Bazaart is an AI-powered design platform with image and video editing capabilities for iOS, Android, MacOS, and the web. == History == Bazaart was founded in 2012 in Israel. In April 2012, Bazaart launched a Facebook app called Pinvolve, which converts Facebook Pages into Pinterest pinboards. From June to August 2012, it participated in the DreamIt startup accelerator in New York and raised $25,000 from the accelerator. In July 2012, it launched its first version as an iPad app connected to Pinterest. In December 2013, it pivoted and launched a major version of its app, a "social" photoshop that allowed users to edit images which could be pulled in from the camera roll, social networks, and other sources. In July 2014, Bazaart reached one million downloads and in December was selected by Apple as Best of 2014. In 2015, Bazaart added Photoshop integration in a partnership with Adobe. In September 2020, Bazaart launched an Android app. In December 2020, Bazaart was selected by Google as Best of 2020. In January 2022, Bazaart added video editing capabilities. In 2023, the platform added AI-powered backgrounds and video background removal features.
Audio-visual speech recognition
Audio visual speech recognition (AVSR) is a technique that uses image processing capabilities in lip reading to aid speech recognition systems in recognizing indeterministic phones or giving preponderance among near probability decisions. Each system of lip reading and speech recognition works separately, then their results are mixed at the stage of feature fusion. As the name suggests, it has two parts. First one is the audio part and second one is the visual part. In audio part we use features like log mel spectrogram, mfcc etc. from the raw audio samples and we build a model to get feature vector out of it . For visual part generally we use some variant of convolutional neural network to compress the image to a feature vector after that we concatenate these two vectors (audio and visual ) and try to predict the target object.
T.38
T.38 is an ITU recommendation for allowing transmission of fax over IP networks (FoIP) in real time. == History == The T.38 fax relay standard was devised in 1998 as a way to transport faxes across IP networks between existing Group 3 (G3) fax terminals. T.4 and related fax standards were published by the ITU in 1980, before the rise of the Internet. In the late 1990s, VoIP, or voice over IP, began to gain ground as an alternative to the conventional public switched telephone network (PSTN). However, because most VoIP systems are optimized (through their use of aggressive lossy bandwidth-saving compression) for voice rather than data calls, conventional fax machines worked poorly or not at all on them due to the network impairments such as delay, jitter, packet loss, and so on. Thus, some way of transmitting fax over IP was needed. == Overview == In practical scenarios, a T.38 fax call has at least part of the call being carried over PSTN, although this is not required by the T.38 definition, and two T.38 devices can send faxes to each other. This particular type of device is called Internet-Aware Fax device, or IAF, and it is capable of initiating or completing a fax call towards the IP network. The typical scenario where T.38 is used is – T.38 fax relay – where a T.30 fax device sends a fax over PSTN to a T.38 fax gateway which converts or encapsulates the T.30 protocol into a T.38 data stream. This is then sent either to a T.38-enabled end point such as fax machine or fax server or another T.38 gateway that converts it back to a PSTN PCM or analog signal and terminates the fax on a T.30 device. The T.38 recommendation defines the use of both TCP and UDP to transport T.38 packets. Implementations tend to use UDP, due to TCP's requirement for acknowledgement packets and resulting retransmission during packet loss, which introduces delays. When using UDP, T.38 copes with packet loss by using redundant data packets. T.38 is not a call setup protocol, thus the T.38 devices need to use standard call setup protocols to negotiate the T.38 call, e.g. H.323, SIP & MGCP. == Operation == There are two primary ways that fax transactions are conveyed across packet networks. The T.37 standard specifies how a fax image is encapsulated in e-mail and transported, ultimately, to the recipient using a store-and-forward