SEMINARS
This page you allow to chose various seminar topics.The main goal of this page is to select seminar topics and abstracts for students from various colleges.
TOPIC 1:
Pen computing
While all types of computers are ultimately Turing machines, this “reduction-and-abstraction” obscures the way people actually experience computing. About every 10 years, a new type of machine is invented that changes our understanding of computation. From the mysterious glass house mainframes of the 1960s, ministered by white-coated experts, to today's friendly personal computers, our sense of the role of computing in our lives has undergone a dramatic transformation. The next wave of this evolution is the “pen computer.” A small group of early pioneers has quietly redefined how most people will experience computation in the future, and refocused what we will do with this power. The pen computer derives its heritage from pen and paper, rather than from the typewriter, as personal computers do. It can be carried and used as a folder or notebook would, rather than as a piece of office equipment in a box. These new social characteristics allow a pen computer to be used in settings where keyboard devices are inappropriate or disruptive. Data is entered by handwriting, sketching, and scribbling, rather than typing, pointing, and clicking. Images are manipulated directly on a visually active surface, rather than remotely. The subjective experience of using a pen computer is unique and utterly personal. This talk will attempt to present the new face that computing will have for future users.
A Pen That Wants to Be a Computer
No matter how wired and mobile-techie you are, if your job requires you to capture, process and make decisions using a lot of information every day, there will be times when you have to write some of that information down on paper rather than in some digital format that would make it easily useful later.
I’ve been dealing with that particular problem for a while. Taking and keeping notes on my laptop makes everything searchable and easy to create reminders of deadlines or appointments, while also ensuring that I can find most of what I need as long as I back it up often enough.
Taking notes on paper is unavoidable, but adds another whole set of chores -- either retyping the notes or scanning and OCRing them in the hope you don’t miss something critical.
The Iomega Mobile Digital Scribe looked as if it would be an ideal solution. It records your pen strokes, syncs with your laptop easily, and doesn’t require the expensive special paper most pens of this kind do. But in practice, it didn’t work out so well.
On the other hand, Livescribe -- a really smart smartpen that records both pen strokes and audio, and can run apps on the pen itself -- looked like an overengineered, expensive and potentially intrusive product. People don’t always react well when they realize they’re being recorded, especially by a stranger.
Barring that, though, Livescribe turned out to be a pretty effective little tool -- simple and mostly intuitive to control, able to capture images of notes, record audio only on command, and able to bring along custom dictionaries or other files you could read on the pen’s tiny display window while taking notes sans PC.
Like other smartpens, Livescribe does require special paper, but the desktop app that comes along with the pen has templates that make it easy to print it yourself. That makes it harder to use throw-away notebooks and forces you to keep track of individual sheets of paper. Eliminating the need to buy expensive, special prints more than makes up for that.
The commands on the paper are simpler than I expected as well. The pen records every penstroke while you’re writing, so there’s no need to turn it on. The audio recording comes on when you touch the Record spot on the paper.
The best thing about the audio: it syncs with the notes file so you can look at your notes and listen to the audio without having to search through the audio file. Microsoft’s OneNote is the only one of the digital note-taking software I’ve seen that syncs audio and text; that single feature almost makes up for OneNote’s proprietary storage format, weak search capability, and idiosyncratic UI.
In a pen, it’s a huge benefit. Most students catch about 10 percent to 20 percent of the information in a lecture on paper notes, according to Livescribe spokespeople. Audio boosts that as much as 400 percent.
I’ve been dealing with that particular problem for a while. Taking and keeping notes on my laptop makes everything searchable and easy to create reminders of deadlines or appointments, while also ensuring that I can find most of what I need as long as I back it up often enough.
Taking notes on paper is unavoidable, but adds another whole set of chores -- either retyping the notes or scanning and OCRing them in the hope you don’t miss something critical.
The Iomega Mobile Digital Scribe looked as if it would be an ideal solution. It records your pen strokes, syncs with your laptop easily, and doesn’t require the expensive special paper most pens of this kind do. But in practice, it didn’t work out so well.
On the other hand, Livescribe -- a really smart smartpen that records both pen strokes and audio, and can run apps on the pen itself -- looked like an overengineered, expensive and potentially intrusive product. People don’t always react well when they realize they’re being recorded, especially by a stranger.
