AI Data Room

AI Data Room — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

  • Too Good To Go

    Too Good To Go

    Too Good To Go is a service with a mobile application that connects customers to restaurants and stores that have surplus unsold food. The service covers major European cities, and in October 2020 started operations in North America. As part of the initiatives taken on the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste to reduce food loss and waste, the app is suggested alongside OLIO among many others. In 2023 Too Good To Go was the fastest-growing sustainable food app startup by number of downloads. As of August 2023, it claimed 164,000 businesses, serving 62 million users, have saved 155 million bags of food. As of March 2023, it claimed to have saved over 200 million meals. == History == The company was created in 2015 in Denmark by Thomas Bjørn Momsen, Klaus Bagge Pedersen, Adam Sigbrand and Brian Christensen. In 2017, Mette Lykke (co-founder of Endomondo) joined as CEO. In February 2019, the company raised an additional 6 million euros in a new round of investment. In August 2019, Too Good To Go was re-launched in Austria. In September 2019, Too Good To Go acquired the Spanish startup weSAVEeat and merged it into its own brand. In November 2019, the offer of Too Good To Go extended to plants through a partnership with the French retail plants company Jardiland. In December 2019, Too Good To Go partnered with the French grocery retail stores Intermarché, and donated 60K euros to the French charity Restaurants du Cœur. In October 2021, Bonnie Wright teamed up with Too Good To Go to drive the initiative to reduce food waste. == Corporate affairs == The key trends for the Danish entity Too Good To Go ApS are (as of the financial year ending December 31): == International expansion == As of March 2026 the company serves the European countries Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, the Faroe Islands, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom. Outside of Europe the service is available in Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and the United States. == Purpose == The purpose of Too Good To Go is to reduce food waste worldwide. It developed a mobile application that connects restaurants and stores that have unsold, surplus food, with customers who can then buy whatever food the outlet considers surplus to requirements—without being able to choose—at a much lower price than normal. The food on the app is priced at one-third its original price. The company claims this reduces the waste of food that would otherwise be discarded; food waste is a global problem that affects the environment. In three years active, the app reached more than 9.5 million users. As of 2022, more than 57.7 million users and 154,000 establishments have signed up, and 139 million meals have been collected. In 2019, the company had 350 employees in Europe. As of June 2023 the company was estimated to have 1,289 employees. == Use == Food outlets must notify the TGTG company about what they have available on each day, stating what sort of food they have (baked foods, meals, produce, vegan food), and the price for a 'surprise bag', whose contents they determine; the user cannot choose, but the original prices will be three or more times the TGTG price. Notification is made early based upon the quantity predicted to be left over, not at the end of a selling period. Users must register to use the service. A mobile phone with an Internet connection running Android or iOS is needed. The user runs the TGTG app, which lists outlets available within a chosen distance and time range. The customer can then order and pay for a 'surprise bag'. The supplier can cancel an order at any time if the expected surplus is not available—the purchaser is notified by text message—and the purchaser can cancel with two hours' notice. The phone must be taken to the food supplier in a specified pickup time window, often 30 or 60 minutes long, and the transaction is finalised by swiping the app—connected to the Internet—to confirm collection.

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  • Minimum resolvable contrast

    Minimum resolvable contrast

    Minimum resolvable contrast (MRC) is a subjective measure of a visible spectrum sensor’s or camera's sensitivity and ability to resolve data. A snapshot image of a series of three bar targets of selected spatial frequencies and various contrast coatings captured by the unit under test (UUT) is used to determine the MRC of the UUT, i.e., the visible spectrum camera or sensor. A trained observer selects the smallest target resolvable at each contrast level. Typically, specialized computer software collects the inputted data of the observer and provides a graph of contrast vs. spatial frequency at a given luminance level. A first order polynomial is fitted to the data and an MRC curve of spatial frequency versus contrast is generated.