process through intermediary entities. T.38, however, defines a protocol that supports the use of the T.30 protocol in both the sender and recipient terminals. (See diagram above.) T.38 lets one transmit a fax across an IP network in real time, just as the original G3 fax standards did for the traditional (time-division multiplexed (TDM)) network, also called the public switched telephone network or PSTN. A special protocol is needed for real-time fax over IP (Internet Protocol) since existing fax terminals only supported PSTN connections, where the information flow was generally smooth and uninterrupted, as opposed to the jittery arrival of IP packets. The trick was to come up with a protocol that makes the IP network “invisible” to the endpoint fax terminals, which would mean the user of a legacy fax terminal need not know that the fax call was traversing an IP network. The network interconnections supported by T.38 are shown above. The two fax terminals on either side of the figure communicate using the T.30 fax protocol published by the ITU in 1980. Interconnection of the PSTN with the IP packet network requires a “gateway” between the PSTN and IP networks. PSTN-IP Gateways support TDM voice on the PSTN side and VoIP and FoIP on the packet side. For voice sessions, the gateway will take in voice packets on the IP side, accumulate a few packets to ensure a smooth flow of TDM data upon their release, and then meter them out over TDM where they eventually are heard by a human or stored on a computer for later playback. The gateway employs packet-management techniques to enhance the quality of the speech in the presence of network errors by taking advantage of the natural ability of a listener to not really hear the occasional missing or repeated packet. But facsimile data are transmitted by modems, which aren't as forgiving as the human ear is for speech. Missing packets will often cause a fax session to fail at worst or create one or more image lines in error at best. So the job of T.38 is to “fool” the terminal into “thinking” that it's communicating directly with another T.30 terminal. It will also correct for network delays with so-called spoofing techniques, and missing or delayed packets with fax-aware buffer-management techniques. Spoofing refers to the logic implemented in the protocol engine of a T.38 relay that modifies the protocol commands and responses on the TDM side to keep network delays on the IP side from causing the transaction to fail. This is done, for example, by padding image lines or deliberately causing a message to be re-transmitted to render network delays transparent to the sending/receiving fax terminals. Networks that do not have packet loss or excessive delay can exhibit acceptable fax performance without T.38, provided the PCM clocks in all gateways are of very high accuracy (explained below). T.38 not only removes the effect of PCM clocks not being synchronized, but also reduces the required network bandwidth by a factor of 10, while it corrects for packet loss and delay. === Bandwidth reduction === As shown in the diagram below, a T.38 gateway is composed of two primary elements: the fax modems and the T.38 subsystem. The fax modems modulate and demodulate the PCM samples of the analog data, turning the sampled-data representation of the fax terminal's analog signal to its binary translation, and vice versa. The PSTN network samples the analog signal of a voice or modem signal (it doesn't know the difference) 8,000 times per second (SPS), and encodes them as 8-bit data bytes. This means 8000 samples-per-second times 8-bits per sample, or 64,000 bits per second (bit/s) to represent the modem (or voice) data in one direction. For both directions the modem transaction consumes 128,000 bits of network bandwidth. However, the typical modem in a fax terminal transmits the image data at 33,600 bit/s, so if the analog data are first converted to the digital content they represent, only 33,600 bits (plus network overhead of a few bytes) are needed. And since T.30 fax is a half-duplex protocol, the network is only needed for one direction at a time. Refer to RFC 3261 === PCM clock synchronization === In the diagram above, there is a sample-rate clock in the fax terminal and one in the gateway's modems that is used to trigger the sampling of the analog line 8,000 times per second. These