Virtual advertising is the use of digital technology to insert virtual advertisements into a live or pre-recorded television show, often in sports events. This technique is often used to allow broadcasters to overlay existing physical advertising panels inside the sports venue with virtual content on the screen when broadcasting the same event in multiple regions; a Spanish football game can be broadcast in Mexico with Mexican advertisements. Similarly, virtual content can be inserted onto empty space within the sports venue such as the pitch, where physical advertising cannot be placed due to regulatory or safety reasons. Virtual advertising content is intended to be photorealistic, so that the viewer has the impression they are seeing the real in-stadium advertising. == History == Throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, advertising on television and in newspapers was a popular method of spreading information. The marketer Jeremiah Lynwood stated that "Thirty years ago, [U.S.] consumers viewed an average of 560 ads per day", mostly from newspapers, television shows, gasoline pumps, and so on. Lynwood also stated that, at the time, "American consumers may be exposed to 3,000 commercial messages every day". Within that time frame, the exposure of daily ads have supported many local and big businesses. With the arrival of the 2000s and 2010s, technological advances have created new opportunities for many businesses to grow. In the 21st century, virtual advertising has been used to create virtual product placements in television shows hours, days, or years after they have been produced. Advertisements can be targeted to regional markets and updated over time to ensure maximum efficiency of advertising money. A good example of how virtual advertising is used in everyday life is in sports. Virtual advertising uses the latest technology to place an ad in position to the field of play, regardless of camera motion, and the players' movement over the logos. Recently, the NHL have virtually inserted sponsors on the glass above the physical boards in NHL stadiums. Big brands will not spend their time or money on hitting a certain region when their main goal is to build global brand awareness. Digital signage opportunities allow these larger brands to purchase signage in a stadium during games that are instead nationally televised. This gets even more expansive thanks to social media outlets like Twitter, Facebook, and Amazon. On the other hand, local businesses sign when there are smaller games going on. The signage is much more affordable and still reaches a vast number of people. Virtual advertising may even make live attendance more attractive to sport fans because the technology allows the playing field and surrounding areas to be cleared of advertisements while television viewers at home are exposed to commercials. For the most part, virtual advertising makes a live attendance more attractive to sports fans, because instead of being at home watching commercials, live fans are able to be clear of advertisements and enjoy the game without pop-up ads. == Technology == The technology used in virtual insertions often uses automated processes such as: automatic detection of playfield limits, automatic detection of cuts, recognition of playfield surface, recognition of existing logos for logo replacements, etc. An operator is usually dedicated to the visual control of the effect but new systems allow to use the instant replay operator. == Examples == === Live events === Virtual advertisements can be effectively integrated into live television in real-time. For example, Fox Sports Net places a virtual advertisement on the glass behind the goaltender that can only be seen on television. The advertising in the playfields is property of the club, except in some professional sports where the league or federation owns the advertising rights. However, the advertising rights broadcast on the screen are property of the broadcasters or the TV channel. This means that second right holders can benefit from selling this virtual advertising. The number of TV viewers is also higher than the people in the stadium, generating more visibility to the advertised marks and more income to the broadcasters. Virtual advertising was first introduced in football during the 2015 Audi Cup at the Allianz Arena in Munich. AIM Sport implemented the technology to digitally overlay advertisements on the stadium's perimeter boards, allowing different sponsors to be displayed to viewers in different broadcast regions. In Formula One, virtual ads are placed on the grass or as virtual billboards. In baseball, Major League Baseball places virtual advertisements on a back-board behind the batter which can be targeted differently in local markets or countries. During the World Series, MLB international broadcasts of the World Series feature different advertisements on a per market basis, showing a different ad in the US, Canadian, Latin American and Japanese markets. In tennis, e.g. during the 2019 ATP Finals in London's O2 Arena certain logos in the background were replaced for various country feeds. In table tennis e.g. during the ITTF World Tour Australian Open 2019 virtual advertising overlays were used by uniqFEED AG in Switzerland. Since the 2022–23 season, the National Hockey League (NHL) has used digitally enhanced dasherboards (DED) to erase and replace ads on each arena's boards with up to 120 thirty-second segments on all or part of the rink. Each broadcaster can use a different set of ads. DED were first used at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, which was organized by the NHL. At UEFA Euro 2024, AIM Sport provided virtual advertising for all matches, marking one of the largest implementations of the technology in an international tournament. In addition to the tournament itself, virtual advertising was also used in the participating teams' domestic matches, extending region-specific advertising beyond the competition itself.
