A MultiValue database is a type of NoSQL and multidimensional database. It is typically considered synonymous with PICK, a database originally developed as the Pick operating system. MultiValue databases include commercial products from Rocket Software, Revelation, InterSystems, Northgate Information Solutions, ONgroup, and other companies. These databases differ from a relational database in that they have features that support and encourage the use of attributes which can take a list of values, rather than all attributes being single-valued. They are often categorized with MUMPS within the category of post-relational databases, although the data model actually pre-dates the relational model. Unlike SQL-DBMS tools, most MultiValue databases can be accessed both with or without SQL. == History == Don Nelson designed the MultiValue data model in the early to mid-1960s. Dick Pick, a developer at TRW, worked on the first implementation of this model for the US Army in 1965. Pick considered the software to be in the public domain because it was written for the military, this was but the first dispute regarding MultiValue databases that was addressed by the courts. Ken Simms wrote DataBASIC, sometimes known as S-BASIC, in the mid-1970s. It was based on Dartmouth BASIC, but had enhanced features for data management. Simms played a lot of Star Trek (a text-based early computer game originally written in Dartmouth BASIC) while developing the language, to ensure that DataBASIC functioned to his satisfaction. Three of the implementations of MultiValue - PICK version R77, Microdata Reality 3.x, and Prime Information 1.0 - were very similar. In spite of attempts to standardize, particularly by International Spectrum and the Spectrum Manufacturers Association, who designed a logo for all to use, there are no standards across MultiValue implementations. Subsequently, these flavors diverged, although with some cross-over. These streams of MultiValue database development could be classified as one stemming from PICK R83, one from Microdata Reality, and one from Prime Information. Because of the differences, some implementations have provisions for supporting several flavors of the languages. An attempt to document the similarities and differences can be found at the Post-Relational Database Reference (PRDB). One reasonable hypothesis for this data model lasting 50 years, with new database implementations of the model even in the 21st century is that it provides inexpensive database solutions. == Data model example == In a MultiValue database system: a database or schema is called an "account" a table or collection is called a "file" a column or field is called a field or an "attribute", which is composed of "multi-value attributes" and "sub-value attributes" to store multiple values in the same attribute. a row or document is called a "record" or "item" Data is stored using two separate files: a "file" to store raw data and a "dictionary" to store the format for displaying the raw data. For example, assume there's a file (table) called "PERSON". In this file, there is an attribute called "eMailAddress". The eMailAddress field can store a variable number of email address values in a single record. The list [[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]] can be stored and accessed via a single query when accessing the associated record. Achieving the same (one-to-many) relationship within a traditional relational database system would include creating an additional table to store the variable number of email addresses associated with a single "PERSON" record. However, modern relational database systems support this multi-value data model too. For example, in PostgreSQL, a column can be an array of any base type. == MultiValue Basic Language == Multivalue Basic (now commonly styled as mvBasic) is a family of programming languages more or less common (and portable) to all the multivalue databases derived from the original Pick Operating System. The variations between implementations are known as flavours. The language originates from Dartmouth Basic and the earliest implementation of PickBASIC (now D3 FlashBasic). Over time various customisations and extensions have been added to take advantage of capabilities added to the different flavours while staying mainly in sync. mvBasic statements and functions are designed to access and take advantage of the multivalue database model and providing the usual capabilities of most modern languages. For example, cryptography and communications. mvBasic is typeless and lends itself to structured programming techniques. Example code is available but limited. Whilst there are commercial applications and tools available, the multivalue database community has not embraced the open source library/package model to the degree seen with other languages. The typical mvBasic compiler compiles program source to a P-code executable object and runs in an interpreter, with D3 FlashBasic and jBASE being notable exceptions. == MultiValue Query Language == Known as ENGLISH, ACCESS, AQL, UniQuery, Retrieve, CMQL, and by many other names over the years, corresponding to the different MultiValue implementations, the MultiValue query language differs from SQL in several respects. Each query is issued against a single dictionary within the schema, which could be understood as a virtual file or a portal to the database through which to view the data. LIST PEOPLE LAST_NAME FIRST_NAME EMAIL_ADDRESSES WITH LAST_NAME LIKE "Van..." The above statement would list all e-mail addresses for each person whose last name starts with "Van". A single entry would be output for each person, with multiple lines showing the multiple e-mail addresses (without repeating other data about the person).
