Best AI Photo Editor

Best AI Photo Editor — hands-on reviews, top picks, pricing, pros and cons and a practical how-to guide on Aizhi.

  • Splitwise

    Splitwise

    Splitwise is an online expense-splitting application software accessible via web browser and mobile app. The app facilitates repayments of shared bills by calculating what each person in a group owes. The primary competitor to the app is Venmo, which only operates in the U.S. Splitwise allows users to create groups with friends to determine what each person owes. All expenses and allocations are added to the app, and Splitwise simplifies the transaction history to determine exactly what payments need to be made to whom to settle outstanding balances. Splitwise stores user information via cloud storage. It was developed and is owned by Splitwise Inc., based in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. == History == The app was launched in February 2011 as SplitTheRent, intended to be used for rent splitting, by Ryan Laughlin, Jon Bittner and Marshall Weir. In September 2013, Splitwise was integrated with Venmo to allow users to settle payments via Venmo. In April 2024, Splitwise partnered with Tink, a Visa payment services company, to incorporate a bank transfer feature directly in the Splitwise app. === Financing === In December 2014, the company raised $1.4 million. In October 2016, the company raised $5 million. In April 2021, Splitwise raised $20 million in funding from series A round run by Insight Partners. == Reception == A 2022 opinion piece in The Guardian by London journalist Imogen West-Knights shared the negative effects of exactly splitting bills among friends and family members. West-Knights argued that Splitwise and similar apps can "turn people into those true enemies of all that is fun and joyful in the world: accountants." However, she said the app does work better when used by couples rather than friend groups. Other reviews noted that the app makes people petty. In contrast, an article published by Condé Nast Traveler describes how Splitwise eliminated stress caused by complicated offline bill splitting, saying it "fixed such a pervasive obstacle in group travel." Coverage by The Wall Street Journal lands somewhere in between the two contrasting views, saying Splitwise and similar apps are helpful, but users need to be prepared for difficult money-related conversations that may arise. An etiquette advisor at Debrett's, said, "The less talk you can have about money on any of these occasions, the better." An editor suggested conversations as simple as asking, "We’re splitting this evenly, right?" before a meal.

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  • Enterprise Objects Framework

    Enterprise Objects Framework

    The Enterprise Objects Framework, or simply EOF, was introduced by NeXT in 1994 as a pioneering object-relational mapping product for its NeXTSTEP and OpenStep development platforms. EOF abstracts the process of interacting with a relational database by mapping database rows to Java or Objective-C objects. This largely relieves developers from writing low-level SQL code. EOF enjoyed some niche success in the mid-1990s among financial institutions who were attracted to the rapid application development advantages of NeXT's object-oriented platform. Since Apple Inc's merger with NeXT in 1996, EOF has evolved into a fully integrated part of WebObjects, an application server also originally from NeXT. Many of the core concepts of EOF re-emerged as part of Core Data, which further abstracts the underlying data formats to allow it to be based on non-SQL stores. == History == In the early 1990s NeXT Computer recognized that connecting to databases was essential to most businesses and yet also potentially complex. Every data source has a different data-access language (or API), driving up the costs to learn and use each vendor's product. The NeXT engineers wanted to apply the advantages of object-oriented programming, by getting objects to "talk" to relational databases. As the two technologies are very different, the solution was to create an abstraction layer, insulating developers from writing the low-level procedural code (SQL) specific to each data source. The first attempt came in 1992 with the release of Database Kit (DBKit), which wrapped an object-oriented framework around any database. Unfortunately, NEXTSTEP at the time was not powerful enough and DBKit had serious design flaws. NeXT's second attempt came in 1994 with the Enterprise Objects Framework (EOF) version 1, a complete rewrite that was far more modular and OpenStep compatible. EOF 1.0 was the first product released by NeXT using the Foundation Kit and introduced autoreleased objects to the developer community. The development team at the time was only four people: Jack Greenfield, Rich Williamson, Linus Upson and Dan Willhite. EOF 2.0, released in late 1995, further refined the architecture, introducing the editing context. At that point, the development team consisted of Dan Willhite, Craig Federighi, Eric Noyau and Charly Kleissner. EOF achieved a modest level of popularity in the financial programming community in the mid-1990s, but it would come into its own with the emergence of the World Wide Web and the concept of web applications. It was clear that EOF could help companies plug their legacy databases into the Web without any rewriting of that data. With the addition of frameworks to do state management, load balancing and dynamic HTML generation, NeXT was able to launch the first object-oriented Web application server, WebObjects, in 1996, with EOF at its core. In 2000, Apple Inc. (which had merged with NeXT) officially dropped EOF as a standalone product, meaning that developers would be unable to use it to create desktop applications for the forthcoming Mac OS X. It would, however, continue to be an integral part of a major new release of WebObjects. WebObjects 5, released in 2001, was significant for the fact that its frameworks had been ported from their native Objective-C programming language to the Java language. Critics of this change argue that most of the power of EOF was a side effect of its Objective-C roots, and that EOF lost the beauty or simplicity it once had. Third-party tools, such as EOGenerator, help fill the deficiencies introduced by Java (mainly due to the loss of categories). The Objective-C code base was re-introduced with some modifications to desktop application developers as Core Data, part of Apple's Cocoa API, with the release of Mac OS X Tiger in April 2005. == How EOF works == Enterprise Objects provides tools and frameworks for object-relational mapping. The technology specializes in providing mechanisms to retrieve data from various data sources, such as relational databases via JDBC and JNDI directories, and mechanisms to commit data back to those data sources. These mechanisms are designed in a layered, abstract approach that allows developers to think about data retrieval and commitment at a higher level than a specific data source or data source vendor. Central to this mapping is a model file (an "EOModel") that you build with a visual tool — either EOModeler, or the EOModeler plug-in to Xcode. The mapping works as follows: Database tables are mapped to classes. Database columns are mapped to class attributes. Database rows are mapped to objects (or class instances). You can build data models based on existing data sources or you can build data models from scratch, which you then use to create data structures (tables, columns, joins) in a data source. The result is that database records can be transposed into Java objects. The advantage of using data models is that applications are isolated from the idiosyncrasies of the data sources they access. This separation of an application's business logic from database logic allows developers to change the database an application accesses without needing to change the application. EOF provides a level of database transparency not seen in other tools and allows the same model to be used to access different vendor databases and even allows relationships across different vendor databases without changing source code. Its power comes from exposing the underlying data sources as managed graphs of persistent objects. In simple terms, this means that it organizes the application's model layer into a set of defined in-memory data objects. It then tracks changes to these objects and can reverse those changes on demand, such as when a user performs an undo command. Then, when it is time to save changes to the application's data, it archives the objects to the underlying data sources. === Using Inheritance === In designing Enterprise Objects developers can leverage the object-oriented feature known as inheritance. A Customer object and an Employee object, for example, might both inherit certain characteristics from a more generic Person object, such as name, address, and phone number. While this kind of thinking is inherent in object-oriented design, relational databases have no explicit support for inheritance. However, using Enterprise Objects, you can build data models that reflect object hierarchies. That is, you can design database tables to support inheritance by also designing enterprise objects that map to multiple tables or particular views of a database table. == Enterprise Objects (EOs) == An Enterprise Object is analogous to what is often known in object-oriented programming as a business object — a class which models a physical or conceptual object in the business domain (e.g. a customer, an order, an item, etc.). What makes an EO different from other objects is that its instance data maps to a data store. Typically, an enterprise object contains key-value pairs that represent a row in a relational database. The key is basically the column name, and the value is what was in that row in the database. So it can be said that an EO's properties persist beyond the life of any particular running application. More precisely, an Enterprise Object is an instance of a class that implements the com.webobjects.eocontrol.EOEnterpriseObject interface. An Enterprise Object has a corresponding model (called an EOModel) that defines the mapping between the class's object model and the database schema. However, an enterprise object doesn't explicitly know about its model. This level of abstraction means that database vendors can be switched without it affecting the developer's code. This gives Enterprise Objects a high degree of reusability. == EOF and Core Data == Despite their common origins, the two technologies diverged, with each technology retaining a subset of the features of the original Objective-C code base, while adding some new features. === Features Supported Only by EOF === EOF supports custom SQL; shared editing contexts; nested editing contexts; and pre-fetching and batch faulting of relationships, all features of the original Objective-C implementation not supported by Core Data. Core Data also does not provide the equivalent of an EOModelGroup—the NSManagedObjectModel class provides methods for merging models from existing models, and for retrieving merged models from bundles. === Features Supported Only by Core Data === Core Data supports fetched properties; multiple configurations within a managed object model; local stores; and store aggregation (the data for a given entity may be spread across multiple stores); customization and localization of property names and validation warnings; and the use of predicates for property validation. These features of the original Objective-C implementation are not supported by the Java implementation.