PANGU (software)
The PANGU (Planet and Asteroid Natural scene Generation Utility) is a computer graphics utility of which the development was funded by ESA and performed by University of Dundee. It generates scenes of planets, moons, asteroids, spacecraft and rovers. The main purpose of the tool is to test and validate navigation techniques based on the processing of images coming from on-board sensors, such as a camera or imaging LIDAR on a planetary lander.
Kimchi (software)
Kimchi is a web management tool to manage Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) infrastructure. Developed with HTML5, Kimchi is developed to intuitively manage KVM guests, create storage pools, manage network interfaces (bridges, VLANs, NAT), and perform other related tasks. The name is an extended acronym for KVM infrastructure management. It is an Apache-licensed project hosted on GitHub, and incubated by oVirt.org.
Media preservation
Preservation of documents, pictures, recordings, digital content, etc., is a major aspect of archival science. It is also an important consideration for people who are creating time capsules, family history, historical documents, scrapbooks and family trees. Common storage media are not permanent, and there are few reliable methods of preserving documents and pictures for the future. == Paper/prints (photos) == Color negatives and ordinary color prints may fade away to nothing in a relatively short period if not stored and handled properly. This happens even if the negatives and prints are kept in the dark, because ambient light is not the determining factor, but heat and humidity are. The color degradation is the result of the dyes used in the color processes. Because color processing results in a less stable image than traditional black-and-white processing, black-and-white pictures from the 1920s are more likely to survive long-term than color films and photographs from after the middle 20th century. Black-and-white photographic films using silver halide emulsions are the only film types that have proven to last for archival storage. The determining factors for longevity include the film base type, proper processing (develop, stop, fix and wash) and proper storage. Early films used a Cellulose nitrate base which was prone to decomposition and highly flammable. Nitrate film was replaced with acetate-base films. These Cellulose acetate films were later discovered to outgass acids (also referred to as vinegar syndrome). Acetate films were replaced in the early 1980s by polyester film base materials which have been determined to be more stable than film stocks with a nitrate or acetate base. Color prints made on most inkjet printers look very good at first but they have a very short lifespan, measured in months rather than in years. Even prints from commercial photo labs will start to fade in a matter of years if not processed properly and stored in cool, dry environments. == Documents/books == With documents for which the media are not so critical as what the documents contain, the information in documents can be copied by using photocopiers and image scanners. Books and manuscripts can also have their information saved without destruction by using a book scanner. Where the medium itself needs to be preserved, for example if a document is a crayon sketch by a famous artist on paper, a complex process of preservation may be used. Depending on the condition and importance of the item this can include gluing the media onto more stable media, or protective enclosing of the media. Polyester sleeves, acid-free folders, and pH buffered document boxes are common supportive protective enclosures whose selection must match the media's chemical and physical properties. Other considerations in preserving paper/books are: Damaging light, particularly UV light, which fades and destroys media over time by breaking down the molecules. Atmosphere contains small traces of sulfur dioxide and nitric acid which turn media yellow and break the fibers down. Humidity and moisture also aid in the breakdown of media. If there is too much, the document can be attacked by bacteria, and if too little, cellulose material breaks down. Temperature, particularly elevated ones, can destroy some media. Low temperatures can cause the water to form crystals which expands destroying the structure of paper-based documents. == Online photo albums == Although there are many websites that allow the upload of photographs and videos, digital preservation for the long-term is still considered an issue. There is a lack of confidence that such websites are capable of storing data for long periods of time (ex. 50 years) without data degradation or loss. == Optical media - CD, DVD, Blu-ray, M-Disc == Write-once optical media, such as CD-Rs and DVD-Rs, typically contain an organic dye that distinguishes data reading from data writing based on the dye's transparency along the disc. Conventional CDs and DVDs have finite shelf-life due to natural degradation of the dye; the newer M-DISC uses inorganic material technology to produce molded DVDs and Blu-Rays (up to 3-layer 100GB BDXL) with a claimed lifespan of 100-1000 years if stored correctly with most BD & BDXL rated read/writers enabling the higher power mode for the M-Disc format after 2011. The National Archives and Records Administration lists published life expectancies to be 10 or 25 years or more for normal CDs and DVDs and conservative life expectancies to be between 2 and 5 years. Storage environments, such as temperature and humidity, as well as handling conditions such as frequency of media use and compatibility between the recorder and media, affect media shelf-life. Improvements in media storage and migrations to new recording technologies can make certain formats obsolete within their respective lifespan. Technologists have pointed to internet streaming services, where services such as video-on-demand have contributed to the 33 percent decline in DVD sales the past 5 years, as a challenge for digital preservation. == Magnetic media - video cassettes, tapes, hard drives == Magnetic media such as audio and video tape and floppy disks also have limited life spans. Audio and video tapes require specific care and handling to ensure that the recorded information will be preserved. For information that must be preserved indefinitely, periodic transcription from old media to new ones is necessary, not only because the media are unstable but also because the recording technology may become obsolete. Magnetic media also deteriorates naturally with typical shelf lives between 10 and 20 years. Magnetic tape can degrade from binder hydrolysis or magnetic remanence decay. Binder hydrolysis, also known as sticky-shed syndrome, refers to the breakdown of binder, or glue, that holds the magnetic particles to the polyester base of the tape. Tapes which have been stored in hot, humid conditions are particularly vulnerable to this phenomenon and may suffer from accelerated degradation. Severe binder can cause the magnetic material to fall off or sheds from the base, leaving a pile of dust and clear backing. Archivists can bake the tape, which evaporates water molecules on the tape, to temporarily restore the binder before making a copy. Magnetic tape can also be destabilized by magnetic remanence decay, which refers to the weakening of the tape's magnetization over time. This weakens the affected tape's readability, leading to reduced sound clarity and volume or picture hue and contrast. Baking the tape will not restore magnetization. Media at risk include recorded media such as master audio recordings of symphonies and videotape recordings of the news gathered over the last 40 years. Threats to media that must be considered when archiving important record media include accidental erasure, physical loss due to disasters such as fires and floods, and media degradation. Along with the actual media being degraded over the years, the machines that are available to play back or reproduce the audio sources are becoming archaic themselves. Manufacturers and their support (parts, technical updates) for their machines have disappeared throughout the years. Even if the medium is vaulted and archived correctly, the mechanical properties of the machines have deteriorated to the point that they could do more harm than good to the tape being played. Many major film studios are now backing up their libraries by converting them to electronic media files, such as .AIFF or .WAV-based files via digital audio workstations. That way, even if the digital platform manufacturer goes out of business or no longer supports their product, the files can still be played on any common computer. There is a detailed process that must take place previous to the final archival product now that a digital solution is in place. Sample rates and their conversion and reference speed are both critical in this process. In floppy disks, the lubricants inside the plastic jackets of many older floppies promote the decay of the magnetic medium. Also, the alignment of the magnetic particles of the disk substrate may gradually degrade, leading to a loss of formatting and data. Early laser disk media were prone to degradation as the layers of the disk substrate were bonded with an adhesive that was vulnerable to decay and would crumble over time. This would lead the different layers of the disk to peel apart, damaging the pitted data surface and rendering the disk unreadable.
