Diamond Multimedia

30Diamond Multimedia is a company that specializes in many forms of multimedia technology. They have produced graphics cards, motherboards, modems, sound cards and MP3 players, however the company began with the production the TrackStar a PC add-on card which emulated Apple II computers. They were one of the major players in the 2D and early 3D graphics card competition throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.
Graphics Cards
Speedstar
Diamond's earliest line, now defunct, was the Speedstar series. The line typically consisted of the cheaper, value-oriented chips in low-cost implementations. Some were actually just lesser ISA port versions of their very powerful PCI port siblings, like the Tseng Labs ET4000, and thus their throughput was reduced, a deciding factor for VGA graphics speed at the time.

Cancer Chemotherapy

Normally, your cells grow and die in a controlled way. Cancer cells keep forming without control. Chemotherapy is drug therapy that can stop these cells from multiplying. However, it can also harm healthy cells, which causes side effects.

During chemotherapy you may have no side effects or just a few. The kinds of side effects you have depend on the type and dose of chemotherapy you get. Side effects vary, but common ones are nausea, vomiting, tiredness, pain and hair loss. Healthy cells usually recover after chemotherapy, so most side effects gradually go away.

Your course of therapy will depend on the cancer type, the chemotherapy drugs used, the treatment goal and how your body responds. You may get treatment every day, every week or every month. You may have breaks between treatments so that your body has a chance to build new healthy cells. You might take the drugs by mouth, in a shot or intravenously.

Major characteristics of multimedia

Multimedia presentations may be viewed in person on stage, projected, transmitted, or played locally with a media player. A broadcast may be a live or recorded multimedia presentation. Broadcasts and recordings can be either analog or digital electronic media technology. Digital online multimedia may be downloaded or streamed. Streaming multimedia may be live or on-demand.

Multimedia games and simulations may be used in a physical environment with special effects, with multiple users in an online network, or locally with an offline computer, game system, or simulator.

The various formats of technological or digital multimedia may be intended to enhance the users' experience, for example to make it easier and faster to convey information. Or in entertainment or art, to transcend everyday experience.

Artificial Intelligence

AI, or artificial intelligence, is a division of computer science that explores intelligent behavior, learning and adaptation in machines. The idea of automating tasks that currently require intelligent behavior is the basis for most research in the field of artificial intelligence. Providing solutions to real life problems through the production of artificial intelligence software or machines is the ultimate goal.

Artificial intelligence systems have many practical uses in business, from organizing operations to investing in stocks. Many of these applications are made up of networks similar to the neurons in a human brain, which are known to do extremely well in pattern recognition.

The attacks on 9/11 have brought about much renewed interest and funding for artificial intelligence research. New research in threat-detection, including machine vision research and data-mining, is aimed at helping to solidify our nation’s security.

Multimedia Usage

Creative Industries

Creative Industries use multimedia for a variety of purposes ranging from fine arts, to entertainment, to commercial art, to journalism, to media and software services provided for any of the industries listed below. An individual multimedia designer may cover the spectrum throughout their career. Request for their skills range from technical, to analytical, to creative.

Commercial

Much of the electronic old and new media utilized by commercial artists is multimedia. Exciting presentations are used to grab and keep attention in advertising. Industrial, business to business, and interoffice communications are often developed by creative services firms for advanced multimedia presentations beyond simple slide shows to sell ideas or liven-up training. Commercial multimedia developers may be hired to design for governmental services and nonprofit services applications as well.

Multimedia Fusion

Multimedia Fusion, often referred to as MMF, is a software authoring tool mostly used for game development or prototyping. The program is created by Clickteam who bought the rights to the name "Multimedia Fusion" from IMSI. This program was the latest in the Klik series of development software (until early 2007 when Clickteam introduced Multimedia Fusion 2 and The Games Factory 2), and included an extensive list of features as well as bug fixes. The program uses a "point and click" programming language much like a table (the Event Editor) to program an application. Recently four bonus packs were released, introducing some new objects with new features, such as alpha blending per pixel, named variables and isometric grid.

