SDL plc was a British multinational professional services company based in Maidenhead, Berkshire, United Kingdom. SDL specialized in language translation software and services (including interpretation services). It was listed on the London Stock Exchange until it was acquired by RWS Group in November 2020. == Name == SDL is an abbreviation for "Software and Documentation Localization". == History == The company was founded by Mark Lancaster with nine employees in 1992. It opened its first overseas office in France in 1996 and was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1999. The company grew organically and via acquisitions. SDL acquired Polylang Multimedia in 1998, International Translation & Publishing (ITP) in 2000, Alpnet in 2001, and the machine translation (MT) assets of Transparent Language in 2001. It bought Trados, a rival translation memory (TM) developer, in 2005. In 2007, the company acquired Tridion, a content management system vendor, and PASS Engineering, developers of the Passolo software. In 2008, it bought Idiom Technologies, a global information system management business. In July 2009 SDL acquired XyEnterprise in an all-cash transaction to add XML Professional Publisher as well as Contenta content management software and LiveContent to manage and deliver XML. This unit combined with Trisoft formerly Infoshare. In December 2009, SDL acquired Fredhopper, a Dutch eCommerce onsite search and navigation, onsite targeting and targeted advertising software vendor. Later that same year, it bought Xopus, another Dutch company and the leader in online XML editing. In May 2011 SDL acquired Dutch-based Media Asset Management company, Calamares, in 2012 the campaign management and social media analytics company, Alterian, and in 2013, bemoko, a supplier of internet software for mobile devices. In January 2016, having undertaken a strategic review, SDL announced the divestment of Fredhopper and Alterian as non-complementary to its new strategy. In August 2020 RWS Group announced a proposed takeover of the company for £809 million. The transaction was completed on 4 November 2020. == Operations == SDL provided software for language translation purposes.
WebPlus
Serif WebPlus was a website design program for Microsoft Windows, developed by the software company, Serif. It allows users to design, create and upload their website onto the internet without any knowledge of HTML or other web technologies. Much like Microsoft Word, WebPlus uses WYSIWYG drag and drop editing to add and position text, images and links as they would appear on the finished web page. Once a user has designed their site, WebPlus can preview the site in a web browser before uploading the site using the in-built FTP. The software comes with a variety of pre-designed sample websites containing Filler text like Lorem ipsum, which can be used as a template for quickly designing a site. It also provides drawing tools for creating and editing buttons and web graphics. == Free WebPlus Starter Edition == Previously Serif had made available feature limited Starter Editions of their software, based on older versions, which could be obtained and used free of charge. For WebPlus the final free edition was based on version X5 and this was released in September 2012. This continued to be available from Serif's server until it was withdrawn around March 2016. WebPlus was then only available as a paid-for version X8. == Program Withdrawal == In March 2016, Serif announced that WebPlus X8 would be the final version, and that there were no current plans to design an application to replace it. Sales of WebPlus X8 by Serif were ended around December 2016. In early 2018, Serif announced that Serif Web Resources, hosted on Serif servers and required to implement some advanced web-site functionality in WebPlus created sites, would no longer work after 31 August 2018. In 2018, Serif also shutdown the servers that generated the "Plus" software registration numbers on-line from the product version and the individual generated installation number. Serif revealed the alternative was to use a universal master registration number, which is 881887. This is known to work with post 2003 Serif "Plus" software (e.g. verified to work with PagePlus v5.02). However, later Serif "Plus" software still registers itself automatically if within a certain recent period of a previous Serif software registration on the same PC. == Supported platforms == WebPlus was developed for Microsoft Windows "Win32" graphical desktop interface and is fully compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista (32/64bit), Windows 7 (32/64bit) and Windows 8. == Features == Web hosting to upload websites to the internet with the address www.sitename.webplus.net and email [email protected]. E-Commerce tool to create online stores with providers such as PayPal. Form wizard generates online forms to collect information from website visitors. Add blogs, forums, hit counters, online polls and content management systems to websites using Smart Objects. Google Maps tool embeds maps and optional