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  • Faceu

    Faceu

    FaceU (Chinese: 激萌) is a camera app for smartphones running Android or Apple iOS that edits portrait photographs, typically selfies. This app uses AR technology to allow users to add stickers or effects in real-time when taking selfies and videos. It was launched in 2016 and had 250 million registered users in 2017. Most of the users of Faceu are females from 15 to 35 years old. In February 2018, Faceu was acquired by Chinese media startup Toutiao, which is worth about $300 million. The app was banned in India (along with other Chinese apps) on 2 September 2020 by the government, the move came amid the 2020 China-India skirmish. == Online marketing == FaceU is one of several selfie camera apps in China, including MeituPic, Pitu, and Camera360. The app includes social functions such as instant messaging and video chat. Photos and short videos are deleted after a short period. . FaceU has worked with brands to create themed stickers for social media campaigns. In 2016, Faceu collaborated with MeituPic's Meipai and launched a rainbow effect. In October 2017, during the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day, FaceU released a feature that applied historical or military costumes to selfies. The app has also worked with various social media personalities and celebrities, who have posted content using FaceU effects. Faceu group engages users' emotions utilizing key opinion leaders (KOL) and posters on social media. == Usage and Demographics == FaceU had a large user base. According to industry sources, the app had more than 90 million monthly active users (MAU) and over 11 million daily active users (DAU) at certain points. Most of the users were under 30 and mainly women. The app was especially popular in major Chinese cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. FaceU also caught on in other parts of East Asia, particularly Japan and South Korea. Some app stores claim the app had hundreds of millions of users worldwide, but these numbers mostly come from the company’s marketing materials and have not been confirmed by independent sources. == Product Features == FaceU includes face recognition and live augmented reality (AR) effects. It allows users to add filters and stickers in real time while they are recording, rather than having to apply them later. The app integrates beauty filters, tools to create emojis and GIFs, and follow-video functionality that automatically tracks the face and movements as it records. Studies and market reports indicate that augmented reality (AR) filters and beautification tools are now common in smartphone photography. These features have influenced the way people take photos and what they expect photos to look like when shared online. Adding AR filters and beautification options has become a standard feature that most mobile photography apps now include.

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  • PCVC Speech Dataset

    PCVC Speech Dataset

    The PCVC (Persian Consonant Vowel Combination) Speech Dataset is a Modern Persian speech corpus for speech recognition and also speaker recognition. The dataset contains sound samples of Modern Persian combination of vowel and consonant phonemes from different speakers. Every sound sample contains just one consonant and one vowel So it is somehow labeled in phoneme level. This dataset consists of 23 Persian consonants and 6 vowels. The sound samples are all possible combinations of vowels and consonants (138 samples for each speaker). The sample rate of all speech samples is 48000 which means there are 48000 sound samples in every 1 second. Every sound sample starts with consonant then continues with vowel. In each sample, in average, 0.5 second of each sample is speech and the rest is silence. Each sound sample ends with silence. All of sound samples are denoised with "Adaptive noise reduction" algorithm. Compared to Farsdat speech dataset and Persian speech corpus it is more easy to use because it is prepared in .mat data files. Also it is more based on phoneme based separation and all samples are denoised. == Contents == The corpus is downloadable from its Kaggle web page, and contains the following: .mat data files of sound samples in a 23630000 matrix, in which 23 is number of consonants, 6 is the number of vowels and 30000 is the length of sound sample.

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  • StatCrunch

    StatCrunch

    StatCrunch is a web-based statistical software application from Pearson Education. StatCrunch was originally created for use in college statistics courses. As a full-featured statistics package, it is now also used for research and for other statistical analysis purposes. == History == American statistics professor Webster West created StatCrunch in 1997. Over the next 19 years West assisted by others added many more statistical procedures and graphing capabilities, and made user interface improvements. In 2005, West received two awards for StatCrunch: the CAUSEweb Resource of the Year Award and the MERLOT Classics Award. In 2013, the StatCrunch Java code was rewritten in JavaScript in order to avoid Java browser security problems, and so that it would run on iOS and Android. In 2015, new ways of importing data were added, including importing multi-page data directly from Wikipedia tables and other Web sources, and also importing with drag-and-drop for various data formats. In 2016, StatCrunch was acquired by Pearson Education, which had already been serving as the primary distributor of StatCrunch for several years. == Software == A StatCrunch license is included with many of Pearson's statistical textbooks. Because StatCrunch is a web application, it works on multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android. Data in StatCrunch is represented in a "data table" view, which is similar to a spreadsheet view, but unlike spreadsheets, the cells in a data table can only contain numbers or text. Formulas cannot be stored in these cells. There are many ways to import data into StatCrunch. Data can be typed directly into cells in the data table. Entire blocks of data may be cut-and-pasted into the data table. Text files (.csv, .txt, etc.) and Microsoft Excel files (.xls and .xlsx) can be drag-and-dropped into the data table. Data can be pulled into StatCrunch directly from Wikipedia tables or other Web tables, including multi-page tables. Data can be loaded directly from Google Drive and Dropbox. Shared data sets saved by other StatCrunch community users can be searched for by title or keyword and opened in a data table. Graphs, results, and reports created by StatCrunch can be shared with other users, in addition to the sharing of data sets. StatCrunch has a library of data transformation functions. StatCrunch can also recode and reorganize data. All data is stored in memory, and all processing happens on the client, so response is fast, even with large data sets. StatCrunch can interact with multiple graphs simultaneously. If a user selects a data point on one graph, then that same data point is highlighted on all other displayed graphs. In addition to standard statistical and graphing procedures, StatCrunch has a collection of about forty "applets" which illustrate statistical concepts interactively.

