The European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI) is the leading conference in the field of Artificial Intelligence in Europe, and is commonly listed together with IJCAI and AAAI as one of the three major general AI conferences worldwide. The conference series has been held without interruption since 1974, originally under the name AISB. The conference was originally held biennially, but has been organized annually since ECAI 2022. The conferences are held under the auspices of the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence (ECCAI) and organized by one of the member societies. The journal AI Communications, sponsored by the same society, regularly publishes special issues in which conference attendees report on the conference. Publication of a paper in ECAI is considered by some journals to be archival: the paper should be considered equivalent to a journal publication and that the contents of ECAI papers cannot be reformulated as separate journal submissions unless a significant amount of new material is added. == List of ECAI conferences == ECAI-1992 took place in Vienna, Austria. ECAI-1996 took place in Budapest, Hungary. ECAI-1998 tool place in Brighton, United Kingdom. ECAI-2000 took place in Berlin, Germany. ECAI-2004 took place in Valencia, Spain. ECAI-2006 took place in Riva del Garda, Italy. ECAI-2008 took place in Patras, Greece. ECAI-2010 took place in Lisbon, Portugal. ECAI-2012 took place in Montpellier, France. ECAI-2014 took place in Prague, Czech Republic. ECAI-2016 took place in The Hague, Netherlands. ECAI-2018 took place in Stockholm, Sweden. ECAI-2020 took place in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. ECAI-2022 took place in Vienna, Austria. ECAI-2023 took place in Kraków, Poland. ECAI-2024 took place in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. ECAI-2025 took place in Bologna, Italy.
Microsoft Whiteboard
Microsoft Whiteboard is a free multi-platform application, as well as an online service and a feature in Microsoft Teams, which simulates a virtual whiteboard and enables real-time collaboration between users. == Overview and features == Microsoft Whiteboard allows users to draw on a virtual whiteboard using input methods such as a stylus pen or a mouse and keyboard, and write down notes, draw connections between shareable ideas, and interact in real time. Microsoft Whiteboard is available to download on the following platforms and devices: Microsoft Windows (on Windows 10 or above) Android Apple iOS Surface Hub devices It is also available on the web and as a feature in Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Whiteboard allows users with Microsoft accounts to view, edit, and share whiteboards using the provided tools and options. The feature set includes tools for drawing, shapes, and media. Drawing in Microsoft Whiteboard is called inking. It works both on mobile devices and computers. The inking toolbar has customizable pencils, a ruler, a highlighter, an eraser, and an object selector. Whiteboard can recognize shapes drawn by hand and straighten them. Holding the Shift key on a computer while inking draws straight lines. Microsoft Whiteboard has keyboard shortcuts for some functions. Additional features include inserting sticky notes, text boxes, stickers, as well as images. Grid lines and colors are adjustable. Different templates can be inserted into the whiteboard. Users can also share their reactions. A feature limited to boards created in Microsoft Teams, is the ability to make them read-only; other participants from the meeting cannot edit them. == Reviews == PC Magazine gave Microsoft Whiteboard a score of 3.5 out of 5, praising the app's free availability and plentiful templates. It compared it to other, paid whiteboarding solutions, and concluded that Microsoft offers the best free one. Some of the cons, described by PCMag, include the inability to view boards without a Microsoft account and the inability to create custom templates.
Digital entertainment
Digital entertainment Industry includes, but is not restricted to, any combination of the following industries (that themselves have a considerable degree of overlap): digital media new media video on demand video games interactive entertainment online gambling mobile entertainment social media streaming services "Digital entertainment", largely a hard to define marketing term, rests upon entertainment technology and ultimately on the enabling basic technologies computers, Internet/World Wide Web, digital rights management, multimedia and streaming media. Apart from pure entertainment, the term rests upon the observation that already in 2011 in the UK, for example, "nearly half of people’s waking hours are spent using media content and communications services" ("screen time"). Digital entertainment is inextricably connected with digital marketing. People who follow influencers on social media for entertainment will receive a fair share of advertising at the same time. Digital merchandise is distributed with every computer game and popup ads or similar are ubiquitous in the online (gaming) world.
