TikTok, while a more professional tone may be used on platforms such as LinkedIn or YouTube.

    Read more →
  • Control communications

    Control communications

    In telecommunications, control communications is the branch of technology devoted to the design, development, and application of communications facilities used specifically for control purposes, such as for controlling (a) industrial processes, (b) movement of resources, (c) electric power generation, distribution, and utilization, (d) communications networks, and (e) transportation systems.

    Read more →
  • Sherwood Applied Business Security Architecture

    Sherwood Applied Business Security Architecture

    SABSA (Sherwood Applied Business Security Architecture) is a model and methodology for developing a risk-driven enterprise information security architecture and service management, to support critical business processes. It was developed independently from the Zachman Framework, but has a similar structure. The primary characteristic of the SABSA model is that everything must be derived from an analysis of the business requirements for security, especially those in which security has an enabling function through which new business opportunities can be developed and exploited. The process analyzes the business requirements at the outset, and creates a chain of traceability through the strategy and concept, design, implementation, and ongoing ‘manage and measure’ phases of the lifecycle to ensure that the business mandate is preserved. Framework tools created from practical experience further support the whole methodology. The model is layered, with the top layer being the business requirements definition stage. At each lower layer a new level of abstraction and detail is developed, going through the definition of the conceptual architecture, logical services architecture, physical infrastructure architecture and finally at the lowest layer, the selection of technologies and products (component architecture). The SABSA model itself is generic and can be the starting point for any organization, but by going through the process of analysis and decision-making implied by its structure, it becomes specific to the enterprise, and is finally highly customized to a unique business model. It becomes in reality the enterprise security architecture, and it is central to the success of a strategic program of information security management within the organization. SABSA is a particular example of a methodology that can be used both for IT (information technology) and OT (operational technology) environments. == SABSA matrix == Note: The above is the original SABSA Matrix, which is still valid today, but it has been expanded by a comprehensive service management matrix and updated in some detail and terminology areas. In the words of David Lynas, SABSA author, "The SABSA Matrix and the SABSA Service Management Matrix have not been updated since the late 90s. We have redesigned them to deliver the improvements your feedback has requested over the years. We have not fundamentally changed the structure or principles of the matrices (very few elements have changed position) but have focused on terminology update and consistency." The new versions can be downloaded (along with the 2009 revision of the SABSA White Paper and other important documents like the SABSA Certification Roadmap) at the SABSA Members' Web Site.

    Read more →
  • Haul video

    Haul video

    A haul video is a video recording posted to the Internet in which a person discusses items that they recently purchased, sometimes going into detail about their experiences during the purchase and the cost of the items they bought. The posting of haul videos (or hauls) was a growing trend between 2008 and 2016. Often the items bought are books, clothing, groceries, household goods, makeup, or jewellery. == Details == The posting of haul videos grew as a trend between 2008 and 2016. By late 2010, nearly a quarter of a million haul videos had been shared on the website YouTube alone. Certain videos have each received tens of millions of views. Many young adults (mostly women) have displayed their shopping hauls, while including their beauty and design commentary in the narration. The videos are often grouped by store name or by the type of product (cosmetics, accessories, shoes, postage stamps, etc.). Before haul videos became an online trend, millions of people spent time watching other people, in technical product videos unbox their latest new gadgets and technology. The trend of "unboxing videos" had emerged during 2006. Haul videos have led to celebrity status for some people. Other haul video bloggers have entered sponsorship deals and advertising programs from major brands. The videos are rarely negative about the products being reviewed. This aspect of the genre of haul videos makes sponsorship by brand advertisers particularly appealing. Brands including J.C. Penney contacted haulers as part of their marketing efforts for Back to School 2010. Haul videos also convinced three San Francisco Bay Area area natives to launch HaulBlog–a parody site that creates fake haul videos which poke fun at the phenomenon. The site is also home to the original monthly web series "The Haul Monitor" a humorous commentary show that features haul videos from around the community. == Fashion media == Sarah Sykes and John Zimmerman of Carnegie Mellon University, HCII and School of Design wrote an article "Making Sense of Haul Videos: Self-created Celebrities Fill a Fashion Media Gap". They discuss their analysis and research project examining what makes video bloggers so popular on YouTube, as well as how it affects fashion media through the production of haul videos. == Federal Trade Commission == The United States Federal Trade Commission recently enacted laws to regulate many types of online publishers and content creators. The posted information includes blogging and podcasting in text, images, audio, and video. While any publishers (including the haul-video creators) are allowed to accept free merchandise and advertising, the gifts or payments must be fully (and clearly) disclosed to reveal being paid by a brand name, as a sponsor, to review a product. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is also closely monitoring such Internet activities.