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  • Piranesi (software)

    Piranesi (software)

    Piranesi is an interactive paint system that enables the user to create artistic images from 3D scenes created using conventional modeling applications. == Image format == Piranesi uses the proprietary EPix file format. For every pixel, additional information is stored, such as distance from the viewer and material settings. EPix files can be rendered from 3D scenes using a fixed viewpoint by Piranesi's companion software, Vedute.

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  • AARON

    AARON

    AARON is the collective name for a series of computer programs written by artist Harold Cohen that create original artistic images autonomously, which set it apart from previous programs. Proceeding from Cohen's initial question "What are the minimum conditions under which a set of marks functions as an image?", AARON was in development between 1972 and the 2010s. As the software is not open source, its development effectively ended with Cohen's death in 2016. The name "AARON" does not seem to be an acronym; rather, it was a name chosen to start with the letter "A" so that the names of successive programs could follow it alphabetically. However, Cohen did not create any other major programs. Initial versions of AARON created abstract drawings that grew more complex through the 1970s. More representational imagery was added in the 1980s; first rocks, then plants, then people. In the 1990s more representational figures set in interior scenes were added, along with color. AARON returned to more abstract imagery, this time in color, in the early 2000s. Cohen used machines that allowed AARON to produce physical artwork. The first machines drew in black and white using a succession of custom-built "turtle" and flatbed plotter devices. Cohen would sometimes color these images by hand in fabric dye (Procion), or scale them up to make larger paintings and murals. In the 1990s Cohen built a series of digital painting machines to output AARON's images in ink and fabric dye. His later work used a large-scale inkjet printer on canvas. Development of AARON began in the C programming language then switched to Lisp in the early 1990s. Cohen credits Lisp with helping him solve the challenges he faced in adding color capabilities to AARON. An article about Cohen appeared in Computer Answers that describes AARON and shows two line drawings that were exhibited at the Tate gallery. The article goes on to describe the workings of AARON, then running on a DEC VAX 750 minicomputer. Raymond Kurzweil's company has produced a downloadable screensaver of AARON for Microsoft Windows PCs. This version of AARON can also produce printable images. AARON's source code is not publicly available, but Cohen has described AARON's operations in various essays and it is discussed in abstract in Pamela McCorduck's book. AARON cannot learn new styles or imagery on its own; each new capability must be hand-coded by Cohen. It is capable of producing a practically infinite supply of distinct images in its own style. Examples of these images have been exhibited in galleries worldwide. AARON's artwork has been used as an artistic equivalent of the Turing test. It does seem however that AARON's output follows a noticeable formula (figures standing next to a potted plant, framed within a colored square is a common theme). Cohen is very careful not to claim that AARON is creative. But he does ask "If what AARON is making is not art, what is it exactly, and in what ways, other than its origin, does it differ from the 'real thing?' If it is not thinking, what exactly is it doing?" — The further exploits of AARON, Painter. The Whitney Museum featured AARON in 2024, showcasing the evolution of AARON as the earliest artificial intelligence (AI) program for artmaking.