Flat-panel display
A flat-panel display (FPD) is an electronic display used to display visual content such as text or images. It is present in consumer, medical, transportation, and industrial equipment. Flat-panel displays are thin, lightweight, provide better linearity and are capable of higher resolution and contrast than typical consumer-grade TVs from earlier eras. They are usually less than 10 centimetres (3.9 in) thick. While the highest resolution for consumer-grade CRT televisions is 1080i, many interactive flat panels in the 2020s are capable of 1080p and 4K resolution. In the 2010s, portable consumer electronics such as laptops, mobile phones, and portable cameras have used flat-panel displays since they consume less power and are lightweight. As of 2016, flat-panel displays have almost completely replaced CRT displays. Most 2010s-era flat-panel displays use LCD or light-emitting diode (LED) technologies, sometimes combined. Most LCD screens are back-lit with color filters used to display colors. In many cases, flat-panel displays are combined with touch screen technology, which allows the user to interact with the display in a natural manner. For example, modern smartphone displays often use OLED panels, with capacitive touch screens. Flat-panel displays can be divided into two display device categories: volatile and static. The former requires that pixels be periodically electronically refreshed to retain their state (e.g. liquid-crystal displays (LCD)), and can only show an image when it has power. On the other hand, static flat-panel displays rely on materials whose color states are bistable, such as displays that make use of e-ink technology, and as such retain content even when power is removed. == History == The first engineering proposal for a flat-panel TV was by General Electric in 1954 as a result of its work on radar monitors. The publication of their findings gave all the basics of future flat-panel TVs and monitors. But GE did not continue with the R&D required and never built a working flat panel at that time. The first production flat-panel display was the Aiken tube, developed in the early 1950s and produced in limited numbers in 1958. This saw some use in military systems as a heads up display and as an oscilloscope monitor, but conventional technologies overtook its development. Attempts to commercialize the system for home television use ran into continued problems and the system was never released commercially. Dennis Gabor, better known as the inventor of holography, patented a flat-screen CRT in 1958. This was substantially similar to Aiken's concept, and led to a years-long patent battle. By the time the lawsuits were complete, with Aiken's patent applying in the US and Gabor's in the UK, the commercial aspects had long lapsed, and the two became friends. Around this time, Clive Sinclair came across Gabor's work and began an ultimately unsuccessful decade-long effort to commercialize it. The Philco Predicta featured a relatively flat (for its day) cathode-ray tube setup and would be the first commercially released "flat panel" upon its launch in 1958; the Predicta was a commercial failure. The plasma display panel was invented in 1964 at the University of Illinois, according to The History of Plasma Display Panels. === Liquid-crystal displays (LC displays, or LCDs) === The MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor, or MOS transistor) was invented by Mohamed M. Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in 1959, and presented in 1960. Building on their work, Paul K. Weimer at RCA developed the thin-film transistor (TFT) in 1962. It was a type of MOSFET distinct from the standard bulk MOSFET. The idea of a TFT-based LCD was conceived by Bernard J. Lechner of RCA Laboratories in 1968. B.J. Lechner, F.J. Marlowe, E.O. Nester and J. Tults demonstrated the concept in 1968 with a dynamic scattering LCD that used standard discrete MOSFETs. The first active-matrix addressed electroluminescent display was made using TFTs by T. Peter Brody's Thin-Film Devices department at Westinghouse Electric Corporation in 1968. In 1973, Brody, J. A. Asars and G. D. Dixon at Westinghouse Research Laboratories demonstrated the first thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display. Brody and Fang-Chen Luo demonstrated the first flat active-matrix liquid-crystal display (AM LCD) using TFTs in 1974. By 1982, pocket LCD TVs based on LCD technology were developed in Japan. The 2.1-inch Epson ET-10 Epson Elf was the first color LCD pocket TV, released in 1984. In 1988, a Sharp research team led by engineer T. Nagayasu demonstrated a 14-inch full-color LCD, which convinced the electronics industry that LCD would eventually replace CRTs as the standard television display technology. As of 2013, all modern high-resolution and high-quality electronic visual display devices use TFT-based active-matrix displays. === LED displays === The first usable LED display was developed by Hewlett-Packard (HP) and introduced in 1968. It was the result of research and development (R&D) on practical LED technology between 1962 and 1968, by a research team under Howard C. Borden, Gerald P. Pighini, and Mohamed M. Atalla, at HP Associates and HP Labs. In February 1969, they introduced the HP Model 5082-7000 Numeric Indicator. It was the first alphanumeric LED display, and was a revolution in digital display technology, replacing the Nixie tube for numeric