TOUCH SCREEN

First computers became more visual, then they took a step further to understand vocal commands and now they have gone a step further and became ‘TOUCHY’, that is skin to screen.

A touchscreen is an easy to use input device that allows users to control PC software and DVD video by touching the display screen. A touch system consists of a touch Sensor that receives the touch input, a Controller, and a Driver. The most commonly used touch technologies are the Capacitive & Resistive systems. The other technologies used in this field are Infrared technology, Near Field Imaging & SAW (surface acoustic wave technology). These technologies are latest in this field but are very much expensive.

The uses of touch systems as Graphical User Interface (GUI) devices for computers continues to grow popularity. Touch systems are used for many applications such as ATM’s, point-of–sale systems, industrial controls, casinos & public kiosks etc. Touch system is basically an alternative for a mouse or keyboard.

The market for touch system is going to be around $2.5 billion by 2004. Various companies involved in development of touch systems mainly are Philips, Samsung etc. Even touch screen mobile phones have been developed by Philips.

INTRODUCTION

A touchscreen is an easy to use input device that  allows users to control PC software and DVD video by touching the display screen. We manufacture and distribute a variety of touch screen related products.

A touch system consists of a touch

Sensor that receives the touch input, a Controller, and a Driver. The touch screen sensor is a clear panel that is designed to fit over a PC. When a screen is touched, the sensor detects the voltage change and passes the signal to the touch screen controller. The controller that reads & translates the sensor input into a conventional bus protocol (Serial, USB) and a software driver which converts the bus information to cursor action as well as providing systems utilities.

As the touch sensor resides between the user and the display while receiving frequent physical input from the user vacuum deposited transparent conductors serve as primary sensing element. Vacuum coated layers can account for a significant fraction of touch system cost. Cost & application parameters are chief criteria for determining the appropriate type determining the system selection. Primarily, the touch system integrator must determine with what implement the user will touch the sensor with & what price the application will support.

Applications requiring activation by a

gloved finger or arbitrary stylus such as a plastic pen will specify either a low cost resistive based sensor or a higher cost infra-red (IR) or surface acoustic wave (SAW) system. Applications anticipating bare finger input or amenable to a tethered pen comprises of the durable & fast capacitive touch systems. A higher price tag generally leads to increased durability better optical performance & larger price.

The most commonly used systems are

generally the capacitive & resistive systems. The other technologies used in this field are Infrared technology & SAW (surface acoustic wave technology) these technologies are latest in this field but are very much expensive.

1. Introduction

To avoid shoot-though in voltage source inverters (VSI), dead-time, a small interval during which both the upper and lower switches in a phase-leg are off, is introduced into the standard pulse width modulation (PWM) control of VSIs. How­ever, such a blanking time can cause problems such as output waveform distortion and fundamental voltage loss in VSIs, es­pecially when the output voltage is low.

To overcome dead-time effects, most solutions focus on dead-time compensation  by introducing complicated PWM compensators and expensive current detection hardware. In practice, the dead-time varies with the gate drive path propa­gation delay, device characteristics and output current, as well as temperature, which makes the compensation less effective, especially at low output current, low frequency, and zero current crossing. Several switching strategies for PWM power converters have been proposed to minimize the dead-time effect. A dead-time minimization algorithm was also discussed earlier to improve the inverter output performance. A phase-leg configu­ration topology proposed prevented shoot through. However, an additional diode in series in the phase-leg increases complexity and causes more loss in the inverter. Also, this phase-leg configuration is not suitable for high-power inverters because the upper device gate turn-off voltage is reversely clamped by a diode turn on voltage. Such a low voltage, usually less than 2 V, is not enough to ensure that a device is in its off-state during the activation of its complement device.

High-power inverters usually need longer dead-time than those low-power counterparts. Also due to complicated struc­tures and severe parasitic parameter variations, in practice, the dead-time for high-power inverters requires specific adjustment and/or compensation, and usually this process is time-con­suming. For general applications, automatically eliminating dead-time by gate drive technology is a desired and complete solution. Gate drives with intelligent functions are in high demand due to the emerging technology of power electronics building blocks (PEBB) and intelligent power modules (IPM) because smart functions can improve power devices’ modu­larity, flexibility and reliability.

