Armin Bernd Cremers (born June 7, 1946) is a German mathematician and computer scientist. He is a professor in the computer science institute at the University of Bonn, Germany. He is most notable for his contributions to several fields of discrete mathematics including formal languages and automata theory. In more recent years he has been recognized for his work in artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics as well as in geoinformatics and deductive databases. == Life and work == Armin B. Cremers studied mathematics and physics at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany. After his graduate diploma (1971) and PhD (1972), both in mathematics, both summa cum laude, he received his academic lectureship qualification for computer science (1974), all from the University of Karlsruhe. Following an invitation by Seymour Ginsburg, he joined the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, in 1973 where he worked until 1976 as an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science. With Ginsburg he initiated Grammar Forms, a new formalism for grammatical families. In 1976 A. B. Cremers returned to Germany and was appointed to full professor of computer science at the University of Dortmund, where he remained until 1990, holding the chair for information systems. During the same time he continued working as a visiting research professor at USC, where together with Thomas N. Hibbard he developed the concept of Data Spaces, a comprehensive computational model, in theory and applications. At the University of Dortmund A. B. Cremers served as chairman of the computer science department and, since early 1985, as vice president for Research and Junior Scientific Staff. In this position he was liaison for the development of the Technology Center Dortmund Archived 2021-05-09 at the Wayback Machine. He was the initiator and founding director of the Center for Expert Systems Dortmund (ZEDO) and the NRW State Research Collaborative in Artificial Intelligence (KI-NRW). From 1988 to 1996 he was also a member of the supervisory board of the German National Research Center for Mathematics and Data Processing (GMD). Since 1990 A. B. Cremers has been professor and director of computer science and head of the research group in artificial intelligence at the University of Bonn. From Bonn he has contributed fundamentally to artificial intelligence and robotics (with Wolfram Burgard, Dieter Fox, Sebastian Thrun among his students), and to the development of software engineering, particularly in civil engineering, and information systems, particularly in the geosciences. The paper "The Interactive Museum Tour-Guide Robot" won the AAAI Classic Paper award of 2016. Together with Matthias Jarke A. B. Cremers established the Bonn-Aachen International Center for Information Technology (B-IT) in 2001 and led this as Founding Scientific Director from the University of Bonn side until his retirement from teaching in 2014. From 2004 to 2008 Cremers was Dean of the School of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, and from April 2009 to July 2014 University Vice President for Planning and Finance. He is member of advisory boards, e.g., as well as Chairman of the University Council of the University of Koblenz-Landau.
SmarterChild
SmarterChild was a chatbot available on AOL Instant Messenger and Windows Live Messenger (previously MSN Messenger) networks. == History == SmarterChild was an apparently intelligent agent or "bot" developed by ActiveBuddy, Inc., with offices in New York and Sunnyvale. It was widely distributed across global instant messaging networks. SmarterChild became very popular, attracting over 30 million Instant Messenger "buddies" on AIM (AOL), MSN and Yahoo Messenger over the course of its lifetime. Founded in 2000, ActiveBuddy was the brainchild of Robert Hoffer and Timothy Kay, who later brought seasoned advertising executive Peter Levitan on board as CEO. The concept for conversational instant messaging bots came from the founder's vision to add natural language comprehension functionality to the increasingly popular AIM instant messaging application. The original implementation took shape as a demo that Kay programmed in Perl in his Los Altos garage to connect a single buddy name, "ActiveBuddy", to look up stock symbols, and later allow AIM users to play Colossal Cave Adventure, a word-based adventure game, and MIT's Boris Katz Start Question Answering System but quickly grew to include a wide range of database applications the company called 'knowledge domains' including instant access to news, weather, stock information, movie times, yellow pages listings, and detailed sports data, as well as a variety of tools (personal assistant, calculators, translator, etc.). None of the individual domains which the company had named “stocksBuddy”, “sportsBuddy”, etc. ever launched publicly. When Stephen Klein came on board as COO — and eventually CEO — he insisted that all of the disparate test “buddies” be launched together with the company’s highly-developed colloquial chat domain. He suggested using “SmarterChild”, a username coined by Tim Kay which Tim was using to test various things. The bundled domains were launched publicly as SmarterChild (on AIM initially) in June 2001. SmarterChild provided information wrapped in fun and quirky conversation. The company generated no revenue from SmarterChild, but used it as a demonstration of the power of what Klein called “conversational computing”. The company subsequently marketed Automated Service Agents—delivering immediate answers to customer service inquiries—-to large corporations, like Comcast, Cingular, TimeWarner Cable, etc. SmarterChild's popularity spawned targeted marketing-oriented bots for Radiohead, Austin Powers, Intel, Keebler, The Sporting News and others. ActiveBuddy co-founders, Kay and Hoffer, as co-inventors, were issued two controversial U.S. patents in 2002. ActiveBuddy changed its name to Colloquis (briefly Conversagent) and targeted development of consumer-facing enterprise customer service agents, which the company marketed as Automated Service Agents. Microsoft acquired Colloquis in October 2006 and proceeded to de-commission SmarterChild and kill off the Automated Service Agent business as well. Robert Hoffer, ActiveBuddy co-founder, licensed the technology from Microsoft after Microsoft abandoned the Colloquis technology.
