0Cloud Technology

By Unknown | At 9:50:00 am | Label : Article , Technology | 0 Comments

Cloud computing

 is computing in which large groups of remote servers are networked to allow centralized data storage and online access to computer services or resources. Clouds can be classified as public, private or hybrid.

The criticisms about it are mainly focused on its social implications. This happens when the owner of the remote servers is a person or organisation other than the user, as their interests may point in different directions, for example, the user may wish that his or her information is kept private, but the owner of the remote servers may want to take advantage of it for their own business.

Overview

Cloud computing relies on sharing of resources to achieve coherence and economies of scale, similar to a utility (like the electricity grid) over a network. At the foundation of cloud computing is the broader concept of converged infrastructure and shared services.

Cloud computing, or in simpler shorthand just "the cloud", also focuses on maximizing the effectiveness of the shared resources. Cloud resources are usually not only shared by multiple users but are also dynamically reallocated per demand. This can work for allocating resources to users. For example, a cloud computer facility that serves European users during European business hours with a specific application (e.g., email) may reallocate the same resources to serve North American users during North America's business hours with a different application (e.g., a web server). This approach should maximize the use of computing power thus reducing environmental damage as well since less power, air conditioning, rackspace, etc. are required for a variety of functions. With cloud computing, multiple users can access a single server to retrieve and update their data without purchasing licenses for different applications.

The term "moving to cloud" also refers to an organization moving away from a traditional CAPEX model (buy the dedicated hardware and depreciate it over a period of time) to the OPEX model (use a shared cloud infrastructure and pay as one uses it).

Proponents claim that cloud computing allows companies to avoid upfront infrastructure costs, and focus on projects that differentiate their businesses instead of on infrastructure. Proponents also claim that cloud computing allows enterprises to get their applications up and running faster, with improved manageability and less maintenance, and enables IT to more rapidly adjust resources to meet fluctuating and unpredictable business demand. Cloud providers typically use a "pay as you go" model. This can lead to unexpectedly high charges if administrators do not adapt to the cloud pricing model.

The present availability of high-capacity networks, low-cost computers and storage devices as well as the widespread adoption of hardware virtualization, service-oriented architecture, and autonomic and utility computing have led to a growth in cloud computing.

Cloud vendors are experiencing growth rates of 50% per annum.

History

Origin of the term

Cloud computing icon.svg

The origin of the term cloud computing is unclear. The expression cloud is commonly used in science to describe a large agglomeration of objects that visually appear from a distance as a cloud and describes any set of things whose details are not inspected further in a given context.

In analogy to above usage the word cloud was used as a metaphor for the Internet and a standardized cloud-like shape was used to denote a network on telephony schematics and later to depict the Internet in computer network diagrams. With this simplification, the implication is that the specifics of how the end points of a network are connected are not relevant for the purposes of understanding the diagram. The cloud symbol was used to represent the Internet as early as 1994, in which servers were then shown connected to, but external to, the cloud.

References to cloud computing in its modern sense appeared early as 1996, with the earliest known mention in a Compaq internal document.

The popularization of the term can be traced to 2006 when Amazon.com introduced the Elastic Compute Cloud.

The 1950s

The underlying concept of cloud computing dates to the 1950s, when large-scale mainframe computers were seen as the future of computing, and became available in academia and corporations, accessible via thin clients/terminal computers, often referred to as "static terminals", because they were used for communications but had no internal processing capacities. To make more efficient use of costly mainframes, a practice evolved that allowed multiple users to share both the physical access to the computer from multiple terminals as well as the CPU time. This eliminated periods of inactivity on the mainframe and allowed for a greater return on the investment. The practice of sharing CPU time on a mainframe became known in the industry as time-sharing. During the mid 70s, time-sharing was popularly known as RJE (Remote Job Entry); this nomenclature was mostly associated with large vendors such as IBM and DEC.

The 1990s

In the 1990s, telecommunications companies, who previously offered primarily dedicated point-to-point data circuits, began offering virtual private network (VPN) services with comparable quality of service, but at a lower cost. By switching traffic as they saw fit to balance server use, they could use overall network bandwidth more effectively. They began to use the cloud symbol to denote the demarcation point between what the provider was responsible for and what users were responsible for. Cloud computing extends this boundary to cover all servers as well as the network infrastructure.

As computers became more prevalent, scientists and technologists explored ways to make large-scale computing power available to more users through time-sharing. They experimented with algorithms to optimize the infrastructure, platform, and applications to prioritize CPUs and increase efficiency for end users.

Since 2000

In early 2008, Eucalyptus became the first open-source, AWS API-compatible platform for deploying private clouds. In early 2008, OpenNebula, enhanced in the RESERVOIR European Commission-funded project, became the first open-source software for deploying private and hybrid clouds, and for the federation of clouds. In the same year, efforts were focused on providing quality of service guarantees (as required by real-time interactive applications) to cloud-based infrastructures, in the framework of the IRMOS European Commission-funded project, resulting in a real-time cloud environment. By mid-2008, Gartner saw an opportunity for cloud computing "to shape the relationship among consumers of IT services, those who use IT services and those who sell them" and observed that "organizations are switching from company-owned hardware and software assets to per-use service-based models" so that the "projected shift to computing ... will result in dramatic growth in IT products in some areas and significant reductions in other areas."

In July 2010, Rackspace Hosting and NASA jointly launched an open-source cloud-software initiative known as OpenStack. The OpenStack project intended to help organizations offer cloud-computing services running on standard hardware. The early code came from NASA's Nebula platform as well as from Rackspace's Cloud Files platform.

On March 1, 2011, IBM announced the IBM SmartCloud framework to support Smarter Planet. Among the various components of the Smarter Computing foundation, cloud computing is a critical piece.

On June 7, 2012, Oracle announced the Oracle Cloud. While aspects of the Oracle Cloud are still in development, this cloud offering is posed to be the first to provide users with access to an integrated set of IT solutions, including the Applications (SaaS), Platform (PaaS), and Infrastructure (IaaS) layers.

Similar concepts

Cloud computing is the result of evolution and adoption of existing technologies and paradigms. The goal of cloud computing is to allow users to take benefit from all of these technologies, without the need for deep knowledge about or expertise with each one of them. The cloud aims to cut costs, and helps the users focus on their core business instead of being impeded by IT obstacles.