In this work, an effective dead-time elimination method is proposed. This method is based on decomposing of a generic phase-leg into two basic switching cells, which are configured with a controllable switch in series with an uncontrollable diode. Therefore, dead-time is not needed. In this paper, the effect of dead-time in VSIs will be first introduced. The prin­ciple of the proposed method to eliminate dead-time effect is explained in detail. Simulation and experimental results are provided to demonstrate the validity and features of the proposed novel method. Flexible implementation methods are also discussed.

INTRODUCTION

Computing in its purest form, has changed hands multiple times. First, from near the beginning mainframes were predicted to be the future of computing. Indeed mainframes and large scale machines were built and used, and in some circumstances are used similarly today. The trend, however, turned from bigger and more expensive, to smaller and more affordable commodity PCs and servers.

Most of our data is stored on local networks with servers that may be clustered and sharing storage. This approach has had time to be developed into stable architecture, and provide decent redundancy when deployed right. A newer emerging technology, cloud computing, has shown up demanding attention and quickly is changing the direction of the technology landscape. Whether it is Google’s unique and scalable Google File System, or Amazon’s robust Amazon S3 cloud storage model, it is clear that cloud computing has arrived with much to be gleaned from.

Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualizes resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the “cloud” that supports them.

Need for large data processing

We live in the data age. It’s not easy to measure the total volume of data stored electronically, but an IDC estimate put the size of the “digital universe” at 0.18 zettabytes in 2006, and is forecasting a tenfold growth by 2011 to 1.8 zettabytes.
Some of the large data processing needed areas include:-

• The New York Stock Exchange generates about one terabyte of new trade data per day.

• Facebook hosts approximately 10 billion photos, taking up one petabyte of storage.

• Ancestry.com, the genealogy site, stores around 2.5 petabytes of data.

• The Internet Archive stores around 2 petabytes of data, and is growing at a rate of 20 terabytes per month.

• The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, will produce about 15 petabytes of data per year.

The problem is that while the storage capacities of hard drives have increased massively over the years, access speeds—the rate at which data can be read from drives have not kept up. One typical drive from 1990 could store 1370 MB of data and had a transfer speed of 4.4 MB/s,§ so we could read all the data from a full drive in around five minutes. Almost 20 years later one terabyte drives are the norm, but the transfer speed is around 100 MB/s, so it takes more than two and a half hours to read all the data off the disk. This is a long time to read all data on a single drive—and writing is even slower. The obvious way to reduce the time is to read from multiple disks at once. Imagine if we had 100 drives, each holding one hundredth of the data. Working in parallel, we could read the data in under two minutes.This shows the significance of distributed computing.

Download Full ArticleHadoop.doc .doc

Techalone joins with the whole world in the practice of Earth Hour. The earth hour will be held today 27th March 2010, from 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm.  Earth hour is practiced to build the awareness of preserving nature in people’s mind. The first Earth hour was held at Sydney in the year 2007. About 20 lakh people participated in that Earth Hour.

In the last Earth Hour of year 2009, about 35 countries including India also took part and it saved about 1000 megawatt of Electricity in India itself. Energy saving and protection of the environment which gets heated up in every second are the message of Earth hour.

The features of buzz as said from the google head quarters are

1. Friends are added automatically who you have emailed on Gmail.

2. It combines sources like Picasa and Twitter into a single feed, and it also includes full-sized photo browsing.

3. Public and private sharing so that you can decide who and what to see.

4. Inbox integration. Buzz features emails that update dynamically with all Buzz thread content.

5. Recommended Buzz -puts friend-of-friend content into your stream, even if you’re not acquainted.

It can be seen as combination of facebook and twitter .It has the private aspects of facebook and the public aspects of twitter ie we can publish our updates as public or private. In twitter and facebooks we cannot get the updates of friends of friends. In buzz they suggest a recommended buzz, by this feature we can get good buzz even if it is not from our friends. Buzz will also try to find boring buzz and automatically collapse bad buzz.

