Tag Archives: HDR

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Cincinnati Bell Becomes First U.S. Carrier to Offer Sony Xperia™ ZL Smartphone

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By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool

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Cincinnati Bell Becomes First U.S. Carrier to Offer Sony Xperia™ ZL Smartphone

World’s Most Compact Premium Smartphone Available from Cincinnati Bell on May 1

CINCINNATI–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Cincinnati Bell, the region’s leading provider of communications services for homes and businesses, today announced it will begin selling the new Sony Xperia™ ZL, a premium smartphone with a razor-sharp 5-inch high-definition Reality Display. The Xperia ZL from Sony will be available from Cincinnati Bell online and in stores by May 1 for $249.99 after mail-in rebate with a two-year equipment agreement.

“We’re excited to add the Sony Xperia ZL to our line of premium smartphones. With this extraordinary device, customers can connect with each other using the best technology Sony has to offer,” said Mike Vanderwoude, senior vice president/general manager, Consumer Markets. “The Xperia ZL on Cincinnati Bell‘s 4G wireless network creates an unbeatable combination.”

The Xperia ZL has all of the specifications and premium features expected from a technology innovator like Sony. A razor-sharp 5-inch full HD (1920x1080p) Reality Display brings Sony’s long-standing TV expertise to the smartphone delivering optimized color, contrast and clarity. Intelligent camera capabilities previously only available in Sony digital cameras make taking high-quality images easier than ever, no matter what the conditions.

One-touch connections via NFC (Near field communication) enable consumers to easily share music, photos, and video from their Xperia ZL with other NFC-enabled devices including Sony speakers, headphones and TVs. For example, with the latest NFC-capable BRAVIA TV, simply touch the Xperia ZL to the TV remote control and enjoy photos or browse the Xperia ZL’s interface on the large TV screen. In addition, the Xperia ZL’s infrared capability offers remote control of TV‘s and other home entertainment devices.

Xperia ZL Key Features:

  • 5-inch 1920x1080p full HD Reality Display with Mobile BRAVIA® Engine 2
  • 13MP camera with Exmor RS for Mobile, HDR video (1080p), Superior Auto and Noise Reduction to effortlessly capture razor-sharp pictures and videos in any conditions
  • Battery STAMINA for improved standby time
  • NFC-enabled and Infrared capable
  • 1.5 GHz asynchronous quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor with 2GB RAM
  • Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean)

    • …read more

    Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

NVIDIA Has Big Plans for the Next Few Years

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By Steve Symington, The Motley Fool

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It seems an understatement to say NVIDIA has been busy so far this year.

First, at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, the graphics specialist simultaneously unveiled both its beefy Tegra 4 processor, and a curious Tegra 4-powered handheld gaming device called Project Shield.

Then, in February, NVIDIA excited the smartphone market and sent shivers up the spines of Qualcomm investors when it announced the Tegra 4i. Why? The Tegra 4i stands tall as NVIDIA‘s first fully integrated 4G LTE mobile processor, featuring an integrated version of its i500 4G LTE modem, 60 NVIDIA GPU cores, and a quad-core CPU which was jointly designed by NVIDIA and processor specialist ARM Holdings.

At the same time, as I noted last month, NVIDIA provided new details on its Chimera digital photography architecture. In addition to being integrated into its Tegra 4 and 4i platforms, Chimera should also help even further solidify NVIDIA‘s grasp on the industry by allowing photographers to capture wide-angle HDR images while the camera is moving. In addition, Chimera also lets users choose a static focal point in their scenes, helping them to maintain a properly-focused shot regardless of whether the camera or its subjects are moved. 

Let’s talk about the future
Of course, there’s plenty more activity to note, from the use of NVIDIA‘s technology in the world’s leading supercomputers to its new GRID-based virtual graphics products. That doesn’t mean, however, that NVIDIA will be content to rest on its laurels anytime soon.

To the contrary, at its 2013 GPU Technology Conference, NVIDIA just described its future plans for both “Project Logan” and “Project Parker” — or, as many are tentatively calling them already, Tegra 5 and Tegra 6.

 

Source: NVIDIA 2013 GPU Technology Conference.

This announcement, mind you, comes before we’ve even seen the very first Tegra 4 devices hit the market. Even so, NVIDIA management was quick to point out during its latest earnings conference call that, “at this point, [they] already have more design wins with Tegra 4 than [they] had in total with Tegra 3″ — and that’s a great thing considering analysts at Needham downgraded the stock last month while complaining of the existing Tegra line’s “limited traction in smartphones.”