User-generated content
User-generated content (UGC), alternatively known as user-created content (UCC), is content generated by users of the Internet such as images, videos, audio, text, testimonials, software, and user interactions. Online content aggregation platforms such as social media, discussion forums and wikis by their interactive and social nature, no longer produce multimedia content but provide tools to produce, collaborate, and share a variety of content, which can affect the attitudes and behaviors of the audience in various aspects. This transforms the role of consumers from passive spectators to active participants. User-generated content is used for a wide range of applications, including problem processing, news, entertainment, customer engagement, advertising, gossip, research and more. It is an example of the democratization of content production and the flattening of traditional media hierarchies. The BBC adopted a user-generated content platform for its websites in 2005, and Time magazine named "You" as the Person of the Year in 2006, referring to the rise in the production of UGC on Web 2.0 platforms. CNN also developed a similar user-generated content platform, known as iReport. There are other examples of news channels implementing similar protocols, especially in the immediate aftermath of a catastrophe or terrorist attack. Social media users can provide key eyewitness content and information that may otherwise have been inaccessible. Since 2020, there has been an increasing number of businesses who are utilizing User Generated Content (UGC) to promote their products and services. Several factors significantly influence how UGC is received, including the quality of the content, the credibility of the creator, and viewer engagement. These elements can impact users' perceptions and trust towards the brand, as well as influence the buying intentions of potential customers. UGC has proven to be an effective method for brands to connect with consumers, drawing their attention through the sharing of experiences and information on social media platforms. Due to new media and technology affordances, such as low cost and low barriers to entry, the Internet is an easy platform to create and dispense user-generated content, allowing the dissemination of information at a rapid pace in the wake of an event. == Definition == The advent of user-generated content marked a shift among media organizations from creating online content to providing facilities for amateurs to publish their own content. User-generated content has also been characterized as citizen media as opposed to the "packaged goods media" of the past century. Citizen Media is audience-generated feedback and news coverage. People give their reviews and share stories in the form of user-generated and user-uploaded audio and user-generated video. The former is a two-way process in contrast to the one-way distribution of the latter. Conversational or two-way media is a key characteristic of so-called Web 2.0, which encourages the publishing of one's own content and commenting on other people's content. The role of the passive audience, therefore, has shifted since the birth of new media, and an ever-growing number of participatory users are taking advantage of these interactive opportunities, especially on the Internet, to create independent content. Grassroots experimentation then generated an innovation in sounds, artists, techniques, and associations with audiences, which then are being used in mainstream media. The active, participatory, and creative audience is prevailing today with relatively accessible media, tools, and applications, and its culture is in turn affecting mass media corporations and global audiences. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has defined three core variables for UGC: Accessible Content: User-generated content (UGC) is publicly produced through platforms located on the Internet and is available to any individual browsing such a publicly accessible website or a public social media account. There are other contexts where users must remain in a community or closed group to access and publish on such platforms (for example, wikis). This is a way of differentiating that although the content is accessible to the audience, there are certain restrictions for the users who generates the content. Creative effort: Creative effort was put into creating the work or adapting existing works to construct a new one; i.e. users must add their own value to the work. UGC often also has a collaborative element to it, as is the case with websites that users can edit collaboratively. For example, merely copying a portion of a television show and posting it to an online video website (an activity frequently seen on the UGC sites) would not be considered UGC. However, uploading photographs, expressing one's thoughts in a blog post or creating a new music video could be considered UGC. Yet the minimum amount of creative effort is hard to define and depends on the context. Creation outside of professional routines and practices: User-generated content is generally created outside of professional routines and practices. It often does not have an institutional or a commercial market context. In extreme cases, UGC may be produced by non-professionals without the expectation of profit or