Personal computer

About: Personal computer is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 58809 publications have been published within this topic receiving 800814 citations. The topic is also known as: PC.

Down-loadable hand-held optical reader

Abstract: A hand-held bar code reader, in particular a bar code wand is used by a consumer to read bar code information accompanying a product displayed at a retail outlet. The bar code information can be presented in, for example, UPC format and carries information relating to the products. The consumer subsequently down-loads information stored in the reader via a suitable interface to a personal computer which accesses information identified by a address included in or comprising the bar code information. The site contains additional information such as price information concerning the advertised product and the consumer may be able to pay for and order the product directly via the site. As a result the consumer has a simple reminder of the product, is able to obtain additional information concerning the product with minimum difficulty and can obtain the product itself with maximum ease.

Personal computer with broadcast receiver on expansion board controlled by computer microprocessor

Abstract: A broadcast receiver (22) for receiving television broadcast signals carrying encoded data e.g. teletext information, includes a tuner (30), a demodulator (32) and a data extractor (36) for decoding the data. The receiver is coupled to a computer through a bus (38) and an interface controller (40). The tuner (30), the demodulator (32) and the data extractor (36) are each individually controllable by the interface controller (40) in response to instructions from the computer to vary any of the tuning, the demodulation parameters, or the data extraction parameters. A data processor (54) processes the extracted data, and can also control the tuner (30), the demodulator (32) and the data extractor (36).

Thin superconductors in a perpendicular magnetic ac field: General formulation and strip geometry.

Abstract: The sheet current, electric field, and penetrating magnetic field in response to an applied perpendicular ac magnetic field are calculated for a thin type-II superconducting strip characterized completely by its sheet resistivity, which may be either nonlinear and frequency independent or linear, complex, and frequency dependent. The general formulation is given for the linear or nonlinear response of a strip and a circular disk in perpendicular time-varying magnetic field. An elegant and rapid numerical method is presented which solves this, in general, nonlinear one-dimensional integrodifferential equation with high precision on a personal computer and which accounts for the facts that the integral kernel has a logarithmic singularity and the sheet current for nearly ideal shielding (occurring at short times or high frequencies or for strong pinning of flux lines) has a one-over-square-root singularity near the specimen edges. As examples the linear Ohmic response of the strip to a sudden change of the applied field and to an ac field are given; Ohmic response is realized during flux flow or thermally activated flux flow. The complex magnetic susceptibility and the ac losses of the Ohmic strip are computed and approximated by simple expressions. This work completes the calculation of dissipation peaks in vibrating superconductors caused by various diffusion modes of the flux lines.

Self identifying remote control device having a television receiver for use in a computer

Abstract: An entertainment system has a personal computer as the heart of the system with a large screen VGA quality monitor as the display of choice. The system has digital satellite broadcast reception, decompression and display capability with multiple radio frequency remote control devices which transmit self identifying signals and have power adjustment capabilities. These capabilities are used to provide context sensitive groups of keys which may be defined to affect only selected applications running in a windowing environment. In addition, the remote control devices combine television and VCR controls with standard personal computer keyboard controls. A keyboard remote also integrates a touchpad which is food contamination resistant and may also be used for user verification. Included in the system is the ability to recognize verbal communications in video signals and maintain a database of such text which is searchable to help identify desired programming in real time.

System and method for ordering and delivering media content

Abstract: An Automatic Purchase System (APS) provides a radio broadcast listener with the ability to conveniently purchase media content such as music or speech while listening to the radio. The user can respond to items in the radio broadcast such as advertisements, fund raising drives such as those conducted by public radio, or interactive listener polls during the broadcast. Data such as song title and artist, author or publisher and the IP address for the location where the digital version of the content is stored, can be transmitted using the RBDS/RDS data stream. A reference number representing song title and artist, author or publisher and the IP address for the location where the digital version of the content is stored can also be employed for ease of implementation. This reference number can reside in a lookup table to be accessed by the APS server software on a Data Server located at the broadcast site, a remote site or both for purposes of redundancy. Transmission of purchase requests from a Technology Enabled Radio (TER) is provided via wireless transmission, or by accessing the Internet using a personal computer or through a cellular or wireless phone.