    Read more →
  • Open Sound Control

    Open Sound Control

    Open Sound Control (OSC) is a protocol for networking sound synthesizers, computers, and other multimedia devices for purposes such as musical performance or show control. OSC's advantages include interoperability, accuracy, flexibility and enhanced organization and documentation. Its disadvantages include higher bandwidth requirements, increased load on embedded processors, and lack of standardized messages/interoperability. The first specification was released in March 2002. == Motivation == OSC is a content format developed at CNMAT by Adrian Freed and Matt Wright comparable to XML, WDDX, or JSON. It was originally intended for sharing music performance data (gestures, parameters and note sequences) between musical instruments (especially electronic musical instruments such as synthesizers), computers, and other multimedia devices. OSC is sometimes used as an alternative to the 1983 MIDI standard, when higher resolution and a richer parameter space is desired. OSC messages are transported across the internet and within local subnets using UDP/IP and Ethernet. OSC messages between gestural controllers are usually transmitted over serial endpoints of USB wrapped in the SLIP protocol. == Features == OSC's main features, compared to MIDI, include: Open-ended, dynamic, URI-style symbolic naming scheme Symbolic and high-resolution numeric data Pattern matching language to specify multiple recipients of a single message High resolution time tags "Bundles" of messages whose effects must occur simultaneously == Applications == There are dozens of OSC applications, including real-time sound and media processing environments, web interactivity tools, software synthesizers, programming languages and hardware devices. OSC has achieved wide use in fields including musical expression, robotics, video performance interfaces, distributed music systems and inter-process communication. The TUIO community standard for tangible interfaces such as multitouch is built on top of OSC. Similarly the GDIF system for representing gestures integrates OSC. OSC is used extensively in experimental musical controllers, and has been built into several open source and commercial products. The Open Sound World (OSW) music programming language is designed around OSC messaging. OSC is the heart of the DSSI plugin API, an evolution of the LADSPA API, in order to make the eventual GUI interact with the core of the plugin via messaging the plugin host. LADSPA and DSSI are APIs dedicated to audio effects and synthesizers. In 2007, a standardized namespace within OSC called SYN, for communication between controllers, synthesizers and hosts, was proposed. == Design == OSC messages consist of an address pattern (such as /oscillator/4/frequency), a type tag string (such as ,fi for a float32 argument followed by an int32 argument), and the arguments themselves (which may include a time tag). Address patterns form a hierarchical name space, reminiscent of a Unix filesystem path, or a URL, and refer to "Methods" inside the server, which are invoked with the attached arguments. Type tag strings are a compact string representation of the argument types. Arguments are represented in binary form with four-byte alignment. The core types supported are 32-bit two's complement signed integers 32-bit IEEE floating point numbers Null-terminated arrays of eight-bit encoded data (C-style strings) arbitrary sized blob (e.g. audio data, or a video frame) An example message is included in the spec (with null padding bytes represented by ␀): /oscillator/4/frequency␀,f␀␀, Followed by the 4-byte float32 representation of 440.0: 0x43dc0000. Messages may be combined into bundles, which themselves may be combined into bundles, etc. Each bundle contains a timestamp, which determines whether the server should respond immediately or at some point in the future. Applications commonly employ extensions to this core set. More recently some of these extensions such as a compact Boolean type were integrated into the required core types of OSC 1.1. The advantages of OSC over MIDI are primarily internet connectivity; data type resolution; and the comparative ease of specifying a symbolic path, as opposed to specifying all connections as seven-bit numbers with seven-bit or fourteen-bit data types. This human-readability has the disadvantage of being inefficient to transmit and more difficult to parse by embedded firmware, however. The spec does not define any particular OSC Methods or OSC Containers. All messages are implementation-defined and vary from server to server.

