Sometimes I have to put text on a path

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

A post (only in french) for tex-latex or xetex and é à ï î ç...; un post en français pour les caractères avec accents

This post is in french because it's focused on the use of french special characters with tex-latex ou xetex.
------intro:
Les caractères accentués et liés (é, à, æ, Å, ø…) n'existent pas en langue anglaise. De fait, le standard informatique ASCII « de base » ne définit que 127 caractères non accentués, dits « caractères ASCII 7 bits ». La norme ASCII définit des caractères étendus, dits « caractères 8 bits », pour chaque pays, ce qui permet d'avoir les caractères éccentués et liés directement sur le clavier. Unicode augmente encore ces aspects. Mais hélas Tex et Latex sont apparus avant unicode... Tout document texte LaTeX peut donc être écrit en ASCII 7bits, ce qui garantit la plus forte interopérabilité.
On va donc limiter ce post à Tex-Latex.


XeTeX (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/XeTeX) est un logiciel de mise en page dérivé de TeX qui utilise l'Unicode et les technologies modernes de polices de caractères telles que OpenType. Initialement développé pour Mac OS X, il est maintenant multiplate-forme. Les fichiers sources sont, par défaut, en utf-8. XeTeX fonctionne avec LaTeX et ConTeXt (macro packages). Sa partie LaTeX est xelatex. Il est utilisé avec le package fontspec, qui permet une interface configurable pour le choix des fonts et permet un choix très vaste de fonts.
XeTeX est incorporé dans les distributions TeX Live 2010, MacTeX 2010 et MiKTeX 2.8.
Unicode et la norme ISO/CEI 10646 attribuent à chaque caractère un nom officiel au sein d’un répertoire commun unifié entre toutes les langues et tous les usages. Dès que le répertoire commun est approuvé, les caractères sont groupés en blocs en fonction de leur usage et des écritures supportées, et reçoivent une identification numérique unique appelée point de code, identifiée généralement sous la forme U+xxxx (où xxxx est un nombre hexadécimal de 4 à 6 chiffres, entre U+0000 et U+10FFFF). La plage définie permet d'attribuer jusqu'à 1 114 112 points de code.

Il y a aussi MathML voir sur ce blog la catégorie "mathML".

 ------généralités LaTeX
Les commandes commencent par une contre-oblique \ suivie de 2 possibilités:
  • un nom composé uniquement de lettres non diacritiés.
    Une espace (en typographie, le mot « espace » est féminin…), un chiffre ou tout autre caractère clôture le nom,
    ex : x\mapsto2 x\mapsto2 ;
  • un seul caractère spécial (non-lettre), ex : \# \#
Remarque: depuis janvier 2003, les formules mathématiques sur Wikipédia peuvent être écrites avec latex: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aide:Formules_TeX
où les formules s'écrivent entre … .

------les caractères spéciaux (ascii non 7bits)
Les caractères suivant sont utilisés par LaTeX pour la compilation (ils ont une signification particulière pour la mise en forme du texte) et ne peuvent donc figurer tels quels dans le texte :
$ & % # { } _ \ ^ ~
Il faut les remplacer par d'autres. Il suffit de faire figurer une barre de fraction inversée « \ » devant,
\$ \& \% \# \{ \}
sauf pour les 3  caractères suivant (heureusement,  ils sont assez rarement utilisés en tant que tels):
« \ » qui s'écrit \ textbackslash,
« ~ » " \ textasciitilde,
« ^ » " \ textasciicircum.


Si l'on reste toujours sous le même environnement (même type d'ordinateur, même système d'exploitation, même pays), alors on peut utiliser les caractères accentués du clavier, quitte à utiliser l'extension inputenc en mettant :
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
dans l'en-tête du fichier.
ou par exemple  \usepackage[frenchb]{babel} 
ou \usepackage[french]{babel}
Les deux sont absolument identiques mais frenchb indique clairement que l'on veut utiliser le français avec babel d'où le b. L'extension babel facilite l'adaptation de la typographie du document à sa langue comme calc permet d'accomplir des calculs simples. La liste des extensions est interminable ; heureusement, tous les paquetages sont réunis au sein du Comprehensive TeX Archive Network (CTAN).