clocks are usually quite accurate, but in some low-cost terminal adapters (a one or two-line gateway) the PCM clock can be surprisingly inaccurate. If the terminal is sending data to the gateway, and the gateway's clock is too slow, the buffers (jitter buffers) in the gateway will eventually overflow, causing the transaction to fail. Since the difference is often quite small, this problem occurs on long, detailed fax images giving the clocks more time to cause the jitter buffer in gateway to either underflow or overflow, which is just the same as missing or duplicated packets. === Packet loss === T.38 provides facilities to eliminate the effects of packet loss through data redundancy. When a packet is sent, either zero, one, two, three, or even more of the previously sent packets are repeated. (The specification does not impose a limit.) This increases the network bandwidth required (it's still much less than not using T.38) but it allows the receiving gateway to reconstruct the complete packet sequence, even with a fairly high level of packet loss. == Related standards == T.4 is the umbrella specification for fax. It specifies the standard image sizes, two forms of image-data compression (encoding), the image-data format, and references, T.30 and the various modem standards. T.6 specifies a compression scheme that reduces the time required to transmit an image by roughly 50-percent. T.30 specifies the procedures that a sending and receiving terminal use to set up a fax call, determine the image size, encoding, and transfer speed, the demarcation between pages, and the termination of the call. T.30 also references the various modem standards. V.21, V.27ter, V.29, V.17, V.34: ITU modem standards used in facsimile. The first three were ratified prior to 1980, and were specified in the original T.4 and T.30 standards. V.34 was published for fax in 1994. T.37 The ITU standard for sending a fax-image file via e-mail to the intended recipient of a fax. G.711 pass through - this is where the T.30 fax call is carried in a VoIP call encoded as audio. This is sensitive to network packet loss, jitter and clock synchronization. When using voice high-compression encoding techniques such as, but not limited to, G.729, some fax tonal signa
Cardiovascular health awareness in Nepal
Cardiovascular health awareness in Nepal has improved in recent times. It has emerged as a cost-effective tool for prevention of heart disease in recent years. == Background == Cardiovascular diseases in Nepal is responsible for maximum number of deaths and rapid urbanization possess extra threat in this situation emphasizing need for widespread awareness campaigns. Efforts to enhance cardiovascular health awareness among the general public, particularly through social media platforms, have proven pivotal in motivating individuals to adopt healthier lifestyle choices and improve heart health in Nepal in recent years. These awareness initiatives, often organized on special occasions such as World Heart Day of World Heart Federation, World Hypertension Day, and World Health Day of World Health Organization, have garnered active participation from the public, reflecting a growing interest in health-related information. Notably, various hospitals, organizations, and health professionals actively contribute to cardiovascular health awareness in Nepal. The prevalence of heart health-related content on social media platforms indicates a substantial dissemination of information. The engagement of a large number of followers underscores the audience's keen interest in health matters, evident in the significant engagement on various social media accounts and pages. During an event of cardiovascular health awareness a Guinness World Record was achieved on World Heart Day 2023. A Facebook live awareness programme on heart health prevention attracted 11,212 viewers during the 30-minute presentation and was awarded the "Most viewers for a cardiovascular health awareness live stream on Facebook" by Guinness World Record signifying depth of public involvement and importance of social media use in health awareness. In 2014, a 11-day heart camp was conducted in Nepal to raise awareness . In 2015, a is a heart health education program " Mission to Save Heart" was conducted to empower health professionals to manage heart attacks and reduce heart disease deaths.