ABSTRACT

The Remote Media Immersion (RMI) system is the result of a unique blend of multiple cutting-edge media technologies to create the ultimate digital media delivery platform. The main goal is to provide an immersive user experience of the highest quality. RMI encompasses all end-to-end aspects from media acquisition, storage, transmission up to their final rendering. Specifically, the Yima streaming media server delivers multiple high bandwidth streams, transmission error and flow control protocols ensure data integrity, and high-definition video combined with immersive audio provide highest quality rendering. The RMI system is operational and has been successfully demonstrated in small and large venues. Relying on the continued advances in electronics integration and residential broadband improvement, RMI demonstrates the future of on-demand home entertainment.

INTRODUCTION

The charter of the Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC) at the University of Southern California (USC) is to investigate new methods and technologies that combine multiple modalities into highly effective, immersive technologies, applications and environments. One of the results of these research efforts is the Remote Media Immersion (RMI) system. The goal of the RMI is to create and develop a complete aural and visual environment that places a participant or group of participants in a virtual space where they can experience events that occurred in different physical locations. RMI technology can effectively overcome the barriers of time and space to enable, on demand, the realistic recreation of visual and aural cues recorded in widely separated locations.

The focus of the RMI effort is to enable the most realistic recreation of an event possible while streaming the data over the Internet. Therefore, we push the technological boundaries much beyond what current video-on-demand or streaming media systems can deliver. As a consequence, high-end rendering equipment and significant transmission bandwidth are required. The RMI project integrates several technologies that are the result of research efforts at IMSC. The current operational version is based on four major components that are responsible for the acquisition, storage, transmission, and rendering of high quality media.

STAGES OF RMI

Acquisition of high-quality media streams

This authoring component is an important part of the overall chain to ensure the high quality of the rendering result as experienced by users at a later time. As the saying “garbage in, garbage out” implies, no amount of quality control in later stages of the delivery chain can make up for poorly acquired media.

Real-time digital storage and playback of multiple independent streams

Yima Scalable Streaming Media Architecture provides real-time storage, retrieval and transmission capabilities. The Yima server is based on a scalable cluster design. Each cluster node is an off-the-shelf personal computer with attached storage devices and, for example, a Fast or Gigabit Ethernet connection. The Yima server software manages the storage and network resources to provide real-time service to the multiple clients that are requesting media streams. Media types include, but are not limited to, MPEG-2 at NTSC and HDTV resolutions, multichannel audio (e.g., 10.2 channel immersive audio), and MPEG-4

Protocols for synchronized, efficient real time transmission of multiple media streams

A selective data retransmission scheme improves playback quality while maintaining realtime properties. A flow control component reduces network traffic variability and enables streams of various characteristics to be synchronized at the rendering location. Industry standard networking protocols such as Real-Time Protocol (RTP) and Real-Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) provide compatibility with commercial systems.

Rendering of immersive audio and high resolution video

Immersive audio is a technique developed at IMSC for capturing the audio environment at a remote site and accurately reproducing the complete audio sensation and ambience at the client location with full fidelity, dynamic range and directionality for a group of listeners (16 channels of uncompressed linear PCM at a data rate of up to 17.6Mb/s). The RMI video is rendered in HDTV resolutions (1080i or 720p format) and transmitted at a rate of up to 45 Mb/s.

Download Full Article Remote Media Immersions.doc

There is a simple feature in Notepad that can make it work like a personal diary for you. Here is how to go about it:

1. Firstly open a blank Notepad file.

2. Now write .LOG as the first line in the file, and then press enter. Now save the file and close it.

3. Open the notepad file now and you will find that the current date and time has been appended (put) at the end and the cursor is in the next line.

4. Type your notes and then save and close the file.

5. Each time you open the file, Notepad repeats the process that is it appends the date and time to the end of the file and places the cursor below it.

This way you can keep track of all your entries, you can easily maintain what you wrote when. This can work very much like a personal diary.

ABSTRACT

Yii is a high-performance component-based PHP framework for developing large-scale Web applications. It enables maximum reusability in Web programming and can significantly accelerate the development process. The name Yii (pronounced as Yee or [ji:]) stands for easy, efficient and extensible.