Mais dans le cas général, si le texte doit être lu dans un autre environnement ou par quelqu'un d'un autre pays, il faut utiliser la frappe suivante avec les "commandes".
Pour mettre un accent aigü, il suffit de faire précéder la lettre de « \' », « \` » pour un accent grave, « \^ » pour un accent circonflexe, et « \" » pour un tréma. De manière générale, on a « \ + accent + lettre ».
Exemple :

é\'e
É\'E
è\`e
à\`a
È\`E
À\`A
ê\^e
â\^a
î\^\i 
ô\^o
û\^u
Ê\^E
Â\^A
Î\^I
Ô\^O
Û\^U
ë\"e



ï\"\i 


ü\"u
Ë\"E



Ï\"I


Ü\"U
NB : pour le « i » accentué, la barre de fraction entre l'accent et le i sert à enlever le point ; il est important de laisser un espace après le i, car certaines instruction commencent elles aussi par \i, comme \it (texte en italique) par exemple (cet espace sera ignoré lors de la compilation). Exemple :
ab\^\i me
pour écrire « abîme » Ajoutons la cédille, le « e dans l'a/o » et le symbole angström (unité de mesure des distances atomiques en physique) :

ç \c c
Ç \c C
æ \ae
Æ \AE
œ \oe
Œ \OE
Å \AA
NB : pour la cédille, il est important de laisser un espace après le \c, car certaines instructions commencent elles aussi par \c, comme \chapter (marque le début d'un chapitre) par exemple (cet espace sera ignoré lors de la compilation). Exemple :
fa\c cade
pour écrire « façade » Voici quelques signes de ponctuation particuliers :
  • petit tiret - (signe moins) : « - » ;
  • tiret moyen – (de la largeur d'un « N ») pour les intervalles de nombres : « -- » ;
  • tiret long — (de la largeur d'un « M ») pour les incides (alternative aux parenthèses) : « --- » ;
  • guillemets français « et » : « << » et « >> » (deux signes inférieur et deux signes supérieur).
On peut aussi représenter les accent et caractères espagnols (tilde, points d'interrogation et d'exclamation inversés), norvégiens… Pour connaître les codes à taper, il faut chercher...
Enfin, il existe des caractères spéciaux pour la mise en page :
  • l'espace insécable « ~ », qui n'est pas coupée par un changement de ligne et en français précède notamment les « : ; ! ? » (ces signes sont également suivis d'une espace normale) et se trouve à l'intérieur des guillemets et des tirets d'incise (qui sont eux-même encadrés par des espaces normales) ;
    en typographie française, on écrit …~;, …~!, …~?, <<~…~>> et ---~…~--- ;
  • l'espace forcée « {} » (accolade d'ouverture-accolade de fermeture) ou bien « \  » (barre de fraction inversée-espace), qui est sécable ;
  • et l'espace fine « \, ».

Notes
  • 1 - ASCII : american standard code for instruction interchange retour
  • 2 - un caractère est une lettre, un chiffre, mais aussi un signe de ponctuation, une espace… retour
 Ref: http://deuns.chez.com/latex/carac.html

Monday, January 23, 2012

LyX; document processor; TeX-LaTeX; WYSIWYM and WYSIWYG; Free Software/Open Source license, Linux-Unix Windows Mac OS X; english & francais

LyX is a document processor that encourages an approach to writing based on the structure of your documents (WYSIWYM) and not simply their appearance (WYSIWYG). 
Lyx est un processeur documentaire qui encourage une écriture fondée sur la « structure » de vos documents (WYSIWYM) et pas simplement sur leur affichage (WYSIWYG).

http://www.lyx.org/Download
--------
LyX is a fully featured document processor. Here are some of the features, classified by category.