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  • Paper data storage

    Paper data storage

    Paper data storage refers to the use of paper as a data storage device. This includes writing, illustrating, and the use of data that can be interpreted by a machine or is the result of the functioning of a machine. A defining feature of paper data storage is the ability of humans to produce it with only simple tools and interpret it visually. Though now mostly obsolete, paper was once an important form of computer data storage as both paper tape and punch cards were a common staple of working with computers before the 1980s. == History == Before paper was used for storing data, it had been used in several applications for storing instructions to specify a machine's operation. The earliest use of paper to store instructions for a machine was the work of Basile Bouchon who, in 1725, used punched paper rolls to control textile looms. This technology was later developed into the wildly successful Jacquard loom. The 19th century saw several other uses of paper for controlling machines. In 1846, telegrams could be prerecorded on punched tape and rapidly transmitted using Alexander Bain's automatic telegraph. Several inventors took the concept of a mechanical organ and used paper to represent the music. In the late 1880s Herman Hollerith invented the recording of data on a medium that could then be read by a machine. Prior uses of machine readable media, above, had been for control (automatons, piano rolls, looms, ...), not data. "After some initial trials with paper tape, he settled on punched cards..." Hollerith's method was used in the 1890 census. Hollerith's company eventually became the core of IBM. Other technologies were also developed that allowed machines to work with marks on paper instead of punched holes. This technology was widely used for tabulating votes and grading standardized tests. Banks used magnetic ink on checks, supporting MICR scanning. In an early electronic computing device, the Atanasoff–Berry Computer, electric sparks were used to singe small holes in paper cards to represent binary data. The altered dielectric constant of the paper at the location of the holes could then be used to read the binary data back into the machine by means of electric sparks of lower voltage than the sparks used to create the holes. This form of paper data storage was never made reliable and was not used in any subsequent machine. == Modern techniques == === 1D barcodes === Barcodes make it possible for any object that was to be sold or transported to have some computer readable information securely attached to it. Universal Product Code barcodes, first used in 1974, are ubiquitous today. Some people recommend a width of at least 3 pixels for each minimum-width gap and each minimum-width bar for 1D barcodes. The density is about 50 bits per linear inch (about 2 bit/mm). === 2D barcodes === 2D barcodes allow to store much more data on paper, up to 2.9 kbyte per barcode. It is recommended to have a width of at least 4 pixels—e.g., a 4 × 4 pixel = 16 pixel module. == Limits == The limits of data storage depend on the technology to write and read such data. The theoretical limits assume a scanner that can perfectly reproduce the printed image at its printing resolution, and a program which can accurately interpret such an image. For example, an 8 in × 10 in (200 mm × 250 mm) 600 dpi black-and-white image contains 3.43 MiB of data, as does a 300 dpi CMYK printed image. A 2,400 ppi True color (24-bit) image contains about 1.29 GiB of information; printing an image maintaining this data would require a printing resolution of about 120,000 dpi in black and white, or 60,000 dpi with CMYK dots.

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  • Agentic commerce

    Agentic commerce

    Agentic commerce (also referred to as agent-based commerce) describes an emerging form of e-commerce in which autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) agents independently execute purchasing and payment processes on behalf of users or organizations. Unlike conventional digital commerce systems, which require direct human interaction at key decision points, agentic commerce systems are designed to search for products or services, evaluate options, make purchasing decisions, and complete payments without real-time human involvement. An emerging development within the broader fields of e-commerce, fintech, and artificial intelligence; agentic commerce combines advances in generative AI, autonomous agents, application programming interfaces (APIs), and digital payment infrastructures to direct transactions with no direct human interaction. == Characteristics == A defining feature of agentic commerce is the delegation of end-to-end commercial activities to software agents. These agents typically operate according to predefined user preferences, rules, or constraints, such as price limits, quality criteria, delivery times, or preferred payment methods. Based on these parameters, an agent can autonomously perform tasks including product discovery, price comparison, contract selection, order placement, and payment execution. In contrast to decision-support systems, which provide recommendations to human users, agentic commerce systems are designed to act independently. Human involvement may be limited to initial configuration, periodic supervision, or exception handling. == Comparison with traditional and AI-assisted commerce == Traditional e-commerce requires users to manually browse products, select offers, and authorize payments. Generative AI systems used in commerce commonly assist users by answering questions or suggesting options, and do not complete transactions autonomously. Agentic commerce differs in that decision-making authority is partially or fully transferred to AI agents. As a result, the conventional customer journey, characterized by conscious decision points, may be replaced by continuous, automated micro-decisions performed by software. == Applications and business use cases == Potential applications of agentic commerce include recurring purchases, subscription management, business-to-business procurement, inventory replenishment, and price monitoring. In such contexts, transactions are often predictable and standardized, making them suitable for automation. From a business perspective, agentic commerce systems may be used to optimize supply chains, manage inventory levels, negotiate prices algorithmically, or execute transactions across multiple platforms. Enterprises adopting the new technology include retailers Walmart, Home Depot, Wayfair and Urban Outfitters, and ad tech DSPs, including Google Ads, Amazon, and Yahoo. Chinese tech firms are using apps to provide full-service shopping and payment tools. These includes Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance who are currently developing AI powered shopping apps. The Qwen AI chatbot allows users to complete transactions directly within its interface. US firms are still leading in developing AI models but integration is slower due to privacy restrictions. == Payments and technical infrastructure == Agentic commerce relies on digital payment systems capable of supporting automated, machine-initiated transactions, including API-based payment processing, tokenization, real-time authorization, and continuous risk monitoring. Typical user interfaces, such as shopping carts, may be replaced by backend integrations between AI agents, merchants, and payment service providers. For example, Iike 2025, Alibaba launched Alipay AI Pay, which grew and began operating as an application for different retailers. In December 2025, Alipay teamed up with Rokid to enable developers to integrate AI payments into AI agents on Rokid's Lingzhu platform. In January 2025, Alipay unveiled the Agentic Commerce Trust Protocol in partnership with Alibaba's consumer AI applications, such as the Qwen App and Taobao Instant Commerce. Qwen adopted the platform first, connecting it to Taobao Instant Commerce and Alipay AI Pay. Users could use Qwen's agentic feature to place food and drink orders within the application instead of having to click outside to an external browser. For merchants, participation in agentic commerce may require products and services to be presented in structured, machine-readable formats to ensure discoverability and interoperability with autonomous agents. == Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) == In January 2026, Google announced the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open-source web standard intended to enable interoperability between AI agents and retail systems across the shopping journey, from discovery and checkout to post-purchase support. UCP makes use of REST, JSON-RPC transports, and support for Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), Agent2Agent (A2A), and Model Context Protocol (MCP). == Legal, regulatory, and security considerations == The use of autonomous agents in commerce raises legal and regulatory questions, particularly regarding authorization, liability, consumer protection, and fraud prevention. Existing payment and contract frameworks are generally based on human decision-makers, and their applicability to autonomous agents remains an area of active discussion. Open issues include responsibility for unauthorized or erroneous transactions, mechanisms for dispute resolution, standards for agent authentication, and compliance with data protection and financial regulations. Continuous, automated transaction patterns may also require new approaches to security and risk assessment. Traditional fraud models centered on identity verification may be insufficient for agentic commerce, and that merchants may need intent-based detection methods using machine learning and behavioral analysis to distinguish legitimate AI agents from malicious automation. === Governance frameworks === The deployment of autonomous AI agents in commercial environments has prompted the development of dedicated governance frameworks. These aim to define operational boundaries, decision authority, oversight mechanisms, and accountability structures for agentic systems. The Agentic Commerce Framework (ACF), created in 2025 by Vincent Dorange, is a governance standard that structures the deployment of autonomous AI agents around four founding principles (Decision Sovereignty, Governance by Design, Ultimate Human Control, Traceable Accountability), four operational layers, and 18 governance KPIs. In January 2026, Singapore's Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) published the Model AI Governance Framework for Agentic AI, extending its existing AI governance guidelines to address agent-specific risks including delegation chains and multi-agent coordination. The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) has also proposed an Agentic Trust Framework applying zero-trust principles to AI agent governance. == Ecosystem and implementation == The adoption of agentic commerce typically requires changes in commerce architecture, data modeling, identity and permissions, and API-based orchestration of checkout and post-purchase workflows. Management consultancies have identified agentic commerce as a structural evolution of digital commerce, emphasizing the role of AI-driven agents in automating discovery, decision-making, and transaction processes across commerce systems. McKinsey & Company has described agentic commerce as a significant shift in how consumers interact with brands and how enterprises design their commerce operating models. In Europe, this ecosystem also includes digital commerce consultancies specializing in the adoption of agentic commerce. Consulting firms such as Horrea support brands in understanding and implementing the technological and organizational shifts associated with agentic commerce. == Market development and outlook == Agentic commerce is generally regarded as an early-stage development. Industry analysts have projected that AI-driven agents could account for a small but growing share of digital payment transactions within the coming years. Due to the scale of global digital commerce, even limited adoption could represent substantial transaction volumes. Analysts expect that by 2029, AI agents could handle between 1% and 4% of all digital payment transactions. With a projected total transaction volume of over $36 trillion a year, even a small share translates into a market worth up to $1.47 trillion. According to a McKinsey study from October 2025, agentic commerce projects that by 2030, the U.S. business-to-consumer retail market alone could see up to $1 trillion in revenue orchestrated through agentic commerce. On a global scale, the opportunity could range from $3 trillion to $5 trillion. Early experiments and pilot projects have demonstrated both the potential and current limitations of the