    Read more →
  • Matt Mullenweg

    Matt Mullenweg

    Matthew Charles Mullenweg (born January 11, 1984) is an American web developer and entrepreneur. He is known as a co-founder of the free and open-source web publishing software WordPress, and the founder of Automattic. == Early life and education == Mullenweg was born January 11, 1984, in Houston, Texas, to Chuck and Kathleen Mullenweg and grew up in the Willowbend neighborhood. His older sister was born in 1974. His father, who died in 2016, was a computer programmer who worked for Brown & Root, and encouraged his children to start using home computers at an early age. His mother was a stay-at-home mother. The Mullenwegs were raised Catholic. He attended Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, studying jazz and playing the saxophone. Mullenweg suffered from migraines as a child that forced him to miss extended periods of school. He attended the University of Houston for two years, studying philosophy and political science. He dropped out after his sophomore year in 2004 to work for CNET, which promised him that he could allocate time to the development of WordPress. == Career == Mullenweg began blogging in 2002 on the open source platform b2. B2 developer Michael Valdrighi abandoned the project and Mullenweg took it over in 2003. He and Mike Little created a b2 fork that year they called WordPress and published it under the GNU General Public License. In March 2003, he co-founded the Global Multimedia Protocols Group (GMPG) with Eric A. Meyer and Tantek Çelik. In April 2004, he helped launch Ping-O-Matic, a mechanism for notifying search engines about blog updates. In October 2004, he was hired by CNET who would allow him to develop WordPress part-time as part of his job. He dropped out of college and moved to San Francisco for the position. === Automattic === After leaving CNET in 2005, Mullenweg founded Automattic as a fully distributed company. Toni Schneider was hired as CEO so Mullenweg could learn how to manage a large organization. During this period, Mullenweg focused on product development while Schneider managed the company. In January 2014, Mullenweg resumed the role of CEO, replacing Schneider. He led Automattic's expansion and a series of acquisitions, including WooCommerce in 2015, The Atavist Magazine in 2018, Tumblr in 2019, Pocket Casts in 2021, and Beeper in 2024. Mullenweg received the Heinz Award for Technology, the Economy and Employment in 2016, for "helping to democratize online publishing". Automattic's valuation reached $7.5 billion in 2021. At the time, WordPress hosted 28 million websites, or 40 percent of all websites on the Internet. == Public disputes == On several occasions, Mullenweg has publicly challenged competitors to WordPress and WordPress.com. He has stated that he prefers to settle disputes in the court of public opinion and described his approach as "brinksmanship", noting that the potential cost of legal action could put Automattic in a "tough spot". In 2008, shortly before WordPress 2.5's release, Six Apart's Movable Type published "A WordPress 2.5 Upgrade Guide"—a comparison of their CMS with their rival, WordPress—as a company blog article that Mullenweg characterized as "desperate and dirty". In 2013, developers on the digital marketplace Envato were banned from speaking at WordPress events after he