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  • Multiple buffering

    Multiple buffering

    In computer science, multiple buffering is the use of more than one buffer to hold a block of data, so that a "reader" will see a complete (though perhaps old) version of the data instead of a partially updated version of the data being created by a "writer". It is very commonly used for computer display images. It is also used to avoid the need to use dual-ported RAM (DPRAM) when the readers and writers are different devices. == Description == === Double buffering Petri net === The Petri net in the illustration shows double buffering. Transitions W1 and W2 represent writing to buffer 1 and 2 respectively while R1 and R2 represent reading from buffer 1 and 2 respectively. At the beginning, only the transition W1 is enabled. After W1 fires, R1 and W2 are both enabled and can proceed in parallel. When they finish, R2 and W1 proceed in parallel and so on. After the initial transient where W1 fires alone, this system is periodic and the transitions are enabled – always in pairs (R1 with W2 and R2 with W1 respectively). == Double buffering in computer graphics == In computer graphics, double buffering is a technique for drawing graphics that shows less stutter, tearing, and other artifacts. It is difficult for a program to draw a display so that pixels do not change more than once. For instance, when updating a page of text, it is much easier to clear the entire page and then draw the letters than to somehow erase only the pixels that are used in old letters but not in new ones. However, this intermediate image is seen by the user as flickering. In addition, computer monitors constantly redraw the visible video page (traditionally at around 60 times a second), so even a perfect update may be visible momentarily as a horizontal divider between the "new" image and the un-redrawn "old" image, known as tearing. === Software double buffering === A software implementation of double buffering has all drawing operations store their results in some region of system RAM; any such region is often called a "back buffer". When all drawing operations are considered complete, the whole region (or only the changed portion) is copied into the video RAM (the "front buffer"); this copying is usually synchronized with the monitor's raster beam in order to avoid tearing. Software implementations of double buffering necessarily require more memory and CPU time than single buffering because of the system memory allocated for the back buffer, the time for the copy operation, and the time waiting for synchronization. Compositing window managers often combine the "copying" operation with "compositing" used to position windows, transform them with scale or warping effects, and make portions transparent. Thus, the "front buffer" may contain only the composite image seen on the screen, while there is a different "back buffer" for every window containing the non-composited image of the entire window contents. === Page flipping === In the page-flip method, instead of copying the data, both buffers are capable of being displayed. At any one time, one buffer is actively being displayed by the monitor, while the other, background buffer is being drawn. When the background buffer is complete, the roles of the two are switched. The page-flip is typically accomplished by modifying a hardware register in the video display controller—the value of a pointer to the beginning of the display data in the video memory. The page-flip is much faster than copying the data and can guarantee that tearing will not be seen as long as the pages are switched over during the monitor's vertical blanking interval—the blank period when no video data is being drawn. The currently active and visible buffer is called the front buffer, while the background page is called the back buffer. == Triple buffering == In computer graphics, triple buffering is similar to double buffering but can provide improved performance. In double buffering, the program must wait until the finished drawing is copied or swapped before starting the next drawing. This waiting period could be several milliseconds during which neither buffer can be touched. In triple buffering, the program has two back buffers and can immediately start drawing in the one that is not involved in such copying. The third buffer, the front buffer, is read by the graphics card to display the image on the monitor. Once the image has been sent to the monitor, the front buffer is flipped with (or copied from) the back buffer holding the most recent complete image. Since one of the back buffers is always complete, the graphics card never has to wait for the software to complete. Consequently, the software and the graphics card are completely independent and can run at their own pace. Finally, the displayed image was started without waiting for synchronization and thus with minimum lag. Due to the software algorithm not polling the graphics hardware for monitor refresh events, the algorithm may continuously draw additional frames as fast as the hardware can render them. For frames that are completed much faster than interval between refreshes, it is possible to replace a back buffers' frames with newer iterations multiple times before copying. This means frames may be written to the back buffer that are never used at all before being overwritten by successive frames. Nvidia has implemented this method under the name "Fast Sync". An alternative method sometimes referred to as triple buffering is a swap chain three buffers long. After the program has drawn both back buffers, it waits until the first one is placed on the screen, before drawing another back buffer (i.e. it is a 3-long first in, first out queue). Most Windows games seem to refer to this method when enabling triple buffering. == Quad buffering == The term quad buffering is the use of double buffering for each of the left and right eye images in stereoscopic implementations, thus four buffers total (if triple buffering was used then there would be six buffers). The command to swap or copy the buffer typically applies to both pairs at once, so at no time does one eye see an older image than the other eye. Quad buffering requires special support in the graphics card drivers which is disabled for most consumer cards. AMD's Radeon HD 6000 Series and newer support it. 3D standards like OpenGL and Direct3D support quad buffering. == Double buffering for DMA == The term double buffering is used for copying data between two buffers for direct memory access (DMA) transfers, not for enhancing performance, but to meet specific addressing requirements of a device (particularly 32-bit devices on systems with wider addressing provided via Physical Address Extension). Windows device drivers are a place where the term "double buffering" is likely to be used. Linux and BSD source code calls these "bounce buffers". Some programmers try to avoid this kind of double buffering with zero-copy techniques. == Other uses == Double buffering is also used as a technique to facilitate interlacing or deinterlacing of video signals.