The main enabling technology for cloud computing is virtualization. Virtualization software separates a physical computing device into one or more "virtual" devices, each of which can be easily used and managed to perform computing tasks. With operating system–level virtualization essentially creating a scalable system of multiple independent computing devices, idle computing resources can be allocated and used more efficiently. Virtualization provides the agility required to speed up IT operations, and reduces cost by increasing infrastructure utilization. Autonomic computing automates the process through which the user can provision resources on-demand. By minimizing user involvement, automation speeds up the process, reduces labor costs and reduces the possibility of human errors.

Users routinely face difficult business problems. Cloud computing adopts concepts from Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) that can help the user break these problems into services that can be integrated to provide a solution. Cloud computing provides all of its resources as services, and makes use of the well-established standards and best practices gained in the domain of SOA to allow global and easy access to cloud services in a standardized way.

Cloud computing also leverages concepts from utility computing to provide metrics for the services used. Such metrics are at the core of the public cloud pay-per-use models. In addition, measured services are an essential part of the feedback loop in autonomic computing, allowing services to scale on-demand and to perform automatic failure recovery.

Cloud computing is a kind of grid computing; it has evolved by addressing the QoS (quality of service) and reliability problems. Cloud computing provides the tools and technologies to build data/compute intensive parallel applications with much more affordable prices compared to traditional parallel computing techniques.

• Grid computing — "A form of distributed and parallel computing, whereby a 'super and virtual computer' is composed of a cluster of networked, loosely coupled computers acting in concert to perform very large tasks."
• Mainframe computer — Powerful computers used mainly by large organizations for critical applications, typically bulk data processing such as: census; industry and consumer statistics; police and secret intelligence services; enterprise resource planning; and financial transaction processing.
• Utility computing — The "packaging of computing resources, such as computation and storage, as a metered service similar to a traditional public utility, such as electricity."
• Peer-to-peer — A distributed architecture without the need for central coordination. Participants are both suppliers and consumers of resources (in contrast to the traditional client–server model).

0Open Source Accounting Software

By Unknown | At 1:50:00 pm | Label : Business , Software | 0 Comments

GnuCash

GnuCash is a free software accounting program that implements a double-entry bookkeeping system. It was initially aimed at developing capabilities similar to Intuit, Inc.'s Quicken application, but also has features for small business accounting. Recent development has been focused on adapting to modern desktop support-library requirements.

GnuCash is part of the GNU Project, and runs on Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris, Mac OS X, and other Unix-like platforms. A Microsoft Windows (2000 or newer) port was made available starting with the 2.2.0 series.

Programming on GnuCash began in 1997, and its first stable release was in 1998. Small Business Accounting was added in 2001. A Mac installer became available in 2004. A Windows port was released in 2007.

In May 2012, the development of GnuCash for Android was announced.This is an expense-tracking companion app for GnuCash, as opposed to a stand-alone accounting package.

Features

• Double-entry bookkeeping
• Scheduled Transactions
• Mortgage and Loan Repayment Assistant
• Small Business Accounting Features
• OFX, QIF Import
• HBCI Support
• Transaction-Import Matching Support
• SQL Support
• Multi-Currency Transaction Handling
• Stock/Mutual Fund Portfolios
• Online Stock and Mutual Fund Quotes
• Built-in and custom reports and charts
• Budget
• Bank and Credit Card reconciliation
• Check printing

Small business accounting features

• Invoicing
• Accounts Receivable (A/R)
• Accounts Payable (A/P) including bills due reminders
• Employee expense voucher
• Depreciation
• Mapping to income tax schedules and TXF export for import into tax prep software (US)
• Setting up tax tables and applying sales tax on invoices

Download GnuCash HERE

0Open Office Open Source Software Download

By Unknown | At 10:07:00 am | Label : Software , Technology | 0 Comments

Apache Open Office

(formerly Open Office.org) is a suite of office applications are open source (open source) that can be obtained for free. The package includes the components of word processing (word processor), spreadsheets (spreadsheet), presentation, vector illustration, and data warehouse (database). Apache Open Office as Open Source Software is intended as a rival to Microsoft Office, and can run on various platforms, including Windows, Solaris, Linux, and Mac OS X. Apache Open Office Open Source Software supports the open document standard for data exchange, and can be used without charge.

Apache Open Office Open Source Software is made based on the code of StarOffice, an office suite developed by StarDivision and acquired by Sun Microsystems in August 1999, which was later acquired by Oracle in 2010. In 2011, this project was developed by the Apache Software Foundation. The source code of this suite is released as an open source project in July 2000, with the aim to break the market dominance of Microsoft Office by providing a choice of low-cost, high-quality, and open. Source code for this application suite is available under two different software licenses: LGPL and SISSL; from version 2.0 to version 3.3, he is only available under the LGPL; of version 3.4, it is available under the Apache License.

Project and software referred to as "Open Office", but project regulator reported that this term is a trademark held by other groups, thus requiring them to take the "OpenOffice.org" as its official name, and is also abbreviated as OOo. After Apache develop this project, they took the "Apache Open Office" as its official name to replace the name "OpenOffice.org", and also abbreviated acronym AOO replace OOo.

features

• ODF document format support, as the format of the document open office Open Source Software application suite.
• Open and save documents in Microsoft Office formats
• Exporting documents in PDF format

Component Application

• Open Office Open Source Software Writer
• Open Office Open Source Software Calc
• Open Office Open Source Software Impress
• Open Office Open Source Software Base
• Open Office Open Source Software Draw
• Open Office Open Source Software Math

Download OpenOffice HERE

0Download Blender v 2.72b open-source 3D computer graphics software

By Unknown | At 2:38:00 pm | Label : Software , Technology | 0 Comments

Blender

is a professional free and open-source 3D computer graphics software product used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, interactive 3D applications and video games. Blender's features include 3D modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, raster graphics editing, rigging and skinning, fluid and smoke simulation, particle simulation, soft body simulation, sculpting, animating, match moving, camera tracking, rendering, video editing and compositing. Alongside the modeling features it also has an integrated game engine.

The Dutch animation studio Neo Geo and Not a Number Technologies (NaN) developed Blender as an in-house application, with the primary author being Ton Roosendaal. The name Blender was inspired by a song by Yello, from the album Baby.

Ton Roosendaal founded NaN in June 1998 to further develop and distribute the program. They initially distributed the program as shareware until NaN went bankrupt in 2002.

