push technology

– Also see Webcasting, another usage. In both usages,netcasting is a synonym.Push technology (Webcasting) is the prearranged updating of news, weather, or other selected information on a computer user’s desktop interface through periodic and generally unobtrusive transmission over the World Wide Web (including the use of the Web protocol on intranet). Webcasting is a feature of the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser and Netscape’s Netcaster, part of its Communicator suite. Webcasting is also available through separate applications such as Pointcast and Backweb that run on current browsers.Webcasting uses so-called push technology in which the Web server ostensibly “pushes” information to the user rather than waiting until the user specifically requests it. (In actuality, most of the push is triggered by user or administrator preselection and arrives only as the result of client requests.) In addition to changing the Web for the home user, new Webcasting products offer corporations an organized way to manage information for their intranet users. Because some products and services seem aimed primarily at the corporate market and others for the home user, we describe how Webcasting works first for the home user and then for a company’s intranet. Webcasting (Home User) Briefly, here’s how it works: You download one of the new Netscape or MSIE browsers or one of the Webcasting applications such as Pointcast or Backweb. Now you have software in your computer that can unobtrusively request and get information updates in the periods when you’re not using your live Internet connection (you won’t be aware of it). The new browser or Webcasting software will ask you what “channels” or information categories and specific Web sites you want to be able to have brought to you. Typically, you fill out a brief profile and select from menus. The user interface varies considerably, depending on the browser or application you have downloaded and installed. A typical interface is a scrolling tickertape on some part of your display screen that you can turn on or off. The tickertape displays news headlines, stock quotes, or other information. Pointcast provides a screensaver that brings you an array of news, weather, and other information as soon as you turn your computer on. Backweb’s Headliner lets you select either a tickertape or a screensaver and change at any time. Both Internet Explorer and Netscape’s Netcaster take an even more radical approach and provide a new interface in which information objects or sources are viewed along with word processing and other applications as though everything was part of your virtual desktop. As you use your computer, the Webcasting software uses a portion of your Internet connection to request updates from the “channels” (Web sites) you have selected. As the updates arrive, they are either stored for you to view the first time you click on a “channel” or, if a channel is already active, the information is presented to you right away and continually as long as you are using your computer. Webcasting (Intranet) Briefly, here’s how it works: An enterprise’s intranet manager installs one of several Webcasting products available (see Table below) on a central Web server. Depending on the product, a range of provided program “channels” may be available to provide the intranet users with international, national, and perhaps local news or news headlines and possibly other services. The intranet manager decides which “channels” to preselect for intranet users and which channels (or whether there will be any) available for the user to choose. The channels that “come with” the product or represent existing sites on the Web may either be icons or graphical links to a Web site or may be summary services such as news tickers and stock quotes that furnish information whether or not the user elects to click to the source Web site. The intranet manager can develop new channels to put on the server that will “push” corporate news, industry or trade news, and news about competitors to selected users in the company. Some of the products will allow the intranet manager to gather statistics on how often each channel is being used. The user of the intranet will view the default set of channels planned and provided by the intranet manager. The intranet will thus become a much more visible part of the user’s computer desktop. In some cases, the user may be able to modify the user interface and turn the Webcast channels off (for example, turn off a screensaver background or a scrolling headline ticker) just as a home user can. Webcasting assumes that individually and as corporations, we want our Web to be less chaotic with information sources pre-selected and organized. Users can still get to the entire Web on their own as usual (at least we think in most companies). However, Webcasters believe you often won’t need to if the information is brought to you first. The use of the term “channel” by the Webcasting providers underscores their belief that users will prefer fewer choices and more order. Some of the Webcast software allows users to add their own Web site selections as channels. Pointcast includes advertising as part of its content. The browsers and other Webcasters do not include advertising unless you click to the source site from a headline. Pointcast’s screensaver approach requires about 10 megabytes of your hard disk. With one or two exceptions, the Webcasting software is free for downloading. A Brief Comparison of Webcasting Products The following table summarizes the leading products, their content, presentation technique, and where to download them. (Note: Since these products are constantly changing, we recommend checking their Web sites for more up-to-date information.) Product Interface Content Download from BackWeb 35 channels including news and stock quotes; developer’s kit lets an intranet create their own channels Flash, screensaver, popup window, scrolling ticker, wallpaper, and launch from client www.backweb.com Castanet Hundreds of channels; encourages channel development by Web sites, promising many more Separate application or an application launched from your Web browser www.marimba.com Headliner Hundreds of channels to choose from; will merge with BackWeb soon Scrolling ticker, screensaver, or newstitle; can easily switch or turn off www.headliner.com Intermind Up to 130 external Web or intranet channels can be installed A helper application (separate window) from the browser www.intermind.com Microsoft Internet Explorer Many preselected channels and more coming Part of your desktop; scrollling ticker www.microsoft.com Netscape Netcaster Many preselected channels and more coming Part of your desktop; menu on the desktop www.netscape.com Pointcast Includes CNN and similar channels and about 50 affiliated content providers Screensaver with a number of running channels; includes advertising; impressive but hard to turn off www.pointcast.com Selected Links Links to products cited in the PC World source article cited below will tell you where to download Pointcast and Backweb. CONTRIBUTORS: Mona Cummins and Kevin Edwards LAST UPDATED: 31 Jul 2001

by: John

There is a lot going on in the cloud related to database management systems (DBMS) these days, but I could not find a good roundup to reference – so here you go.

