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Automated attendant
In telephony, an automated attendant (also auto attendant, auto-attendant, autoattendant, automatic phone menus, AA, or virtual receptionist) allows callers to be automatically transferred to an extension without the intervention of an operator/receptionist. Many AAs will also offer a simple menu system ("for sales, press 1, for service, press 2," etc.). An auto attendant may also allow a caller to reach a live operator by dialing a number, usually "0". Typically the auto attendant is included in a business's phone system such as a PBX, but some services allow businesses to use an AA without such a system. Modern AA services (which now overlap with more complicated interactive voice response or IVR systems) can route calls to mobile phones, VoIP virtual phones, other AAs/IVRs, or other locations using traditional land-line phones or voice message machines. == Feature description == Telephone callers will recognize an automated attendant system as one that greets calls incoming to an organization with a recorded greeting of the form, "Thank you for calling .... If you know your party's extension, you may dial it any time during this message." Callers who have a touch-tone (DTMF) phone can dial an extension number or, in most cases, wait for operator ("attendant") assistance. Since the telephone network does not transmit the DC signals from rotary dial telephones (except for audible clicks), callers who have rotary dial phones have to wait for assistance. On a purely technical level it could be argued that an automated attendant is a very simple kind of IVR however, in the telecom industry the terms IVR and auto attendant are generally considered distinct. An automated attendant serves a very specific purpose (replace live operator and route calls), whereas an IVR can perform all sorts of functions (telephone banking, account inquiries, etc.). An AA will often include a directory which will allow a caller to dial by name in order to find a user on a system. There is no standard format to these directories, and they can use combinations of first name, last name, or both. The following lists common routing steps that are components of an automated attendant: Transfer to extension Transfer to voicemail Play message (i.e., "our address is ...") Go to a sub-menu Repeat choices In addition, an automated attendant would be expected to have values for the following: '0' – where to go when the caller dials '0' Timeout – what to do if the caller does nothing (usually go to the same place as '0') Default mailbox – where to send calls if '0' is not answered (or is not pointing to a live person) == Background == PBXs (private branch exchanges) or PABXs (private automatic branch exchanges) are telephone systems that serve an organization that has many telephone extensions but fewer telephone lines (sometimes called "trunks") that connect that organization to the rest of the global telecommunications network. While persons within an enterprise served by a PBX can call each other by dialing their extension numbers, incoming calls, i.e., calls originating from a telephone not served by the PBX but intended for a party served by the PBX, required assistance from a switchboard operator (also called a "switchboard attendant") or a telephone service called DID ("direct inward dialing"). Direct inward dialing has advantages such as rapid connection to the destination party and disadvantages including cost, lack of identification of the called organization and use of ten-digit telephone numbers. Automated attendants provide, among many other things, a way for an external caller to be directed to an extension or department served by a PBX system without using direct inward dialing or without switchboard attendant assistance. == History == Automated attendants are not part of voicemail systems. Voice messaging (or voicemail or VM) technology has existed since the late 1970s; in the early 1980s companies provided voice-prompting systems that allowed callers to reach (route the call) to an intended party, not necessarily to leave a message. Automated attendant systems are also referred to as automated menu systems and much early work in this field was done by Michael J. Freeman, Ph.D. == Time-based routing == Many auto attendants will have options to allow for time-of-day routing, as well as weekend and holiday routing. The specifics of these features will depend entirely on the particular automated attendant, but typically there would be a normal greeting and routing steps that would take place during normal business hours, and a different greeting and routing for non-business hours.
LumenVox
LumenVox is a privately held speech recognition software company based in San Diego, California. LumenVox has been described as one of the market leaders in the speech recognition software industry. == History == LumenVox was founded in 2001 as subsidiary of Progressive Computing. According to LumenVox CEO Edward Miller, when Progressive had initially looked to add speech recognition to its own phone system, it found the existing offerings too expensive and recognized a niche in the market for a more affordable speech recognition product. This led to the development of LumenVox with an aim to bring speech recognition to small-to-midsized businesses. LumenVox is one of the major providers of automatic speech recognition for telephone systems, and as of 2006, became the second largest provider of speech recognition software. == Products == The primary LumenVox product is the LumenVox Speech Engine. It is a speaker-independent automatic speech recognizer that uses the Speech Recognition Grammar Specification for building and defining grammars. It has been integrated with several of the major voice platforms, including Avaya Voice Portal/Interactive Response, Aculab, and BroadSoft's BroadWorks. The Speech Engine was originally derived from CMU Sphinx, but LumenVox has added considerable development effort to make it a commercial-ready product. LumenVox also offers a product called the Speech Tuner, which provides a graphical means of testing and troubleshooting speech recognition applications. == Open source support == LumenVox was recognized as one of the top VoIP companies in 2008 for its work in providing its offerings to the open source community, an effort by the company that began in 2006 when it partnered with Digium. At that time, Digium, maintainer of the open source Asterisk PBX, integrated the LumenVox Speech Engine into Asterisk. This made LumenVox the first commercially available speech recognition engine for Asterisk. As one of the earlier commercial software integrations with Asterisk, the LumenVox integration has been described as one of the applications that helped to mainstream Asterisk. In 2009, LumenVox also began offering access to the Speech Engine as a monthly subscription, bringing the cost of entry down even lower for open source users. LumenVox is also integrated with the open source UniMRCP project, which provides open source client and server libraries for the Media Resource Control Protocol.