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  • Confusion matrix

    Confusion matrix

    In machine learning, a confusion matrix, also known as error matrix, is a specific table layout that allows visualization of the performance of an algorithm, typically a supervised learning one. In unsupervised learning it is usually called a matching matrix. The term is used specifically in the problem of statistical classification. Each row of the matrix represents the instances in an actual class while each column represents the instances in a predicted class, or vice versa – both variants are found in the literature. The diagonal of the matrix therefore represents all instances that are correctly predicted. The name stems from the fact that it makes it easy to identify whether the system is confusing two classes (i.e., commonly mislabeling one class as another). The confusion matrix has its origins in human perceptual studies of auditory stimuli. It was adapted for machine learning studies and used by Frank Rosenblatt, among other early researchers, to compare human and machine classifications of visual (and later auditory) stimuli. It is a special kind of contingency table, with two dimensions ("actual" and "predicted"), and identical sets of "classes" in both dimensions (each combination of dimension and class is a variable in the contingency table). == Example == Given a sample of 12 individuals, 8 that have been diagnosed with cancer and 4 that are cancer-free, where individuals with cancer belong to class 1 (positive) and non-cancer individuals belong to class 0 (negative), we can display that data as follows: Assume that we have a classifier that distinguishes between individuals with and without cancer in some way, we can take the 12 individuals and run them through the classifier. The classifier then makes 9 accurate predictions and misses 3: 2 individuals with cancer wrongly predicted as being cancer-free (sample 1 and 2), and 1 person without cancer that is wrongly predicted to have cancer (sample 9). Notice, that if we compare the actual classification set to the predicted classification set, there are 4 different outcomes that could result in any particular column: The actual classification is positive and the predicted classification is positive (1,1). This is called a true positive result because the positive sample was correctly identified by the classifier. The actual classification is positive and the predicted classification is negative (1,0). This is called a false negative result because the positive sample is incorrectly identified by the classifier as being negative. The actual classification is negative and the predicted classification is positive (0,1). This is called a false positive result because the negative sample is incorrectly identified by the classifier as being positive. The actual classification is negative and the predicted classification is negative (0,0). This is called a true negative result because the negative sample gets correctly identified by the classifier. We can then perform the comparison between actual and predicted classifications and add this information to the table, making correct results appear in green so they are more easily identifiable. The template for any binary confusion matrix uses the four kinds of results discussed above (true positives, false negatives, false positives, and true negatives) along with the positive and negative classifications. The four outcomes can be formulated in a 2×2 confusion matrix, as follows: The color convention of the three data tables above were picked to match this confusion matrix, in order to easily differentiate the data. Now, we can simply total up each type of result, substitute into the template, and create a confusion matrix that will concisely summarize the results of testing the classifier: In this confusion matrix, of the 8 samples with cancer, the system judged that 2 were cancer-free, and of the 4 samples without cancer, it predicted that 1 did have cancer. All correct predictions are located in the diagonal of the table (highlighted in green), so it is easy to visually inspect the table for prediction errors, as values outside the diagonal will represent them. By summing up the 2 rows of the confusion matrix, one can also deduce the total number of positive (P) and negative (N) samples in the original dataset, i.e. P = T P + F N {\displaystyle P=TP+FN} and N = F P + T N {\displaystyle N=FP+TN} . == Table of confusion == In predictive analytics, a table of confusion (sometimes also called a confusion matrix) is a table with two rows and two columns that reports the number of true positives, false negatives, false positives, and true negatives. This allows more detailed analysis than simply observing the proportion of correct classifications (accuracy). Accuracy will yield misleading results if the data set is unbalanced; that is, when the numbers of observations in different classes vary greatly. For example, if there were 95 cancer samples and only 5 non-cancer samples in the data, a particular classifier might classify all the observations as having cancer. The overall accuracy would be 95%, but in more detail the classifier would have a 100% recognition rate (sensitivity) for the cancer class but a 0% recognition rate for the non-cancer class. F1 score is even more unreliable in such cases, and here would yield over 97.4%, whereas informedness removes such bias and yields 0 as the probability of an informed decision for any form of guessing (here always guessing cancer). According to Davide Chicco and Giuseppe Jurman, the most informative metric to evaluate a confusion matrix is the Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC). Other metrics can be included in a confusion matrix, each of them having their significance and use. Some researchers have argued that the confusion matrix, and the metrics derived from it, do not truly reflect a model's knowledge. In particular, the confusion matrix cannot show whether correct predictions were reached through sound reasoning or merely by chance (a problem known in philosophy as epistemic luck). It also does not capture situations where the facts used to make a prediction later change or turn out to be wrong (defeasibility). This means that while the confusion matrix is a useful tool for measuring classification performance, it may give an incomplete picture of a model’s true reliability. == Confusion matrices with more than two categories == Confusion matrix is not limited to binary classification and can be used in multi-class classifiers as well. The confusion matrices discussed above have only two conditions: positive and negative. For example, the table below summarizes communication of a whistled language between two speakers, with zero values omitted for clarity. == Confusion matrices in multi-label and soft-label classification == Confusion matrices are not limited to single-label classification (where only one class is present) or hard-label settings (where classes are either fully present, 1, or absent, 0). They can also be extended to Multi-label classification (where multiple classes can be predicted at once) and soft-label classification (where classes can be partially present). One such extension is the Transport-based Confusion Matrix (TCM), which builds on the theory of optimal transport and the principle of maximum entropy. TCM applies to single-label, multi-label, and soft-label settings. It retains the familiar structure of the standard confusion matrix: a square matrix sized by the number of classes, with diagonal entries indicating correct predictions and off-diagonal entries indicating confusion. In the single-label case, TCM is identical to the standard confusion matrix. TCM follows the same reasoning as the standard confusion matrix: if class A is overestimated (its predicted value is greater than its label value) and class B is underestimated (its predicted value is less than its label value), A is considered confused with B, and the entry (B, A) is increased. If a class is both predicted and present, it is correctly identified, and the diagonal entry (A, A) increases. Optimal transport and maximum entropy are used to determine the extent to which these entries are updated. TCM enables clearer comparison between predictions and labels in complex classification tasks, while maintaining a consistent matrix format across settings.