On July 18, 2002, in response to the bankruptcy Roosendaal started the "Free Blender" campaign, as an early crowdfunding precursor.The campaign aimed for open-sourcing Blender for a one-time payment of €100,000 (US$100,670 at the time) collected from the community. On September 7, 2002, it was announced that they had collected enough funds and would release the Blender source code. Today, Blender is free, open-source software and is apart from the Blender Institute's two half-time and two full-time employees developed by the community.

The Blender Foundation initially reserved the right to use dual licensing, so that, in addition to GPL, Blender would have been available also under the Blender License that did not require disclosing source code but required payments to the Blender Foundation. However, they never exercised this option and suspended it indefinitely in 2005.Currently, Blender is solely available under GNU GPL.

n January–February 2002 it was clear that NaN could not survive and would close the doors in March. Nevertheless, they put out one more release, 2.25. As a sort-of easter egg, a last personal tag, the artists and developers decided to add a 3D model of a chimpanzee head. It was created by Willem-Paul van Overbruggen (SLiD3), who named it Suzanne after the orangutan in the Kevin Smith film Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

Suzanne is Blender's alternative to more common test models such as the Utah Teapot and the Stanford Bunny. A low-polygon model with only 500 faces, Suzanne is often used as a quick and easy way to test material, animation, rigs, texture, and lighting setups and is also frequently used in joke images.Suzanne is still included in Blender. The largest Blender contest gives out an award called the Suzanne Award.

Due to Blender's open source nature, other programs have tried to take advantage of its success by repackaging and selling cosmetically-modified versions of it. Examples include IllusionMage and 3DMofun.

Features

Official releases of Blender for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and GNU/Linux,as well as a port for FreeBSD, are available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Though it is often distributed without extensive example scenes found in some other programs, the software contains features that are characteristic of high-end 3D software. Among its capabilities are:

• Support for a variety of geometric primitives, including polygon meshes, fast subdivision surface modeling, Bezier curves, NURBS surfaces, metaballs, multi-res digital sculpting (including dynamic topology, maps baking, remeshing, resymetrize, decimation..), outline font, and a new n-gon modeling system called B-mesh.
• Internal render engine with scanline ray tracing, indirect lighting, and ambient occlusion that can export in a wide variety of formats.
• A pathtracer render engine called Cycles, which can take advantage of the GPU for rendering. Cycles supports the Open Shading Language since Blender 2.65.
• Integration with a number of external render engines through plugins.
• Keyframed animation tools including inverse kinematics, armature (skeletal), hook, curve and lattice-based deformations, shape keys (morphing), non-linear animation, constraints, and vertex weighting.
• Simulation tools for Soft body dynamics including mesh collision detection, LBM fluid dynamics, smoke simulation, Bullet rigid body dynamics, ocean generator with waves.
• A particle system that includes support for particle-based hair.
• Modifiers to apply non-destructive effects.
• Python scripting for tool creation and prototyping, game logic, importing and/or exporting from other formats, task automation and custom tools.
• Basic non-linear video/audio editing.
• The Blender Game Engine, a sub-project, offers interactivity features such as collision detection, dynamics engine, and programmable logic. It also allows the creation of stand-alone, real-time applications ranging from architectural visualization to video game construction.
• A fully integrated node-based compositor within the rendering pipeline accelerated with OpenCL.
• Procedural and node-based textures, as well as texture painting, projective painting, vertex painting, weight painting and dynamic painting.
• Realtime control during physics simulation and rendering.
• Camera and object tracking.

Hardware requirements

Blender hardware requirements

Hardware	Minimum	Recommended	Production-standard
Processor	32-bit dual core 2Ghz CPU with SSE2 support	64-bit quad core CPU	64-bit eight core CPU
Memory	2 GB RAM	8 GB	16 GB
Graphics card	OpenGL card with 256 MB video RAM	OpenGL card with 1 GB video RAM (CUDA or OpenCL for GPU rendering)	Dual OpenGL cards with 3 GB RAM, (i.e. FirePro 3D orNvidia Quadro)
Display	1280×768 pixels, 24-bit color	1920×1080 pixels, 24-bit color	Dual 1920×1080 pixels, 24-bit color
Input	Two-button mouse	Three-button mouse	Three-button mouse and a graphics tablet

59.82MB ver. x64

Download x86 version HERE

Download x64 version HERE

0NFC Technology

By Unknown | At 10:50:00 am | Label : Article , Technology | 0 Comments

Near field communication (NFC)

is a set of standards for smartphones and similar devices to establish radio communication with each other by touching them together or bringing them into proximity, typically a distance of 10 cm (3.9 in) or less.

As with proximity card technology, near-field communication uses electromagnetic induction between two loop antennas located within each other's near field, effectively forming an air-core transformer. It operates within the globally available and unlicensed radio frequency ISM band of 13.56 MHz on ISO/IEC 18000-3 air interface and at rates ranging from 106 kbit/s to 424 kbit/s. NFC involves an initiator and a target; the initiator actively generates an RF field that can power a passive target, an unpowered chip called a "tag".This enables NFC targets to take very simple form factors such as tags, stickers, key fobs, or cards that do not require batteries. NFC peer-to-peer communication is possible, provided both devices are powered. NFC tags contain data (currently between 96 and 4,096 bytes of memory) and are typically read-only, but may be rewriteable. The tags can securely store personal data such as debit and credit card information, loyalty program data, PINs and networking contacts, among other information. They can be custom-encoded by their manufacturers or use the specifications provided by the NFC Forum, an industry association with more than 160 members founded in 2004 by Nokia, Philips Semiconductors (became NXP Semiconductors since 2006) and Sony charged with promoting the technology and setting key standards. The NFC Forum defines four types of tags that provide different communication speeds and capabilities in terms of configurability, memory, security, data retention and write endurance. The Forum also promotes NFC and certifies device compliance and if it fits the criteria for being considered a personal area network.

NFC standards cover communications protocols and data exchange formats, and are based on existing radio-frequency identification (RFID) standards including ISO/IEC 14443 and FeliCa.The standards include ISO/IEC 18092 and those defined by the NFC Forum. In addition to the NFC Forum, the GSMA has also worked to define a platform for the deployment of "GSMA NFC Standards". within mobile handsets. GSMA's efforts include Trusted Services Manager, Single Wire Protocol, testing and certification, secure element.

A patent licensing program for NFC is currently under deployment by France Brevets, a patent fund created in 2011. The program under development by Via Licensing Corporation, an independent subsidiary of Dolby Laboratories, terminated in May 2012. A public, platform-independent NFC library is released under the free GNU Lesser General Public License by the name libnfc.