displays and becoming the basis for later LED displays. In 1977, James P Mitchell prototyped and later demonstrated what was perhaps the earliest monochromatic flat-panel LED television display. Ching W. Tang and Steven Van Slyke at Eastman Kodak built the first practical organic LED (OLED) device in 1987. In 2003, Hynix produced an organic EL driver capable of lighting in 4,096 colors. In 2004, the Sony Qualia 005 was the first LED-backlit LCD. The Sony XEL-1, released in 2007, was the first OLED television. == Common types == === Liquid-crystal display (LCD) === Field-effect LCDs are lightweight, compact, portable, cheap, more reliable, and easier on the eyes than CRT screens. LCD screens use a thin layer of liquid crystal, a liquid that exhibits crystalline properties. It is sandwiched between two glass plates carrying transparent electrodes. Two polarizing films are placed at each side of the LCD. By generating a controlled electric field between electrodes, various segments or pixels of the liquid crystal can be activated, causing changes in their polarizing properties. These polarizing properties depend on the alignment of the liquid-crystal layer and the specific field-effect used, being either twisted nematic (TN), in-plane switching (IPS) or vertical alignment (VA). Color is produced by applying appropriate color filters (red, green and blue) to the individual subpixels. LC displays are used in various electronics like watches, calculators, mobile phones, TVs, computer monitors and laptops screens etc. === LED-LCD === Most earlier large LCD screens were back-lit using a number of CCFL (cold-cathode fluorescent lamps). However, small pocket size devices almost always used LEDs as their illumination source. With the improvement of LEDs, almost all new displays are now equipped with LED backlight technology. The image is still generated by the LCD layer. === Plasma panel === A plasma display consists of two glass plates separated by a thin gap filled with a gas such as neon. Each of these plates has several parallel electrodes running across it. The electrodes on the two plates are at right angles to each other. A voltage applied between the two electrodes one on each plate causes a small segment of gas at the two electrodes to glow. The glow of gas segments is maintained by a lower voltage that is continuously applied to all electrodes. By 2010, consumer plasma displays had been discontinued by numerous manufacturers. === Electroluminescent panel === In an electroluminescent display, the image is created by applying electrical signals to the plates which make the phosphor glow. === Organic light-emitting diode === An OLED (organic light-emitting diode) is a light-emitting diode (LED) in which the emissive electroluminescent layer is a film of organic compound which emits light in response to an electric current. This layer of organic semiconductor is situated between two electrodes; typically, at least one of these electrodes is transparent. OLEDs are used to create digital displays in devices such as television screens, computer monitors, portable systems such as mobile phones, handheld game consoles and PDAs. === Quantum-dot light-emitting diode === QLED or quantum dot LED is a flat panel display technology introduced by Samsung under this trademark. Other television set manufacturers such as Sony have used the same technology to enhance the backlighting of LCD TVs already in 2013. Quantum dots create their own unique light when illuminated by a light source of shorter wavelength such as blue LEDs. Th
Outline of telecommunication
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to telecommunication: Telecommunication – the transmission of signals over a distance for the purpose of communication. In modern times, this process almost always involves the use of electromagnetic waves by transmitters and receivers, but in earlier years it also involved the use of drums and visual signals such as smoke, fire, beacons, semaphore lines and other optical communications. == Modes of telecommunication == E-mail Fax Instant messaging Radio Satellite SMS Telegraphy Telephony Television Television broadcasting mobile telephony Videoconferencing VoIP Voicemail == Types of telecommunication networks == Telecommunications network Computer networks ARPANET Ethernet Internet Wireless networks Public switched telephone networks (PSTN) Packet switched networks Radio network Broadband Wireless Broadband == Aspects of telecommunication transmission == Telecommunication Analog Digital Functional profile Optics === Telecommunication technology === Modulation Amplitude modulation Frequency modulation Quadrature amplitude modulation Nyquist rate Nyquist ISI criterion Pulse shaping Intersymbol interference === Communications media types === Physical media for Telecommunication Twisted pair Coaxial cable Optical fiber Telecommunication through Free Space Broadcast radio frequency including television and radio Line-of-sight Communications satellite Terrestrial Microwave Wireless LAN === Relationship between media and transmitters === Physical access to media Simplex Duplex (telecommunications) Logical relationships Return channel Two-way alternating Two-way simultaneous === Multiple access to media === Multiplexing Analog Frequency division multiplexing Space division multiplexing Digital Time-division multiplexing Statistical multiplexing and Packet switching Media Access Control Contention