Adversarial stylometry
Adversarial stylometry is the practice of altering writing style to reduce the potential for stylometry to discover the author's identity or their characteristics. This task is also known as authorship obfuscation or authorship anonymisation. Stylometry poses a significant privacy challenge in its ability to unmask anonymous authors or to link pseudonyms to an author's other identities, which, for example, creates difficulties for whistleblowers, activists, and hoaxers and fraudsters. The privacy risk is expected to grow as machine learning techniques and text corpora develop. All adversarial stylometry shares the core idea of faithfully paraphrasing the source text so that the meaning is unchanged but the stylistic signals are obscured. Such a faithful paraphrase is an adversarial example for a stylometric classifier. Several broad approaches to this exist, with some overlap: imitation, substituting the author's own style for another's; translation, applying machine translation with the hope that this eliminates characteristic style in the source text; and obfuscation, deliberately modifying a text's style to make it not resemble the author's own. Manually obscuring style is possible, but laborious; in some circumstances, it is preferable or necessary. Automated tooling, either semi- or fully-automatic, could assist an author. How best to perform the task and the design of such tools is an open research question. While some approaches have been shown to be able to defeat particular stylometric analyses, particularly those that do not account for the potential of adversariality, establishing safety in the face of unknown analyses is an issue. Ensuring the faithfulness of the paraphrase is a critical challenge for automated tools. It is uncertain if the practice of adversarial stylometry is detectable in itself. Some studies have found that particular methods produced signals in the output text, but a stylometrist who is uncertain of what methods may have been used may not be able to reliably detect them. == History == Rao & Rohatgi (2000), an early work in adversarial stylometry, identified machine translation as a possibility, but noted that the quality of translators available at the time presented severe challenges. Kacmarcik & Gamon (2006) is another early work. Brennan, Afroz & Greenstadt (2012) performed the first evaluation of adversarial stylometric methods on actual texts. Brennan & Greenstadt (2009) introduced the first corpus of adversarially authored texts specifically for evaluating stylometric methods; other corpora include the International Imitation Hemingway Competition, the Faux Faulkner contest, and the hoax blog A Gay Girl in Damascus. == Motivations == Rao & Rohatgi (2000) suggest that short, unattributed documents (i.e., anonymous posts) are not at risk of stylometric identification, but pseudonymous authors who have not practiced adversarial stylometry in producing corpuses of thousands of words may be vulnerable. Narayanan et al. (2012) attempted large-scale deanonymisation of 100,000 blog authors with mixed results: the identifications were significantly better than chance, but only accurately matched the blog and author a fifth of the time; identification improved with the number of posts written by the author in the corpus. Even if an author is not identified, some of their characteristics may still be deduced stylometrically, or stylometry may narrow the anonymity set of potential authors sufficiently for other information to complete the identification. Detecting author characteristics (e.g., gender or age) is often simpler than identifying an author from a large, possibly open, set of candidates. Modern machine learning techniques offer powerful tools for identification; further development of corpora and computational stylometric techniques are likely to raise further privacy issues. Gröndahl & Asokan (2020a) say that the general validity of the hypothesis underlying stylometry—that authors have invariant, content-independent 'style fingerprints'—is uncertain, but "the deanonymisation attack is a real privacy concern". Those interested in practicing adversarial stylometry and stylistic deception include whistleblowers avoiding retribution; journalists and activists; perpetrators of frauds and hoaxes; authors of fake reviews; literary forgers; criminals disguising their identity from investigators; and, generally, anyone with a desire for anonymity or pseudonymity. Authors, or agents acting on behalf of authors, may also attempt to remove stylistic clues to author characteristics (e.g., race or gender) so that knowledge of those characteristics cannot be used for discrimination (e.g., through algorithmic bias). Another possible use for adversarial stylometry is in disguising automatically generated text as human-authored. == Methods == With imitation, the author attempts to mislead stylometry by matching their style to another author's. An incomplete imitation, where some of the true author's unique characteristics appear alongside the imitated author's, can be a detectable signal for the use of adversarial stylometry. Imitation can be performed automatically with style transfer systems, though this typically requires a large corpus in the target style for the system to learn from. Another approach is translation, which employs machine translation of a source text to eliminate characteristic style, often through multiple translators in sequence to produce a round-trip translation. Such chained translation can lead to texts being significantly altered, even to the point of incomprehensibility; improved translation tools reduce this risk. More simply-structured texts can be easier to machine translate without losing the original meaning. Machine translation blurs into direct stylistic imitation or obfuscation achieved through automated style transfer, which can be viewed as a "translation" with the same language as input and output. With low-quality