Present and anticipated applications include contactless transactions, data exchange, and simplified setup of more complex communications such as Wi-Fi.

0Imagination Technologies

By Unknown | At 7:19:00 am | Label : News , Technology | 0 Comments

Imagination takes open and accessible micro-computing to the next level

Introduces MIPS Creator CI20 high-performance, low power development board with advanced graphics, video, audio and a range of connectivity options for IoT applications

London, UK – 4th December, 2014 – Imagination Technologies (IMG.L) announces that the high-performance, low power MIPS Creator CI20 development board is now available for pre-order.

The MIPS Creator CI20 is an affordable micro-computer that runs Linux and Android and enables open source developers, the maker community, system integrators and others to create a wide range of applications and projects, ranging from home automation and gaming to wireless multimedia streaming.

Originally introduced in August 2014 through a limited promotional giveaway for university students, developers, hobbyists and partners, Imagination was inundated with enquiries leading to today’s announcement that the Creator CI20 is available to pre-order at $65/ £50, with units available at the end of January 2015.

Says Tony King-Smith, EVP of marketing for Imagination: “We are very excited to be taking part in the growing interest within the open source and maker communities for affordable, fully featured development platforms. Creator CI20 has been designed for people who want high performance and advanced features for their development projects and to create access at the software and hardware level to allow creativity to come to the fore.”

The development board includes a unique combination of features and specifications:

-       A 1.2 GHz MIPS32-based, dual-core processor designed for superior performance and low power computing

-       PowerVR SGX540 graphics offering full support for OpenGL 2.1 and OpenGL ES 2.0

-       Dedicated video hardware for low power 1080p decoding at 30 fps

-       A full package of connectivity options including fast Ethernet, high-speed 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0

-       On-board memory:1GB DDR3 memory, 4GB flash memory and an SD card expansion slot

-       High-quality audio playback

-       A comprehensive set of peripherals, including GPIO, SPI, I2C, UART, etc.

MIPS Creator CI20 comes pre-installed with Debian 7. Other Linux distributions will be available, including Gentoo and Yocto, as well as a version of Debian 7 that complies with the principles of the Free Software Foundation. Users can also install the latest version of Android v4.4.

Creator CI20 also includes FlowCloud support for application development focused on the Internet of Things (IoT). FlowCloud is an exciting IoT platform from Imagination that enables users to construct solutions for a wide range of applications, including security, personal and professional health monitoring, energy management, cloud-based systems for content delivery and much more.

Imagination community quotes

Says Mike Woster, COO and VP of business development for The Linux Foundation: “We're excited to see Linux Foundation members like Imagination Technologies contribute to the choice, affordability, power and variety of Linux development boards available today. Whether as a DIY or design platform, work like this is sure to attract more developers and help kick off new applications.”

Says Art Swift, president of the prpl Foundation: “The prpl Foundation and our member companies welcome the highly capable Creator CI20 development board.  Developers in the open source community will appreciate the high performance, advanced feature set, and affordable cost of this microcomputer.  It is a great example of the sophisticated hardware designs offered by the vibrant and growing MIPS ecosystem.”

Says Neil Henning, technology lead for Codeplay: “The Creator CI20 is a fast development board for a really good price that combines two technologies we are very excited about: a dual-core MIPS CPU and a PowerVR GPU. There is a real drive for more and more affordable devices like this that deliver power efficiency yet still pack a hefty punch. The new Creator CI20 micro-computer has filled the role perfectly.”

Says Yingtao Hou, VP of Chukong Technology: “Imagination provides the industry-leading PowerVR graphics processors inside many iconic smartphones and tablets. We’ve worked with them extensively on performance optimizations for games built using the Cocos2d-x engine and have been very satisfied with the tools and utilities they provide for Android or Linux. We welcome the launch of the MIPS Creator CI20 micro-computer and look forward to explore the possibilities it brings.”  

Pricing and Availability

Priced at $65 (US) / £50 (Europe), the MIPS Creator CI20 is available for pre-order now from http://store.imgtec.com/ for North America and Europe, with more countries to be added shortly.

Units will be despatched at the end of January 2015.

0Network Monitor and Control

By Unknown | At 2:09:00 pm | Label : Software , Technology | 0 Comments

P2poover

First of all, P2pover is the only most powerful bandwidth control application for LAN that I have ever used!

P2pover is an outstanding local area network management software, which allows you to master BitTorrent, eMonkey and other network applications that consume a lot of bandwidth easily and with foolproof. Saving the valuable and limited bandwidth for family and enterprise, so as to protect the web surfing, emailing, corporate ERP and other important applications from impacts.

P2pover installation and deployment are very simple, you just need to install and run P2pover on any host within the local area network and then you can control the whole LAN. P2pover can manage more than 10 kinds of common download software based on P2P (peer-to-peer, point-to-point) technology, as well as frequently used IM (instant messenger) chatting tools such as MSN Messenger, QQ.

P2pover not only supports the custom of network control rules and scheduled tasks, but also allows to set up different rules for different hosts. Moreover, P2pover will record the host traffics and allow making queries.

There’s always this question about how you can limit the bandwidth in your home network. Well, a middle class router or modem/router should be able to do that. But what if you have a cheap router that doesn’t have such an option to limit bandwidth of users, or if you simply have no access to your router? Here’s where P2POver comes in handy. It is an absolutely free to use bandwidth management software.

With this software, you can limit the bandwidth of any computer/device in your home network directly from your computer. However, some routers have the firewall that blocks this kind of activity, making it unusable in the network.

If you’re sharing your internet with your house mates or neighbors, and you want to limit the bandwidth of each of them for a more fair-use friendly environment, you can use P2POver to limit the download and upload speed of any computer or device found in the same network. According to the author of this software, having two of this programs running within the same network will force one to quit. Please use this only if you’re authorized to do so in your network.

2.19 MB

0Notepad++

By Unknown | At 4:35:00 am | Label : Software , Technology | 0 Comments

Notepad++

 is a text editor and source code editor for Windows. Notepad++ differs from Notepad, the built in Windows text editor in that Notepad++ supports tabbed editing, which allows working with multiple open files in a single window. Notepad++ opens large files significantly faster than Windows Notepad. The project name comes from the C increment operator.

Notepad++ is distributed as free software. The project was hosted on SourceForge.net, from where Notepad++ has been downloaded over 28 million times and twice won the SourceForge Community Choice Award for Best Developer Tool. The project has been hosted on TuxFamily since June 2010. Notepad++ uses the Scintilla editor component.