Math/science features (demo clip)

  • Mathematical formula editor which is easily best of breed. Fully harnesses the power of LaTeX.
  • Equations can be entered via point-and-click interface or via keyboard with LaTeX commands (optionally via auto-completion). Formulas are immediately visually rendered on screen.
  • Copy/paste to and from LaTeX source code.
  • Equation arrays, equation numbering, theorems, customizable math macros, matrices, algorithms, and much more.
  • Support of math macros
  • Basic support for various Computer Algebra Systems (CAS) - Maple, Maxima, Octave, Mathematica

Structured document creation

  • Advanced features for labels, references, index and bibliography (including advanced BibTeX support)
  • Standard word processor operations, like cut/paste, multiple open documents, undo/redo, spellchecking (uses aspell or hunspell in the background), thesaurus and revision tracking
  • Different textclasses allow you to type letters, articles, books, movie scripts, LinuxDoc, slides, presentations. Also included are some textclasses for scientific societies, such as AMS, APS, IEEE, or specific journals like Astronomy and Astrophysics.
  • Dedicated modules let you dynamically enhance the functionality of the textclass by adding features that are needed for specific tasks (such as endnotes, linguistic glosses, Noweb/Sweave or LilyPond support)
  • Numbered section headings, table of contents (with hypertext functionality), lists of figures/tables
  • The outliner mode allows for easy navigating in your document as well as for moving or nesting complete chapters and sections
  • Character styles provide access to fully semantic markup

Graphics/tables

  • Support for many graphic formats (including EPS, SVG, XFig, Dia and others)
  • WYSIWYG for cropping, rotation, scaling of images
  • Enhanced support for intelligently floating figures and tables
  • Support for subfigures, subtables and captions
  • Support for wrapped figures and tables
  • Interactive WYSIWYG tables
  • Shared (geometry) settings for multiple figures

Internationalization (more here)

  • Support for writing documents in many languages of the world
  • Bidi support for Right-to-Left languages such as Hebrew and Arabic
  • Support for many writing systems (including CJK)
  • Write multilingual documents consisting of diverse languages and scripts thanks to unicode compliance.
  • Menus, error messages, manuals and key bindings are available in many languages

Document formats

  • Access to all LaTeX functionality with capability to insert plain LaTeX code anywhere in a document.
  • Import and export to many formats (LaTeX, PDF, Postscript, DVI, ASCII, HTML, OpenDocument, RTF, MS Word, and others) thanks to configurable converters
  • Send a fax from within LyX
  • Source code viewer for instant LaTeX and DocBook view.
  • SGML-tools support (DocBook DTDs)
  • Literate programming support (noweb, Sweave)
  • Support for export of PDF bookmarks and header information

Usability/user interface

  • Graphical user interface that gives access to all functions via menus and mouse, as well as configurable key bindings
  • Extensive documentation, including a beginner's tutorial, available in many languages
  • Text completion support
  • Typesetting in background

Document management

  • Change tracking
  • Support for external version control systems (RCS, CVS, SVN)
  • Comparison of different versions of the document
  • Branches for having different versions of the same document
  • Yellow sticky notes

Additional

  • Available for Linux, Windows, and Mac
  • Quite fast and no memory hog at all.
There's a lot more not listed here. Check it out yourself!

Saturday, January 21, 2012

a new "online service" : biometric detection technology; alcohol detection systems for the automotive market (and beyond...).

TruTouch’s technology  combines the state-of-the-art in alcohol testing with an integral biometric identity verification capability.  It is a 100% noninvasive, touch based measurement that offers significant improvements in safety and ease-of use relative to existing measurement approaches.
The TruTouch measurement is performed by transmitting light into the skin via contact with an optical touch pad, and collecting a portion of the light (near infrared) reflected back by the skin. The collected light is analyzed to determine the tissue alcohol concentration and to verify the user’s identity. 


----------science

TruTouch devices  measure the 4000-8000 cm-1 (1.25-2.5 mm) spectral region.