SWIG
The Simplified Wrapper and Interface Generator (SWIG) is an open-source software tool used to connect computer programs or libraries written in C or C++ with scripting languages such as Lua, Perl, PHP, Python, R, Ruby, Tcl, and other language implementations like C#, Java, JavaScript, Go, D, OCaml, Octave, Scilab and Scheme. Output can also be in the form of XML. == Function == The aim is to allow the calling of native functions (that were written in C or C++) by other programming languages, passing complex data types to those functions, keeping memory from being inappropriately freed, inheriting object classes across languages, etc. The programmer writes an interface file containing a list of C/C++ functions to be made visible to an interpreter. SWIG will compile the interface file and generate code in regular C/C++ and the target programming language. SWIG will generate conversion code for functions with simple arguments; conversion code for complex types of arguments must be written by the programmer. The SWIG tool creates source code that provides the glue between C/C++ and the target language. Depending on the language, this glue comes in three forms: a shared library that an extant interpreter can link to as some form of extension module, or a shared library that can be linked to other programs compiled in the target language (for example, using Java Native Interface (JNI) in Java). a shared dynamic library source code that should be compiled and dynamically loaded (e.g. Node.js native extensions) SWIG is not used for calling interpreted functions by native code; this must be done by the programmer manually. == Example == SWIG wraps simple C declarations by creating an interface that closely matches the way in which the declarations would be used in a C program. For example, consider the following interface file: In this file, there are two functions sin() and strcmp(), a global variable Foo, and two constants STATUS and VERSION. When SWIG creates an extension module, these declarations are accessible as scripting language functions, variables, and constants respectively. In Python: == Purpose == There are two main reasons to embed a scripting engine in an existing C/C++ program: The program can then be customized far faster, via a scripting language instead of C/C++. The scripting engine may even be exposed to the end-user, so that they can automate common tasks by writing scripts. Even if the final product is not to contain the scripting engine, it may nevertheless be very useful for writing test scripts. There are several reasons to create dynamic libraries that can be loaded into extant interpreters, including: Provide access to a C/C++ library which has no equivalent in the scripting language. Write the whole program in the scripting language first, and after profiling, rewrite performance-critical code in C or C++. == History == SWIG is written in C and C++ and has been publicly available since February 1996. The initial author and main developer was David M. Beazley who developed SWIG while working as a graduate student at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of Utah and while on the faculty at the University of Chicago. Development is currently supported by an active group of volunteers led by William Fulton. SWIG has been released under a GNU General Public License. == Google Summer of Code == SWIG was a successful participant of Google Summer of Code in 2008, 2009, 2012. In 2008, SWIG got four slots. Haoyu Bai spent his summers on SWIG's Python 3.0 Backend, Jan Jezabek worked on Support for generating COM wrappers, Cheryl Foil spent her time on Comment 'Translator' for SWIG, and Maciej Drwal worked on a C backend. In 2009, SWIG again participated in Google Summer of Code. This time four students participated. Baozeng Ding worked on a Scilab module. Matevz Jekovec spent time on C++0x features. Ashish Sharma spent his summer on an Objective-C module, Miklos Vajna spent his time on PHP directors. In 2012, SWIG participated in Google Summer of Code. This time four out of five students successfully completed the project. Leif Middelschulte worked on a C target language module. Swati Sharma enhanced the Objective-C module. Neha Narang added the new module on JavaScript. Dmitry Kabak worked on source code documentation and Doxygen comments. == Alternatives == For Python, similar functionality is offered by SIP, Pybind11, and Boost's Boost.python library. == Projects using SWIG == ZXID (Apache License, Version 2.0) Symlabs SFIS (commercial) LLDB GNU Radio up to (including) version 3.8.x.x; later versions use Pybind11 Xapian TensorFlow Apache SINGA QuantLib Babeltrace
T Layout
The T-Layout is an architectural and design concept for web applications, specifically tailored to improve the user experience on mobile devices. It features a horizontally scrollable container divided into three distinct sections, each spanning the full width of the screen, and was developed to optimise space usage and streamline navigation. == Background == The T-Layout introduces horizontal scrolling as a complementary method to the conventional pop-up-based navigation system in mobile web applications. In this layout, the central section which is visible by default upon accessing the application, facilitates the main content of a URL address and is flanked by two "helper" sections. This approach minimises the need for extensive user movements, in order to reach navigation controls typically located at the top of the screen. It is aimed at enhancing the user experience on mobile devices by providing an easier way to access essential content such as the main navigation, e-commerce related screens, or user account related information, ensuring that those elements are readily accessible while requiring minimal user effort. The T-Layout was first implemented by E (e-streetwear.com) in their mobile web app layout, and it was inspired by the interfaces of well-tested native mobile apps like Instagram and Revolut. A study titled "Mobile Navigation and User Preferences