criticized the platform for selling WordPress themes with the graphics and CSS components under a proprietary license instead of the GPL. In 2016, Mullenweg accused Wix.com, a competitor to WordPress.com, of reusing WordPress's mobile text editor code in Wix's own mobile app without adhering to the terms of the GPL. Despite the license's requirement to publish anything built with GPL code under the GPL, Wix's CEO claimed that the company open-sourced their forked version of the component and satisfied the license's terms before the app switched to its own fork of the MIT-licensed text editor that the WordPress editor was based upon. The new fork added a clause to the MIT license that forbids redistribution under any other license. In 2022, Mullenweg criticized GoDaddy for not reinvesting in the WordPress project sufficiently. On January 9, 2025, the representative of the WordPress Sustainability team, Thijs Buijs, resigned via WordPress.org’s Slack channel, citing dissatisfaction with Matt Mullenweg’s December 24, 2024, Reddit post titled “What drama should I create in 2025?” highlighting concerns about what he described as “unsustainable leadership”. In response, Matt Mullenweg thanked Thijs Buijs for reminding him of the existence of a sustainability team, announced its disbanding, and subsequently closed Wordpress.org's #sustainability Slack channel. === Tumblr === Mullenweg began a three-month sabbatical from his role as CEO at the beginning of February 2024. During that time, Mullenweg engaged in a public feud with a transgender Tumblr user who, frustrated with the failure of Tumblr (owned by Automattic) to address transphobic harassment, posted that she wished Mullenweg would die in a comedic way. The user was subsequently banned. Responding to user uproar, Mullenweg addressed the ban in posts on his personal Tumblr blog, in which he characterized the post as a death threat, and shared private account information about the user. Mullenweg also responded to individual commenters on Tumblr in posts and direct messages, and went to Twitter to respond to the banned user's tweets about the situation. A few days later, transgender employees of Tumblr and Automattic made a post on the official Tumblr staff blog characterizing his response as "unwarranted and harmful" and stating that he did not speak on their behalf. They also said that the user's post was not a realistic threat of violence and not the reason for her ban. === WP Engine dispute === == Audrey Capital == Mullenweg is a principal at angel investment firm Audrey Capital, which he co-founded in 2008 alongside Naveen Selvadurai and Audrey Kim. As of 2024, the company lists investments in companies such as CoinDesk, MakerBot, Sonos, SpaceX, Ring, as well as software companies including Calm, Chartbeat, DailyBurn, Memrise, Genius, Nord Security and Telegram. It has also funded startups that provide services to web developers including Creative Market, GitLab, NPM, SendGrid, Stripe and Typekit. From 2017 to 2019, Mullenweg also served as a board member for GitLab. Mullenweg has employed a team of contributors to WordPress through Audrey Capital since 2010, who work separately from Automattic. On the 20th anniversary of WordPress' initial release, Mullenweg announced a scholarship program aimed at the children of significant contributors to open-source projects.