Additional information regarding the TruTouch technology and its evaluation using
clinical and laboratory studies can be found in the following peer reviewed journal articles.

T. Ridder, S. Hendee, C. Brown, “Noninvasive Alcohol Testing using Diffuse Reflectance Near-Infrared Spectroscopy”, Applied Spectroscopy, 59(2), pp. 181-189, (2005).
DOI: 10.1366/0003702053085098
Abstract: A diffuse reflectance near-infrared (NIR) spectrometer was evaluated as a noninvasive alternative to breath and blood measurements for in vivo alcohol testing. A hybrid partial least squares (PLS) calibration was constructed using a combination of in vivo and in vitro spectral data. This model was subsequently evaluated for its performance in quantifying alcohol concentrations in vivo using a prospective validation study involving subjects who did not participate in the calibration. The validation study entailed induction of alcohol excursions in ten human subjects and comparison of the noninvasive NIR alcohol measurements to blood and breath alcohol measurements. Blood and breath alcohol measurements were performed at the time of each noninvasive NIR measurement (N = 372), establishing the noninvasive NIR measurement standard error relative to blood alcohol at 4.9 mg/dL (0.0049 %). Assessment of the hybrid calibration model's sensitivity and selectivity provided strong evidence that the hybrid calibration yielded measurements that were both sensitive to alcohol and independent of other absorbing analytes in human tissue.

C. Brown, T. Ridder, “A Framework for Multivariate Selectivity Analysis. Part 1: Theoretical and Practical Merits”, Applied Spectroscopy, 59(6), pp. 787-803, (2005).
DOI: 10.1366/0003702054280621

T. Ridder, C. Brown, B. Ver Steeg, “A Framework for Multivariate Selectivity Analysis.
Part 2: Experimental Applications”, Applied Spectroscopy, 59(6), pp. 804-815, (2005).
DOI: 10.1366/0003702054280739



------------industry

Takata has partnered with TruTouch Technologies (http://www.trutouchtech.com/UploadFiles/TruTouch%20Technology%20Overview.pdf) to develop alcohol detection systems for the automotive market.

Combining Takata’s electronic sensor technology and the TruTouch biometric intoxication detection technology, the partnership is developing a product that will work with push-button ignition systems to prevent the vehicle from starting if the driver’s blood alcohol level is above the legal limit.

The product uses an infrared measurement system.  Drivers place their finger on the device, and within seconds, the system measures the alcohol concentration in the driver’s system.


http://www.takataesv.com/pages/trutouch.html

--------funds
NHTSA (National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration) Awards Takata-TruTouch $2.25M to Advance World’s First Touch-based In-Vehicle Alcohol Detection Device


AUBURN HILLS, Mich., Sept. 26, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ 

 Imagine every time you go to start a vehicle it could potentially provide your Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) in an instant, just from touching the ignition button. This scenario could be a reality within the decade, and the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA) through Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety (DADSS) and The Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety (ACTS) recognizes this system’s capacity to save lives as an additional tool to help address one of the most significant road safety problems around the world. .

To aid with the continued advancement of the life-saving technology, a $2.25M award has been made to Takata in partnership with TruTouch Technologies to develop an in-vehicle solution that could help keep drunk drivers off the road, potentially saving hundreds-of-thousands of lives lost in alcohol-impaired crashes globally every year. As this technology advances and is incorporated into automobiles, it has the capacity to potentially help eliminate drunk driving.

“We are already enjoying tremendous success with this technology in the law enforcement, oil and drilling, military, and transportation markets,” said Dr. Richard D. Gill, President and CEO of TruTouch. “Together with Takata, our mission is to help eliminate alcohol-impaired dangers on the road and save lives. This NHTSA award will help expedite the work to adapt the technology for use in automotive applications where customers demand quick, accurate, and cost-effective in-vehicle solutions to ensure safe vehicle operation.”