Harnessing the power of Wolverine
Aside from the fact the Tegra 4i should provide plenty of incentive for smartphone makers to change that, there’s even more to love about Project Logan.

Logan will not only be integrated with NVIDIA‘s next-gen Kepler GPU and OpenGL 4.3, but also will be the first mobile processor to incorporate the company’s high-performance CUDA parallel computing platform — and yep, that’s the same CUDA utilized by NVIDIA‘s Tesla processors for supercomputing applications. This, as NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang stated, will enable mobile devices to do “everything that a modern computer ought to do.” What’s more, NVIDIA should have its first Logan processors ready later this year, with the line “easily” entering mass production by early 2014.

Hanging with …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

iCAD Announces FDA Clearance of Cervical Applicator for Xoft Electronic Brachytherapy System

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By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool

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iCAD Announces FDA Clearance of Cervical Applicator for Xoft Electronic Brachytherapy System

NASHUA, N.H.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– iCAD, Inc. (NAS: ICAD) , a leading provider of advanced imaging and radiation therapy technologies for the detection and treatment of cancer, today announced that the company received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance for its new cervical applicator for use with its Xoft® Axxent® Electronic Brachytherapy System®to deliver high dose rate brachytherapy for intracavitary treatment of cancer of the uterus, cervix, endometrium and vagina.

The regulatory clearance of Xoft’s cervical applicator will help address an unmet need for improved cervical cancer treatment on a global level. According to the World Health Organization, cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in women worldwide, with about 500,000 new cases and 250,000 deaths each year.

“The addition of the cervical applicator broadens our gynecological product offering to provide treatment for patients with cervical or endometrial cancers. This regulatory clearance further demonstrates the advantages of the Xoft System platform which is also being used today in the treatment of certain breast and skin cancers,” said Ken Ferry, iCAD’s CEO.

Xoft’s cervical applicator is designed to treat locally advanced stage cervical cancer in combination with the Xoft System by delivering the prescribed radiation dose to the uterus, and cervix, endometrium and vagina with reduced radiation exposure to the surrounding healthy tissue. Brachytherapy is an important component in the curative management of cervical cancer and significantly improves survival.

The Xoft System is a mobile, isotope-free alternative to radionuclide-based high-dose radiation (HDR) brachytherapy and eliminates several logistical shortcomings associated with isotope, linear accelerator and external beam x-ray based radiation systems.

Xoft also recently received FDA clearance for an upgraded Xoft System controller capability that will support the cervical applicator and offer enhanced platform features.

About iCAD, Inc.

iCAD is a leading provider of advanced image analysis, workflow solutions and radiation therapies for the early identification and treatment of common cancers. iCAD offers a comprehensive range of high-performance, upgradeable CAD solutions for mammography and advanced image analysis and workflow solutions for Magnetic Resonance Imaging, for breast and prostate cancers and Computed Tomography for colorectal cancer. iCAD’s Xoft System, offers radiation treatment for early-stage breast cancer that can be administered in the form of intraoperative radiation therapy or accelerated partial breast irradiation. The Xoft System is also cleared for the …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Linux

Calligra 2.6 Released

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The Calligra team is proud and pleased to announce the release of version 2.6 of the Calligra Suite, Calligra Active and the Calligra Office Engine. This version is the result of thousands of commits which provide new features, polishing of the user interaction and bug fixes.

As usual, Calligra is developing very fast and there are a lot of new features to be announced. This is also the second feature update after the initial release of Calligra in April last year which means that we are approaching some form of maturity. The team has used a significant part of the development time to polish away usability problems and visual glitches.

News in This Release

Here are the most important new or improved features in Calligra 2.6.

New Application: Calligra Author

Calligra Author is a new member of the growing Calligra application family. The application was announced just after the release of Calligra 2.5 with the following description:

The application will support a writer in the process of creating an eBook from concept to publication. We have two user categories in particular in mind:

  • Novelists who produce long texts with complicated plots involving many characters and scenes but with limited formatting.
  • Textbook authors who want to take advantage of the added possibilities in eBooks compared to paper-based textbooks.

The first version of Calligra Author is very similar to Calligra Words since the new features of Author are also adopted by Words. Future releases shall deviate more.