    Read more →
  • Decision tree pruning

    Decision tree pruning

    Pruning is a data compression technique in machine learning and search algorithms that reduces the size of decision trees by removing sections of the tree that are non-critical and redundant to classify instances. Pruning reduces the complexity of the final classifier, and hence improves predictive accuracy by the reduction of overfitting. One of the questions that arises in a decision tree algorithm is the optimal size of the final tree. A tree that is too large risks overfitting the training data and poorly generalizing to new samples. A small tree might not capture important structural information about the sample space. However, it is hard to tell when a tree algorithm should stop because it is impossible to tell if the addition of a single extra node will dramatically decrease error. This problem is known as the horizon effect. A common strategy is to grow the tree until each node contains a small number of instances then use pruning to remove nodes that do not provide additional information. Pruning should reduce the size of a learning tree without reducing predictive accuracy as measured by a cross-validation set. There are many techniques for tree pruning that differ in the measurement that is used to optimize performance. == Techniques == Pruning processes can be divided into two types (pre- and post-pruning). Pre-pruning procedures prevent a complete induction of the training set by replacing a stop () criterion in the induction algorithm (e.g. max. Tree depth or information gain (Attr)> minGain). Pre-pruning methods are considered to be more efficient because they do not induce an entire set, but rather trees remain small from the start. Prepruning methods share a common problem, the horizon effect. This is to be understood as the undesired premature termination of the induction by the stop () criterion. Post-pruning (or just pruning) is the most common way of simplifying trees. Here, nodes and subtrees are replaced with leaves to reduce complexity. Pruning can not only significantly reduce the size but also improve the classification accuracy of unseen objects. It may be the case that the accuracy of the assignment on the train set deteriorates, but the accuracy of the classification properties of the tree increases overall. The procedures are differentiated on the basis of their approach in the tree (top-down or bottom-up). === Bottom-up pruning === These procedures start at the last node in the tree (the lowest point). Following recursively upwards, they determine the relevance of each individual node. If the relevance for the classification is not given, the node is dropped or replaced by a leaf. The advantage is that no relevant sub-trees can be lost with this method. These methods include Reduced Error Pruning (REP), Minimum Cost Complexity Pruning (MCCP), or Minimum Error Pruning (MEP). === Top-down pruning === In contrast to the bottom-up method, this method starts at the root of the tree. Following the structure below, a relevance check is carried out which decides whether a node is relevant for the classification of all n items or not. By pruning the tree at an inner node, it can happen that an entire sub-tree (regardless of its relevance) is dropped. One of these representatives is pessimistic error pruning (PEP), which brings quite good results with unseen items. == Pruning algorithms == === Reduced error pruning === One of the simplest forms of pruning is reduced error pruning. Starting at the leaves, each node is replaced with its most popular class. If the prediction accuracy is not affected then the change is kept. While somewhat naive, reduced error pruning has the advantage of simplicity and speed. === Cost complexity pruning === Cost complexity pruning generates a series of trees ⁠ T 0 … T m {\displaystyle T_{0}\dots T_{m}} ⁠ where ⁠ T 0 {\displaystyle T_{0}} ⁠ is the initial tree and ⁠ T m {\displaystyle T_{m}} ⁠ is the root alone. At step ⁠ i {\displaystyle i} ⁠, the tree is created by removing a subtree from tree ⁠ i − 1 {\displaystyle i-1} ⁠ and replacing it with a leaf node with value chosen as in the tree building algorithm. The subtree that is removed is chosen as follows: Define the error rate of tree ⁠ T {\displaystyle T} ⁠ over data set ⁠ S {\displaystyle S} ⁠ as ⁠ err ⁡ ( T , S ) {\displaystyle \operatorname {err} (T,S)} ⁠. The subtree t {\displaystyle t} that minimizes err ⁡ ( prune ⁡ ( T , t ) , S ) − err ⁡ ( T , S ) | leaves ⁡ ( T ) | − | leaves ⁡ ( prune ⁡ ( T , t ) ) | {\displaystyle {\frac {\operatorname {err} (\operatorname {prune} (T,t),S)-\operatorname {err} (T,S)}{\left\vert \operatorname {leaves} (T)\right\vert -\left\vert \operatorname {leaves} (\operatorname {prune} (T,t))\right\vert }}} is chosen for removal. The function ⁠ prune ⁡ ( T , t ) {\displaystyle \operatorname {prune} (T,t)} ⁠ defines the tree obtained by pruning the subtrees ⁠ t {\displaystyle t} ⁠ from the tree ⁠ T {\displaystyle T} ⁠. Once the series of trees has been created, the best tree is chosen by generalized accuracy as measured by a training set or cross-validation. == Examples == Pruning could be applied in a compression scheme of a learning algorithm to remove the redundant details without compromising the model's performances. In neural networks, pruning removes entire neurons or layers of neurons.