Survey" indicated a preference among mobile app users for one-handed usage, primarily navigating with their thumb. These insights led to the T-Layout Experiment, which compared the efficiency of using swipe gestures to access navigational elements against reaching traditional navigation controls. == Development history == It was first released as the mobile layout of E in early 2023. It was originally developed based on six principles: user-centric functionality, lightweight filesize, HTML and CSS implementation with minimal or no use of JavaScript required, suitable both for browser and server-rendering architectures, intuitive design, and improved SEO. The development of the T-Layout was driven by the necessity for more ergonomic and user-friendly interfaces in mobile web applications. Its design, reminiscent of the letter 'T', emerged as a solution to several usability challenges mobile device users face, emphasising ease of access and efficient screen space utilisation. In July 2023, E formalised the concept and its technical specifications, introducing it to the web design and development community. In October 2023 the "Mobile Navigation and User Preferences Survey" was conducted, establishing that the vast majority of individuals prefer to use mobile applications by holding the phone in a one-handed grip, utilising only the thumb for gestures when possible. The subsequent "T-Layout Experiment", designed to measure the time in seconds and the distance (user effort) in pixels, required to access navigational elements by traditionally tapping on fixed-positioned controls compared to swiping anywhere on the screen. The results proved that swipe gestures require less time and much less effort. == Styling and features == The main characteristic of the T-Layout is its horizontal scrolling feature, which can improve navigation efficiency while preserving the functionality of traditionally structured user interfaces. Its Implementation can be achieved with a combination of HTML and styling with CSS as well as precompiled Scss and Sass, CSS-in-JS, and styled JSX. It can be either a purely HTML/CSS solution but JavaScript can be utilised as well to add more specific functionalities, while It can be implemented to both existing and new applications. Its application in server-side rendering architectures will ensure that all its underlying principles apply. Although principally each section in the layout has a distinct role and facilitates specific types of content, the T-Layout as a concept is versatile, and it is adaptable allowing modifications in the layout or how it's implemented to cater to the specific needs of different applications.
ISPConfig
ISPConfig is an open source hosting control panel for Linux, licensed under BSD license and developed by the company ISPConfig UG. The ISPConfig project was started in autumn 2005 by Till Brehm from the German company projektfarm GmbH. == Overview == Using the dashboard, administrators have the ability to manage websites, email addresses, MySQL and MariaDB as well as PostgreSQL (since version 3.3) databases, FTP accounts, Shell accounts and DNS records through a web-based interface. The software has 4 login levels: administrator, reseller, client, and email-user, each with a different set of permissions. == Operating Systems == ISPConfig is only available on Linux, with CentOS, Debian, and Ubuntu being among the supported distributions. == Features == The following services and features are supported: Management of a single or multiple servers from one control panel. Web server management for Apache HTTP Server and Nginx. Mail server management (with virtual mail users) with spam and antivirus filter using Postfix (software) and Dovecot (software). DNS server management (BIND, Powerdns). Configuration mirroring and clusters. Administrator, reseller, client and mail-user login. Virtual server management for OpenVZ Servers. Website statistics using Webalizer and AWStats
Digital Darkroom
Digital Darkroom was a graphics program for editing gray-scale photos, published by Silicon Beach Software for the Macintosh in 1987. It was programmed by Ed Bomke and Don Cone. Digital Darkroom was the first Macintosh program to incorporate a plug-in architecture. Silicon Beach and Ed Bomke are credited with having coined the term "plug-in". Another innovation of Digital Darkroom was the Magic Wand tool, which also appeared later in Photoshop. When Silicon Beach Software was acquired by Aldus Corporation, Digital Darkroom continued to be published by the Aldus Consumer Division, but was never updated to include color. The trademark "Digital Darkroom" was acquired by MicroFrontier in 1997 and used for a completely new image-editing program that does work with color. The software was acquired by Digimage Arts in 2002 and was sold for both Windows and Mac systems.
Color reproduction
Color reproduction is an aspect of color science concerned with producing light spectra that evoke a desired color, either through additive (light emitting) or subtractive (surface color) models. It converts physical correlates of color perception (CIE 1931 XYZ color space tristimulus values and related quantities) into light spectra that can be experienced by observers. In this way, it is the opposite of colorimetry. It is concerned with the faithful reproduction of a color in one medium, with a color in another, so it is a central concept in color management and relies heavily on color calibration. For example, food packaging must be able to faithfully reproduce the colors of the foods therein in order to appeal to a customer. This involves proper color calibration of at least four devices: Lighting, which must have a high color rendering index and not give a color cast to the object. Camera, which measures the reflected spectrum of the object and converts to a trichromatic color space (e.g. RGB). Screen, which reproduces color so a designer can proof the captured image and make color corrections as necessary. Printer, which reproduces the final color on paper.