Layers (digital image editing)
Layers are used in digital image editing to separate different elements of an image. A layer can be compared to a transparency on which imaging effects or images are applied and placed over or under an image. Today they are an integral feature of image editors. In the early days of computing, memory was at a premium and the idea of using multi-layered images was considered infeasible in personal computer applications as the tradeoffs were image size and color depth. As the price of memory fell it became feasible to apply the concept of layering to raster images. The first software known to apply the concept of layers was LALF, which was released in 1989 for the NEC PC-9801. LALF's terminology for layers is "cells", after the concept of drawing animation frames over-top of a stencil. Layers were introduced in Western markets by Fauve Matisse (later Macromedia xRes), and then available in Adobe Photoshop 3.0, in 1994, which lead to widespread adoption. In vector image editors that support animation, layers are used to further enable manipulation along a common timeline for the animation; in SVG images, the equivalent to layers are "groups". == Layer types == There are different kinds of layers, and not all of them exist in all programs. They represent a part of a picture, either as pixels or as modification instructions. They are stacked on top of each other, and depending on the order, determine the appearance of the final picture. In graphics software, layers are the different levels at which one can place an object or image file. In the program, layers can be stacked, merged, or defined when creating a digital image. Layers can be partially obscured allowing portions of images within a layer to be hidden or shown in a translucent manner within another image. Layers can also be used to combine two or more images into a single digital image. For the purpose of editing, working with layers allows for applying changes to just one specific layer. == Layer (basic) == The standard layer available to most programs consists of a rectangular, semitransparent picture which may be superimposed over other layers. Some programs require that layers cover the same area as the final canvas, but others offer layers of multiple sizes. Each layer may bear individual settings, such as opacity, blending modes, dynamic filters, and potentially hundreds of other properties. == Layer mask == A layer mask is linked to a layer and hides part of the layer from the picture. What is painted black on the layer mask will not be visible in the final picture. What is grey will be more or less transparent depending on the shade of grey. As the layer mask can be both edited and moved around independently of both the background layer and the layer it applies to, it gives the user the ability to test a lot of different combinations of overlay. == Adjustment layer == An adjustment layer typically applies a common effect like brightness or saturation to other layers. However, as the effect is stored in a separate layer, it is easy to try it out and switch between different alternatives, without changing the original layer. In addition, an adjustment layer can easily be edited, just like a layer mask, so an effect can be applied to just part of the image.
Irwin Sobel
Irwin Sobel (born September 12, 1940) is a scientist and researcher in digital image processing. == Biography == Irwin Sobel was born in New York City. He graduated from MIT in 1961 and completed his Ph.D. research at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Project (SAIL) with thesis Camera Models and Machine Perception. His Ph.D. advisor was Jerome A. Feldman. Starting in 1973, he spent nine years doing postdoctoral research at Columbia University. After 1982, he worked as a Senior Researcher at HP Labs. == Sobel operator == In 1968, Sobel gave a talk entitled "An Isotropic 3x3 Image Gradient Operator" at SAIL; this method became known as the Sobel operator. It was developed jointly with a colleague, Gary Feldman, also at SAIL.
