As part of the Arts and Humanities Data Service Project, this Guide to Good Practice covers computer-aided design (CAD). It is a free online handbook "for individuals and organisations involved in the creation, maintenance, use, and long-term preservation of CAD-based digital resources in the humanities." Rather than focusing on a specific software application and situation, the guide discusses a...

Condor is a popular software tool developed by the University of Wisconsin at Madison Computer Sciences Department. It is a type of batch system that distributes computationally intensive jobs to multiple workstations, thereby creating a grid-style environment and speeding the processing time. Universities and other research institutions can download Condor at no charge, provided they agree to the...

Data compression is an important tool that minimizes the size of digital data. Without it, many features of Internet would not be practical, or even possible. This site discusses "the principles and practice of data compression," and examines common techniques for different types of information. The author considers some algorithms and coding methods, such as Huffman coding and the Blahut...

In the April-June 2002 special issue of the IEEE Pervasive Computing journal, a team from Carnegie Mellon University contributed with a discussion of their Project Aura. The project's goal is to increase computing efficiency, particularly in wireless environments, so that "distractions such as poor performance and failures" are minimized. With greater system reliability and fewer distractions,...

Squint is a Python library that provides a Simple query interface for Tabular data that is designed to be "light-weight and easy to learn." Squint can load data from CSV files, Excel files, DBF files, connections to relational databases (e.g., MySQL or Postgres), or Pandas objects. The desired columns can be specified using Python's built-in data structures (e.g., sets, lists, and dictionaries),...

Anyone without access to a statistical software package may find this Web site to be a valuable tool. A wide variety of free online utilities are offered, including data and equation plotting, regression analysis, and scientific forecasting. The applications' interfaces are very straightforward, and many options are available for users to input their data and customize the desired output. No...

Appearing in the August 2002 issue of IEEE Spectrum, this article considers the potential advantages of adding processing power to computer hard drives. By shifting the burden of such common tasks "as searching and encryption" from the CPU to the hard drive, the author argues that significant performance improvements would be realized. Using a hard drive for more than just data storage would...