What is Yii Best for?

Yii is a generic Web programming framework that can be used for developing virtually all sorts of Web applications. Because it is light-weighted and equipped with sophisticated caching solutions, it is especially suitable for developing high-traffic applications, such as portals, forums, content management systems (CMS), e-commerce systems, etc.

How is Yii Compared with Other Frameworks?

Like most PHP frameworks, Yii is an MVC framework. Yii excels over other PHP frameworks in that it is efficient, feature-rich and clearly- documented. Yii is carefully designed from the beginning to fit for serious Web application development. It is neither a byproduct of some pro ject nor a conglomerate of third-party work. It is the result of the authors’ rich experience of Web application development and the investigation and reflection of the most popular Web programming frameworks and applications.

INTRODUCTION

The Yii framework is free software. It is released under the terms of the following BSD License.
1.1 New Features

This page summarizes the main new features introduced in each Yii release.

• Version 1.0.7

• Added support for displaying call stack information in trace messages

– Logging Context Information

• Added index option to AR relations so that related ob jects can be indexed using the values of a specific column

– Relational Query Options

• Version 1.0.6

• Added support for using named scope with update and delete methods:

– Named Scopes

• Added support for using named scope in the with option of relational rules

• Added support for profiling SQL executions

– Profiling SQL Executions

• Added support for logging additional context information

– Logging Context Information

• Added support for customizing a single URL rule by setting its urlFormat and case Sensitive options:

– User-friendly URLs

• Added support for using a controller action to display application errors:

– Handling Errors Using an Action

• Version 1.0.5

• Enhanced active record by supporting named scopes. See:

– Named Scopes

– Default Named Scope

– Relational Query with Named Scopes

• Enhanced active record by supporting lazy loading with dynamic query options. See:

– Dynamic Relational Query Options

• Enhanced CUrlManager to support parameterizing the route part in URL rules. See:

– Parameterizing Routes in URL Rules

1.2 What is Yii

Yii is a high-performance component-based PHP framework for developing large-scale Webapplications. It enables maximum reusability in Web programming and can significantly

accelerate the development process. The name Yii (pronounced as Yee or [ji:]) standsfor easy, efficient and extensible.

Requirements

To run an Yii-powered Web application, you need a Web server supporting PHP 5.1.0 or higher.

For developers who want to use Yii, understanding ob ject-oriented programming (OOP)is very helpful, because Yii is a pure OOP framework.

1.3 What is Yii Best for?

Yii is a generic Web programming framework that can be used for developing virtually all sorts of Web applications. Because it is light-weighted and equipped with sophisticated

caching solutions, it is especially suitable for developing high-traffic applications, such as

portals, forums, content management systems (CMS), e-commerce systems, etc.

1.4 How is Yii Compared with Other Frameworks?

Like most PHP frameworks, Yii is an MVC framework. Yii excels over other PHP frameworks in that it is efficient, feature-rich and clearly-documented. Yii is carefully designed from the beginning to fit for serious Web application development. It is neither a byproduct of some pro ject nor a conglomerate of third-partywork. It is the result of the authors’ rich experience of Web application development and the investigation and reflection of the most popular Web programming frameworks and applications.

1.4 Installation

Installation of Yii mainly involves the following two steps:

• Download Yii Framework from yiiframework.com.
• Unpack the Yii release file to a Web-accessible directory.

Requirements

After installing Yii, you may want to verify that your server satisfies all the requirementsof using Yii. You can do so by accessing the requirement checker script at the followingURL in a Web browser:

http://hostname/path/to/yii/requirements/index.php

The minimum requirement by Yii is that your Web server supports PHP 5.1.0 or above.

Yii has been tested with Apache HTTP server on Windows and Linux operating systems.

It may also run on other Web servers and platforms provided PHP 5 is supported.
Download Full Article Yii Framework.doc

Download Full Article Cocoa.doc

ABSTRACT

Cocoa is one of Apple Inc.’s native object-oriented application program environments for the Mac OS X operating system. It is one of five major APIs available for Mac OS X; the others are Carbon, POSIX (for the BSD environment), X11 and Java.