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  • Artificial intelligence in marketing

    Artificial intelligence in marketing

    Artificial intelligence marketing (AI marketing) is a form of marketing that uses artificial intelligence concepts and models such as machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision to achieve marketing goals. The main difference between AI marketing and traditional forms of marketing reside in the reasoning, which is performed through a computer algorithm rather than a human. Each form of marketing has a different technique to the core of the marketing theory. Traditional marketing directly focuses on the needs of consumers; meanwhile some believe the shift AI may cause will lead marketing agencies to manage consumer needs instead. AI is used in various digital marketing spaces, such as content marketing, email marketing, online advertisement (in combination with machine learning), social media marketing, affiliate marketing, and beyond. == Historical development == AI in marketing has a long history, which goes all the way back to the 1980s. At this time, AI research was focusing on expert systems and robotics. Despite the initial research and the studies that were carried out, AI adoption remained limited. Research on it came to a stop for a while, until research was revived two decades later with the advancement in technology, the rise of big data, and a significant increase in computational power. Eventually, AI became very popular in the marketing world, and caught the eyes of many researchers as well as professionals. A large‐scale bibliometric study covering 1,580 peer‑reviewed papers published between 1982 and 2020 confirms that scholarly output on AI in marketing has surged since 2017, with Expert Systems with Applications emerging as the most prolific outlet. Prior to the application of artificial Intelligence in marketing, there was something called "collaborative filtering". This was used as early as 1998 by Amazon, and one of the first ways companies predicted consumer behavior, which enabled millions of recommendations to different customers. Personalized recommender systems are now widely used, for example to suggest music on Spotify, or TV shows on Netflix. A big milestone in AI marketing happened in 2014, when programmatic ad buying gained much greater popularity. Marketing consists of numerous manual tasks such as researching target markets, insertion orders, and managing high budgets as well as prices. In order to cut costs, and remove the need for these tedious tasks, many companies started to automate the marketing process with AI. In 2015, Google introduced RankBrain, a machine learning component of its search algorithm designed to interpret the intent behind user queries. RankBrain was followed by further AI-based search updates, including BERT in 2019, which improved the understanding of conversational queries, and the Multitask Unified Model (MUM) in 2021, which is multimodal and processes information across 75 languages. These advances shifted search engine optimization practice away from keyword matching toward content that satisfies user intent. Artificial intelligence is increasingly used in marketing to personalize user experiences and automate decision-making. For example, Netflix uses AI algorithms to recommend content based on viewing history, while Sephora employs chatbots to assist customers with product selection and availability. Programmatic advertising platforms like Google Ads leverage machine learning to optimize bidding strategies and target audiences more effectively. These applications demonstrate how AI enhances efficiency, engagement, and conversion rates across digital channels. === Artificial neural networks === An artificial neural network is a form of computer program modeled on the brain and nervous system of humans. Neural networks are composed of a series of interconnected processing neurons that function in unison to achieve certain outcomes. Using “human-like trial and error learning methods neural networks detect patterns existing within a data set ignoring data that is not significant while emphasizing the data which is most influential”. From a marketing perspective, neural networks are a form of software tool used to assist in decision making. Neural networks are effective in gathering and extracting information from large data sources and have the ability to identify cause and effect within tha data. These neural nets through the process of learning, identify relationships and connections between databases. Once knowledge has been accumulated, neural networks can be relied on to provide generalizations and can apply past knowledge and learning to a variety of situations. Neural networks help fulfill the role of marketing companies through effectively aiding in market segmentation and measurement of performance while reducing costs and improving accuracy. Due to their learning ability, flexibility, adaption, and knowledge discovery, neural networks offer many advantages over traditional models. Neural networks can be used to assist in pattern classification, forecasting and marketing analysis. == Tools and uses == Classification of customers can be facilitated through the neural network approach allowing companies to make informed marketing decisions. An example of this was employed by Spiegel Inc., a firm dealing in direct-mail operations that used neural networks to improve efficiencies. Using software developed by NeuralWare Inc., Spiegel identified the demographics of customers who had made a single purchase and those customers who had made repeat purchases. Neural networks where then able to identify the key patterns and consequently identify the customers that were most likely to repeat purchase. Understanding this information allowed Spiegel to streamline marketing efforts, and reduced costs. Sales forecasting “is the process of estimating future events with the goal of providing benchmarks for monitoring actual performance and reducing uncertainty". Artificial intelligence techniques have emerged to facilitate the process of forecasting through increasing accuracy in the areas of demand for products, distribution, employee turnover, performance measurement, and inventory control. An example of forecasting using neural networks is the Airline Marketing Assistant/Tactician; an application developed by BehabHeuristics which allows for the forecasting of passenger demand and consequent seat allocation through neural networks. This system has been used by National air Canada and USAir. Neural networks provide a useful alternative to traditional statistical models due to their reliability, time-saving characteristics and ability to recognize patterns from incomplete or noisy data. Examples of marketing analysis systems includes the Target Marketing System developed by Churchull Systems for Veratex Corporation. This support system scans a market database to identify dormant customers allowing management to make decisions regarding which key customers to target. When performing marketing analysis, neural networks can assist in the gathering and processing of information ranging from consumer demographics and credit history to the purchase patterns of consumers. Predictive analytics is a form of analytics involving the use of historical data and artificial intelligence algorithms to predict future trends and outcomes. It serves as a tool for anticipating and understanding user behavior based on patterns found in data. Predictive analytics uses artificial intelligence machine learning algorithms to recognize and predict patterns within data. Machine learning algorithms analyze the data, recognize patterns, and make predictions through continuous learning and adaptation. Predictive analytics is widely used across businesses and industries as a way to identify opportunities, avoid risks, and anticipate customer needs based on information derived from the analysis of user data. By analyzing historical customer data, artificial intelligence algorithms can deliver relevant and targeted marketing content. Recent systematic reviews show that generative large‑language models such as GPT‑3 and GPT‑4 are now routinely embedded in predictive‑analytics pipelines to mine unstructured market data and anticipate customer intent with greater precision. Personalization engines use artificial intelligence and machine learning to provide content or advertisements that are relevant to the user. User data is gathered, which then gets processed with machine learning, and patterns and trends among the users are identified. Users with shared characteristics or behaviors are then segmented into groups, and the personalization engine adjusts content and advertisements to match each segment's preferences. By processing a large amount of data, personalization engines are able to match users to advertisements and recommendations that align with their interests or preferences. Field evidence from consumer‑goods and electronics firms indicates that AI‑driven personalization can raise