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  • Anti-Grain Geometry

    Anti-Grain Geometry

    Anti-Grain Geometry (AGG) is a 2D rendering graphics library written in C++. It features anti-aliasing and sub-pixel resolution. It is not a graphics library, per se, but rather a framework to build a graphics library upon. The library is operating system independent and renders to an abstract memory object. It comes with examples interfaced to the X Window System, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, AmigaOS, BeOS, SDL. The examples also include an SVG viewer. The design of AGG uses C++ templates only at a very high level, rather than extensively, to achieve the flexibility to plug custom classes into the rendering pipeline, without requiring a rigid class hierarchy, and allows the compiler to inline many of the method calls for high performance. For a library of its complexity, it is remarkably lightweight: it has no dependencies above the standard C++ libraries and it avoids the C++ STL in the implementation of the basic algorithms. The implicit interfaces are not well documented, however, and this can make the learning process quite cumbersome. While AGG version 2.5 is licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or greater, AGG version 2.4 is still available under the 3-clause BSD license and is virtually the same as version 2.5. == History == Active development of the AGG codebase stalled in 2006, around the time of the v2.5 release, due to shifting priorities of its main developer and maintainer Maxim Shemanarev. M. Shemanarev remained active in the community until his sudden death in 2013. Development has continued on a fork of the more liberally licensed v2.4 on SourceForge.net. == Usage == The Haiku operating system uses AGG in its windowing system. It is one of the renderers available for use in GNU's Gnash Flash player. Graphical version of Rebol language interpreter is using AGG for scalable vector graphics DRAW dialect. Hilti uses it in some of their rebar detection tools, like the PS 1000. Matplotlib uses AGG as its canonical renderer for interactive user interfaces. fpGUI Toolkit has an optional AggPas back-end rendering engine. Work is being done to make AggPas the default or sole rendering engine for fpGUI. Mapnik, the toolkit that renders the maps on the OpenStreetMap website, uses AGG for all its bitmap map rendering by default. HTTPhotos uses AGG to scale photos. Pdfium, the PDF rendering engine used by Google Chrome makes use of AGG, although work is progressing to replace this with Skia Graphics Engine. Graphics Mill, the .NET imaging SDK uses AGG as its drawing engine. Image-Line FL Studio, a digital audio workstation, since version 10.8 released on September 30, 2012, uses AGG for drawing. Native Instruments's Supercharger and Supercharger GT compressors use AGG for its user interface. == Author == The main author of the library was Maxim Shemanarev (Russian: Максим Шеманарёв). On November 26, 2013 Shemanarev (born June 15, 1966, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia) was reported dead at the age of 47 at his home in Columbia, Maryland (US). He died suddenly, allegedly from an epileptic seizure that he had suffered for a while. He was a graduate from Nizhny Novgorod State Technical University. Little is known about his personal life. It's known though that he was divorced and his mother was alive at the time of his death. He used to love skiing, snowboarding (in Colorado), and inline skating. He was praised by his friends for his intelligent programming skills.

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  • Bump (application)

    Bump (application)

    Bump was an iOS and Android mobile app that enabled smartphone users to transfer contact information, photos and files between devices. In 2011, it was #8 on Apple's list of all-time most popular free iPhone apps, and by February 2013 it had been downloaded 125 million times. Its developer, Bump Technologies, shut down the service and discontinued the app on January 31, 2014, after being acquired by Google for Google Photos and Android Camera. == Features == Bump sent contact information, photos and files to another device over the internet. Before activating the transfer, each user confirmed what they want to send to the other user. To initiate a transfer, two people physically bumped their phones together. A screen appeared on both users' smartphone displays, allowing them to confirm what they want to send to each other. When two users bumped their phones, software on the phones send a variety of sensor data to an algorithm running on Bump servers, which included the location of the phone, accelerometer readings, IP address, and other sensor readings. The algorithm figured out which two phones felt the same physical bump and then transfers the information between those phones. Bump did not use Near Field Communication. February 2012 release of Bump 3.0 for iOS, the company streamlined the app to focus on its most frequently used features: contact and photo sharing. Bump 3.0 for Android maintained the features eliminated from the iOS version but moved them behind swipeable layers. In May 2012, a Bump update enabled users to transfer photos from their phone to their computer via a web service. To initiate a transfer, the user goes to the Bump website on their computer and bumps the smartphone on the computer keyboard's space bar. By December 2012, various Bump updates for iOS and Android had added the abilities to share video, audio, and any files. Users swipe to access those features. In February 2013, an update to the Bump iOS and Android apps enabled users to transfer photos, videos, contacts and other files from a computer to a smartphone and vice versa via a web service. To perform the transfer, users went to the Bump website on their computer and bump the smartphone on the computer keyboard's space bar. == History == The underlying idea of a synchronous gesture like bumping two devices for content transfer or pairing them was first conceived by Ken Hinkley of Microsoft Research in 2003. This idea was presented at a user interface and technology conference that same year. The paper proposed the use of accelerometers and a bumping gesture of two devices to enable communication, screen sharing and content transfer between them. Similar to this original concept, the idea for Bump app was conceived by David Lieb, a former employee of Texas Instruments, while he was attending the University of Chicago Booth School of Business for his MBA. While going through the orientation and meeting process of business school, he became frustrated by constantly entering contact information into his iPhone and felt that the process could be improved. His fellow Texas Instruments employees Andy Huibers and Jake Mintz, who was a classmate of Lieb's at the University of Chicago's MBA program, joined Lieb to form Bump Technologies. Bump Technologies launched in 2008 and is located in Mountain View, CA. Early funding for the project was provided by startup incubator Y Combinator, Sequoia Capital and other angel investors. It gained attention at the CTIA international wireless conference, due to its accessibility and novelty factor. In October 2009, Bump received $3.4m in Series A funding followed in January 2011 with a $16m series B financing round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen sits on the company's board. The Bump app debuted in the Apple iOS App Store in March 2009 and was “one of the apps that helped to define the iPhone” (Harry McCracken, Technologizer). It soon became the billionth download on Apple's App Store. An Android version launched in November 2009. By the time Bump 3.0 for iOS was released in February 2012, the app had been installed 77 million times, with users sharing more than 2 million photos daily. As of February 2013, there had been 125 million Bump app downloads. == Other apps created by Bump Technologies == Bump Technologies worked with PayPal in March 2010 to create a PayPal iPhone application. The application, which allows two users to automatically activate an Internet transfer of money between their accounts, found widespread adoption. A similar version was released for Android in August 2010. The Bump capability in PayPal's apps was removed in March 2012. At that time, Bump Technologies released Bump Pay, an iOS app that lets users transfer money via PayPal by physically bumping two smartphones together. The tool was originally created for the Bump team to use when splitting up restaurant bills. The payment feature was not added to the Bump app because the company “wanted to make it as simple as possible so people understand how this works,” Lieb told ABC News. Bump Pay was the first app from the company's Bump Labs initiative. A goal of Bump Labs is to test new app ideas that may not fit within the main Bump app. ING Direct added a feature to its iPhone app in 2011 that lets users transfer money to each other using Bump's technology. The feature was later added to its Android app, now called Capital One 360. In July 2012, Bump Technologies released Flock, an iPhone photo sharing app. An Android version was released in December 2012. Using geolocation data embedded in photos and a user's Facebook connections, Flock finds pictures the user takes while out with friends and family and puts everyone's photos from that event into a single shared album. Users receive a push notification after the event, asking if they want to share their photos with friends who were there in the moment. The app will also scan previous photos in the iPhone camera roll and uncover photos that have yet to be shared. If location services were enabled at the time a photo was taken, Flock allows users to create an album of photos from the past with the friends who were there with them. == Acquisition by Google == On September 16, 2013, Bump Technologies announced that it had been acquired by Google. On December 31, 2013, they broke the news that both Bump and Flock would be discontinued so that the team could focus on new projects at Google. The apps were removed from the App Store and Google Play on January 31, 2014. The company subsequently deleted all user data and shut down their servers, thus rendering existing installations of the apps inoperable.