translation tools, an author can be required to manually correct major translation errors while avoiding the hazard of re-introducing stylistic characteristics. Wang, Juola & Riddell (2022) found that gross errors introduced by Google Translate were rare, but more common with several intermediate translations—however, occasional simple or short sentences and misspellings in the source text appeared verbatim in the output, potentially providing an identifying signal. Chain translation can leave characteristic traces of its application in a document, which may allow reconstruction of the intermediate languages used and the number of translation steps performed. Obfuscation involves deliberately changing the style of a text to reduce its similarity to other texts by some metric; this may be performed at the time of writing by conscious modification, or as part of a revision process with feedback from the metric being targeted as an input to decide when the text has been sufficiently obfuscated. In contrast to translation, complex texts can offer more opportunities for effective obfuscation without altering meaning, and likewise genres with more permissible variation allow more obfuscation. However, longer texts are harder to thoroughly obfuscate. Obfuscation can blend into imitation if the author develops a novel target style, distinct from their original style. With respect to masking author characteristics, obfuscation may aim to achieve a union (adding signals for imitated characteristics) or an intersection (removing signals and normalising) of other authors' styles. Avoiding the author's own idiosyncrasies and producing a "normalised" text is a critical obfuscatory step: an author may have a unique tendency to misspell certain words, use particular variants, or to format a document in a characteristic way. Stylometric signals vary in how simply they can be adversarially masked; an author may easily change their vocabulary by conscious choice, but altering the pattern of grammar or the letter frequency in their text may be harder to achieve, though Juola & Vescovi (2011) report that imitation typically succeeds at masking more characteristics than obfuscation. Automated obfuscation may require large amounts of training data written by the author. Concerning automated implementations of adversarial stylometry, two possible implementations are rule-based systems for paraphrasing; and encoder–decoder architectures, where the text passes through an intermediate format that is (intended to be) style-neutral. Another division in automated methods is whether there is feedback from an identification system or not. With such feedback, finding paraphrases for author masking has been characterised as a heuristic search problem, exploring textual variants until the result is stylistically sufficiently far (in the case of obfuscation) or near (in the case of imitation), which then constitutes an adversarial example for that identification system. == Evaluation == How
Limnu
Limnu was an online whiteboarding app founded in 2015 by David DeBry and David Hart. It allowed users to draw on virtual whiteboards and invite others by e-mail or by sharing a link. Invitees see any changes to the board in real time and, if allowed by the owner of the board, can also draw on the board. The service was accessible through a web application in desktop and mobile web browsers, as well as through an iOS application. It was headquartered in San Mateo, California. == History == In 2018, ZipSocket, a maker of online meeting software acquired Limnu. == Staff Directory == Andrew Kunz - CEO & Founder of ZipSocket Jenny Rice - Product Manager Max Requenes - Software Engineer Henry Maguire - Machine Learning Engineer
Marq (company)
Marq (formerly Lucidpress) is a cloud-based software platform for brand management and templated content creation. The platform integrates with digital asset management (DAM) systems—including Aprimo and Bynder and customer relationship management (CRM) tools such as Salesforce and HubSpot. Marq also includes AI-assisted features for brand compliance and content automation. Trade publications have described the product as a brand templating and creative automation platform. == History == In October 2013, Lucid Software, Inc. announced Lucidpress as a public beta version. Following its release, Lucidpress was featured in TechCrunch, VentureBeat and PC World, with TechCrunch noting: "I had a chance to test the app before its launch and it is indeed very easy to use. If you've ever used a desktop publishing app in the past, you'll feel right at home with Marq, as it features the same kind of standard top-bar menu and layout options as most other publishing apps. In terms of features, it can also hold its own against similar desktop-based apps." In May 2021, Lucidpress announced that it had been acquired by Charles Thayne Capital ("CTC"), a growth-oriented and technology-focused private investment firm. In May 2021, following its acquisition by Charles Thayne Capital, Lucidpress became fully independent. Owen Fuller, who had served as General Manager since 2017, was appointed Chief Executive Officer. In 2022, Lucidpress was rebranded as Marq to reflect the company’s shift toward brand templating and creative automation tools, while continuing to support its publishing features. == Features == Marq integrates with customer relationship management (CRM) platforms such as Salesforce and HubSpot, enabling the creation of personalized, on-brand sales and marketing materials. The platform also connects with multiple digital asset management (DAM) systems, including Bynder, Aprimo, MediaValet, PhotoShelter, Acquia, and Canto. == Investment == Lucid Software raised $1 million in Seed in 2011, led by Google Ventures. In May 2014, the company received a $5 million investment. The round was led by Salt Lake-based Kickstart Seed Fund. In September 2016, the company received a $36 million investment from Spectrum Equity.