For the purpose of this analysis, I divide cloud DBMS offerings into four categories based on whether or not they are “relational” and the degree to which they are “native” to the cloud (e.g. integrated part of a cloud service).  Note that I specifically exclude SaaS platforms with their underlying databases because often it’s not possible to tell what’s under the covers.  Here’s the general breakdown:

Note that just about any database can be run in a cloud-based infrastructure.  The key requirement is the ability have administrator rights to be able to install and configure the database, and the ability to generally have persistent volumes to mount the database.  Virtually any RDBMS – Oracle, IBM DB2, SQL Server, Sybase, etc. – can run in most of the cloud infrastructures.

Recently there have been a lot of non-relational database systems gaining traction f or “web-scale” applications.  These tend to be distributed “key-value” systems or document databases.  They are all open source as well.  HyperTable is an open source copy of the Google BigTable (“datastore”).  HBase is a database that sits on top of Hadoop.  Project Cassandra was developed at Facebook and released into open source. Collectively these entrants are being called the “NoSQL Movement.”

There are far fewer “native” cloud database options.  On the non-relational front, SimpleDB from Amazon was among the first, followed by the Google AppEngine Datastore (based on BigTable).  Amazon’s Elastic MapReduce is not a database, per se, but is a cloud version of Hadoop and enables large scale data manipulation (some people might object if I leave it out).

For relational databases, only Microsoft with their SQL Azure Database (aka “SQL Services”) is the only RDBMS-as-a-service that I can find. Initially the Microsoft offering, called SQL Data Services, did not offer full support for SQL.  Based on a lot of feedback (presumably negative), Microsoft accelerated their support for complete relational functionality and their Tranact-SQL (T-SQL) interface.  It is not clear if existing T-SQL applications can be migrated as is to SQL Azure, but that would presumably be the goal in the long term.

Based on what I’m seeing, the concept of native cloud database offering has yet to really take off.  SimpleDB and Google Datastore (BigTable) are too proprietary and not widely adopted.  SQL Azure is not even fully available yet.  Perhaps the market is not there yet because there’s not much demand?  Or perhaps it’s just early.  Time will tell.

by Juventino Quinones on 25. Feb, 2010

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The folks over at The Astonishing Tribe — tat for short — have come up with a facial recognition app for Google’s free mobile OS. The app is called Recognizr and is not only able to connect faces with your handset’s address book, but it can match the person’s face to social networking profiles so you can to identify the user by face.

As most of you already know, face recognition isn’t a new concept on Android, the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 has the ability to identify people’s pictures and then link them to their Contacts entries. But the Recognizr app is said to give facial recognition capabilities to all Android devices and not just one.

As of now Recognizr is in the prototype stages, but the folks from TAT expect to have a version of the app in the Android Market in a few months. One of the caveats of the app at this point is that in order to be recognized, participants must be users of the mobile app. It is still a great concept though, let us know what you think about it.

With its enhanced, highly intelligent OCR technologies, ABBYY FineReader 10 dramatically expands the scope of traditional text recognition. Based on the new generation of ADRT^® (Adaptive Document Recognition Technology), FineReader 10 reproduces even the most complex formatting of multipage documents with extreme precision and intelligence. A range of functions designed to increase productivity, combined with a smart, easy-to-use interface, make ABBYY FineReader 10 the essential tool for professional work with documents.

New Achievements in OCR Accuracy and Performance

ABBYY FineReader 10 demonstrates significant accuracy increase in processing documents with background image items (e.g. magazine pages); high-quality images; documents with difficult-to-read print quality (e.g. faxes); and images captured by digital and phone cameras. In the table below, you can find additional data on accuracy and performance enhancements for certain document types and conversion tasks*:

* Numbers quoted are based on internal ABBYY testing.

Optical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is the mechanical or electronic translation of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text. It is widely used to convert books and documents into electronic files, to computerize a record-keeping system in an office, or to publish the text on a website. OCR makes it possible to edit the text, search for a word or phrase, store it more compactly, display or print a copy free of scanning artifacts, and apply techniques such as machine translation, text-to-speech and text mining to it. OCR is a field of research in pattern recognition, artificial intelligence and computer vision.

OCR systems require calibration to read a specific font; early versions needed to be programmed with images of each character, and worked on one font at a time. “Intelligent” systems with a high degree of recognition accuracy for most fonts are now common. Some systems are capable of reproducing formatted output that closely approximates the original scanned page including images, columns and other non-textual components.

Have you ever had a experience that after you purchase a nice jacket or a wonderful clothes but found the price drop 30 percent after 2 days? Have you ever feel upset when you found you spend three hundred dollars but now only one hundred bucks just in a week? Now you don’t have to worry about these annoyed detail. Just buy a tinny extra insurance on the clothes’ price during you purchasing it, and then you can have our guarantee have your price different back if there are lower price be found in fifteen days. Our company (LIM Inc) uses two parts of way to give you our words. First of all, once you purchase any item with our guarantee in a store, remember send your receipt (purchase date, price and item number are required) no matter you take a picture and e-mail to us or through our Iphone Apps. When we receive your price we will compare the price we gather in next fifteen days. The price information can be found on the website which will be updated every day. If we found any price difference we will return your money back to your account right away or you can choose store credits. That is the way we work!