“As a company solely dedicated to automotive safety, we are excited with the contract from DADSS/ACTS to develop the TruTouch sensors for use in automotive, commercial vehicle and heavy equipment applications,” added Kirk Morris, Vice President of Business Development of TK Holdings Inc., the NA subsidiary of Takata Corporation. “The objective is to develop tools to help intoxicated drivers from operating the vehicle if they are impaired, and to do so in a personal, non-intrusive manner.”

The TruTouch technology utilizes an advanced intoxication detection technology that measures a person’s alcohol level through the use of infrared light. With TruTouch, a person’s BAC is determined when placing their finger on a near infrared sensor that analyzes the alcohol concentration in his or her body. The device can produce accurate results in seconds and has a built-in biometric system to prevent tampering. The ultimate objective is to embrace this advanced technology and develop an automotive solution equipped to combat the global problem of alcohol related accidents. The Takata/TruTouch products require no user training, and no operator assistance.

About TruTouch Technologies

TruTouch Technologies, Inc. develops, manufactures and sells patented noninvasive biometric alcohol testing systems into both existing and emerging alcohol testing markets. Inspired by the potential to place its passive, durable systems virtually anywhere, TruTouch’s vision is to create a world where intoxication is routinely intercepted before it does harm.

Current and future TruTouch applications include:

Work Force Safety Systems for testing of on duty impairment by alcohol

Medical Diagnostic Systems

Alcohol Point-Of-Sale Liability Reduction Systems

Law Enforcement Systems

Industrial Safety Systems

Vehicle Safety Systems

www.trutouchtechnologies.com

Thursday, December 15, 2011

solution of the error "Could Not Save Item": Zotero and Web of science or other Web of Knowledge databases.

Currently Zotero not playing nice with Web of Science, or any of the other Web of Knowledge databases
e.g. error "Could Not Save Item. An error occurred while saving this item. Check Known Translator Issues for more information."

Please go to http://github.com/ajlyon/translators/raw/master/ISI%20Web%20of%20Knowledge.js and save the file to the translators directory of your Zotero data directory (http://www.zotero.org/support/zotero_data).

Restart Firefox, and it should start saving from all WoK/ISI databases. Currently, it saves all of the results for your current query-- that'll change soon, but the courageous can try it out now."

There are unresolved issues that make multiple item saves fail, so this is limited to one item per save at present (DATA@dec 2011).

Ref.
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/1966/

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

citeulike a web service for managing and discovering scholarly references

citeulike http://www.citeulike.org/ is a free service for managing and discovering scholarly references
  • Easily store references you find online
  • Discover new articles and resources
  • Automated article recommendations
  • Share references with your peers
  • Find out who's reading what you're reading
  • Store and search your PDFs
Input:

  • You can enter the URL of an article in the "Post URL" page which you can find within the "My CiteULike" menu.
  • However, you will probably find it more convenient to use one of our browser buttons which will let you post articles to CiteULike with a single click
  • You can also copy articles from other users' libraries into your own. Try searching for an article using the 'Search' link at the top right-hand corner of this page. Click on an article of interest, then choose [Copy] to add that article to your own library.
  • Import to My library. Pick a BibTeX or RIS file. Pretty much any BibTeX file should be fine. We should be able to cope with macros, comments, and most of the other strange things people put in their BibTeX files. Pretty much any RIS file should be OK too.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Search Engine Analysis: Hitwise

The following report shows search engines for the industry 'All Categories', ranked by Volume of Searches for the 4 weeks ending 12/03/2011.
Rank   Searches
1.
www.google.com
63.69%
2.
search.yahoo.com
15.36%
3.
www.bing.com
14.24%
4.
www.ask.com
3.71%
5.
search.aol.com
2.47%
Ref. http://www.hitwise.com/us/datacenter/main/dashboard-23984.html

Top 10 Social Networking sites
The following report shows websites for the industry 'Computers and Internet - Social Networking and Forums', ranked by Visits for the week ending 12/03/2011.
Rank Website Visits Share
1.
Facebook
63.63%
2.
YouTube
20.36%
3.
Twitter
1.52%
4.
Yahoo! Answers
1.02%
5.
Tagged
0.74%
6.
Linkedin
0.65%
7.
Google+
0.58%
8.
MySpace
0.47%
9.
myYearbook
0.41%
10.
Pinterest.com
0.34%

Top 10 Software sites
The following report shows websites for the industry 'Computers and Internet - Software', ranked by Visits for the week ending 12/03/2011.