remuneration. Motivating factors include connecting with peers, achieving a certain level of fame, notoriety, or prestige, and the desire to express oneself. == Media pluralism == According to Cisco, in 2016 an average of 96,000 petabytes was transferred monthly over the Internet, more than twice as many as in 2012. In 2016, the number of active websites surpassed 1 billion, up from approximately 700 million in 2012. Reaching 1.66 billion daily active users in Q4 2019, Facebook has emerged as the most popular social media platform globally. Other social media platforms are also dominant at the regional level such as: Twitter in Japan, Naver in the Republic of Korea, Instagram (owned by Facebook) and LinkedIn (owned by Microsoft) in Africa, VKontakte (VK) and Odnoklassniki (eng. Classmates) in Russia and other countries in Central and Eastern Europe, WeChat and QQ in China. However, a concentration phenomenon is occurring globally giving dominance to a few online platforms that become popular for some unique features they provide, most commonly for the added privacy they offer users through disappearing messages or end-to-end encryption (e.g. Jami, Signal, Snapchat, Telegram, Viber, and WhatsApp), but they have tended to occupy niches and to facilitate the exchanges of information that remain rather invisible to larger audiences. Production of freely accessible information has been increasing since 2012. In January 2017, Wikipedia had more than 43 million articles, almost twice as many as in January 2012. This corresponded to a progressive diversification of content and an increase in contributions in languages other than English. In 2017, less than 12 percent of Wikipedia content was in English, down from 18 percent in 2012. Graham, Straumann, and Hogan say that the increase in the availability and diversity of content has not radically changed the structures and processes for the production of knowledge. For example, while content on Africa has dramatically increased, a significant portion of this content has continued to be produced by contributors operating from North America and Europe, rather than from Africa itself. == History == The massive, multi-volume Oxford English Dictionary was exclusively composed of user-generated content. In 1857, Richard Chenevix Trench of the London Philological Society sought public contributions throughout the English-speaking world for the creation of the first edition of the OED. As Simon Winchester recounts: So what we're going to do, if I have your agreement that we're going to produce such a dictionary, is that we're going to send out invitations, were going to send these invitations to every library, every school, every university, every book shop that we can identify throughout the English-speaking world... everywhere where English is spoken or read with any degree of enthusiasm, people will be invited to contribute words. And the point is, the way they do it, the way they will be asked and instructed to do it, is to read voraciously and whenever they see a word, whether it's a preposition or a sesquipedalian monster, they are to... if it interests them and if where they read it, they see it in a sentence that illustrates the way that that word is used, offers the meaning of the day to that word, then they are to write it on a slip of paper... the top left-hand side you write the word, the chosen word, the catchword, which in this case is 'twilight'. Then the quotation, the quotation illustrates the meaning of the word. And underneath it, the citation, where it came from, whether it was printed or whether it was in manuscri
Valantic
Valantic GmbH (stylised as valantic) is an IT service and consulting company headquartered in Munich, Germany. == History == Valantic GmbH was founded in 2012 under the name Dabero Service Group. Until it was renamed Valantic GmbH in 2017, the company merged with IT service providers and consulting firms. These included, among others, Realtime AG, a company for SAP systems. The companies involved in these mergers were also renamed in 2017 and have since used the Valantic brand name. Realtime AG, for example, became Valantic ERP Services AG. During the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic pressures, demand increased for IT service providers, particularly those offering customised software, IT consulting, SAP services, customer experience, cybersecurity, IoT, and digital work environments. In the following years, Valantic expanded by integrating additional companies. In 2021, Valantic expanded into other European countries through the integration of the Dutch company ISM eCompany and the Portuguese consulting firm Abaco. In 2022, the consulting firm C-Clear/Atom Ideas from Belgium joined Valantic. In February 2019, DPE Deutsche Private Equity Management III GmbH (DPE) took over the majority shareholding in Valantic. The founder, Holger von Daniels, and the further management retained a 25% stake. By 2025, DPE had invested €500 million in Valantic. In the following years, Valantic expanded its international locations. In 2023, Valantic incorporated the Danish company Inspari into the group, thereby entering the Scandinavian market. Inspari is a company for Microsoft technologies such as Azure and Power Platform. In the same year, Valantic joined forces with the Aiopsgroup, an international provider of online