A new version of Multimedia Fusion, Multimedia Fusion 2, was released on June 30, 2006. It is available in three different varieties: The Games Factory 2, Multimedia Fusion 2 and Multimedia Fusion 2 Developer, with more features being in the latter versions than the former.

Categorization of multimedia

Multimedia may be broadly divided into linear and non-linear categories. Linear active content progresses without any navigation control for the viewer such as cinema presentation. Non-linear content offers user interactivity to control progress as used with computer games or used in self-paced computer based training. Hypermedia is an example of non-linear content.

Multimedia presentations can be live or recorded. A recorded presentation may allow interactivity via a navigationsystem. A live multimedia presentation may allow interactivity via an interaction with the presenter or performer.

Multimedia In Entertainment And Fine Arts

Multimedia is heavily used in the entertainment industry, especially to develop special effects in movies and animations. Multimedia games are a popular pastime and are software programs available either as CD- ROMs or online. Some video games also use multimedia features. Multimedia applications that allow users to actively participate instead of just sitting by as passive recipients of information are called Interactive Multimedia. In the Arts there are multimedia artists, whose minds are able to blend techniques using different media that in some way incorporates interaction with the viewer. One of the most relevant could be Peter Greenway who is melding Cinema with Opera and all sorts of digital media. Another approach entails the creation of multimedia that can be displayed in a traditional fine arts arena, such as an art gallery. Although multimedia display material may be volatile, the survivability of the content is as strong as any traditional media. Digital recording material may be just as durable and infinitely reproducible with perfect copies every time.

Multimedia Computer

A multimedia computer is a computer, that is optimized for high multimedia performance, enabling rich multimedia experience.
Early home computers simply lacked the power and storage necessary for true multimedia. The games for these systems, along with the demo scene were able to achieve high sophistication and technical polish using only simple, blocky graphics and digitally-generated sound. The Amiga 1000 from Commodore has been called the first multimedia computer. Its groundbreaking animation, graphics and sound technologies enabled multimedia content to flourish. Famous demos such as the Boing Ball and Juggler showed off the Amiga's abilities. Later the Atari ST series and Apple Macintosh II extended the concept; the Atari integrated a MIDI port and was the first computer under $1000USD to have 1 megabyte of RAM which is a realistic minimum for multimedia content and the Macintosh was the first computer able to display true photorealistic graphics as well as integrating a CD-ROM drive, whose high capacity was essential for delivering multimedia content in the pre-Internet era.
Multimedia capabilities weren't common on IBM PC compatibles until the advent of Windows 3.0 and the MPC standards in the early 1990s. The original PCs were devised as "serious" business machines and colorful graphics and powerful sound abilities weren't a priority. The few games available suffered from slow video hardware, PC speaker sound and limited color palette when compared to its contemporaries. But as PCs penetrated the home market in the late 1980s, a thriving industry arose to equip PCs to take advantage of the latest sound, graphics and animation technologies. Creative's SoundBlaster series of sound cards, as well as video cards from ATi, nVidia and Matrox soon became standard equipment for most PCs sold.
Most PCs today have good multimedia features. They have dual- or single-core CPUs clocked at 3.0 GHz or faster, at least 1GB of RAM, a 128 MB or higher video card and TV Tuner card. Popular graphics cards include Nvidia Gforce or ATI Radeon. The Intel Viiv platform, and Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition are some of today's products aimed at multimedia computing.
More recently, high-performance devices have become more compact, and multimedia computer capabilities are found in mobile devices such as the Apple iPhone and Nokia Nseries, featuring DVD-like video quality, megapixel class cameras, fully capable browser, music and video players, podcasting, blogging, as well as e-mail, instant messaging, presence and internet call (VoIP) functionality. Multiradios help to offer broadband wireless connectivity, including for instance WCDMA/HSDPA and WLAN/Wifi. Devices are also increasingly equipped with GPS receivers and maps applications, providing new capabilities for location-aware services. The Nseries devices are also expandable, allowing for the addition of multiple applications and multimedia content.