Rank Website Visits Share
1.
Adobe
5.52%
2.
Apple
5.16%
3.
Microsoft Windows
4.10%
4.
Yahoo! Pulse
3.79%
5.
Big Fish Games
3.07%
6.
Apple iPod & iTunes
2.82%
7.
Google Chrome
1.97%
8.
Frontline Placement Technologies
1.86%
9.
Symantec
1.84%
10.
Microsoft Office Online
1.79%
--------
    Hitwise Methodology

Hitwise has developed proprietary software that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) use to analyze website logs created on their network. This anonymous data is aggregated and provided to Hitwise, where it is analyzed to provide a range of industry standard metrics relating to the viewing of websites including page requests, visits, average visit length, search terms and behaviour.

Hitwise is able to combine this rich ISP data with data from opt-in panel partners and with region specific consumer demographic and lifestyle information.

Hitwise collects aggregate usage data from a geographically diverse range of ISP networks and opt-in panels, representing all types of Internet usage, including home, work, educational and public access. To ensure this data is accurate and representative, it is weighted to universe estimates in each market.

Because of the extensive sample size (25 million people worldwide, including 10 million in the US), Hitwise can provide detailed insights into the search terms used to find thousands of sites as well as a range of clickstream reports, analyzing the movement of visitors between sites.
Ref. http://www.hitwise.com/us/about-us/hitwise-methodology

Research and metrics: an ex-ample with "erotic content", "sexual interests", keywords as sex, youth, breasts, vaginas etc...

Bad Research: Popular Sex Search Terms

Researchers Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam recently published a book, A Billion Wicked Thoughts,
detailing their analysis of 400 million searches they collected from the Dogpile search engine.
Of those 400 million searches, 13 percent (55 million) were for erotic content.

Note that the terms below are the general category of search for that interest, which is inclusive of all sorts of permutations of the terms. These permutations (such as “tits” for breasts) are not listed below.

    Youth – 13.5 percent
    Gay – 4.7 percent
    MILFs (Mother’s I’d Like to F***) – 4.3 percent
    Breasts – 4.0 percent
    Cheating wives – 3.4 percent
    Vaginas – 2.8 percent
    Penises – 2.4 percent

There’s an old saying in computer programming — GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out. It applies equally well to any scientific endeavor, which is only as good as the data you choose to analyze. If you start out with a dataset of questionable generalizability or value, you may find yourself drawing conclusions which have little connection with reality.

In this instance, there’s a huge problem with the research data these researchers compiled. They don’t come from Google or even Bing. They come from a little-known search engine called “Dogpile” which isn’t even a search engine. What Dogpile is is simply an aggregation engine of search results from Google, Yahoo and Bing. Google and Bing (and Yahoo) don’t make the data it collects on searches readily available to researchers.

Context is, of course, everything when it comes to datasets, especially when those datasets are likely to be biased in ways you never bothered to investigate. In this instance, the dataset is biased by the use of the Dogpile search engine — a tiny, niche search engine that is more likely than not used by a certain subset of the population that differs from the rest of the population.

So who uses Dogpile? Who knows, but it certainly isn’t likely to be a mainstream Internet user. While over 150 million people use Google and 90 million use Bing.com, Dogpile’s measly 2-3 million people per month pales in comparison and is far less than 0.05 percent of the total search engine market.

For instance, Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam said they analyzed 400 million Internet searches. But compare this number to the 3 billion searches conducted each and every day, according to Hitwise, an online analytics company.

Ref. http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/05/31/bad-research-popular-sex-search-terms/

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Machine translation and human translation; Translation service; integration with microsoft word and google docs; French<->English

Three online services (machine translation):


These tools are only for computer-assisted-translation.
Use these three services and compare!