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  • Clips (software)

    Clips (software)

    Clips is a discontinued mobile video editing software application created by Apple Inc. It was released onto the iOS App Store on April 6, 2017, for free. Initially, it was only available on 64-bit devices running iOS 10.3 or later; as of version 3.1.3, it requires iOS 16.0 or later. Apple describes it as an app for "making and sharing fun videos with text, effects, graphics, and more.". Its final release was on May 9, 2024 before was removed from the App Store on October 10, 2025. == Features == After launching of the app, the user sees the view of the front-facing camera. The app allows the user to create a new clip by tapping on a red record button, or use photos or videos from the device's photo library. Once a clip is recorded, it can be added to a project timeline shown at the bottom of the screen. The user can share their project on social media platforms. The user can also add filters and effects to the project. "Live Titles" (available in several styles) can also be created by dictating to the device.

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  • MoltenVK

    MoltenVK

    MoltenVK is a software library which allows Vulkan applications to run on top of Metal on Apple's macOS, iOS, and tvOS operating systems. It is the first software component to be released for the Vulkan Portability Initiative, a project to have a subset of Vulkan run on platforms lacking native Vulkan drivers. There are some limitations compared with a native Vulkan implementation. == History == MoltenVK was first released as a proprietary and commercially licensed product by The Brenwill Workshop on July 27, 2016. On July 31, 2017, Khronos announced the formation of the Vulkan Portability Technical Subgroup. === Open source === On February 26, 2018, Khronos announced that Vulkan became available on macOS and iOS products through the MoltenVK library. Valve announced that Dota 2 will run on macOS using the Vulkan API with the aid of MoltenVK, and that they had made an arrangement with developer The Brenwill Workshop Ltd to release MoltenVK as open-source software under the Apache License version 2.0. On May 30, 2018, Qt was updated with Vulkan for Qt on macOS using MoltenVK. On May 31, 2018, optional Vulkan support for Dota 2 on macOS was released. Benchmarks for the game were available the following day, showing better performance using Vulkan and MoltenVK compared to OpenGL. On July 20, 2018, Wine was updated with Vulkan support on macOS using MoltenVK. On 29 July 2018, the first app using MoltenVK was accepted onto the App Store, after initially being rejected. On 6 August 2018, Google open-sourced Filament, a crossplatform real-time physically based rendering engine with MoltenVK for macOS/iOS. On November 28, 2018, Valve released Artifact, their first Vulkan-only game on macOS using MoltenVK. === Version 1.0 === On 29 January 2019, MoltenVK 1.0.32 was released with early prototype of Vulkan Portability Extensions. RPCS3 and Dolphin emulators were updated with Vulkan support on macOS using MoltenVK. On 13 April 2019, MoltenVK 1.0.34 was released with support for tessellation. On July 30, 2019, MoltenVK 1.0.36 was released targeting Metal 3.0. On July 31, 2020, MoltenVK 1.0.44 was released, adding support for the tvOS platform. On January 23, 2020, MoltenVK was updated to support for some of the new features of Vulkan 1.2, as of Vulkan SDK 1.2.121. === Version 1.1 === On October 1, 2020, MoltenVK 1.1.0 was released, adding full support for Vulkan 1.1, as of Vulkan SDK 1.2.154. On 9 December 2020, MoltenVK 1.1.1 was released, providing support for Vulkan on Apple silicon GPUs and support for the Mac Catalyst platform for porting iOS/iPadOS apps to macOS. === Version 1.2 === On October 18, 2022, MoltenVK 1.2.0 was released, adding full support for Vulkan 1.2 as of Vulkan SDK 1.3.231. In January 2023, MoltenVK 1.2.2 added support for Vulkan as of SDK 1.3.239, while this version of Vulkan SDK fixed some issues with the interconnectivity with Metal API, while version 1.2.3 supported some additional extensions. === Version 1.3 === On May 1, 2025, MoltenVK 1.3 was released with support for Vulkan 1.3. === Version 1.4 === On August 20, 2025, MoltenVK 1.4 was released with support for Vulkan 1.4.

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  • Kai's Power Tools

    Kai's Power Tools