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  • Education by algorithm

    Education by algorithm

    Education by algorithm refers to automated solutions that algorithmic agents or social bots offer to education, to assist with mundane educational tasks. These are often instrumentalist “educational reforms” or “curriculum transformations”, which have been implemented by policy makers and are supported by proprietary education technologies. New educational policies, mandated by transnational governance forums (like the OECD), have manufactured a connection between economies and education. Governments, schools and universities are expected to introduce or prepare students for an “unknown future”, to “future proof” them against an identified issue or to mitigate a national crisis. Technologies are seen as a catalyst to effect these changes. However, these policies mask a deeper problem, which include the assetization of education and the use of technologies as a means for surveillance and behavior modification. The traces that students and leave, through cookies, logins learning activities, assignments and tests, are collected, facetted, and shared with commercial organizations by these agents, to both predict future behavior and shape it. Techno solutionist thinking has led to managers adopting educational policies and reforms, and looking towards technologies to act as disrupters, liberators or agents to improve efficiency. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many more students had to modify their learning and working circumstances to protect themselves. Academics shifted their assessment practices from the dominant assessment of learning paradigm to an orientation that saw value in "assessment for learning". Big tech assisted, and teaching infrastructure became further privatized, and unbundling of education provision went a step further. Following the return to class, this assessment paradigm became rationalised in education. Leaving the space for algorithmic agents to step in. Academics work was increasingly driven by learning experience platforms and student understanding was extended through interleaving, behavior modification nudges and rewards and scheduled high stakes assessments. This data collection may also be construed as surveillance., or perceived as evidence of a Fourth Industrial Revolution

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  • Recommender system

    Recommender system

    A recommender system, also called a recommendation algorithm, recommendation engine, or recommendation platform, is a type of information filtering system that suggests items most relevant to a particular user. The value of these systems becomes particularly evident in scenarios where users must select from a large number of options, such as products, media, or content. Major social media platforms and streaming services rely on recommender systems that employ machine learning to analyze user behavior and preferences, thereby enabling personalized content feeds. Typically, the suggestions refer to a variety decision-making processes, including the selection of a product, musical selection, or online news source to read. The implementation of recommender systems is pervasive, with commonly recognised examples including the generation of playlist for video and music services, the provision of product recommendations for e-commerce platforms, and the recommendation of content on social media platforms and the open web. These systems can operate using a single type of input, such as music, or multiple inputs from diverse platforms, including news, books and search queries. Additionally, popular recommender systems have been developed for specific topics, such as restaurants and online dating services. Recommender systems have also been developed to explore research articles and experts, collaborators, and financial services. A content discovery platform is a software recommendation platform that employs recommender system tools. It utilizes user metadata in order to identify and suggest relevant content, whilst reducing ongoing maintenance and development costs. A content discovery platform delivers personalized content to websites, mobile devices, and set-top boxes. A large range of content discovery platforms currently exist for various forms of content ranging from news articles and academic journal articles to television. As operators compete to serve as the gateway to home entertainment, personalized television emerges as a key service differentiator. Academic content discovery has recently become another area of interest, the emergence of numerous companies dedicated to assisting academic researchers in keeping up to date with relevant academic content and facilitating serendipitous discovery of new content. == Overview == Recommender systems usually make use of either or both collaborative filtering and content-based filtering, as well as other systems such as knowledge-based systems. Collaborative filtering approaches build a model from a user's past behavior (e.g., items previously purchased or selected and/or numerical ratings given to those items) as well as similar decisions made by other users. This model is then used to predict items (or ratings for items) that the user may have an interest in. Content-based filtering approaches utilize a series of discrete, pre-tagged characteristics of an item in order to recommend additional items with similar properties. === Example === The differences between collaborative and content-based filtering can be demonstrated by comparing two early music recommender systems, Last.fm and Pandora Radio. We can also look at how these methods are applied in e-commerce, for example, on platforms like Amazon. Last.fm creates a "station" of recommended songs by observing what bands and individual tracks the user has listened to on a regular basis and comparing those against the listening behavior of other users. Last.fm will play tracks that do not appear in the user's library, but are often played by other users with similar interests. As this approach leverages the behavior of users, it is an example of a collaborative filtering technique. Pandora uses the properties of a song or artist (a subset of the 450 attributes provided by the Music Genome Project) to seed a "station" that plays music with similar properties. User feedback is used to refine the station's results, deemphasizing certain attributes when a user "dislikes" a particular song and emphasizing other attributes when a user "likes" a song. This is an example of a content-based approach. In e-commerce, Amazon's well-known "customers who bought X also bought Y" feature is a prime example of collaborative filtering. It also uses content-based filtering when it recommends a book by the same author you've previously read or a pair of shoes in a similar style to ones you've viewed. Each type of system has its strengths and weaknesses. In the above example, Last.fm requires a large amount of information about a user to make accurate recommendations. This is an example of the cold start problem, and is common in collaborative filtering systems. Whereas Pandora needs very little information to start, it is far more limited in scope (for example, it can only make recommendations that are similar to the original seed). === Alternative implementations === Recommender systems are a useful alternative to search algorithms since they help users discover items they might not have found otherwise. Of note, recommender systems are often implemented using search engines indexing non-traditional data. In some cases, like in the Gonzalez v. Google Supreme Court case, may argue that search and recommendation algorithms are different technologies. Recommender systems have been the focus of several granted patents, and there are more than 50 software libraries that support the development of recommender systems including LensKit, RecBole, ReChorus and RecPack. == History == Elaine Rich created the first recommender system in 1979, called Grundy. She looked for a way to recommend users books they might like. Her idea was to create a system that asks users specific questions and classifies them into classes of preferences, or "stereotypes", depending on their answers. Depending on users' stereotype membership, they would then get recommendations for books they might like. Another early recommender system, called a "digital bookshelf", was described in a 1990 technical report by Jussi Karlgren at Columbia University, and implemented at scale and worked through in technical reports and publications from 1994 onwards by Jussi Karlgren, then at SICS, and research groups led by Pattie Maes at MIT, Will Hill at Bellcore, and Paul Resnick, also at MIT, whose work with GroupLens was awarded the 2010 ACM Software Systems Award. Montaner provided the first overview of recommender systems from an intelligent agent perspective. Adomavicius provided a new, alternate overview of recommender systems. Herlocker provides an additional overview of evaluation techniques for recommender systems, and Beel et al. discussed the problems of offline evaluations. Beel et al. have also provided literature surveys on available research paper recommender systems and existing challenges. == Approaches == === Collaborative filtering === One approach to the design of recommender systems that has wide use is collaborative filtering. Collaborative filtering is based on the assumption that people who agreed in the past will agree in the future, and that they will like similar kinds of items as they liked in the past. The system generates recommendations using only information about rating profiles for different users or items. By locating peer users/items with a rating history similar to the current user or item, they generate recommendations using this neighborhood. This approach is a cornerstone for e-commerce sites that analyze the purchasing patterns of thousands of users to suggest what you might like. Collaborative filtering methods are classified as memory-based and model-based. A well-known example of memory-based approaches is the user-based algorithm, while that of model-based approaches is matrix factorization (recommender systems). A key advantage of the collaborative filtering approach is that it does not rely on machine analyzable content and therefore it is capable of accurately recommending complex items such as movies without requiring an "understanding" of the item itself. Many algorithms have been used in measuring user similarity or item similarity in recommender systems. For example, the k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) approach and the Pearson Correlation as first implemented by Allen. When building a model from a user's behavior, a distinction is often made between explicit and implicit forms of data collection. Examples of explicit data collection include the following: Asking a user to rate an item on a sliding scale. Asking a user to search. Asking a user to rank a collection of items from favorite to least favorite. Presenting two items to a user and asking him/her to choose the better one of them. Asking a user to create a list of items that he/she likes (see Rocchio classification or other similar techniques). Examples of implicit data collection include the following: Observing the items that a user views in an online store, media library, or other repository of med