See also this comparison of machine translation applications:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_machine_translation_applications

---------------word and google docs


Most of users don’t find Google Docs much useful with Microsoft Office (Word 2010 PC and Word 2011 mac) installed in their Computers for creating, editing Word document with multilingual translation/dictionnary services, but  Google Docs lets you translate PDF files (and lets you save translated copy of PDF to your Computer). Google Translator translates up to 8 pages in a document only.
http://techdows.com/2011/09/pdf-files-translation-with-google-docs.html


---------------
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/translation/
Microsoft has released a translation bookmarklet which allows single-click translation of any website in your own browser (DATA@ nov 2011).
http://blog.gts-translation.com/category/translation-software/translation-widgets/
---------------
It is estimated that 125 million native French speakers and 200 million second language French speakers live around the world.


The more people that speak a commonly used language such as French, the greater the demand for services related to that language becomes. The need for good-quality French translation will also continue to rise.

----------------online human translation:

myGengo translation is all done by humans. The one exception is that developers can access machine translation via the API as a free service, however this is explicitly described as such.

We use computer-assisted-translation (CAT) tools to speed up translation and ensure consistency, but the translation is done by a real person.


Ref:
http://mygengo.com/translation-services/comparison-chart/
http://mygengo.com/translation-solutions/french-translation/

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

content management system (CMS): plone.org; open source

Plone is among the top 2% of all open source projects worldwide, with 340 core developers and more than 300 solution providers in 57 countries (available in more than 40 languages).
http://plone.org/

Plone lets non-technical people create and maintain website content using only a web browser. Plone offers a rich set of capabilities for public websites, private intranets and collaborative workspaces.

demo: http://plone-demo.sixfeetup.com/


A CMS allows users to create, manage and publish content to a website without requiring a high level of technical skill.

As websites have grown larger and more complex, content management systems like Plone have grown in popularity, since they provide an efficient, easy way for people to create and edit content in a consistent, secure and controllable fashion. CMSes also enable website visitors to interact with content and with each other by contributing comments, ratings, submitting forms and more.


Plone comes with a reliable, secure, easy-to-administer object database backend known as the ZODB (Zope Object Database). In addition, Plone can easily connect to data stored in Active Directory, LDAP, Salesforce.com, SQL databases, and more.

A free Plone add-on, RelStorage, also allows enterprises with investments in Oracle, MySQL and PostgreSQL to store the data driving their Plone site in their existing infrastructure to be able to make use of familiar tools, clustering and failover solutions.


How does Plone compare with Sharepoint, Drupal, Alfresco and Joomla?
Plone is a true CMS with built-in publication workflow and document management features, unlike other systems such as Sharepoint or Alfresco, which are primarily document management systems with limited web functionality. This makes Plone ideal for intranets and extranets.

Plone can be customized and extended to meet the specific needs of an organization in terms of site structure, content types, workflow rules, etc. Not all CMSes offer the same level of flexibility.

Because it is built on top of Python and Zope, Plone is very secure, which is a reason why many switch from Joomla and Drupal to Plone.

Plone is 100% open source, so released, stable versions can be downloaded for free. There's no need to purchase a per-server or per-user license to get commercial support, as is the case with Alfresco or Sharepoint.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

worldometer and the Real Time Statistics Project

http://www.worldometers.info/

Worldometers is part of the Real Time Statistics Project, which is run by an international team of developers, researchers, and volunteers with the goal of making world statistics available in a thought-provoking and time relevant format to a wide audience around the world.

Sources
Sources are carefully selected to include only data published by the most reputable organizations and statistical offices in the world.
 
Algorithm
The counters that display the real-time numbers are based on Worldometers’ algorithm that processes the latest and most accurate statistical data available together with its estimated progression to compute the current millisecond number to be displayed on each counter based on the specific time set on each visitor’s computer clock. Please refer to the frequently asked questions to learn more about the mechanism.