navigation markers within a website. Site navigation bars adopt a website's structure providing a tool for navigating around the website. Photo gallery groups a collection of images together and displays them as an animated slideshow. Search engine optimization (SEO) tools optimise a websites search ranking with the likes of Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Collect website metrics such as page popularity and number of website hits using Google Analytics. WebPlus X5 introduced a button studio for creating button graphics. Restrict access to specific pages on a website with a secure member's area. WebPlus automatically converts images and graphics into a web targeted format, optimising them for fast download. Embed YouTube videos within a web page. Add animated effects to a website with Animated GIFs, Animated Marquees or by importing Flash videos. Stream news and information feeds to a website using RSS and podcasts. Automated Site Checker analyses and corrects potential problems with a website. AdSense tool incorporates Google AdSense advertisements into a website In-built FTP transfers files onto a web server, uploading a website to the internet. In-built Basic Photo Editor the PhotoLab can make automatic adjustments and "Quick Fix's" to photos. From X5, WebPlus offers image editing and filters, through its PhotoLab and also provides a dedicated background-removal tool in the form of Cutout Studio. Display images, Flash videos and web pages using animated Lightboxes. Filter Effects can be applied to the graphical objects, giving convincing, realistic effects such as glass, metallic, plastic and other 2D/3D filters. WebPlus also provides QuickShapes for creating button and web graphics. These predefined shapes can be quickly modified with sliders to adjust certain parameters, for example creating rounded rectangles, etc. Shapes include: rectangles, ellipses, stars, spirals, cogs, petals, etc.
Foveated rendering
Foveated rendering is a rendering technique which uses an eye tracker integrated with a virtual reality headset to reduce the rendering workload by greatly reducing the image quality in the peripheral vision (outside of the zone gazed by the fovea). A less sophisticated variant called fixed foveated rendering doesn't utilise eye tracking and instead assumes a fixed focal point. == History == Research into foveated rendering dates back at least to 1991. At Tech Crunch Disrupt SF 2014, Fove unveiled a headset featuring foveated rendering. This was followed by a successful kickstarter in May 2015. At CES 2016, SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI) demoed a new 250 Hz eye tracking system and a working foveated rendering solution. It resulted from a partnership with camera sensor manufacturer Omnivision who provided the camera hardware for the new system. In July 2016, Nvidia demonstrated during SIGGRAPH a new method of foveated rendering claimed to be invisible to users. In February 2017, Qualcomm announced their Snapdragon 835 Virtual Reality Development Kit (VRDK) which includes foveated rendering support called Adreno Foveation. == Use == According to chief scientist Michael Abrash at Oculus, utilising foveated rendering in conjunction with sparse rendering and deep learning image reconstruction has the potential to require an order of magnitude fewer pixels to be rendered in comparison to a full image. Later, these results have been demonstrated and published. In December 2019, fixed foveated rendering support was added to the Oculus Quest SDK. A number of VR headsets have included on-board eye tracking to provide support for foveated rendering, including HTC's Vive Pro Eye (2019), Meta Quest Pro (2022), PlayStation VR2 (2023), and Apple Vision Pro (2024). In 2025, Valve announced the upcoming Steam Frame headset, which applies a variation of the technique known as "foveated streaming" for wireless streaming from a PC to the headset; the method similarly uses variance in bit rate, and is performed at the encoder level rather than the software level.
ZipBooks
ZipBooks is a free online accounting software company based in American Fork, Utah. The cloud-based software is an accounting and bookkeeping tool that helps business owners process credit cards, track finances, and send invoices, among other features. == History == ZipBooks was founded by Tim Chaves in June 2015, backed by venture capital firm Peak Ventures. The company secured an additional $2 million of funding in July 2016, and in 2017 it was awarded a $100,000 economic grant by the Utah Governor's Office of Economic Development Technology Commercialization and Innovation Program. == Products == ZipBooks' core modules are invoicing, transactions, bills, reporting, time tracking, contacts, and payroll. Accrual accounting was added in 2017. The application is available on G Suite, iOS, Slack, and as a web application. == Reception == Computerworld compared ZipBooks favorably with other accounting software. PC Magazine praised its user experience, but stated it lacked "a lot of features that competing sites offer".