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  • Manifold hypothesis

    Manifold hypothesis

    The manifold hypothesis posits that many high-dimensional data sets that occur in the real world actually lie along low-dimensional latent manifolds inside that high-dimensional space. As a consequence of the manifold hypothesis, many data sets that appear to initially require many variables to describe, can actually be described by a comparatively small number of variables, linked to the local coordinate system of the underlying manifold. It is suggested that this principle underpins the effectiveness of machine learning algorithms in describing high-dimensional data sets by considering a few common features. The manifold hypothesis is related to the effectiveness of nonlinear dimensionality reduction techniques in machine learning. Many techniques of dimensional reduction make the assumption that data lies along a low-dimensional submanifold, such as manifold sculpting, manifold alignment, and manifold regularization. The major implications of this hypothesis is that Machine learning models only have to fit relatively simple, low-dimensional, highly structured subspaces within their potential input space (latent manifolds). Within one of these manifolds, it's always possible to interpolate between two inputs, that is to say, morph one into another via a continuous path along which all points fall on the manifold. The ability to interpolate between samples is the key to generalization in deep learning. == The information geometry of statistical manifolds == An empirically-motivated approach to the manifold hypothesis focuses on its correspondence with an effective theory for manifold learning under the assumption that robust machine learning requires encoding the dataset of interest using methods for data compression. This perspective gradually emerged using the tools of information geometry thanks to the coordinated effort of scientists working on the efficient coding hypothesis, predictive coding and variational Bayesian methods. The argument for reasoning about the information geometry on the latent space of distributions rests upon the existence and uniqueness of the Fisher information metric. In this general setting, we are trying to find a stochastic embedding of a statistical manifold. From the perspective of dynamical systems, in the big data regime this manifold generally exhibits certain properties such as homeostasis: We can sample large amounts of data from the underlying generative process. Machine Learning experiments are reproducible, so the statistics of the generating process exhibit stationarity. In a sense made precise by theoretical neuroscientists working on the free energy principle, the statistical manifold in question possesses a Markov blanket.

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  • Subject (documents)

    Subject (documents)

    In library and information science documents (such as books, articles and pictures) are classified and searched by subject – as well as by other attributes such as author, genre and document type. This makes "subject" a fundamental term in this field. Library and information specialists assign subject labels to documents to make them findable. There are many ways to do this and in general there is not always consensus about which subject should be assigned to a given document. To optimize subject indexing and searching, we need to have a deeper understanding of what a subject is. The question: "what is to be understood by the statement 'document A belongs to subject category X'?" has been debated in the field for more than 100 years (see below) == Theoretical view == === Charles Ammi Cutter (1837–1903) === For Cutter the stability of subjects depends on a social process in which their meaning is stabilized in a name or a designation. A subject "referred [...] to those intellections [...] that had received a name that itself represented a distinct consensus in usage" (Miksa, 1983a, p. 60) and: the "systematic structure of established subjects" is "resident in the public realm" (Miksa, 1983a, p. 69); "[s]ubjects are by their very nature locations in a classificatory structure of publicly accumulated knowledge (Miksa, 1983a, p. 61). Bernd Frohmann adds: "The stability of the public realm in turn relies upon natural and objective mental structures which, with proper education, govern a natural progression from particular to general concepts. Since for Cutter, mind, society, and SKO [Systems of Knowledge Organization] stand one behind the other, each supporting each, all manifesting the same structure, his discursive construction of subjects invites connections with discourses of mind, education, and society. The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), by contrast, severs those connections. Melvil Dewey emphasized more than once that his system maps no structure beyond its own; there is neither a "transcendental deduction" of its categories nor any reference to Cutter's objective structure of social consensus. It is content-free: Dewey disdained any philosophical excogitation of the meaning of his class symbols, leaving the job of finding verbal equivalents to others. His innovation and the essence of the system lay in the notation. The DDC is a poorly semiotic system of expanding nests of ten digits, lacking any referent beyond itself. In it, a subject is wholly constituted in terms of its position in the system. The essential characteristic of a subject is a class symbol which refers only to other symbols. Its verbal equivalent is accidental, a merely pragmatic characteristic... .... The conflict of interpretations over "subjects" became explicit in the battles between "bibliography" (an approach to subjects having much in common with Cutter's) and Dewey's "close classification". William Fletcher spoke for the scholarly bibliographer.... Fletcher's "subjects", like Cutter's, referred to the categories of a fantasized, stable social order, whereas Dewey's subjects were elements of a semiological system of standardized, techno-bureaucratic administrative software for the library in its corporate, rather than high culture, incarnation". (Frohmann, 1994, 112–113). Cutter's early view on what a subject is, is probably wiser than most understandings that dominated the 20th century – and also the understanding reflected in the ISO-standard quoted below. The early statements quoted by Frohmann indicate that subjects are somehow shaped in social processes. When that is said, it should be added that they are not particularly detailed or clear. We only get a vague idea of the social nature of subjects. === S. R. Ranganathan (1892–1972) === A classification system with an explicit theoretical foundation is Ranganathan's Colon Classification. Ranganathan provided an explicit definition of the concept of "subject": Subject – an organized body of ideas, whose extension and intension are likely to fall coherently within the field of interests and comfortably within the intellectual competence and the field of inevitable specialization of a normal person. A related definition is given by one of Ranganathan's students: A subject is an organized and systematized body of ideas. It may consist of one idea or a combination of several... Ranganathan's definition of "subject" is strongly influenced by his Colon Classification system. The colon system is based on the combination of single elements from facets to subject designation. This is the reason why the combined nature of subjects are emphasized so strongly. It leads, however, to absurdities such as the claim that gold cannot be a subject (but is alternatively termed "an isolate"). This aspect of the theory has been criticized by Metcalfe (1973, p. 318). Metcalfe's skepticism regarding Ranganathan's theory is formulated in hard words (op. cit., p. 317): "This pseudo-science imposed itself on British disciples from about 1950 on...". It seems unacceptable that Ranganathan defines the word subject in a way that favors his own system. A scientific concept like "subject" should make it possible to compare different ways of establishing access to information. Whether or not subjects are combined or not should be examined once their definition has been given, it should not determined a priori, in the definition. Besides the emphasis on the combined, organizing and systematizing nature of subjects contains Ranganathan's definition of subject the pragmatic demand, that a subject should be determined in a way that suits a normal person's competency or specialization. Again we see a strange kind of wishful thinking mixing a general understanding of a concept with demands put by his own specific system. One thing is what the word subject means, quite another issue is how to provide subject descriptions that fulfill demands such as the specificity of a given information retrieval language which fulfill demands put on the system, such as precision and recall. If researchers too often define terms in ways that favor specific kinds of systems, that are such definitions not useful to provide more general theories about subjects, subject analysis and IR. Among other things are comparative studies of different kinds of systems made difficult. Based on these arguments, as well as additional arguments which have been used in the literature, we may conclude that Ranganathan's definition of the concept "subject" is not suited for scientific use. Like the definition of "subject" given by the ISO-standard for topic maps, may Ranganathan's definition be useful within his own closed system. The purpose of a scientific and scholarly field is, however, to examine the relative fruitfulness of systems such as topic maps and Colon Classification. For such purpose is another understanding of "subject" necessary. === Patrick Wilson (1927–2003) === In his book Wilson (1968) examined – in particular by thought experiments – the suitability of different methods of examining the subject of a document. The methods were: identifying the author's purpose for writing the document, weighing the relative dominance and subordination of different elements in the picture, which the reading imposes on the reader, grouping or count the document's use of concepts and references, construing a set of rules for selecting elements deemed necessary (as opposed to unnecessary) for the work as a whole. Patrick Wilson shows convincingly that each of these methods are insufficient to determine the subject of a document and is led to conclude ( p. 89): "The notion of the subject of a writing is indeterminate..." or, on p. 92 (about what users may expect to find using a particular position in a library classification system): "For nothing definite can be expected of the things found at any given position". In connection to the last quote has Wilson an interesting footnote in which he writes that authors of documents often use terms in ambiguous ways ("hostility" is used as an example). Even if the librarian could personally develop a very precise understanding of a concept, he would be unable to use it in his classification, because none of the documents use the term in the same precise way. Based on this argumentation is Wilson led to conclude: "If people write on what are for them ill-defined phenomena, a correct description of their subjects must reflect the ill-definedness". Wilson's concept of subject was discussed by Hjørland (1992) who found that it is problematic to give up the precise understanding of such a basic term in LIS. Wilson's arguments led him to an agnostic position which Hjørland found unacceptable and unnecessary. Concerning the authors' use of ambiguous terms, the role of the subject analysis is to determine which documents would be fruitful for users to identify whether or not the documents use one or another term or whether a given term i