Features that were developed especially for Author include export to eBook formats EPUB2 and MOBI (the latter will come a bit delayed, in 2.6.1), and improved text statistics (word count, character count, etc).

Productivity Applications

For the productivity part of the suite (word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation program) the target user of version 2.6 is still the student or academic user. This version has a number of new features that will make it more suitable for these users.

Words, the word processing application improved layout and numerous minor fixes in dialogs and tools, e.g. the spell checking. This should make Words more pleasant to use for the normal user. Words also enjoys the same features as Author: improved text statistics and export to eBook formats.

Statistics support in Calligra Words 2.6

Statistics support in Calligra Words 2.6

Sheets, the spreadsheet application, has a new function optimizer – also known as a Solver. All standard scripts are available for translation.

Stage, the presentation program, has a new animation framework that lets the user create and manipulate animations in slide shows.

Flow, the diagram application, has improved connections.

Plan, the project management application, has updated scheduling information, improved scheduling granularity, improved performance charts, improved project creation, improved usability in the report generator and many bug fixes.

Kexi, the visual database creator, has new support for user data storage, improved CSV import and export and improved table views. Overwriting objects with the same name is now possible. Detailed lists of changes for Kexi are available here.

Text trimming in tables - Kexi 2.6

Text trimming in tables – Kexi 2.6

Artistic Applications

The artistic applications of the Calligra Suite are the most mature ones and are already used by professional users everywhere.

Krita, the drawing application, has new support for OpenColorIO, which makes it suitable for use in the movie industry. It also has big speedups in many places, including the vc library and when painting using the new precision slider in the preset editor.

Screenshot of Krita 2.6 alpha

Setting Exposure on a HDR image with Krita 2.6′s new OpenColorIO based LUT docker

There is also improvements in painting HDR images and integration into a GFX workflow as well as support for the latest OpenRaster standard and many bug fixes.

Supported Document Formats

Calligra 2.6 can now export documents to EPUB2 format. In 2.6.1 it will also be able to export to MOBI format.

And of course support for all MS Office formats has been improved even more, especially for the MS Open XML formats of MS Office 2007 and above.

Common Improvements

The architecture of the Calligra Suite lets the applications share much of the functionality of the suite with each other. Many common parts have seen improvements since the release of 2.5. Here are a few of them.

Calligra will now load and save 3D shapes and annotations. This means better interoperability with other office applications even if Calligra can not show them at this time.

Charts have a number of improvements for fine tuning the formatting. Examples include fonts for titles and labels and markers for data sets.

Mathematical formulas have an improved rendering.

Other Than the Desktop

Calligra Active, the version for tablets and smartphones, has several improvements: there is a new slide chooser for presentations, slides can be changed by flicking the device, page switching improvements for text documents and improved start up sequences including a new splash screen.

There is also a new preview for text documents, a new text search feature for all 3 document formats, support for translations, a simplified UI and some bug fixes. And, naturally, Calligra Active also benefits from all the improvements in the common parts of Calligra: the libraries and plugins.

Try It Out

  • The source code is available for download: calligra-2.6.0.tar.bz2. As far as we are aware, the following distributions package Calligra 2.6. This information will be updated when we get more details. In addition, many distributions will package and ship Calligra 2.6 as part of their standard set of applications.
  • Users of Ubuntu and Kubuntu are urged to try the daily snapshots prepared by Project Neon. Paste the following in a terminal window and you’ll find Calligra installed in /opt: 
    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:neon/ppa 
&& sudo apt-get update
&& sudo apt-get install project-neon-base 
   project-neon-calligra 
   project-neon-calligra-dbg

    You can run these packages by adding /opt/project-neon/bin to your PATH.

  • Arch Linux provides Calligra packages in the [kde-unstable] repository.
  • Fedora packages are available in the rawhide development repository (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Rawhide), and unofficial builds are available for prior releases from kde-unstable repository at http://kde-redhat.sourceforge.net/ .
  • There are OpenSUSE Calligra packages in the unstable playground repository.
  • Calligra FreeBSD ports are available in Area51.
  • MS Windows packages will be available from KO GmbH. For download of Windows binaries, use the download page.
  • Mac OS X: We would welcome volunteers who want to build and publish packages for the Calligra Suite on OS X.

About Calligra

Calligra, comprising the Calligra Suite and Calligra Active, is part of the applications from the KDE community. See more information at the website http://www.calligra.org.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet KDE