General features include in Notepad++:

• Tabbed document interface
• Drag and drop
• Multiple clipboards (plugin required)
• Split screen editing and synchronized scrolling
• Spell checker (requires Aspell) (Spell checker does not distinguish between text and code)
• Supports text encoding formats such as Unicode, for international writing systems. UTF-8 and several UTF-16 encodings are supported.
• Find and replace: with regular expressions (including multi-line); over multiple documents; and marking/summary of occurrences
• Data comparison
• Zooming

Source code editing features include in Notepad++:

• Auto completion
• Bookmarks
• Syntax highlighting and syntax folding
• Brace and indent highlighting
• Smart highlighting
• Project manager
• Regular expression find and replace (in perl compatible extent)
• Speech synthesis
• FTP Browser (plug in included in standard installation)
• Macro recording and execution.
• Various tools such as line sorting, text encoding conversion, text folding
• File status auto detection
• Customizable shortcut key mapping.
• Function list.

Notepad++ also supports Unix line endings so that it can be used to work with texts that have been produced on (or will be moved to) machines that run Unix operating systems.

Notepad++ supports syntax highlighting and code folding for over 50 programming, scripting, and markup languages. Notepad++ attempts to automatically detect the language that a given file uses, using a modifiable list of file extension bindings. Users may also manually set the current language, overriding the extension default language. Notepad++ also supports autocompletion for a subset of the API of some programming languages.

The following languages are natively supported by Notepad++ as of version 6.6:

• Ada, asp, Assembly, AutoIt
• Batch
• C, C++, C#, Caml, Cmake, COBOL, CoffeeScript, CSS
• D, Diff
• Flash ActionScript, Fortran
• Gui4CLI
• Haskell, HTML
• INNO
• Java, Javascript, JSP
• KiXtart
• LISP, Lua
• Makefile, Matlab, MS-DOS, INI file
• NSIS, Normal Text File
• Objective-C
• Pascal, Perl, PHP, PostScript, PowerShell, Properties, Python
• R, Resource file, Ruby
• Shell, Scheme, Smalltalk, SQL
• TCL, TeX
• Visual Basic, VHDL, Verilog
• XML
• YAML

Users can also define their own language (for syntax highlighting) and its respective API (for autocompletion) by using the built in User Language Define System. Users may configure the syntax highlighting font styles per element, per language, and the resulting formatted script may be printed in full color (WYSIWYG). Additionally, Notepad++ displays indent guidelines when source code is indented with tab characters, and highlights closing braces, brackets and tags.

7.57 MB

0Tech News

By Unknown | At 4:14:00 am | Label : News , Technology | 0 Comments

IBM and NVIDIA Will Power the World Fastest Supercomputer

IBM (NYSE: IBM  ) announced earlier this month that it had secured two contracts from the U.S. Department of Energy, worth a total of $325 million, to build two new supercomputers at the Oak Ridge and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories. Both supercomputers will be more powerful than the fastest system in operation today, and this deal marks the first big win for IBM OpenPOWER initiative.

NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA  ) , also a member of OpenPOWER, will supply its Tesla GPU to accelerate both new super computers, along with NVLink, a technology that greatly increases the rate at which data can be transferred from CPU to GPU. The supercomputer being replaced by the faster of the two new systems, Titan, was NVIDIA first big win in the supercomputer space, and it helped begin the era of conducting scientific calculations on the GPU.

Dealing with Big Data
Both supercomputers will handle Big Data problems, which involve crunching enormous amounts of data, and IBM has optimized the architecture underlying the systems specifically for this task. Simply increasing the performance of the CPU and GPU is not enough, because much of the work being done when Big Data is involved is simply moving data back and forth between storage and the processors. As IBM stated in its press release, "The popular practice of putting design emphasis solely on faster microprocessors becomes progressively more untenable because the computing infrastructure is dominated by data movement and data management."

This is a dig at Intel (NASDAQ: INTC  ) , a company with a near monopoly in the server CPU market, and the main target of IBM OpenPOWER initiative. IBM power systems have been losing market share for years to x86 based systems, mostly powered by Intel chips, and IBM decision to open up the architecture is seemingly starting to pay off.

One reason IBM won these contracts is energy efficiency. Supercomputers consume monstrous amounts of power, with the fastest supercomputer in the world, the Tianhe 2 in China, using about 17.8 megawatts. To put this in perspective, that's enough to power a little more than 14,000 average homes in the United States.

Titan, the system Oak Ridge is replacing, uses 8.2 MW of power. Summit, the larger of the two new supercomputers, will use about 10 MW of power, but it will provide five to 10 times the performance of Titan. This increased energy efficiency is due to efficiency gains in NVIDIA GPU and the minimization of moving data around the system.

What it means for IBM

IBM Power architecture gets a big win with these systems. While Intel is unlikely to give up its massive market share in the server CPU market, the subset of that market that deals with Big Data could be up for grabs. IDC predicts the Big Data technology and services market is going to grow at a 27% compound annual rate through 2017, turning into a $32 billion market by that time, and IBM has a real chance at claiming a significant portion.

The OpenPOWER initiative makes this more likely, as it allows other hardware and software companies to develop products that are tightly integrated with the Power architecture. There a big incentive for many companies to create a viable alternative to Intel based systems; Google, for example, sends plenty of money Intel way each year in building out its cloud data centers. With Intel having a near monopoly, the company can charge extremely high prices.

The supercomputer deal is an important accomplishment for IBM, and it provides a high profile example of the benefits of OpenPOWER.

What it means for NVIDIA

NVIDIA has become the leader in the high performance computing accelerator card market, and while the enterprise division is still a small part of its overall business, it has been growing fast. From fiscal 2010 to 2014, NVIDIA high performance computing and data center revenue has grown at a 64% compound annual rate.

NVIDIA GPU are in 17 of the top 100 supercomputers in the world, and that number will likely grow as GPU become more common in supercomputing. NVIDIA biggest competitor is Intel, which has its own line of accelerator cards, the Xeon Phi, but so far NVIDIA has maintained its lead, with the Phi present in only 11 of the top 100 supercomputers.

Intel certainly is not standing still, with the company set to launch an updated Phi in the second half of 2015. But one of NVIDIA strengths is the vast catalog of software that has been adapted to run on its GPU, such as scientific simulations, business analytics, and 3 D modeling programs. This creates lock in and switching costs, and it makes it more difficult for Intel to gain traction in the market.