Pocket (service)
Pocket, formerly known as Read It Later, was a social bookmarking service for storing, sharing and discovering web bookmarks, first released in 2007. Mozilla, the developer of Pocket, announced in May 2025 that it was discontinuing the service and would shut it down in July of that year. == History == Pocket was introduced in August 2007 as a Mozilla Firefox browser extension named Read It Later by Nathan (Nate) Weiner. Once his product was used by millions of people, he moved his office to Silicon Valley and four other people joined the Read It Later team. Weiner's intention was for the application to be like a TiVo directory for web content and to give users access to that content on any device. Read It Later obtained venture capital investments of US$2.5 million in 2011 and $5.0 million in 2012. The 2011 funding came from Foundation Capital, Baseline Ventures, Google Ventures, Founder Collective and unnamed angel investors. The company rejected an acquisition offer by Evernote after showing concerns that Evernote intended to shut down the Read It Later service and amalgamate its functionality into Evernote's main service. Initially, the Read It Later app was available in a free version and a paid version that included additional features. After the rebranding to Pocket, all paid features were made available in a free and advertisement-free app. In May 2014, a paid subscription service called Pocket Premium was introduced, adding server-side storage of articles and more powerful search tools. In June 2015, Pocket was included in Firefox, via a toolbar button and link to a user's Pocket list in the bookmark's menu. The integration was controversial, as users displayed concerns for the direct integration of a proprietary service into an open source application, and that it could not be completely disabled without editing advanced settings, unlike other third-party extensions. A Mozilla spokesperson stated that the feature was meant to leverage the service's popularity among Firefox users and clarified that all code related to the integration was open source. The spokesperson added that "[Mozilla had] gotten lots of positive feedback about the integration from users". On February 27, 2017, Pocket announced that it had been acquired by Mozilla Corporation, the commercial arm of Firefox's non-profit development group. Mozilla staff stated that Pocket would continue to operate as an independent subsidiary but that it would be leveraged as part of an ongoing "Context Graph" project. There were plans to open-source the server-side code of Pocket, though only parts of the project had been open-sourced as of 2024. On May 22, 2025, Mozilla announced that it would shut down Pocket on July 8, 2025. Exports of user data would be available until October 8, 2025, when accounts would be deleted. The email newsletter Pocket Hits was rebranded as Ten Tabs on June 12 as part of the closure, with it being changed to release only on weekdays. == Functions == The application allows the user to save an article or web page to remote servers for later reading. The article is sent to the user's Pocket list (synced to all of their devices) for offline reading. Pocket makes the article more readable by removing clutter and enabling the user to add tags and adjust text settings. == User base == The application had 17 million users and 1 billion saves, as of September 2015. Pocket was listed among Time magazine's 50 Best Android Applications for 2013. == Reception == Kent German of CNET said that "Read It Later is oh so incredibly useful for saving all the articles and news stories I find while commuting or waiting in line." Erez Zukerman of PC World said that supporting the developer is enough reason to buy what he deemed a "handy app". Bill Barol of Forbes said that although Read It Later works less well than Instapaper, "it makes my beloved Instapaper look and feel a little stodgy." In 2015, Pocket was awarded a Material Design Award for Adaptive Layout by Google for their Android application.