Barring that, though, Livescribe turned out to be a pretty effective little tool -- simple and mostly intuitive to control, able to capture images of notes, record audio only on command, and able to bring along custom dictionaries or other files you could read on the pen’s tiny display window while taking notes sans PC.
Like other smartpens, Livescribe does require special paper, but the desktop app that comes along with the pen has templates that make it easy to print it yourself. That makes it harder to use throw-away notebooks and forces you to keep track of individual sheets of paper. Eliminating the need to buy expensive, special prints more than makes up for that.
The commands on the paper are simpler than I expected as well. The pen records every penstroke while you’re writing, so there’s no need to turn it on. The audio recording comes on when you touch the Record spot on the paper.
The best thing about the audio: it syncs with the notes file so you can look at your notes and listen to the audio without having to search through the audio file. Microsoft’s OneNote is the only one of the digital note-taking software I’ve seen that syncs audio and text; that single feature almost makes up for OneNote’s proprietary storage format, weak search capability, and idiosyncratic UI.
In a pen, it’s a huge benefit. Most students catch about 10 percent to 20 percent of the information in a lecture on paper notes, according to Livescribe spokespeople. Audio boosts that as much as 400 percent.
TOPIC 2:
New Blackberry Curve
BLACKBERRY LATEST MOBILE PHONE:
Blackberry Curve (8300) is one of the most popular latest phones since its launch. But since its launch, mobile industry has experienced many advances in technology. So to keep them update wit latest technology Blackberry family has launched its latest edition called BLACKBERRY BOLD.
WHAT'S NEW ?
Blackberry Bold is a blend of greatest features of Windows Mobile and the quality and reliability specific to Blackberry brand.
With the help of new Blackberry Bold now it is possible to edit your Microsoft Word and PowerPoint documents. These updates can be moved over onto main PC or Mac. So now you can update and improve speeches and presentations during practice runs or when still on the road.
SOMETHING MORE INTERESTING:
Blackberry Bold is one of the most media-friendly release yet with the inclusion of Wifi which allows you to access the Internet from virtually millions of locations worldwide (the GPS and mapping functions can help you locate a site). And even outside of hot-spot areas, the Blackberry Bold utilizes HSDPA technology to access nearly 3G download speeds.
In new Blackberry Bold streaming videos are also available, complementing the mp3 player. And with the Media Sync application, you can easily transfer media files from itunes to your handset very easily.
Blackberry Curve (8300) is one of the most popular latest phones since its launch. But since its launch, mobile industry has experienced many advances in technology. So to keep them update wit latest technology Blackberry family has launched its latest edition called BLACKBERRY BOLD.
WHAT'S NEW ?
Blackberry Bold is a blend of greatest features of Windows Mobile and the quality and reliability specific to Blackberry brand.
With the help of new Blackberry Bold now it is possible to edit your Microsoft Word and PowerPoint documents. These updates can be moved over onto main PC or Mac. So now you can update and improve speeches and presentations during practice runs or when still on the road.
SOMETHING MORE INTERESTING:
Blackberry Bold is one of the most media-friendly release yet with the inclusion of Wifi which allows you to access the Internet from virtually millions of locations worldwide (the GPS and mapping functions can help you locate a site). And even outside of hot-spot areas, the Blackberry Bold utilizes HSDPA technology to access nearly 3G download speeds.
In new Blackberry Bold streaming videos are also available, complementing the mp3 player. And with the Media Sync application, you can easily transfer media files from itunes to your handset very easily.
TOPIC 3:
Forget Windows: Midori is coming
WINDOWS is a name that has ruled the whole computer world since its first launch in November 1985. Since then it is like a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
With many advanced versions of Windows available today such as Windows XP, Windows Vista, it is the most used operating system in the world. In 2010, Microsoft is going to launch WINDOWS 2007, but now here is time to experience a yet another technology of operating systems.
Yes, MICROSOFT is working on a new generation of operating systems called Cloud-Based Operating System and rumors are there that MIDORI will be their first such operating system, which will replace Windows fully from computer map.
WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE
MIDORI is an offshoot of Microsoft Research's Singularity operating system. In this the tools and libraries are completely managed code. MIDORI is designed to run directly on native hardware (x86, x64 and ARM), will be hosted on the Windows Hyper-V hypervisor, or even be hosted by a Windows process.
MIDORI can be also seen as MICROSOFT'S answer those competitors who are applying "Virtualization" as a mean to solving issues within contemporary computing.
The main idea behind MIDORI is to develop a lightweight portable OS which can be mated easily to lots of various applications.
IMPORTANCE OF MIDORI
For knowing the importance of MIDORI you have to think about, how an operating system is loaded on a computer. Actually operating system is loaded onto a hard disk physically located on that machine. In this way, the operating system is tied very tightly to that hardware. As Windows is dependent on hardware, it might face opposition from contemporary ways of working because people are extremely mobile in using different devices in order get diverse information.
Due to this trend installing different applications on a single computer may led to different compatibility issues whenever the machine require updating. The new operating system will solve these problems by the concept of Virtualizing. This will solve problems such as widespread security vulnerabilities, unexpected interactions among different applications, failures caused by errant extensions, plug-ins, and drivers and many more.
ERIC RUDDER, Senior Vice President, Technical Strategy
The importance of this project for MICROSOFT can be understood by the fact that company choose Eric Rudder , former head of Microsoft's server and tools business and a key member of Chairman Bill Gates' faction of the company, to handle it.
WHEN WILL IT BE LAUNCHED
Just Wait and See. Microsoft has not declared any such date about launching of MIDORI, but there are rumors that this project is in incubation phase
With many advanced versions of Windows available today such as Windows XP, Windows Vista, it is the most used operating system in the world. In 2010, Microsoft is going to launch WINDOWS 2007, but now here is time to experience a yet another technology of operating systems.
Yes, MICROSOFT is working on a new generation of operating systems called Cloud-Based Operating System and rumors are there that MIDORI will be their first such operating system, which will replace Windows fully from computer map.
WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE
MIDORI is an offshoot of Microsoft Research's Singularity operating system. In this the tools and libraries are completely managed code. MIDORI is designed to run directly on native hardware (x86, x64 and ARM), will be hosted on the Windows Hyper-V hypervisor, or even be hosted by a Windows process.
MIDORI can be also seen as MICROSOFT'S answer those competitors who are applying "Virtualization" as a mean to solving issues within contemporary computing.
The main idea behind MIDORI is to develop a lightweight portable OS which can be mated easily to lots of various applications.
IMPORTANCE OF MIDORI
For knowing the importance of MIDORI you have to think about, how an operating system is loaded on a computer. Actually operating system is loaded onto a hard disk physically located on that machine. In this way, the operating system is tied very tightly to that hardware. As Windows is dependent on hardware, it might face opposition from contemporary ways of working because people are extremely mobile in using different devices in order get diverse information.
Due to this trend installing different applications on a single computer may led to different compatibility issues whenever the machine require updating. The new operating system will solve these problems by the concept of Virtualizing. This will solve problems such as widespread security vulnerabilities, unexpected interactions among different applications, failures caused by errant extensions, plug-ins, and drivers and many more.
ERIC RUDDER, Senior Vice President, Technical Strategy
The importance of this project for MICROSOFT can be understood by the fact that company choose Eric Rudder , former head of Microsoft's server and tools business and a key member of Chairman Bill Gates' faction of the company, to handle it.
WHEN WILL IT BE LAUNCHED
Just Wait and See. Microsoft has not declared any such date about launching of MIDORI, but there are rumors that this project is in incubation phase
TOPIC 4:
Search Photos by their Content
Researchers of Penn State has developed a statistical approach called Automatic Linguistic Indexing of Pictures in Real Time or ALIPR which can be a next major step insearching for pictures on Internet.
Technology Used By ALIPR
This technology teaches computers to recognize contents of pictures, such as peoples, landscapes, buildings, parks etc. opposite to the current technology of image-retrieval in which photographs are searched by keywords in the surrounding text such as ALT text. The researchers are hoping that soon this technology can be used for automatic tagging as a part of Internet search engine.
Jia Li - Associate Professor of Statistics at Penn State gives explanation about their approach.