Cocoa applications are typically developed using the development tools provided by Apple, specifically Xcode (formerly Project Builder) and Interface Builder, using the Objective-C language. However, the Cocoa-programming environment can be accessed using other tools, such as Object Pascal, Python, Perl and Ruby, with the aid of bridging mechanisms such as PasCocoa, PyObjC, CamelBones and RubyCocoa, respectively. Also, under development by Apple, is an implementation of the Ruby language, called MacRuby, which does away with the requirement for a bridging mechanism. It is also possible to write Objective-C Cocoa programs in a simple text editor and build it manually with GCC or GNUstep’s makefile scripts. For end-users, Cocoa applications are considered to be those written using the Cocoa-programming environment. Such applications usually have a distinctive feel, since the Cocoa-programming environment automates many aspects of an application to comply with Apple’s human interface guidelines.

Main frameworks

Cocoa consists primarily of two Objective-C object libraries called frameworks. Frameworks are functionally similar to shared libraries, a compiled object that can be dynamically loaded into a program’s address space at runtime, but frameworks add associated resources, header files, and documentation.

Foundation Kit, or more commonly simply Foundation, first appeared in OpenStep. On Mac OS X, it is based on Core Foundation. Foundation is a generic object-oriented library providing string and value manipulation, containers and iteration, distributed computing, run loops, and other functions that are not directly tied to the graphical user interface. The “NS” prefix, used for all classes and constants in the framework, comes from Cocoa’s NeXTSTEP heritage.

Application Kit or AppKit is directly descended from the original NeXTSTEP Application Kit. It contains code with which programs can create and interact with graphical user interfaces. AppKit is built on top of Foundation, and uses the same “NS” prefix. A key part of the Cocoa architecture is its comprehensive views model. This is organized along conventional lines for an application framework, but is based on the PDF drawing model provided by Quartz. This allows creation of custom drawing content using PostScript-like drawing commands, which also allows automatic printer support and so forth. Since the Cocoa framework manages all the clipping, scrolling, scaling and other chores of drawing graphics, the programmer is freed from implementing basic infrastructure and can concentrate only on the unique aspects of an application’s content.

Technology Overview

Cocoa helps you create commercial-grade applications quickly and efficiently. It is an advanced, mature object- oriented development environment that enables you to create complex software with surprisingly few lines of code. Through a seamless integration of tools and Cocoa API, the design and construction of a user interface is largely a matter of dragging windows, buttons, and other objects from palettes, initializing their attributes, and connecting them to other objects. Cocoa also defines a model for applications and implements most aspects of application behavior; you simply fit into this model the code that makes your application unique.

The programmatic interfaces of the core Cocoa frameworks, Foundation and Application Kit, simplify access to most of the technologies on which Mac OS X is based, such as Quartz, Bonjour networking, Core Text, and the printing system. Although these interfaces are in Objective-C, you can integrate code written in other languages into your Cocoa projects, including C++ code and C code. Because Objective-C is a superset of ANSI C, frameworks with C APIs are compatible with Objective-C.

Implementations

The Cocoa frameworks are written in Objective-C, and hence Objective-C is the preferred language for development of Cocoa applications. Java bindings for the Cocoa frameworks (known as the “Java bridge”) are also available but have not proven popular amongst Cocoa developers. Further, the need for runtime binding means many of Cocoa’s key features are not available with Java. In 2005, Apple announced that the Java bridge was to be deprecated, meaning that features added to Cocoa in Mac OS X versions later than 10.4 would not be added to the Cocoa-Java programming interface. AppleScript Studio, part of Apple’s Xcode Tools makes it possible to write (less complex) Cocoa applications using AppleScript. Third party bindings available for other languages include PyObjC (Python), RubyCocoa (Ruby), CamelBones (Perl), Cocoa#, Monobjc (C#) and NObjective(C#).There are also open source implementations of major parts of the Cocoa framework that allows cross- platform (including Microsoft Windows) Cocoa application development, such as GNUstep, and Cocotron

Download Full Article Cocoa.ppt

Download Full Article Cocoa.doc

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