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  • Authoritative Legal Entity Identifier

    Authoritative Legal Entity Identifier

    An Authoritative Legal Entity Identifier (ALEI) is the identifier assigned by a government jurisdiction authorized by statute or decree to create a legal entity and to maintain the authoritative registries of legal entities. ALEIs are used within supply chain data, ERP applications and master data management systems to support accurate and consistent identification of entities in digital records, supply chains, and government databases. ALEIs are described in the international standard ISO 8000-116, which outlines a structured format that makes the locally unique identifier into a globally unique one and ensures global interoperability and data quality. == Structure == An ALEI is composed of three main components: a prefix that identifies the jurisdiction and register, a subdomain element (optional), and the local registration number of the entity. For example, the identifier "US-DE.BER:3031657" refers to an entity registered in the Delaware Business Entity Register in the United States. The standardization of this structure is governed by ISO 8000-116, which is designed to ensure each ALEI is globally unique and resolvable. == Comparison with other identifiers == ALEIs differ from proxy identifiers such as the DUNS number, NCAGE code, or the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) managed by GLEIF. While proxy identifiers can be issued by institutions that do not create legal entities, ALEIs are created and maintained by public bodies with the authority to form and register legal entities. This authoritative origin makes ALEIs particularly suitable for applications involving legal traceability, government regulation, and international transparency efforts. == Usage == ALEIs are increasingly utilized to identify legal entities in public and private datasets. The identifiers support supply chain accuracy, regulatory compliance, and the unification of master data. The first practical implementation of an ALEI was the International Business Registration Number (IBRN), developed to provide globally unique identifiers for registered business entities. IBRNs are issued by authorized government jurisdictions and are used to verify entities across borders, particularly in the context of trade facilitation and data exchange systems. For instance, business directories and registration systems in U.S. states like Connecticut provide structured registration documents that can be used to verify the ALEIs they issue. The use of ALEIs has been recommended by international organizations such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and Open ownership to improve beneficial ownership registries. == Policy and regulation == ALEIs have been referenced in policy consultations such as those related to the U.S. Financial Data Transparency Act. Federal institutions including the Federal Reserve and FDIC have examined the potential for ALEIs to unify entity identification across regulatory databases.

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  • List of library and information science journals

    List of library and information science journals

    This list covers the journals, magazines, periodicals already published and continuing in the discipline of library and information science (LIS). It doesn't include ceased titles or predatory journals. Titles listed were taken from various scholarly sources, UGC Care and Wikipedia articles. == LIS journal prestige as assessed by LIS faculty == In a 2013 article by Laura Manzari, 232 LIS faculty members from ALA-accredited information science programs ranked the most prestigious journals in library and information science. The following journals were ranked in the top ten most prestigious: Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology The Library Quarterly Annual Review of Information Science and Technology Journal of Documentation Library Trends Library and Information Science Research Information Processing and Management Journal of Education for Library and Information Science Education College & Research Libraries First Monday (journal) A subsequent study by Safón and Docampo in 2023 identified impactful LIS journals based on their influence on papers published in other LIS publications. Journals listed in the top ten in this study that did not appear in Manzari's list include: Scientometrics International Journal of Information Management Quantitative Science Studies MIS Quarterly Information and Management Journal of the Association for Information Systems Journal of Informetrics The Journal of Academic Librarianship == India == Annals of Library and Information Studies. (Pub: CSIR-NIScPR ), Formerly: Annals of Library Science. ISSN 0003-4835. (1954-) OPEN ACCESS Collnet Journal of Scientrometrics and Information Management (Pub: Taru Publications, Online through Taylor and Francis) ISSN: 0973-7766 Online 2168-930X. College Libraries (Pub: West Bengal College Librarians’ Association (WBCLA) ISSN 0972-1975, Quarterly DESIDOC Journal of Library and Information Technology (DJLIT) (Formerly: DESIDOC Bulletin 0970-8154, DESIDOC Bulletin of Information Technology. 0971-4383/0974-0643) (Pub: Defence Scientific Information & Documentation Centre) ISSN: 0974-0643, ISSN: 0976-4658 (O), Bi-monthly, OPEN ACCESS. Grandhalaya Sarvaswam (Bilingual: Telugu & English) [Pub: Andhra Pradesh Library Association, Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, India] (1915–) Gyankosh: Journal of Library and Information Management. (Pub: Integrated Academy Of Management And Technology. Through: Indian Journals.Com). ISSN: 2229-4023 (P), 2249-3182. Half yearly. IASLIC Bulletin (Pub: Indian Association of Special Libraries and Information Centres) ISSN: 0018-8411. Quarterly (1956-) IASLIC Newsletter (Pub: Indian Association of Special Libraries and Information Centres. (Pub: Indian Association of Special Libraries and Information Centres) ISSN 0018-845X. Monthly. (1966-) INFLIBNET Newsletter. (Pub: INFLIBNET). Monthly. Informatics Studies. (Pub: Centre For Informatics Research And Development). Quarterly. Through: Indian journals.com. ISSN: 2583-8994 (Online), 2320-530X (Print) ISST Journal of Advances in Librarianship (Pub:Intellectuals Society for Socio-Techno Welfare) ISSN: 0976-9021. Semiannual. Journal of Advanced Research in Library and Information Science. (JALIS Publishers). 4/year. ISSN 2277-2219. Journal of Indian Library Association (Pub: Indian Library Association). ISSN (P) 2277-5145 O) 2456-513X. Quarterly. (1965-). Journal of Scientometric Research. (Pub: Phcog.Net). ISSN (P) 2321-6654, (O) 2320-0057]; Frequency : Triannual. KELPRO Bulletin (Pub: Kerala Library Professionals' Organisation - KELPRO). ISSN 0975-4911( Print),2582-497X (O).(1993-) KIIT Journal of Library and Information Management (Pub: KIIT University, online through Indian Journals.com) Half yearly. ISSN: 2348-0858. Library Herald. (Pub: Delhi Library Association - DLA). Quarterly. ISSN: 0024-2292. Library Progress (International). (Pub: Bpas Publications, Through: ). Half yearly. ISSN: 0970-1052. (O) ISSN: 2320-317X. (1981-) Pearl: A Journal of Library and Information Science. (Pub: University Library Teacher's Association of Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad), ISSN: 0973-7081 (print), 0975-6922 (online). Quarterly. RBU Journal of Library and Information Science. (Pub: Rabindra Bharati University).ISSN: 0972-2750. Annual. SALIS Journal of Information Management and Technology - SJIMT. (Pub: Society for the Advancement of Library and Information Science). Half-yearly. ISSN 0975-4105. SALIS Journal of Library and Information Science - SJLIS: an International Journal. (Pub: Society for the Advancement of Library and Information Science). Half-yearly. ISSN: 0973-3108. SRELS journal of Information and Knowledge (Formerly: Library Science with a Slant to Documentation, ISSN: 0024-2543; Library Science with a Slant to Documentation and Information Studies ISSN: 0970-6089; SRELS Journal of Information Management ISSN: ). Quarterly. ISSN: 2583-9314 (O) World Digital Libraries. Half yearly. ISSN: 0974-567X (P), 0975-7597 (O). == Other countries == African Journal of Library, Archives and Information Science Art Libraries Journal (Cambridge University Press) Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science Cataloging & Classification Quarterly Communications in Information Literacy Cataloging & Classification Quarterly Catholic Library Association Children and Libraries Code4Lib Journal College & Research Libraries Communications in Information Literacy Disability in Library and Information Studies Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship El Profesional de la Información (es) (EPI) (Formerly Information World en Español) Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (journal) Faslname-ye Ketab Florida Libraries. Florida Library Association. Georgia Library Quarterly. Quarterly. (Pub: Georgia Library Association). Hipertext.net IFLA Journal In the Library with the Lead Pipe Information & Culture International Journal of Information Retrieval Research (IJIRR) Information Processing and Management Information Research Information Sciences (journal) Information Visualization (journal) Information, Communication & Society International Journal of Geographical Information Science Information Research: An International Electronic Journal (IR) Internet Research (journal) Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship Italian Journal of Library and Information Studies (JLIS.it) JLIS.it Journal of Documentation (JDoc) Journal of Information Ethics Journal of Information Science (JIS) Journal of Information Technology Journal of Informetrics Journal of Librarianship and Information Science Journal of Library & Information Studies - JLIS. (Pub: National Taiwan University) Journal of Library Administration Journal of Religious & Theological Information Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (Formerly Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology) (JASIST) Journal of the Medical Library Association Journal of the Canadian Health Libraries Association (Pub: Canadian Health Libraries Association). Knowledge Organization (journal) Knowledge Quest. (Pub: American Association of School Librarians) Library and Information Science Abstracts Library Literature and Information Science Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts Library Literature and Information Science Retrospective Library Review (journal) Library Trends Libri (journal) Malaysian Journal of Library and Information Science MLA Forum New Century Library New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship Notes (journal) Portal – Libraries and the Academy Progressive Librarian, Progressive Librarians Guild Reference and User Services Quarterly Reference Services Review Research Evaluation (journal) Scientometrics (journal) Serials Review South African Journal of Libraries and Information Science The Charleston Advisor The Christian Librarian, from the Association of Christian Librarians The Journal of Academic Librarianship The Library Quarterly (LQ) The Public-Access Computer Systems Review TripleC Webolog