    Read more →
  • Deluxe Media

    Deluxe Media

    Deluxe Media Inc., also known simply as Deluxe and formerly Deluxe Entertainment Services Group, Inc., is an American multinational multimedia and entertainment service provisions company owned by Platinum Equity, founded in 1915 by Hungarian-born American film producer William Fox and headquartered in Burbank, California. The company services multiple clients in the film, television, digital content and advertising industries across the globe, and has been recognized with 10 Academy Awards for scientific and technical achievements, including developments in CinemaScope pictures (as part of 20th Century Fox) and more recently for a process of creating archival separations from digital image data. == History == Deluxe began as a film processing laboratory established in 1915 by William Fox under the name De Luxe as part of his eponymous film conglomerate corporation in Fort Lee, New Jersey. In 1916, Fox Film Corporation opened its studio in Hollywood on 13 acres at Sunset and Western. The first Deluxe film laboratory on the west coast was built on the south side of the lot (Fernwood and Serrano), and the laboratory was moved to the new Fox studios building on Manhattan's west side in 1919, where it remained for over 40 years. The "business manager" (later president) of the laboratory was Alan E. Freedman, who guided the company into the 1960s. In 1927, Fox (Deluxe) received a patent for sound-on-film, the Fox Movietone system. In 1927, "Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans," an early Movietone film, opened. Fox Movietone News, ran weekly in theaters until 1963. During the Great Depression, Fox Film Corporation encountered financial difficulties. Among the actions taken to maintain liquidity, Fox sold the laboratories in 1932 to Freedman, who renamed the operation Deluxe. Under Freedman's leadership, Deluxe added two more plants in Chicago and Toronto. In January 1934, Fox was granted an option to rebuy DeLuxe before December 31, 1938. On 31 May 1935, under Sidney Kent, Fox merged his film company with Twentieth Century Pictures to form The Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation following a bank-infused reorganisation. The merged company then exercised this option in July 1936, with Freedman remaining as president. In 1953, Deluxe developed the widescreen format CinemaScope. Titles included "There's No Business Like Show Business" (1954) and "The Seven Year Itch" (1955). Other innovations included the processing and sound striping of CinemaScope, and were patented and/or received Academy awards. In 1962 Freedman retired. In the 1960s, Deluxe closed its New York plant, followed by its plants in Chicago and Toronto, as motion picture production declined on the East Coast. In 1972, Deluxe began large volume videocassette production, with a billion by 1996. In 1990, The Rank Organisation acquired Deluxe from Fox. In 2000, Deluxe began large volume DVD production. In 2006, The Rank Organisation sold Deluxe Film Group to MacAndrews & Forbes, renamed Deluxe Entertainment Services Group. On 9 February 2012, Deluxe acquired Hong Kong–based visual effects and post-production company, Centro Digital Pictures, with its founder John Chu remaining as president while reporting to Alaric McAusland, managing director for Deluxe in Australia. In May 2014, Deluxe shut down its Los Angeles plant at Sunset & Western Studios complex, where other studios themselves were demolished way back in 1971. Also that same year, Deluxe closed the Hollywood film labs, and they gave thousands of orphaned film elements to the Academy Film Archive. The Deluxe Laboratories Collection at the Academy Film Archive consists of over 7,500 35mm and 16mm film elements of various motion pictures dating back to the early 1960s. On 22 April 2015, Deluxe and its longtime competitor, Technicolor S.A., announced that they had entered into a binding agreement to create a new joint venture known as Deluxe Technicolor Digital Cinema which will specialize in cinema mastering, distribution and management services. Deluxe got acquired on 4 September 2019 by creditors in a debt-for-equity swap to avoid bankruptcy. On 3 October 2019, Deluxe filed for bankruptcy, pending in the Southern District of New York. The same month on the 24th, the company received court approval to emerge from bankruptcy with a comprehensive restructuring plan. On July 1, 2020, Platinum Equity agreed to acquire the distribution division of Deluxe and re-unite with former CEO Cyril Drabinsky who would merge CineVizion, a film distribution company he founded after leaving Deluxe in 2016, into it. The companies Company 3 and Method Studios which formed the creative divisions of Deluxe were sold to Framestore in November 2020.

    Read more →
  • Macroelectronics

    Macroelectronics

    Macroelectronics are flexible electronics that cover a large area. The most visible example of macroelectronics is flat-panel displays. Other emerging applications include rollable display, printable thin film solar cell and electronic skin. Flat-panel displays fabricated on glass substrates are fragile so fabricating directly on flexible substrates, such as polymers is being explored. Displays made on thin polymer substrates can be more rugged than glass. In September 2005, Philips Polymer Vision revealed the world's first prototype of a rollable electronic reader, which can unfold to a 5-inch display and roll back into a pocket-size (100×60×20 mm) device. Thin-film devices on flexible polymer substrates can lend themselves to low-cost fabrication processes (i.e., roll-to-roll printing), resulting in lightweight, rugged and flexible macroelectronic products.