A single company is unlikely to battle Intel in the enterprise market, but with the companies involved in the OpenPOWER initiative working together, Intel has much to worry about. The supercomputer deal is the first piece of evidence that Intel has a real competitor on its hands for the first time in years, at least when it comes to Big Data.

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Timothy Green owns shares of International Business Machines and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends Google (A shares), Google (C shares), Intel, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool owns shares of Google (A shares), Google (C shares), Intel, and International Business Machines. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

0Software Audio Editor Free

By Unknown | At 3:38:00 am | Label : Software , Technology | 0 Comments

Audacity as Audio Editor

is a free open source digital audio editor and recording computer software application, available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and other operating systems for editor. Audacity as Audio Editor was started in May 2000 by Dominic Mazzoni and Roger Dannenberg at Carnegie Mellon University. As of 10 October 2011, it was the 11th most popular download from SourceForge, with 76.5 million downloads. Audacity as Audio Editor won the SourceForge 2007 and 2009 Community Choice Award for Best Project for Multimedia.

In addition to recording audio from multiple sources, Audacity as Audio Editor can be used for post processing of all types of audio, including podcasts by adding effects such as normalization, trimming, and fading in and out. Audacity as Audio Editor has also been used to record and mix entire albums, such as by Tune Yards. It is also currently used in the UK OCR National Level 2 ICT course for the sound creation unit.

Audacity's features include:

    Importing and exporting of WAV, AIFF, MP3 (via the LAME encoder, downloaded separately), Ogg Vorbis, and all file formats supported by libsndfile library. Versions 1.3.2 and later support Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC). Version 1.3.6 and later also support additional formats such as WMA, AAC, AMR and AC3 via the optional FFmpeg library.
    Recording and playing back sounds
    Editing via cut, copy, and paste, with unlimited levels of undo
    Multitrack mixing
    A large array of digital effects and plug ins. Additional effects can be written with Nyquist
    Built in LADSPA plug in support. VST support available through an optional VST Enabler.
    Amplitude envelope editing
    Noise removal based on sampling the noise to be removed.
    Audio spectrum analysis using the Fourier transform algorithm
    Support for multi channel modes with sampling rates up to 96 kHz with 32 bits per sample
    Precise adjustments to the audio speed (tempo) while maintaining pitch in order to synchronize it with video or run for a predetermined length of time
    Adjusting audio pitch while maintaining speed
    Features of modern multitrack audio software including navigation controls, zoom and single track edit, project pane and XY project navigation, non destructive and destructive effect processing, audio file manipulation (cut, copy, paste)
    Conversion of cassette tapes or records into digital tracks by automatically splitting the audio source into multiple tracks based on silences in the source material
    Cross platform operation Audacity as Audio Editor works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Unix like systems (including Linux and BSD)
    Audacity as Audio Editor uses the wxWidgets software library to provide a similar graphical user interface on several different operating systems.

Audacity as Audio Editor supports the LV2 open standard for plugins and can therefore load software like Calf Studio Gear.

Audacityas Audio Editor supports only 32 bit VST audio effect plug ins. It does not support 64 bit or instrument VST (VSTi) plugins. Audacity as Audio Editor lacks dynamic equalizer controls, real time effects and support for scrubbing. MIDI files can only be displayed.

Audacity as Audio Editor does not natively import or export WMA, AAC, AC3 or most other proprietary or restricted file formats; rather, an optional FFmpeg library is required.

Also, while Audacity as Audio Editor does feature a vocal remover for the easy creation of karaoke tracks, a more desirable result requires several steps and use of the noise removal feature.

In addition to English language help, the ZIP file of the downloadable Audacity as Audio Editor software program includes help files for Afrikaans, Arabic, Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Norwegian (Bokmål), Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Welsh in its user interface. A partial Bengali help file is also included.

The Audacity as Audio Editor website also provides tutorials in several languages.

The free and open nature of Audacity as Audio Editor has allowed it to become very popular in education, encouraging its developers to make the user interface easier for students and teachers.

CNET rated Audacity as Audio Editor 5/5 stars and called it "feature rich and flexible". Preston Gralla of PC World said, "If you're interested in creating, editing, and mixing you'll want Audacity as Audio Editor." Jack Wallen of Tech Republic highlighted its features and ease of use. Michael Muchmore of PC Magazine rated it 3.5/5 stars and said, "Though not as slick or powerful as programs from the likes of Adobe, Sony, and M Audio, Audacity as Audio Editor is surprisingly feature full for free software."

In The Art of Unix Programming, Eric S. Raymond says of Audacity as Audio Editor "The central virtue of this program is that it has a superbly transparent and natural user interface, one that erects as few barriers between the user and the sound file as possible."

21.83 MB

0Software

By Unknown | At 3:24:00 am | Label : Article , Technology | 0 Comments

Computer software, or simply software is any set of machine readable instructions that directs a computer processor to perform specific operations. Computer software contrasts with computer hardware, which is the physical component of computers. Computer hardware and software require each other and neither can be realistically used without the other.

Computer software includes computer programs, libraries and their associated documentation. The word software is also sometimes used in a more narrow sense, meaning application software only. Software is stored in computer memory and cannot be touched i.e. it is intangible.

At the lowest level, executable code consists of machine language instructions specific to an individual processor typically a central processing unit (CPU). A machine language consists of groups of binary values signifying processor instructions that change the state of the computer from its preceding state. For example, an instruction may change the value stored in a particular storage location inside the computer – an effect that is not directly observable to the user. An instruction may also (indirectly) cause something to appear on a display of the computer system a state change which should be visible to the user. The processor carries out the instructions in the order they are provided, unless it is instructed to "jump" to a different instruction, or interrupted.

Software written in a machine language is known as "machine code". However, in practice, software is usually written in high level programming languages that are easier and more efficient for humans to use (closer to natural language) than machine language. High level languages are translated, using compilation or interpretation or a combination of the two, into machine language. Software may also be written in a low level assembly language, essentially, a vaguely mnemonic representation of a machine language using a natural language alphabet. Assembly language is translated into machine code using an assembler.