AdBlock
AdBlock is an ad-blocking browser extension for Google Chrome, Apple Safari (desktop and mobile), Firefox, Samsung Internet, Microsoft Edge and Opera. AdBlock allows users to prevent page elements, such as advertisements, from being displayed. It is free to download and use, and it includes optional donations to the developers. The AdBlock extension was created on December 8, 2009, which is the day that supports for extensions was added to Google Chrome. It was one of the first Google Chrome extensions that was made. Since 2016, AdBlock has been based on the Adblock Plus source code. In July 2018, AdBlock acquired uBlock, a commercial ad-blocker owned by uBlock LLC and based on uBlock Origin. In April 2021, eyeo GmbH (developer of Adblock Plus) announced its purchase of AdBlock, Inc (formerly BetaFish, Inc). == Crowdfunding == Gundlach launched a crowdfunding campaign on Crowdtilt in August 2013 in order to fund an ad campaign to raise awareness of ad-blocking and to rent a billboard at Times Square. After the one-month campaign, it raised $55,000. == Sales and acceptable ads == AdBlock was sold to an anonymous buyer in 2015 and on October 15, 2015, Gundlach's name was taken down from the site. In the terms of the deal, the original developer Michael Gundlach left operations to Adblock's continuing director, Gabriel Cubbage, and as of October 2, 2015, AdBlock began participating in the Acceptable Ads program. Acceptable Ads identifies "non-annoying" ads, which AdBlock shows by default. The intent is to allow non-invasive advertising, to either maintain support for websites that rely on advertising as a main source of revenue or for websites that have an agreement with the program. == Filters == AdBlock uses EasyList, the same filter syntax as Adblock Plus for Firefox, and natively supports the use of a number of filter lists. == Partnership with Amnesty International == On March 12, 2016, in support of World Day Against Cyber Censorship, and in partnership with Amnesty International, instead of blocking ads, AdBlock replaced ads with banners linked to articles on Amnesty's website, written by prominent free speech advocates such as Edward Snowden, to raise awareness of government-imposed online censorship and digital privacy issues around the world. The campaign was met with both praise and criticism, with AdBlock's CEO, Gabriel Cubbage, defending the decision in an essay on AdBlock's website, saying "We’re showing you Amnesty banners, just for today, because we believe users should be part of the conversation about online privacy. Tomorrow, those spaces will be vacant again. But take a moment to consider that in an increasingly information-driven world, when your right to digital privacy is threatened, so is your right to free expression." Meanwhile, Simon Sharwood of The Register characterized Cubbage's position as "'You should control your computer except when we feel political', says AdBlock CEO". == AdBlock for Firefox == On September 13, 2014, the AdBlock team released a version for Firefox users, ported from the code for Google Chrome, released under the same free software license as the original Adblock. The extension was removed on April 2, 2015, by an administrator on Mozilla Add-ons. On December 7, 2015, the official AdBlock site's knowledge base article stated that with version 44 or higher of Firefox desktop and Firefox Mobile, AdBlock will not be supported. The last version of Adblock for those platforms will work on older versions of Firefox. AdBlock was released again on Mozilla Add-ons on November 17, 2016. On April 1, 2012, Adblock developer Michael Gundlach tweaked the code to display LOLcats instead of simply blocking ads. Initially developed as a short-lived April Fools joke, the response was so positive that CatBlock was continued to be offered as an optional add-on supported by a monthly subscription. On October 23, 2014, the developer decided to end official support for CatBlock, and made it open-source, under GPLv3 licensing, as the original extension.
TimeTiger
TimeTiger is a time and project tracking app developed by Indigo Technologies Ltd. in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Indigo was founded in 1997 and initially released TimeTiger in 1998. == Company == The company was incorporated in 1997 and began operations as a custom software developer. TimeTiger (internally called TaskMaster) was developed as a tool to help with Indigo's own project planning and estimating. After releasing TimeTiger as a commercial product in 1998, Indigo shifted its focus to time and project management solutions. TimeTiger first introduced support for web-based time logging in 2000, to appeal to workers who were not already tracking their time for billing reasons. Subsequent development emphasized project analysis tools. == Features == Web-based electronic time log "To Do" list to monitor project and non-project activities Pivot table report designer Role-based access control == Software integration == Reports can be exported to Microsoft Excel or saved as Excel-compatible HTML files. Microsoft Project files can be imported and exported. A Software Development Kit is available.