Token-based Centralized token control Distributed token control == History of telecommunication == History of telecommunication History of telegraphy History of the telephone Invention of the telephone Timeline of the telephone History of radio History of television History of videophones History of mobile phones History of computing hardware History of the Internet == Major telecommunications equipment manufacturers == Alcatel-Lucent – French global telecommunications equipment company Aricent – Former company AT&T – American telecommunications company Avaya – American technology company Ciena – American telecommunications company Cisco Systems – American multinational technology companyPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets Ericsson – Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company Fujitsu – Japanese multinational technology company HCL Technologies – Indian multinational technology companyPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets Huawei – Chinese multinational technology company NEC – Japanese technology corporation Nokia – Multinational data networking and telecommunications equipment company ShoreTel – US telecommunications company Verizon – American telecommunications company ZTE – Chinese telecommunications company == Major telecommunications service providers == List of mobile network operators List of telephone operating companies == Telecommunication organizations == Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions Telecommunications Industry Association == Telecommunication publications == Magazines Billing and OSS World Cabling Installation & Maintenance Call Center Communications News Communications System Design Lightwave Mobile Radio Technology (MRT) New Telephony Phone+ RCR Wireless News Telecom Asia Telecommunications Magazine Telephony WhatSatphone Magazine Wireless Systems Design Wireless Week Xchange == Persons influential in telecommunication == Edwin Howard Armstrong – American radio-frequency engineer and inventor (1890–1954) John Logie Baird – Scottish inventor (1888–1946) Paul Baran – American-Jewish engineer (1926–2011) Alexander Graham Bell – Inventor of the telephone (1847–1922) Tim Berners-Lee – English computer scientist (born 1955) Jagadish Chandra Bose – Physicist, biologist and botanist (1857–1937) Vint Cerf – American computer scientist and Internet pioneer (born 1943) Claude Chappe – Late 18th-century French inventor Donald Davies – British computer scientist (1924–2000) Louis Pouzin – French computer scientist and Internet pioneer (born 1931) Lee de Forest – American inventor (1873–1961) Philo Farnsworth – American inventor (1906–1971) Reginald Fessenden – Canadian-American electrical engineer and inventor (1866–1932) Elisha Gray – American electrical engineer (1835–1901) Innocenzo Manzetti – Italian inventor (1826–1877) Guglielmo Marconi – Italian radio-frequency engineer and inventor (1874–1937) Antonio Meucci – Italian inventor (1808–1889) Alexander Stepanovich Popov – Russian physicist (1859–1906)Pages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets Johann Philipp Reis – German scientist and inventor Almon Brown Strowger – American inventor of the telephone exchange (1839–1902) Nikola Tesla – Serbian-American engineer and inventor (1856–1943) Camille Tissot – French physicist (1868–1917) Alfred Vail – 19th-century American machinist and inventor Charles Wheatstone – English physicist and inventor (1802–1875) Vladimir K. Zworykin – Russian-American engineer (1888–1982)
Egocentric vision
Egocentric vision or first-person vision is a sub-field of computer vision that entails analyzing images and videos captured by a wearable camera, which is typically worn on the head or on the chest and naturally approximates the visual field of the camera wearer. Consequently, visual data capture the part of the scene on which the user focuses to carry out the task at hand and offer a valuable perspective to understand the user's activities and their context in a naturalistic setting. The wearable camera looking forwards is often supplemented with a camera looking inward at the user's eye and able to measure a user's eye gaze, which is useful to reveal attention and to better understand the user's activity and intentions. == History == The idea of using a wearable camera to gather visual data from a first-person perspective dates back to the 70s, when Steve Mann invented "Digital Eye Glass", a device that, when worn, causes the human eye itself to effectively become both an electronic camera and a television display. Subsequently, wearable cameras were used for health-related applications in the context of Humanistic Intelligence and Wearable AI. Egocentric vision is best done from the point-of-eye, but may also be done by way of a neck-worn camera when eyeglasses would be in-the-way. This neck-worn variant was popularized by way of the Microsoft SenseCam in 2006 for experimental health research works. The interest of the computer vision community into the egocentric paradigm has been arising slowly entering the 2010s and it is rapidly growing in recent years, boosted by both the impressive advances in the field of wearable technology and by the increasing number of potential applications. The prototypical first-person vision system described by Kanade and Hebert, in 2012 is composed by three basic components: a localization component able to estimate the surrounding, a recognition