Based on the goal, computer software can be divided into:

    Application software, which uses the computer system to perform special functions or provide entertainment functions beyond the basic operation of the computer itself. There are many different types of application software, because the range of tasks that can be performed with a modern computer is so large  see list of software.
    System software, which is designed to directly operate the computer hardware, to provide basic functionality needed by users and other software, and to provide a platform for running application software. System software includes:
        Operating systems, which are essential collections of software that manage resources and provides common services for other software that runs "on top" of them. Supervisory programs, boot loaders, shells and window systems are core parts of operating systems. In practice, an operating system comes bundled with additional software (including application software) so that a user can potentially do some work with a computer that only has an operating system.
        Device drivers, which operate or control a particular type of device that is attached to a computer. Each device needs at least one corresponding device driver; because a computer typically has at minimum at least one input device and at least one output device, a computer typically needs more than one device driver.
        Utilities, which are computer programs designed to assist users in maintenance and care of their computers.
    Malicious software or malware, which are computer programs developed to harm and disrupt computers. As such, malware is undesirable. Malware is closely associated with computer related crimes, though some malicious programs may have been designed as practical jokes.


    Desktop applications such as web browsers and Microsoft Office, as well as smartphone and tablet applications (called "apps"). (There is a push in some parts of the software industry to merge desktop applications with mobile apps, to some extent. Windows 8, and later Ubuntu Touch, tried to allow the same style of application user interface to be used on desktops and laptops, mobile devices, and hybrid tablets.)
    JavaScript scripts are pieces of software traditionally embedded in web pages that are run directly inside the web browser when a web page is loaded without the need for a web browser plugin. Software written in other programming languages can also be run within the web browser if the software is either translated into JavaScript, or if a web browser plugin that supports that language is installed; the most common example of the latter is ActionScript scripts, which are supported by the Adobe Flash plugin.
    Server software, including:
        Web applications, which usually run on the web server and output dynamically generated web pages to web browsers, using e.g. PHP, Java or ASP.NET, or even JavaScript that runs on the server. In modern times these commonly include some JavaScript to be run in the web browser as well, in which case they typically run partly on the server, partly in the web browser.
    Plugins and extensions are software that extends or modifies the functionality of another piece of software, and require that software be used in order to function;
    Embedded software resides as firmware within embedded systems, devices dedicated to a single use or a few uses such as cars and televisions (although some embedded devices such as wireless chipsets can themselves be part of an ordinary, non embedded computer system such as a PC or smartphone). In the embedded system context there is sometimes no clear distinction between the system software and the application software. However, some embedded systems run embedded operating systems, and these systems do retain the distinction between system software and application software (although typically there will only be one, fixed, application which is always ran).
    Microcode is a special, relatively obscure type of embedded software which tells the processor itself how to execute machine code, so it is actually a lower level than machine code. It is typically proprietary to the processor manufacturer, and any necessary correctional microcode software updates are supplied by them to users (which is much cheaper than shipping replacement processor hardware). Thus an ordinary programmer would not expect to ever have to deal with it.

Users often see things differently from programmers. People who use modern general purpose computers (as opposed to embedded systems, analog computers and supercomputers) usually see three layers of software performing a variety of tasks: platform, application, and user software.

    Platform software: Platform includes the firmware, device drivers, an operating system, and typically a graphical user interface which, in total, allow a user to interact with the computer and its peripherals (associated equipment). Platform software often comes bundled with the computer. On a PC one will usually have the ability to change the platform software.
    Application software: Application software or Applications are what most people think of when they think of software. Typical examples include office suites and video games. Application software is often purchased separately from computer hardware. Sometimes applications are bundled with the computer, but that does not change the fact that they run as independent applications. Applications are usually independent programs from the operating system, though they are often tailored for specific platforms. Most users think of compilers, databases, and other "system software" as applications.
    User written software: End user development tailors systems to meet users' specific needs. User software include spreadsheet templates and word processor templates. Even email filters are a kind of user software. Users create this software themselves and often overlook how important it is. Depending on how competently the user written software has been integrated into default application packages, many users may not be aware of the distinction between the original packages, and what has been added by co workers.

Computer software has to be "loaded" into the computer storage (such as the hard drive or memory). Once the software has loaded, the computer is able to execute the software. This involves passing instructions from the application software, through the system software, to the hardware which ultimately receives the instruction as machine code. Each instruction causes the computer to carry out an operation – moving data, carrying out a computation, or altering the control flow of instructions.

Data movement is typically from one place in memory to another. Sometimes it involves moving data between memory and registers which enable high speed data access in the CPU. Moving data, especially large amounts of it, can be costly. So, this is sometimes avoided by using "pointers" to data instead. Computations include simple operations such as incrementing the value of a variable data element. More complex computations may involve many operations and data elements together.

Software quality is very important, especially for commercial and system software like Microsoft Office, Microsoft Windows and Linux. If software is faulty (buggy), it can delete a person work, crash the computer and do other unexpected things. Faults and errors are called "bugs." Software is often also a victim to what is known as software aging, the progressive performance degradation resulting from a combination of unseen bugs. Many bugs are discovered and eliminated (debugged) through software testing. However, software testing rarely – if ever – eliminates every bug; some programmers say that "every program has at least one more bug" (Lubarsky's Law). All major software companies, such as Microsoft, Novell and Sun Microsystems, have their own software testing departments with the specific goal of just testing. Software can be tested through unit testing, regression testing and other methods, which are done manually, or most commonly, automatically, since the amount of code to be tested can be quite large. For instance, NASA has extremely rigorous software testing procedures for many operating systems and communication functions. Many NASA based operations interact and identify each other through command programs called software. This enables many people who work at NASA to check and evaluate functional systems overall. Programs containing command software enable hardware engineering and system operations to function much easier together.

The software license gives the user the right to use the software in the licensed environment, and in the case of free software licenses, also grants other rights such as the right to make copies.

Proprietary software can be divided into two types:

    freeware, which includes the historical category shareware. As the name suggests, freeware can be used for free, although in the case of shareware, this is sometimes only true for a limited period of time. However, the term shareware has fallen out of use, as the original name "shareware" was coined in a pre internet age, and even larger, well established software companies such as Microsoft commonly offer free trial versions of some or all of their software.
    software available for a fee, often inaccurately termed "commercial software", which can only be legally used on purchase of a license.

Open source software, on the other hand, comes with a free software license, granting the recipient the rights to modify and redistribute the software.

Software patents, like other types of patents, are theoretically supposed to give an inventor an exclusive, time limited license for a detailed idea (e.g. an algorithm) on how to implement a piece of software, or a component of a piece of software. Ideas for useful things that software could do, and user requirements, are not supposed to be patentable, and concrete implementations (i.e. the actual software packages implementing the patent) are not supposed to be patentable either  the latter are already covered by copyright, generally automatically. So software patents are supposed to cover the middle area, between requirements and concrete implementation. In some countries, a requirement for the claimed invention to have an effect on the physical world may also be part of the requirements for a software patent to be held valid  although since all useful software has effects on the physical world, this requirement may be open to debate.