    Kai's Power Tools (KPT) are a set of API plugins created by the German computer scientist Kai Krause in 1992 that were designed for use with Adobe Photoshop and Corel Photo-Paint. Kai's Power Tools were sold to Corel in 2000 when MetaCreations was closed. There are various versions of Kai's Power Tools. KPT 3, 5, 6, and X sets are compilations of different filters. The program interface features a reward-based function in which a bonus function is revealed as the user moves towards more complex aspects of the tool. == Filters == The KPT Convolver is a mathematics based filter; the level of precision and varying effects can be achieved by using numerical values of colour, tint, hue, saturation, contrast, brightness, luminosity, and posterize. The KPT Projector takes the current image or selection and offers a number of interactive perspective warp effects. To a large extent, with its draggable distortion handles and its moving, scaling and rotating options, this simply duplicates Adobe Photoshop's Free Transform capabilities. What is completely different is the ability to rotate the bitmap image in 3D space and to tile the results if desired. It can also animate the distortions by dragging keyframes from the preview window into an animation palette. KPT 6 will then preview the animation and output it to various sizes in avi or mov format. This animation capability is even more useful with the KPT Turbulence filter. This is another distortion filter, but one that treats the image as if it was completely liquid. The preview panel shows the animation in real time. The KPT Goo filter is used to produce a single frame freeform liquid distortion. This filter is available both with KPT 6 and the standalone version. It works by effectively turning a bitmap image into a liquid that can be interactively smeared, smudged, twirled, and pinched with the range of tools on offer. The obvious use is to distort photographic portraits into caricatures. KPT Materializer can create advanced surface textures based on bump maps that define troughs and peaks. It can use any external image for the basis of the bump map or alternatively the user can pick out the hue, saturation, luminance or red, green, or blue channel of the current image. It can then offset, scale and rotate the texture map, control its lighting, and even blend in a reflection map. The filter can be used for anything from providing an oil-painting feel to an entire image, to giving the illusion of depth to a selection. Also producing the impression of depth is the KPT Gel filter which uses various paint tools to synthesize photo-realistic 3D materials such as metals, liquids, or plastics. Gel painting is very different from traditional 2D painting as the brush strokes pool together when they touch and refract the underlying image. It can also manipulate 3D paint—once it has been added—by twirling, pinching, and carving it. The opposite is true of the Equalizer filter, which is used for applying variations on sharpening effects. The filter has three modes. The first mode, Equalizer, looks and works rather like the graphic equalizer on a stereo system, enabling adjustment of the level of pixel contrast within nine bands of different visual frequencies. The second mode, Contrast Sharpen, allows for increasing the contrast between light and dark areas in an image. The third mode, Bounded Sharpen, can sharpen an image without causing oversharpening, which can lead to halo effects. This feature is particularly useful when pulling out the detail in an image softened by resizing. KPT SceneBuilder is used for producing photorealistic 3D scenes by importing and rendering 3DS files. The main image window offers three tabs for editing in 2D and 3D mode and for setting up the object's final texture. Many users regard this filter as being the most impressive because it acts as a standalone 3D rendering tool and provides control over everything from transparency, reflection, refraction, bump mapping through to multiple light sources, and so on but without the ability to create or edit objects. The final filter, KPT SkyEffects, also has its roots in Metacreations' experience with 3D programs such as Bryce and RayDream. This filter is designed to simulate the interaction between the light from the sun or moon with no less than six atmospheric layers of haze, fog and cloud. The filter is typical of the KPT 6 collection as a whole: at times the interface is inspired and offers the ability to create beautiful reddening sunsets simply by interactively dragging the sun toward the horizon, producing realistic sunsets and moonscapes. == Other effects == Kai's Power Tools 6 features a lens flare effect for precisely managing the type of glow, halo, streaks, and reflection. The addition of a library of preset effects helps to overcome this by allowing the user to choose a standard effect and then interactively position the flare in the image preview. KPT 6 provides a new engine in the form of the KPT Reaction, which takes a reaction seed and turns it into a seamlessly tiling pattern based on a reaction diffusion process. It offers random noise, regular dots or reticulated voronoi patterns or a bitmap image itself as the seed. Corel has no plans for any updates.

