I still remember deploying my first Microsoft Access application 10 years ago for a head hunting agency. They had a user base of about 200 users (I can already hear some of you groan) and they needed a system to manage job applicants and the companies that want to hire them. And they tossed my meager development team of two an...

One day,Erica and her husband took the kids out for ice cream, and she noticed a big advertisement hanging above the counter. It said, “Bring in your digital photographs. We’ll put them on ice cream cakes.” She found the manager and asked what was involved. “It’s simple,” she said. “Just bring...

Studying the history of consumer electronics is nothing short of fascinating. The landscape is filled with countless stories of product successes and failures— fickle consumer adoptions, clever marketing campaigns that outsmart the best technologies, better packaging winning over better technology, and products that are simply...

Quick, grab a seat. The show is about to begin, and it is full of a wonderfully mischievous cast of characters you do not want to miss. They call them “pixels,” magical spirits brought to life by digital mayhem and transported by light. They are the muses of the digital artist, the star performers on the Photoshop stage, and...

There was a time when people believed that the stars were bonfires lit by other tribes in the sky, that the universe was a flat plate resting on the shell of a giant turtle, and that the Earth, according to the Greek astronomer Ptolemy, was at the center of the universe. From the most remote of times, people have been curious...

There's only one source to turn to for the answers to the most puzzling and thought-provoking questions about the world of...

Data management has evolved over the years from being strictly associated with database systems, through active databases, to being a topic that has grown beyond the scope of a single field encompassing multiple aspects: distributed systems, event-driven systems, and peer-to-peer and streaming systems. The present collection of works,...

Image synthesis, or rendering, is a field of transformation: it changes geometry and physics into meaningful images. Because the most popular algorithms frequently change, it is increasingly important for researchers and implementors to have a basic understanding of the principles of image synthesis. Focusing on theory, Andrew...

Advanced Crime Scene Photography developed over time and out of my experiences as a crime scene investigator with a large metropolitan police department. Like any major city, violent crime is prevalent, offering numerous opportunities to utilize the different skills and techniques learned and evolved through numerous schools, scene...

Recently, powerful innovations in intrusion detection and prevention have evolved in response to emerging threats and changing business environments....