Software patents are controversial in the software industry with many people holding different views about them. One of the sources of controversy is that the aforementioned split between initial ideas and patent does not seem to be honored in practice by patent lawyers  for example the patent for Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP), which purported to claim rights over any programming tool implementing the idea of AOP, howsoever implemented. Another source of controversy is the effect on innovation, with many distinguished experts and companies arguing that software is such a fast moving field that software patents merely create vast additional litigation costs and risks, and actually retard innovation. In the case of debates about software patents outside the US, the argument has been made that large American corporations and patent lawyers are likely to be the primary beneficiaries of allowing or continue to allow software patents.

Design and implementation of software varies depending on the complexity of the software. For instance, design and creation of Microsoft Word software will take much more time than designing and developing Microsoft Notepad because of the difference in functionalities in each one.

Software is usually designed and created (coded/written/programmed) in integrated development environments (IDE) like Eclipse, Emacs and Microsoft Visual Studio that can simplify the process and compile the program. As noted in different section, software is usually created on top of existing software and the application programming interface (API) that the underlying software provides like GTK+, JavaBeans or Swing. Libraries (APIs) are categorized for different purposes. For instance, JavaBeans library is used for designing enterprise applications, Windows Forms library is used for designing graphical user interface (GUI) applications like Microsoft Word, and Windows Communication Foundation is used for designing web services. Underlying computer programming concepts like quicksort, hash table, array, and binary tree can be useful to creating software. When a program is designed, it relies on the API. For instance, if a user is designing a Microsoft Windows desktop application, he/she might use the .NET Windows Forms library to design the desktop application and call its APIs like Form1.Close() and Form1.Show() to close or open the application and write the additional operations him/herself that it need to have. Without these APIs, the programmer needs to write these APIs him/herself. Companies like Sun Microsystems, Novell, and Microsoft provide their own APIs so that many applications are written using their software libraries that usually have numerous APIs in them.

Computer software has special economic characteristics that make its design, creation, and distribution different from most other economic goods.

A person who creates software is called a programmer, software engineer or software developer, terms that all have a similar meaning.
A great variety of software companies and programmers in the world comprise a software industry. Software can be quite a profitable industry: Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft was the richest person in the world in 2009 largely due to his ownership of a significant number of shares in Microsoft, the company responsible for Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office software products.

Non profit software organizations include the Free Software Foundation, GNU Project and Mozilla Foundation. Software standard organizations like the W3C, IETF develop software standards so that most software can interoperate through standards such as XML, HTML and HTTP.

Other well known large software companies include Oracle, Novell, SAP, Symantec, Adobe Systems, and Corel, while small companies often provide innovation.

0ONC plots quality improvement plan

By Unknown | At 3:07:00 am | Label : News , Technology | 0 Comments

ONC sculpted a decade long vision for ensuring Health Information Technology is geared toward what it described as "robust and continuous quality improvement."

"Dramatic advancements have been made in digitizing the care delivery system during the past decade," ONC notes in its report  not least the fact that all 50 states have some form of health information exchange services to enable care coordination.

In addition, more than half of U.S. hospitals can electronically search for patient information outside their own walls, with six out of ten electronically exchanging health information with outside providers.

Still, more can be done.

"ONC envisions an electronically enabled QI ecosystem that promotes better health and care, improved communication and transparency, rapid translation of knowledge for all stakeholders and reduction in the burden of data collection and reporting for providers," according to the study.

Toward that end, the agency has set goal posts at 3, 6 and 10 year intervals.

3 years out "Alignment and standarisation to support data capture within the QI ecosystem"

Quality reporting programs must be better aligned, "to reduce the collection and reporting burden on providers and hospitals," ONC concedes.

"Through maturing standards, giving technical assistance, certifying Health Information Technology and coordination among federal and state agencies, ONC will work to harmonize and align measure components, tools and standards," according to the report. "Providers, payers and health systems need highly reliable, comparable and universally accepted performance indicators for priority health conditions and patient safety initiatives, such as preventable hospital readmissions and reduction of health care associated conditions."

Moreover, "stakeholders may have unique QI objectives on which they would like to focus," says ONC. "A key building block to enabling this wide variety of QI goals is the capture of highly structured, shareable data that has the appropriate level of metadata in place to support multiple uses CDS, advanced analytics and quality measurement."

6 years out "Big data for the QI ecosystem"

Over the next six years, as quality improvement data sharing increases. "quality and safety metrics will refocus from provider centric to patient centric," according to ONC. "The data in Health Information Technology, including patient generated and claims data, will be standardized, linked at the individual level to clinical data as appropriate, and optimized for interoperable sharing and aggregation.

"Clinical data from heath IT will be increasingly structured, but will still require mapping and normalization to be aggregated and analyzed," according to the report. "Big data has the characteristics of high volume, high velocity and high variety and will require effective and innovative analytic tools to filter out the 'noise' and yield useful information.

"For the purposes of performance measurement and improvement for value based payment, regional linking of claims and clinical data will enable measurement and reporting on quality and efficiency to all payers while providing timely feedback to providers on all their patients."

10 years out: "Fast data, fast improvement across the QI ecosystem"

A decade from now, ONC sees a rosy future for interoperability and data exchange, leading to markedly better care: "By 2024, the nationwide use of interoperable Health Information Technology will be pervasive. Patients and their care team will use quality and safety data and measurement as an expected aspect of care delivery. There will be numerous advancements in the features, functionality and interoperability of Health Information Technology tools that the QI ecosystem stakeholders seamlessly interact with on a daily basis for multiple purposes such as: healthy habits of daily living, delivery of care, care coordination, population management and value based reimbursement.

"Our citizens will enjoy better health, high value and high quality care, with improved safety and highly usable technologies and resources," ONC report continues. "Individuals will view themselves as the hub of their health and care and will be considered an integral member of the care team. Technology will continue to advance and become more pervasive in every aspect of daily living. Individuals will routinely use advanced technology to manage and monitor their wellness and health care, and generate data for use by multiple IT systems and analytical tools.

"Their data will be available whenever and wherever they are needed to enable optimal health and care. They will enjoy personalized information and individualized care which is crucial to facilitate their wellness goals and the flow of their health information."