Digital backlot
A digital backlot or virtual backlot is a motion-picture set that is neither a genuine location nor a constructed studio; the shooting takes place entirely on a stage with a blank background (often a greenscreen) that will later on project an artificial environment put in during post-production. Digital backlots are mainly used for genres such as science fiction, where building a real set would be too expensive or outright impossible. == Notable films == Among the first films to introduce the technique was Mini Moni the Movie by Shinji Higuchi in 2002, predated by Rest In Peace by Stolpskott Film (2000). Others include: === Released === Rest in Peace (Sweden, 2000) – Shot entirely with green-screen. Some sections fully CGI. Casshern (Japan, 2004) – Shot on celluloid. A few practical set pieces used. Able Edwards (United States, 2004) – Shot digitally on Canon XL1 cameras. Immortal (France, 2004) – Shot on celluloid. Also showed CGI characters interacting with live actors. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (United States, 2004) – Shot digitally on Sony CineAlta cameras. Sin City (United States, 2005) – Shot digitally on CineAlta cameras. Three practical sets used. MirrorMask (United States/United Kingdom, 2005) – Shot on celluloid. 80% of film uses digital backlot. Some practical set pieces used. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (United States, 2005) – Shot digitally. 300 (United States, 2007) – Shot on celluloid. Two practical sets used. Speed Racer (United States, 2008) – Directed by the Wachowskis. Three practical sets used. The Spirit (United States, 2008) – Director Frank Miller shot the film with the same techniques he and Robert Rodriguez used on Sin City. Avatar (United States, 2009) – Directed by James Cameron. Two practical sets used. Goemon (Japan, 2009) – The second film from Casshern helmer Kazuaki Kiriya. Alice in Wonderland (United States, 2010) – Directed by Tim Burton. Practical sets used. Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (United States 2014) – Co-directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller. Sequel to Sin City. === Upcoming === Tribes of October
2018 Google data breach
The 2018 Google data breach was a major data privacy scandal in which the Google+ API exposed the private data of over five hundred thousand users. Google+ managers first noticed harvesting of personal data in March 2018, during a review following the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal. The bug, despite having been fixed immediately, exposed the private data of approximately 500,000 Google+ users to the public. Google did not reveal the leak to the network's users. In November 2018, another data breach occurred following an update to the Google+ API. Although Google found no evidence of failure, approximately 52.5 million personal profiles were potentially exposed. In August 2019, Google declared a shutdown of Google+ due to low use and technological challenges. == Overview of Google+ == Google+ was launched in June 2011 as an invite-only social network, but was opened for public access later in the year. It was managed by Vic Gundotra. Similar to Facebook, Google+ also included key features Circles, Hangouts and Sparks. Circles let users personalize their social groups by sorting friends into different categories. Once allowed into a Circle, users could regulate information in their individual spaces. Hangouts included video chatting and instant messaging between users. Sparks allowed Google to track users' past searches to find news and content related to their interests. Google+ was linked to other Google services, such as YouTube, Google Drive and Gmail, giving it access to roughly 2 billion user accounts. However, less than 400 million consumers actively used Google+, with 90% of those users using it for less than five seconds. == The breaches == In March 2018, Google developers found a data breach within the Google+ People API in which external apps acquired access to Profile fields that were not marked as public. According to The Wall Street Journal, Google didn’t disclose the breach when it was first discovered in March to avoid regulatory scrutiny and reputational damage. 500,000 Google+ accounts were included in the breach, which allowed 438 external apps unauthorized access to private users' names, emails, addresses, occupations, genders and ages. This information was available between 2015 and 2018. Google found no evidence of any user's personal information being misused, nor that any third-party app developers were aware of the leak. In November 2018, a software update created another data breach within the Google+ API. The bug impacted 52.5 million users, where, similarly to the March breach, unauthorized apps were able to access Google+ profiles, including users' names, email addresses, occupations and ages. Apps could not access financial information, national identification, numbers, or passwords. Blog posts, messages and phone numbers also remained inaccessible if marked as private. Unlike the previous breach, access was only available for six days before Google+ learned of the breach. Once more, Google+ found no evidence of data being misused by third-party developers. == Responses == In October 2018, the Wall Street Journal published an article outlining the initial breach and Google's decision to not disclose it to users. At the time, there was no federal law that required Google to inform their consumers of data breaches. Google+ originally did not disclose the breach out of fears of being compared to Facebook's recent data leak and subsequent loss of consumer confidence. In response to the Wall Street Journal article, Google announced the shutdown of Google+ in August 2019. After the second data leak, the date was moved to April 2019. In response to the data breach, enterprise consumers were notified of the bug's impact and given instructions on how to save, download and delete their data prior to the Google+ shut down. Google's Privacy and Data Protection Office found no misuse of user data. Prior to the Google+ shutdown, Google set a 10-month period in which users could download and migrate their data. After the 10-month period, user content was deleted. On 4 February 2019, consumers were no longer able to create new Google+ profiles. Google shut down Google+ APIs on 7 March 2019 to ensure that developers did not continue to rely on the APIs prior to the Google+ shutdown. Google is the principal entity of its parent company, Alphabet Inc. After the data breach, Alphabet Inc. share prices fell by 1% to $1,157.06 on 9 October 2018 after an earlier drop of $1,135.40 that morning, the lowest price since 5 July 2018. After the publication of The Wall Street Journal article, share prices dropped as low as 2.1% in two days on 10 October 2018. Share prices steadily increased from this point and met the 8 October 2018 share price on 5 February 2019. Google planned to rebuild Google+ as a corporate enterprise network. Google Play will now assess which apps can ask for permission to access the user's SMS data. Only the default app for telephone distribution is able to make requests. Prior to the data breaches, apps were able to request access to all of a consumer's data simultaneously. Now, each app must request permission for each aspect of a consumer's profile.