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  • WebPlus

    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.

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  • Adobe GoLive

    Adobe GoLive

    Adobe GoLive was a WYSIWYG HTML editor and web site management application from Adobe Systems. It replaced Adobe PageMill as Adobe's primary HTML editor and was itself discontinued in favor of Dreamweaver. The last version of GoLive that Adobe released was GoLive 9. == History == GoLive originated as the flagship product of a company named GoNet Communication, Inc. then based in Menlo Park, California, and the development company GoNet Communications GmbH in Hamburg, Germany, in 1996. Later GoNet changed its name to GoLive Systems, Inc, and the name of its product to GoLive CyberStudio. Adobe acquired GoLive in 1999 and re-branded the GoLive CyberStudio product to what became Adobe GoLive. Adobe took over the Hamburg office as an Adobe development site to continue to develop the product. At the time of the acquisition, CyberStudio was a Macintosh-only application. In the spring of 1999 Adobe released Adobe GoLive for both Macintosh and Microsoft Windows. The first versions of Dreamweaver and CyberStudio were released in a similar timeframe. However, Dreamweaver eventually became the dominant WYSIWYG HTML editor in market share. After the Adobe acquisition of Macromedia (the company that had owned Dreamweaver), GoLive was progressively re-targeted toward Adobe's traditional design market, and the product became better integrated with Adobe's existing suite of design-oriented software products and less focused on the professional web development market. The Adobe CS2 Premium suite contained GoLive CS2. With the release of Creative Suite 3, Adobe integrated Dreamweaver as a replacement for GoLive and released GoLive 9 as a standalone product. In April 2008, Adobe announced that sales and development of GoLive would cease in favor of Dreamweaver. == General description and distinctive aspects == GoLive incorporated a largely modeless workflow that relied heavily on drag-and-drop. Most user interaction was done via a contextual inspector rather than the modal workflow found in Dreamweaver. Among its features were a separate editor for tables that supported nesting, and a two-dimensional panel for applying CSS styles to elements. GoLive supported drag-and-drop of native Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator files via what the company called "Smart Objects", which then automatically guided the user through saving those files in web-supported formats. Updates to the original Photoshop or Illustrator assets were automatically tracked by GoLive. It also implemented a tool called "Components" which allowed updates to interface elements throughout a site to be updated globally by changing one single file. As a website management tool, GoLive allowed users to transfer and publish content directly from within the application, and allowed individual files to be excluded from uploading. == Features == One of the new features of GoLive version 5 was Dynamic Link, which was a method of creating dynamic, database-driven web content without the need to know a server-side language and with full WYSIWYG support in the GoLive user interface. GoLive had a powerful set of extensibility API which could be used to add additional functionality to the product. The GoLive SDK provided interfaces which allowed developers to use a combination of XML, JavaScript and C/C++ to create plugins for the product. The extensibility API allowed developers access to custom drawing and event handling using JavaScript, as well as a full JavaScript debugger and command line interpreter. This allowed intermediate-level developers using interpreted JavaScript to create sophisticated user interfaces. == Language and framework structure == Adobe GoLive is coded in the C++ programming language. It uses a custom C++ framework called SCL (Simple Class Library) which was initially built from scratch by the engineers at GoLive Systems Inc. The SCL framework was also used in the short-lived Adobe Atmosphere 3D software. == Release history == As the final version, GoLive 9 was discontinued in April 2008.

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