component able to identify object and people, and an activity recognition component, able to provide information about the current activity of the user. Together, these three components provide a complete situational awareness of the user, which in turn can be used to provide assistance to the user or to the caregiver. Following this idea, the first computational techniques for egocentric analysis focused on hand-related activity recognition and social interaction analysis. Also, given the unconstrained nature of the video and the huge amount of data generated, temporal segmentation and summarization were among the first problems addressed. After almost ten years of egocentric vision (2007–2017), the field is still undergoing diversification. Emerging research topics include: Social saliency estimation Multi-agent egocentric vision systems Privacy preserving techniques and applications Attention-based activity analysis Social interaction analysis Hand pose analysis Ego graphical User Interfaces (EUI) Understanding social dynamics and attention Revisiting robotic vision and machine vision as egocentric sensing Activity forecasting Gaze prediction == Technical challenges == Today's wearable cameras are small and lightweight digital recording devices that can acquire images and videos automatically, without the user intervention, with different resolutions and frame rates, and from a first-person point of view. Therefore, wearable cameras are naturally primed to gather visual information from our everyday interactions since they offer an intimate perspective of the visual field of the camera wearer. Depending on the frame rate, it is common to distinguish between photo-cameras (also called lifelogging cameras) and video-cameras. The former (e.g., Narrative Clip and Microsoft SenseCam), are commonly worn on the chest, and are characterized by a very low frame rate (up to 2fpm) that allows to capture images over a long period of time without the need of recharging the battery. Consequently, they offer considerable potential for inferring knowledge about e.g. behaviour patterns, habits or lifestyle of the user. However, due to the low frame-rate and the free motion of the camera, temporally adjacent images typically present abrupt appearance changes so that motion features cannot be reliably estimated. The latter (e.g., Google Glass, GoPro), are commonly mounted on the head, and capture conventional video (around 35fps) that allows to capture fine temporal details of interactions. Consequently, they offer potential for in-depth analysis of daily or special activities. However, since the camera is moving with the wearer head, it becomes more difficult to estimate the global motion of the wearer and in the case of abrupt movements, the images can result blurred. In both cases, since the camera is worn in a naturalistic setting, visual data present a huge variability in terms of illumination conditions and object appearance. Moreover, the camera wearer is not visible in the image and what he/she is doing has to be inferred from the information in the visual field of the camera, implying that important information about the wearer, such for instance as pose or facial expression estimation, is not available. == Applications == A collection of studies published in a special theme issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine has demonstrated the potential of lifelogs captured through wearable cameras from a number of viewpoints. In particular, it has been shown that used as a tool for understanding and tracking lifestyle behaviour, lifelogs would enable the prevention of noncommunicable diseases associated to unhealthy trends and risky profiles (such as obesity and depression). In addition, used as a tool of re-memory cognitive training, lifelogs would enable the prevention of cognitive and functional decline in elderly people. More recently, egocentric cameras have been used to study human and animal cognition, human-human social interaction, human-robot interaction, human expertise in complex tasks. Other applications include navigation/assistive technologies for the blind, monitoring and assistance of industrial workflows, and augmented reality interfaces.
CloudLibrary
CloudLibrary (stylized as "cloudLibrary") is a cloud-based software system through which libraries lend electronic books; it is also the name of the app that users download to access the e-books. CloudLibrary was created in 2011 by 3M as part of its library systems unit as a competitor to OverDrive, Inc.; in 2015 3M sold the North American part of that unit to Bibliotheca Group GmbH, a company founded in 2011 that was funded by One Equity Partners Capital Advisors, a division of JP Morgan Chase. By 2019, Bibliotecha had tried, unsuccessfully, to negotiate with Amazon to add Kindle-ebook compatibility to cloudLibrary - something that, as of then, Amazon had only made available to Overdrive. In that year, cloudLibrary, along with hoopla offered by Midwest Tape, ODILO, and Baker & Taylor’s Axis 360, were the main competitors to the Overdrive and Libby apps offered by OverDrive, Inc. in the library e-book market. In April 2024, Bibliotheca sold cloudLibrary to the nonprofit cooperative OCLC. By that time, cloudLibrary was used by around 500 libraries in around 20 countries in around 50 languages, and was used to lend audiobooks, digital magazines, newspapers, and comics, and streaming media, along with e-books.