    Read more →
  • Radio network

    Radio network

    A radio network is a system that distributes radio signals to multiple receivers or enables two-way communication between stations and mobile units. Worldwide, radio networks include broadcast networks, such as BBC Radio in the United Kingdom and NPR in the United States, which transmit one-to-many signals for news, entertainment, and public information; two-way radio networks, used by police, fire services, taxicabs, and delivery fleets for operational communication; and cellular networks, such as Verizon, Vodafone, and China Mobile, which provide mobile telephony and data services using frequency or time division duplexing. While all rely on radio-frequency technology like transmitters, receivers, and antennas, their network architectures, protocols, and regulatory frameworks differ substantially across applications and regions. The two-way type of radio network shares many of the same technologies and components as the broadcast-type radio network but is generally set up with fixed broadcast points (transmitters) with co-located receivers and mobile receivers/transmitters or transceivers. In this way both the fixed and mobile radio units can communicate with each other over broad geographic regions ranging in size from small single cities to entire states/provinces or countries. There are many ways in which multiple fixed transmit/receive sites can be interconnected to achieve the range of coverage required by the jurisdiction or authority implementing the system: conventional wireless links in numerous frequency bands, fibre-optic links, or microwave links. In all of these cases the signals are typically backhauled to a central switch of some type where the radio message is processed and resent (repeated) to all transmitter sites where it is required to be heard. In contemporary two-way radio systems, a concept called trunking is commonly used to achieve better efficiency of radio spectrum use. It provides a very wide range of coverage, with no switching of channels required by the mobile radio user as it roams throughout the system coverage. Trunking of two-way radio is identical to the concept used for cellular phone systems where each fixed and mobile radio is specifically identified to the system controller and its operation is switched by the controller. == Broadcasting networks == The broadcast type of radio network is a network system which distributes radio programming to multiple stations simultaneously, or slightly delayed, for the purpose of extending total coverage beyond the limits of a single broadcast signal. The resulting expanded audience for radio programming or information essentially applies the benefits of mass-production to the broadcasting enterprise. A radio network has two sales departments, one to package and sell programs to radio stations, and one to sell the audience of those programs to advertisers. Most radio networks also produce much of their programming. Originally, radio networks owned some or all of the stations that broadcast the network's radio format programming. Presently however, there are many networks that do not own any stations and only produce and/or distribute programming. Similarly station ownership does not always indicate network affiliation. A company might own stations in several different markets and purchase programming from a variety of networks. Radio networks rose rapidly with the growth of regular broadcasting of radio to home listeners in the 1920s. This growth took various paths in different places. In Britain the BBC was developed with public funding, in the form of a broadcast receiver license, and a broadcasting monopoly in its early decades. In contrast, in the United States various competing commercial broadcasting networks arose funded by advertising revenue. In that instance, the same corporation that owned or operated the network often manufactured and marketed the listener's radio. Major technical challenges to be overcome when distributing programs over long distances are maintaining signal quality and managing the number of switching/relay points in the signal chain. Early on, programs were sent to remote stations (either owned or affiliated) by various methods, including leased telephone lines, pre-recorded gramophone records and audio tape. The world's first all-radio, non-wireline network was claimed to be the Rural Radio Network, a group of six upstate New York FM stations that began operation in June 1948. Terrestrial microwave relay, a technology later introduced to link stations, has been largely supplanted by coaxial cable, fiber, and satellite, which usually offer superior cost-benefit ratios. Many early radio networks evolved into television networks.

    Read more →
  • SPL notation

    SPL notation

    SPL (Sentence Plan Language) is an abstract notation representing the semantics of a sentence in natural language. In a classical Natural Language Generation (NLG) workflow, an initial text plan (hierarchically or sequentially organized factoids, often modelled in accordance with Rhetorical Structure Theory) is transformed by a sentence planner (generator) component to a sequence of sentence plans modelled in a Sentence Plan Language. A surface generator can be used to transform the SPL notation into natural language sentences. Probably the most widely used SPL language used today (2022) is AMR (Abstract Meaning Representation, see there for further references), but is owes parts of its popularity to its application to NLP problems other than NLG, e.g., machine translation and semantic parsing.

