Blu-ray Disc

Blu-ray Disc (also known as Blu-ray or BD) is an optical disc storage media format. Its main uses are high-definition video and data storage. The disc has the same dimensions as a standard DVD or CD.

The name Blu-ray Disc is derived from the blue laser used to read and write this type of disc. Because of its shorter wavelength (405 nm), substantially more data can be stored on a Blu-ray Disc than on the DVD format, which uses a red (650 nm) laser. A dual layer Blu-ray Disc can store 50 GB, almost six times the capacity of a dual layer DVD.

Blu-ray Disc was developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association, a group of companies representing consumer electronics, computer hardware, and motion picture production. The standard is covered by several patents belonging to different companies. As of April 2008, a joint licensing agreement for all the relevant patents had not yet been finalized.

As of April 5, 2008, more than 530^] Blu-ray Disc titles have been released in the United States, and more than 250 in Japan.

During the high definition optical disc format war, Blu-ray Disc competed with the HD DVD format. On February 19, 2008, Toshiba — the main company supporting HD DVD — announced it would no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders, leading almost all other HD DVD supporters to follow suit, effectively naming Blu-ray the victor of the format war.

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XAMPP

XAMPP is a free, cross-platform web server, consisting mainly of the Apache HTTP Server, MySQL database, and interpreters for scripts written in the PHP and Perl programming languages.

Requirements and features

 

XAMPP only requires one zip, tar or exe file to be downloaded and run, and little or no configuration of the various components that make up the web server is required. XAMPP is regularly updated to incorporate the latest releases of Apache/MySQL/PHP and Perl. It also comes with a number of other modules including OpenSSL and phpMyAdmin.

Because its user interface is considered simple to use it is sometimes called the “lazy man’s WAMP/LAMP installation.”

Installing XAMPP takes less time than installing every installation contained in the package as a separate install.

The result is self-contained, multiple instances can exist on a computer, and a given instance can be copied from one computer to another.

It is offered in both a full, standard version and a smaller version (known as XAMPP Lite). Add-on extension modules are also available.

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E-book

An e-book (for electronic book: also ebook: also ecobook) is the digital media equivalent of a conventional printed book. Such documents are usually read on personal computers, or on dedicated hardware devices known as e-book readers or e-book devices.

An e-book is a specialised type of e-text.

 

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osCommerce

osCommerce (“open source Commerce”) is an e-commerce and online store-management software program. It can be used on any web server that has PHP and MySQL installed. It is available as free software under the GNU General Public License.

Key Features

The following is a list of key features of osCommerce MS2.2 as stated on the osCommerce site:

1. Compatible with PHP 4 and MySQL – easily portable to version 5.
2. Compatible with all major browsers.
3. Multi-lingual English, German and Spanish by default.
4. Automatic web-based installation.
5. Unlimited number of products and categories.
6. Automatic setup of e-commerce payment systems: Authorize.net, 2Checkout.com, iPayment.de, PayPal.com, PsiGate.com, SECPay.com, and TrustCommerce.com; Many other add-on ecommerce payment systems, off-line (manual) credit card payments) and on-line payment processing.
7. Multi-currency support via manual update from exchange rate server.
8. Support for dynamic images (one image per product).
9. Supports physical products as well as product downloads.
10. Web-based administration module.
11. Database backup and restore.
12. Temporary and permanent shopping carts.
13. Secure transactions with SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) support.
14. Many shipping options including by weight, price, or destination.
15. Real-time shipping quote integration with UPS, USPS.
16. Zone-based shipping options as well as a free shipping option as part of Order Totals Module.
17. Full tax functionality, included compounded taxes, different zones for different products.

 

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Play Station 3

 

PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system unleashes a brilliant, high-definition entertainment experience. As its digital soul, the Cell Broadband Engine™ represents a tour de force in parallel processing, which means a gaming experience that is beyond what you know today. Its built-in Blu-ray Disc™ drive delivers a whole new generation in high-definition gaming and unmatched digital media storage. Whether it’s gaming, Blu-ray movies, music or online services.

 

http://www.us.playstation.com/ps3/about

 

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)

An -company, application-to-application communication of data in standard format for business transactions, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is a set of standards for structuring information that is to be electronically exchanged between and within businesses, organizations, government entities and other groups. The standards describe structures that emulate documents, for example purchase orders to automate purchasing. The term EDI is also used to refer to the implementation and operation of systems and processes for creating, transmitting, and receiving EDI documents.

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) can be formally defined as ‘The transfer of structured data, by agreed message standards, from one computer system to another without human intervention’. Most other definitions used are variations on this theme.

 

Advantages of using EDI over paper systems:-

 

EDI and other similar technologies save company money by providing alternative to or replacing information flows that require a great deal of human interaction and materials such as paper documents, meetings, faxes, etc. Even when paper documents are maintained in parallel with EDI exchange, e.g. printed shipping manifests, electronic exchange and the use of data from that exchange reduces the handling costs of sorting, distributing, organizing, and searching paper documents. EDI and similar technologies allow a company to take advantage of the benefits of storing and manipulating data electronically without the cost of manual entry.

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Thuraya

Thuraya is a regional satellite phone provider, its coverage area covers most of Europe, the Middle East, North, Central and East Africa, Asia and Australia.