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  • Brill tagger

    Brill tagger

    The Brill tagger is an inductive method for part-of-speech tagging. It was described and invented by Eric Brill in his 1993 PhD thesis. It can be summarized as an "error-driven transformation-based tagger". It is: a form of supervised learning, which aims to minimize error; and, a transformation-based process, in the sense that a tag is assigned to each word and changed using a set of predefined rules. In the transformation process, if the word is known, it first assigns the most frequent tag, or if the word is unknown, it naively assigns the tag "noun" to it. High accuracy is eventually achieved by applying these rules iteratively and changing the incorrect tags. This approach ensures that valuable information such as the morphosyntactic construction of words is employed in an automatic tagging process. == Algorithm == The algorithm starts with initialization, which is the assignment of tags based on their probability for each word (for example, "dog" is more often a noun than a verb). Then "patches" are determined via rules that correct (probable) tagging errors made in the initialization phase: Initialization: Known words (in vocabulary): assigning the most frequent tag associated to a form of the word Unknown word == Rules and processing == The input text is first tokenized, or broken into words. Typically in natural language processing, contractions such as "'s", "n't", and the like are considered separate word tokens, as are punctuation marks. A dictionary and some morphological rules then provide an initial tag for each word token. For example, a simple lookup would reveal that "dog" may be a noun or a verb (the most frequent tag is simply chosen), while an unknown word will be assigned some tag(s) based on capitalization, various prefix or suffix strings, etc. (such morphological analyses, which Brill calls Lexical Rules, may vary between implementations). After all word tokens have (provisional) tags, contextual rules apply iteratively, to correct the tags by examining small amounts of context. This is where the Brill method differs from other part of speech tagging methods such as those using Hidden Markov Models. Rules are reapplied repeatedly, until a threshold is reached, or no more rules can apply. Brill rules are of the general form: tag1 → tag2 IF Condition where the Condition tests the preceding and/or following word tokens, or their tags (the notation for such rules differs between implementations). For example, in Brill's notation: IN NN WDPREVTAG DT while would change the tag of a word from IN (preposition) to NN (common noun), if the preceding word's tag is DT (determiner) and the word itself is "while". This covers cases like "all the while" or "in a while", where "while" should be tagged as a noun rather than its more common use as a conjunction (many rules are more general). Rules should only operate if the tag being changed is also known to be permissible, for the word in question or in principle (for example, most adjectives in English can also be used as nouns). Rules of this kind can be implemented by simple Finite-state machines. See Part of speech tagging for more general information including descriptions of the Penn Treebank and other sets of tags. Typical Brill taggers use a few hundred rules, which may be developed by linguistic intuition or by machine learning on a pre-tagged corpus. == Code == Brill's code pages at Johns Hopkins University are no longer on the web. An archived version of a mirror of the Brill tagger at its latest version as it was available at Plymouth Tech can be found on Archive.org. The software uses the MIT License.

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  • Web data integration

    Web data integration

    Web data integration (WDI) is the process of aggregating and managing data from different websites into a single, homogeneous workflow. This process includes data access, transformation, mapping, quality assurance and fusion of data. Data that is sourced and structured from websites is referred to as "web data". WDI is an extension and specialization of data integration that views the web as a collection of heterogeneous databases. Data integration techniques in the context of the web, forms the foundation for businesses taking advantage of data available on the ever-increasing number of publicly-accessible websites. Corporate spending on this area amounted to about USD 2.5bn in 2017, and it is expected that by 2020 the market will reach almost USD 7bn.

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  • Metadata management

    Metadata management

    Metadata management involves managing metadata about other data, whereby this "other data" is generally referred to as content data. The term is used most often in relation to digital media, but older forms of metadata are catalogs, dictionaries, and taxonomies. For example, the Dewey Decimal Classification is a metadata management system developed in 1876 for libraries. == Metadata schema == Metadata management goes by the end-to-end process and governance framework for creating, controlling, enhancing, attributing, defining and managing a metadata schema, model or other structured aggregation system, either independently or within a repository and the associated supporting processes (often to enable the management of content). For web-based systems, URLs, images, video etc. may be referenced from a triples table of object, attribute and value. == Scope == With specific knowledge domains, the boundaries of the metadata for each must be managed, since a general ontology is not useful to experts in one field whose language is knowledge-domain specific. == Metadata Manager == In the process of developing a knowledge management solution, creating a metadata schema, and a system in which metadata is managed, a dedicated resource may be appointed to maintain adherence to metadata standards as defined by data owners as well as general best practice. This person is responsible for curation of the business and technical layers of the metadata schema, and commonly involved with strategy and implementation. A metadata manager is not required to master all aspects, or be involved with everything concerning the solution, but an understanding of as much of the process as possible to ensure a relevant schema is developed. == Metadata management over time == Managing the metadata in a knowledge management solution is an important step in a metadata strategy. It is part of the strategy to make sure that the metadata are complete, current and correct at any given time. Managing a metadata project is also about making sure that users of the system are aware of the possibilities allowed by a well-designed metadata system and how to maximize the benefits of metadata. Regularly monitoring the metadata to ensure that the schema remains relevant is advised. === Wikipedia metadata === Wikipedia is a project that actively manages metadata for its articles and files. For example, volunteer editors carefully curate new biographical articles based on the notability (claim to fame), name, birth, and/or death dates. Similarly, volunteer editors carefully curate new architectural articles based on name, municipality, or geo coordinates. When new articles with a valid alternate spelling are added to Wikipedia that match up to existing articles based on metadata, these are then manually checked and if needed, tagged for merging. When new articles are added that are considered out of scope or otherwise unfit for Wikipedia, these are nominated for deletion. To help keep track of metadata on Wikipedia, the new Wikimedia project Wikidata was established in 2012. Click on the pictures to view more metadata about these images:

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