    Read more →
  • Asymmetric follow

    Asymmetric follow

    An asymmetric follow social network is one which allows many people to follow an individual or account without having to follow them back. It is also known as asynchronous follow or sometimes asymmetric friendship. Asymmetric follow is a common pattern on Twitter, where someone may have thousands of followers, but themselves follow few (or no) accounts. In September 2010 Facebook started experimenting with a similar feature, which Facebook calls "Subscribe To."

    Read more →
  • Radio network

    Radio network

    A radio network is a system that distributes radio signals to multiple receivers or enables two-way communication between stations and mobile units. Worldwide, radio networks include broadcast networks, such as BBC Radio in the United Kingdom and NPR in the United States, which transmit one-to-many signals for news, entertainment, and public information; two-way radio networks, used by police, fire services, taxicabs, and delivery fleets for operational communication; and cellular networks, such as Verizon, Vodafone, and China Mobile, which provide mobile telephony and data services using frequency or time division duplexing. While all rely on radio-frequency technology like transmitters, receivers, and antennas, their network architectures, protocols, and regulatory frameworks differ substantially across applications and regions. The two-way type of radio network shares many of the same technologies and components as the broadcast-type radio network but is generally set up with fixed broadcast points (transmitters) with co-located receivers and mobile receivers/transmitters or transceivers. In this way both the fixed and mobile radio units can communicate with each other over broad geographic regions ranging in size from small single cities to entire states/provinces or countries. There are many ways in which multiple fixed transmit/receive sites can be interconnected to achieve the range of coverage required by the jurisdiction or authority implementing the system: conventional wireless links in numerous frequency bands, fibre-optic links, or microwave links. In all of these cases the signals are typically backhauled to a central switch of some type where the radio message is processed and resent (repeated) to all transmitter sites where it is required to be heard. In contemporary two-way radio systems, a concept called trunking is commonly used to achieve better efficiency of radio spectrum use. It provides a very wide range of coverage, with no switching of channels required by the mobile radio user as it roams throughout the system coverage. Trunking of two-way radio is identical to the concept used for cellular phone systems where each fixed and mobile radio is specifically identified to the system controller and its operation is switched by the controller. == Broadcasting networks == The broadcast type of radio network is a network system which distributes radio programming to multiple stations simultaneously, or slightly delayed, for the purpose of extending total coverage beyond the limits of a single broadcast signal. The resulting expanded audience for radio programming or information essentially applies the benefits of mass-production to the broadcasting enterprise. A radio network has two sales departments, one to package and sell programs to radio stations, and one to sell the audience of those programs to advertisers. Most radio networks also produce much of their programming. Originally, radio networks owned some or all of the stations that broadcast the network's radio format programming. Presently however, there are many networks that do not own any stations and only produce and/or distribute programming. Similarly station ownership does not always indicate network affiliation. A company might own stations in several different markets and purchase programming from a variety of networks. Radio networks rose rapidly with the growth of regular broadcasting of radio to home listeners in the 1920s. This growth took various paths in different places. In Britain the BBC was developed with public funding, in the form of a broadcast receiver license, and a broadcasting monopoly in its early decades. In contrast, in the United States various competing commercial broadcasting networks arose funded by advertising revenue. In that instance, the same corporation that owned or operated the network often manufactured and marketed the listener's radio. Major technical challenges to be overcome when distributing programs over long distances are maintaining signal quality and managing the number of switching/relay points in the signal chain. Early on, programs were sent to remote stations (either owned or affiliated) by various methods, including leased telephone lines, pre-recorded gramophone records and audio tape. The world's first all-radio, non-wireline network was claimed to be the Rural Radio Network, a group of six upstate New York FM stations that began operation in June 1948. Terrestrial microwave relay, a technology later introduced to link stations, has been largely supplanted by coaxial cable, fiber, and satellite, which usually offer superior cost-benefit ratios. Many early radio networks evolved into television networks.

    Read more →