Homeboyz Interactive
Homeboyz Interactive (HBI) was a faith-based recruitment, training and job placement non-profit business in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States, founded by a Jesuit brother in 1996 to transform gang members into productive workers. == History == James Holub, a former Jesuit brother affiliated with Wheeling Jesuit University, asked gang members in the Southside of Milwaukee, WI how they could be helped, to break the cycle of poverty and violence. The youth suggested that they be trained for work they found exciting. To attract interest, the training must lead to jobs that paid at least a living wage, and computer skills seemed the most attractive. The non-profit Homeboyz Interactive was established to prepare professionals in web design, application development, and PC/network support. This non-profit outfit spawned the for-profit web design firm HBI Consulting, which provided trainees with work experience. It turned out more than 20 teachers yearly for computer and computer network programs for high schools and other clients, as well as for computer service providers. Some graduates of the program continued their education, some founded their own business, and others continued working at HBI. The Economist described this effort as "turning thugs into programmers" on Milwaukee's South Side, which has proportionally twice as many murders as New York. Holub had "buried his 28th gang member" before he implemented the Homeboyz plan, with the understanding that "nothing stops a bullet like a job." The programs would pass through about 80 prospects a year who successfully completed training and provide them with a job while studying for their high school equivalency test, before they were asked to decide in which direction to go. Most accepted a job or went on to community college but about 25 entered the Homeboyz training for computer programmers. Of first 150 graduates of this program none lost their job; their average pay after two years was US$63,000. Some preferred to return to full-time work at HBI. By 2002, a total of 142 people had graduated from HBI training and moved into full-time IT careers. The training curriculum as of 2000 included JavaScript and Photoshop, among other web-development tools. In 2000, HBI received a 14% ownership stake in reEmploy.com, a payrolling company, in exchange for the development of an electronic time sheet created by the organization. As of 2001, HBI Consulting, the for profit web design firm, had 72 clients. Among those clients were GE Medical, Toyota Forklift, Northwestern Mutual Life, Verizon Wireless, BP; and Marquette University. Companies that graduates of HBI's training programs secured positions have included Northwestern Mutual and Manpower Inc., United Community Center in Milwaukee and EKI Consulting. A pair of graduates also started their own company in 2002, Innovative Source, a web design firm, which itself has had clients such as the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Milwaukee Women's Center. This was a common path forward, graduates starting their own consulting firms. In 2004, HBI received a grant for General Support from the Vine and Branches Foundation in the amount of US$120,000. The product Project Foundry found its start in the difficulty of managing project-based learning across dozens of students with widely varying levels of skill, a problem encountered by Shane Krukowski, who developed the software while teaching at HBI. Krukowski subsequently an eponymous company to commercialize the software through a subscription-based business model. Some came to Homeboyz through the criminal courts or Department of Corrections. A Jesuit Volunteer (JV) was assigned to work with the program, and to add a spiritual dimension through regular reflection together. Gradually the market began prioritizing graphic design and flash images more than site construction. After 2006 Homeboyz HBI morphed into several spinoffs and ceased to exist as a separate entity.