The basic approach is a take a large number of photos (they have started with 60,000), and tag these photos with with a variety of keywords, manually. Let's say, take 100 photos of national parks and tag them with keyword: National Parks, Landscape and Trees.
After that they would build a statistical model which will teach computers to recognize color and texture pattern in these 100 photographs and then assign these keywords to those pictures that seems to contain parks, landscapes and trees. Eventually the process will be reversed so that a internet surfer can use keywords to search the World Wide Web for relevant images.
Problem With Current Image Retrieval Systems
Most of the image-retrieval systems used today, search for keywords in the text associated with the photo or in the name that was given to the photo. But with this technique the surfer often misses appropriate photos and gets inappropriate images.
This new technique of Jia Li can train computers to recognize the semantics of images based on pixel information alone.
Keywords Approach and Accuracy
According to Jia Li- developer of ALIPR says that their approach appropriately assigns to photos at least one keyword among seven possible keywords about 90 percent of the time. But, the accuracy rate really depends on the evaluator. "It depends on how specific the evaluator expects the approach to be," she said. "For example, ALIPR often distinguishes people from animals, but rarely distinguishes children from adults."
Now the team is working on improving the accuracy of ALIPR, but according to Li it is not easy to achieve 100% accuracy. As there are so many images on Internet and they have so much variations that it is not possible for ALIPR to be 100% accurate each time.
Reasons for Inaccuracy
We can understand this by a simple example. Suppose in an image there is a Cat wearing a Red Coat.....then Red Coat will lead ALIPR to tag the photo with words irrelevant to the Cat. There is too much variations in the images that will cause problems for ALIPR. But Li is working on some new ideas to achieve better recognition of image sementics.
You Can Help ALIPR
Yes.... You can help ALIPR by participating in a survey and evaluate whether the keywords that ALIPR is using to describe the images are appropriate. Thus you can help in improving the accuracy of ALIPR. To participate in survey just click here: http://www.alipr.com
Technology Used By ALIPR
This technology teaches computers to recognize contents of pictures, such as peoples, landscapes, buildings, parks etc. opposite to the current technology of image-retrieval in which photographs are searched by keywords in the surrounding text such as ALT text. The researchers are hoping that soon this technology can be used for automatic tagging as a part of Internet search engine.
Jia Li - Associate Professor of Statistics at Penn State gives explanation about their approach.
The basic approach is a take a large number of photos (they have started with 60,000), and tag these photos with with a variety of keywords, manually. Let's say, take 100 photos of national parks and tag them with keyword: National Parks, Landscape and Trees.
After that they would build a statistical model which will teach computers to recognize color and texture pattern in these 100 photographs and then assign these keywords to those pictures that seems to contain parks, landscapes and trees. Eventually the process will be reversed so that a internet surfer can use keywords to search the World Wide Web for relevant images.
Problem With Current Image Retrieval Systems
Most of the image-retrieval systems used today, search for keywords in the text associated with the photo or in the name that was given to the photo. But with this technique the surfer often misses appropriate photos and gets inappropriate images.
This new technique of Jia Li can train computers to recognize the semantics of images based on pixel information alone.
Keywords Approach and Accuracy
According to Jia Li- developer of ALIPR says that their approach appropriately assigns to photos at least one keyword among seven possible keywords about 90 percent of the time. But, the accuracy rate really depends on the evaluator. "It depends on how specific the evaluator expects the approach to be," she said. "For example, ALIPR often distinguishes people from animals, but rarely distinguishes children from adults."
Now the team is working on improving the accuracy of ALIPR, but according to Li it is not easy to achieve 100% accuracy. As there are so many images on Internet and they have so much variations that it is not possible for ALIPR to be 100% accurate each time.
Reasons for Inaccuracy
We can understand this by a simple example. Suppose in an image there is a Cat wearing a Red Coat.....then Red Coat will lead ALIPR to tag the photo with words irrelevant to the Cat. There is too much variations in the images that will cause problems for ALIPR. But Li is working on some new ideas to achieve better recognition of image sementics.
You Can Help ALIPR
Yes.... You can help ALIPR by participating in a survey and evaluate whether the keywords that ALIPR is using to describe the images are appropriate. Thus you can help in improving the accuracy of ALIPR. To participate in survey just click here: http://www.alipr.com