OpenIO
OpenIO offered object storage for a wide range of high-performance applications. OpenIO was founded in 2015 by Laurent Denel (CEO), Jean-François Smigielski (CTO) and five other co-founders; it leveraged open source software, developed since 2006, based on a grid technology that enabled dynamic behaviour and supported heterogenous hardware. In October 2017 OpenIO was completed a $5 million funding rounds. In July 2020 OpenIO had been acquired by OVH and withdrawn from the market to become the core technology of OVHcloud object storage offering. == Software == OpenIO is a software-defined object store that supports S3 and can be deployed on-premises, cloud-hosted or at the edge, on any hardware mix. It has been designed from the beginning for performance and cost-efficiency at any scale, and it has been optimized for Big Data, HPC and AI. OpenIO stores objects within a flat structure within a massively distributed directory with indirections, which allows the data query path to be independent of the number of nodes and the performance not to be affected by the growth of capacity. Servers are organized as a grid of nodes massively distributed, where each node takes part in directory and storage services, which ensures that there is no single point of failure and that new nodes are automatically discovered and immediately available without the need to rebalance data. The software is built on top of a technology that ensures optimal data placement based on real-time metrics and allows the addition or removal of storage devices with automatic performance and load impact optimization. For data protection OpenIO has synchronous and asynchronous replication with multiple copies, and an erasure coding implementation based on Reed-Solomon that can be deployed in one data center or geo-distributed or stretched clusters. The software has a feature that catches all events that occur in the cluster and can pass them up in the stack or to applications running on OpenIO nodes. This enables event-driven computing directly into the storage infrastructure. The open source code is available on Github and it is licensed under AGPL3 for server code and LGPL3 for client code. == Performance == OpenIO claimed in 2019 to have reached 1.372 Tbit/s write speed (171 GB/s) on a cluster of 350 physical machines. The benchmark scenario, conducted under production conditions with standard hardware (commodity servers with 7200 rpm HDDs), consisted in backing up a 38 PB Hadoop datalake via the DistCp command. This level of performance marked, according to analysts, the arrival of a new generation of object storage technologies oriented toward high performance and hyper-scalability.
Photo-consistency
In computer vision, photo-consistency determines whether a given voxel is occupied. A voxel is considered to be photo consistent when its color appears to be similar to all the cameras that can see it. Most voxel coloring or space carving techniques require using photo consistency as a check condition in Image-based modeling and rendering applications. == Usage == 3D Volumetric Reconstruction. Image registration. Multi-view reconstruction.
Situational application
In computing, a situational application is "good enough" software created for a narrow group of users with a unique set of needs. The application typically (but not always) has a short life span, and is often created within the group where it is used, sometimes by the users themselves. As the requirements of a small team using the application change, the situational application often also continues to evolve to accommodate these changes. Although situational applications are specifically designed to embrace change, significant changes in requirements may lead to an abandonment of the situational application altogether – in some cases it is just easier to develop a new one than to evolve the one in use. == Characteristics == Situational applications are developed fast, easy to use, uncomplicated, and serve a unique set of requirements. They have a narrow focus on a specific business problem, and they are written in a way where if the business problem changes rapidly, so can the situational application. This contrasts with more common enterprise applications, which are designed to address a large set of business problems, require meticulous planning, and impose a sometimes-slow and often-meticulous change process. == Origination == Clay Shirky in his essay entitled "Situated Software" described a type of software that "...is designed for use by a specific social group, rather than for a generic set of "users"." IBM later morphed the term into "situational applications". == Evolution == The successful large-scale implementation of a situational application environment in an organization requires a strategy, mindset, methodology and support structure quite different from traditional application development. This is now evolving as more companies learn how to best leverage the ideas behind situational applications. In addition, the advent of cloud-based application development and deployment platforms makes the implementation of a comprehensive situational application environment much more feasible. == Examples == A structured wiki that can host wiki applications lends itself to creation of situational applications. Some mashups can also be considered situational applications. A forms application such as a Microsoft Access Database (MDB file) can be considered a situational application. The latest implementations of situational application environments include Longjump, Force.com and WorkXpress.