Nice (app)
Nice is a photo-sharing mobile app developed by Nice App Mobile Technology Co., Ltd. (Chinese: 北京极赞科技有限公司) in China. The app allows users to tag specific locations on images, enabling detailed labeling of items such as clothing and accessories. The company received a $36 million investment in C-round funding in 2014. Nice had 30 million registered users and 12 million active users as of late 2015. As of January 2024, it remained a popular app, the 6th most-downloaded in the iOS App Store for China. == Official website == Official website
Landweber iteration
The Landweber iteration or Landweber algorithm is an algorithm to solve ill-posed linear inverse problems, and it has been extended to solve non-linear problems that involve constraints. The method was first proposed in the 1950s by Louis Landweber, and it can be now viewed as a special case of many other more general methods. == Basic algorithm == The original Landweber algorithm attempts to recover a signal x from (noisy) measurements y. The linear version assumes that y = A x {\displaystyle y=Ax} for a linear operator A. When the problem is in finite dimensions, A is just a matrix. When A is nonsingular, then an explicit solution is x = A − 1 y {\displaystyle x=A^{-1}y} . However, if A is ill-conditioned, the explicit solution is a poor choice since it is sensitive to any noise in the data y. If A is singular, this explicit solution doesn't even exist. The Landweber algorithm is an attempt to regularize the problem, and is one of the alternatives to Tikhonov regularization. We may view the Landweber algorithm as solving: min x ‖ A x − y ‖ 2 2 / 2 {\displaystyle \min _{x}\|Ax-y\|_{2}^{2}/2} using an iterative method. The algorithm is given by the update x k + 1 = x k − ω A ∗ ( A x k − y ) . {\displaystyle x_{k+1}=x_{k}-\omega A^{}(Ax_{k}-y).} where the relaxation factor ω {\displaystyle \omega } satisfies 0 < ω < 2 / σ 1 2 {\displaystyle 0<\omega <2/\sigma _{1}^{2}} . Here σ 1 {\displaystyle \sigma _{1}} is the largest singular value of A {\displaystyle A} . If we write f ( x ) = ‖ A x − y ‖ 2 2 / 2 {\displaystyle f(x)=\|Ax-y\|_{2}^{2}/2} , then the update can be written in terms of the gradient x k + 1 = x k − ω ∇ f ( x k ) {\displaystyle x_{k+1}=x_{k}-\omega \nabla f(x_{k})} and hence the algorithm is a special case of gradient descent. For ill-posed problems, the iterative method needs to be stopped at a suitable iteration index, because it semi-converges. This means that the iterates approach a regularized solution during the first iterations, but become unstable in further iterations. The reciprocal of the iteration index 1 / k {\displaystyle 1/k} acts as a regularization parameter. A suitable parameter is found, when the mismatch ‖ A x k − y ‖ 2 2 {\displaystyle \|Ax_{k}-y\|_{2}^{2}} approaches the noise level. Using the Landweber iteration as a regularization algorithm has been discussed in the literature. == Nonlinear extension == In general, the updates generated by x k + 1 = x k − τ ∇ f ( x k ) {\displaystyle x_{k+1}=x_{k}-\tau \nabla f(x_{k})} will generate a sequence f ( x k ) {\displaystyle f(x_{k})} that converges to a minimizer of f whenever f is convex and the stepsize τ {\displaystyle \tau } is chosen such that 0 < τ < 2 / ( ‖ ∇ f ‖ 2 ) {\displaystyle 0<\tau <2/(\|\nabla f\|^{2})} where ‖ ⋅ ‖ {\displaystyle \|\cdot \|} is the spectral norm. Since this is special type of gradient descent, there currently is not much benefit to analyzing it on its own as the nonlinear Landweber, but such analysis was performed historically by many communities not aware of unifying frameworks. The nonlinear Landweber problem has been studied in many papers in many communities; see, for example. == Extension to constrained problems == If f is a convex function and C is a convex set, then the problem min x ∈ C f ( x ) {\displaystyle \min _{x\in C}f(x)} can be solved by the constrained, nonlinear Landweber iteration, given by: x k + 1 = P C ( x k − τ ∇ f ( x k ) ) {\displaystyle x_{k+1}={\mathcal {P}}_{C}(x_{k}-\tau \nabla f(x_{k}))} where P {\displaystyle {\mathcal {P}}} is the projection onto the set C. Convergence is guaranteed when 0 < τ < 2 / ( ‖ A ‖ 2 ) {\displaystyle 0<\tau <2/(\|A\|^{2})} . This is again a special case of projected gradient descent (which is a special case of the forward–backward algorithm) as discussed in. == Applications == Since the method has been around since the 1950s, it has been adopted and rediscovered by many scientific communities, especially those studying ill-posed problems. In X-ray computed tomography it is called simultaneous iterative reconstruction technique (SIRT). It has also been used in the computer vision community and the signal restoration community. It is also used in image processing, since many image problems, such as deconvolution, are ill-posed. Variants of this method have been used also in sparse approximation problems and compressed sensing settings.