The company is based in the United Arab Emirates and distributes its products and service through authorized service providers. Its shareholders are a mixture of Middle Eastern and North African telcos (in which Etisalat is a major one) and investment companies.

The current number of subscribers is around 250,000 (March 2006). Some 360,000 Thuraya handsets have been put in service since launch in 2001. The subscriber growth has apparently slowed down during the last year, but Thuraya still made a net profit of US$80 million on revenues of $323 million in 2005 (compared to just US$26 million profit in 2004).

Services

• Voice communications with handheld (Thuraya SO-2510, SG-2520, Hughes 7100 (discontinued) / 7101 and Ascom 21 (discontinued)) or fixed terminals
• Short message service
• 9.6 kbit/s of data & fax service
• 60 kbit/s downlink and 15kbit/s uplink “GMPRS” mobile data service on SO and SG handsets
• 144 kbit/s high-speed data transfer via a notebook-sized terminal (ThurayaDSL)
• GPS is supported by all handsets
• A number of value-added services, such as news, call back, call waiting, missed calls, voicemail, WAP, etc.
• A one-way ‘high power alert’ capability that notifies users of an incoming call, when the signal path to the satellite is obstructed (e.g. inside a building)

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E Bay

eBay Inc. is an American Internet company that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell goods and services worldwide. In addition to its original U.S. website, eBay has established localized websites in thirty other countries. eBay Inc also owns PayPal, Skype, and other businesses.

 

The online auction web site was founded in San Jose, California on September 3, 1995 by French-born Iranian computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as AuctionWeb, part of a larger personal site that included, among other things, Omidyar’s own tongue-in-cheek tribute to the Ebola virus.

The very first item sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer for $14.83.

eBay offers various online help features, including a library of self-help resources, e-mail contact forms and “Live Help,” which lets users chat with customer service representatives via instant messaging. Although this is not available to users on international sites such as eBay.co.uk, members of international eBay websites are welcome to utilize eBay.com’s Live Help service. Excepting Live Help, eBay does not offer phone support to its customers except to sellers of the rank “Bronze PowerSeller” and above, the company’s term for members who sell at least an average of $1,000 worth of goods per month on the site, as well as to eBay Store owners. 

 

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Safari (web browser)

Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc. and included in Mac OS X. It was first released as a public beta on January 7, 2003, and is the default browser in Mac OS X v10.3 and later. It is also the native browser on the Apple iPhone and iPod touch. A beta version for Microsoft Windows was released for the first time on June 11, 2007 with support for Windows XP and Windows Vista with a release version for Windows following on March 18, 2008. Safari has also been run unofficially on Linux under Wine, but the graphical user interface (GUI) and web graphics do not render properly.

Since the release of Safari, its usage share has been climbing. For the month of February 2008, TheCounter.com reports a usage share of 3.34% for Safari; while Net Applications records a usage share of 4.61% in April 2007 and 5.70% in February 2008.

Features

Safari offers most features common to modern web browsers. In addition, some of these features are implemented in distinctive ways, while it also includes some unique to the browser:

• A tabbed-browsing interface that allows dragging tabs to reorder them, move them between windows or create new windows.
• A bookmark management scheme reminiscent of the iTunes jukebox software.
• A resizable web-search box in the toolbar. This uses Google on the Mac and either Google or Yahoo! on Windows.
• Pop-up ad blocking.
• As-you-type text search.
• Spell-checking for all text entry fields.
• Expandable text entry boxes, which can be resized by the user to make entering long texts easier.
• Automatic filling in of web forms.
• Built-in password management via Keychain.
• Functionality for subscribing to and reading web feeds.
• Quartz-style font-smoothing even on Windows.
• Integration of Apple’s QuickTime multimedia technology.
• Support for user-specified style sheets.
• The Web Inspector, a DOM Inspector-like utility that lets users and developers browse the Document Object Model of a web page.
• A high level of standards compliance through its use of the WebKit framework, including partial, preliminary support for CSS3 and HTML 5.

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Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. is an American e-commerce company based in Seattle, Washington. It was one of the first major companies to sell goods over the Internet and was one of the iconic stocks of the late 1990s dot-com bubble. After the bubble burst, Amazon faced skepticism about its business model, but it made its first annual profit in 2003.

Founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, and launched in 1995, Amazon.com began as an online bookstore but soon diversified its product lines by adding VHSs, DVDs, music CDs, MP3s, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and more.

Amazon has established separate websites in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, China, and Japan. It ships globally on selected products.

The company’s global headquarters is located on Seattle, Washington’s Beacon Hill. It has offices throughout other parts of greater Seattle including Union Station and the Columbia Center.

Amazon has announced plans to move its headquarters to the South Lake Union neighborhood of Seattle beginning in mid-2010, with full occupancy by 2011. This move will consolidate all Seattle employees onto the new 11-building campus.

Amazon has steadily branched into retail sales of music CDs, videotapes and DVDs, software, consumer electronics, kitchen items, tools, lawn and garden items, toys & games, baby products, apparel, sporting goods, gourmet food, jewelry, watches, health and personal-care items, beauty products, musical instruments, industrial & scientific supplies, groceries, and more.

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