shopping applications for private and business customers of large companies. The company is based in Bulgaria with additional locations across Eastern Europe and other places. Additionally, the SAP applications division was expanded through the merger with the Spanish company Saptools. As a result, the companies became one of the largest European end-to-end consulting and implementation house for SAP services. By the end of 2023, Valantic had locations in 18 countries. In November 2024, Valantic announced its merger with the Danish digital consultancy Venzo. Through the integration of the company, founded in 2007 and oriented towards Microsoft technologies and digital transformation projects in the areas of automation, artificial intelligence, security, infrastructure and change management, Valantic further expanded its presence in Denmark and the Nordic countries. In July 2025, Valantic announced its merger with Utiligence GmbH, a Mannheim-based consulting firm for SAP technologies. Utiligence works primarily for the energy industry and supports companies in the integration of SAP S/4HANA and the digitalisation of business processes. == Company structure == Valantic is a partnership-based organisation, with partners acting as decision-makers in matters relating to corporate strategy, employee development and acquisitions. Valantic pursues a holacratic approach, promoting an open and self-organised way of working instead of hierarchical structures. By merging with other companies, Valantic is expanding its range of services and tapping into international markets and market shares. The new companies use Valantic's core systems and support processes, but usually retain their original structure. In the 2024 financial year, the company generated revenue of €544 million and employed 3,874 on average. Valantic has over 40 locations internationally. == Services == Valantic GmbH is a consulting firm, software provider and implementation partner. The company offers services in the areas of digital strategy and analytics (business intelligence and data science), customer experience management, SAP services, smart industries (Industry 4.0, supply chain management, and production planning and control processes), and financial services automation. The automation of financial services is aimed at financial service providers and banks. Valantic has been offering services in the field of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) since 2023. Part of these services involves enabling companies to use GenAI securely and in compliance with regulations in order to make internal work processes more efficient. Its customers include large corporations, several medium-sized companies and DAX-listed companies. == Research == Since 2018, Valantic has published an annual study on the development of the SAP landscape in German-speaking countries. The study examines topics such as the migration to SAP S/4HANA, cloud strategies, technological trends and the use of artificial intelligence in business processes. The 2025 survey of 201 SAP professionals from the DACH region showed, for example, an increase in ongoing and completed S/4HANA migration projects, as well as a further shift towards private-cloud systems. The use of artificial intelligence continued to grow, as did the use of the SAP Business Technology Platform and the Business Data Cloud. In 2025, Valantic, together with the Handelsblatt Research Institute, published the trend study Digital 2030 – The Rise of Applied AI. The study was based on a survey of around 700 executives from companies in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland on the economic effects of current digitalisation trends. According to the study, most respondents consider artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and cloud computing to hold the greatest strategic importance for business success by 2030. Around 70% of the participating companies stated that they are already achieving measurable business benefits through the use of AI applications, for example in quality control, document management, logistics, or customer service.
CloudLibrary
CloudLibrary (stylized as "cloudLibrary") is a cloud-based software system through which libraries lend electronic books; it is also the name of the app that users download to access the e-books. CloudLibrary was created in 2011 by 3M as part of its library systems unit as a competitor to OverDrive, Inc.; in 2015 3M sold the North American part of that unit to Bibliotheca Group GmbH, a company founded in 2011 that was funded by One Equity Partners Capital Advisors, a division of JP Morgan Chase. By 2019, Bibliotecha had tried, unsuccessfully, to negotiate with Amazon to add Kindle-ebook compatibility to cloudLibrary - something that, as of then, Amazon had only made available to Overdrive. In that year, cloudLibrary, along with hoopla offered by Midwest Tape, ODILO, and Baker & Taylor’s Axis 360, were the main competitors to the Overdrive and Libby apps offered by OverDrive, Inc. in the library e-book market. In April 2024, Bibliotheca sold cloudLibrary to the nonprofit cooperative OCLC. By that time, cloudLibrary was used by around 500 libraries in around 20 countries in around 50 languages, and was used to lend audiobooks, digital magazines, newspapers, and comics, and streaming media, along with e-books.