IMAGE COMPRESSION:

Introduction:
The image taken by the normal digital camera is 100megabites. This size is very big in case if you want to use these images in the website or even attaching through the email. By introducing the knowledge of image compression these things is very possible and easy.

By considering the knowledge given by Mr. Justine Ngimba and Zuwena Mgova on Monday 20th/April/2009 through their class presentation, at least most of us now know we have knowledge of image compression. Their presentation was very good and attractive since they were showing on how to compress the larger images to smaller images of different sizes.

The image compression is the process of reducing the size of the data files from large files to smaller files without losing the information. This image compression is very important in since it makes quick transferring of images through the network, also serves the space in the storage devices e.g. hard disk and movable storage devices and also it serves time in the process of image downloading and uploading.

There are different types of image formats depends on the intended use of the image. These image formats includes;

TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) GIF (Graphical Interchange Format) PNG (Portable network graphics) BMP (Bitmap). As IT professionals we have to be familiar with all these types of images so that we can work with any kind of images without facing any difficulties. Something we have to bear in mind is that image compression can only be done in the original image and not the compressed one and also do not save to the new format if you think you need to go on compressing image.

Image compression is very important but still there are some disturbances caused by this image compression. For example reducing the reliability of the image records as a result of losing some useful data, reduction of the information i.e. one can’t understand some of the contents. Also image compression result in destruction of image properties and during processing it takes a long time (time consuming).


Conclusion:By using image compression we can easily upload and download image files. Also it is possible to attach many images in the emails without facing any difficulties during uploading and downloading.

DATA MINING

AIntroduction: very interesting topic was introduced as the presentation work by Mr. Remmy Kaaro together with Mr. Joshua Shendu. The topic was all about knowledge discovery. They explained a lot about how to extract hidden information from different resources. They actually gave a good presentation which was understandable to us.

By definition, data mining is the process of extracting and analyzing large amounts of information in order to find important data from different hidden sources as well as summarizing them into simple information that can be identified easily.

They explained several forms of data mining; Relation data mining, text mining, Audio mining, image data mining, web data mining and video data mining. All these were showing on how to extract the data from many different sources.

There are specifically three stages of data mining which are;Exploration:This stage usually starts with data preparation which involves cleaning data and data transformation.Model building and validation:This stage involves considering various models and choosing the best one based on their predictive performance.Deployment:This is the last stage which organizes and presents the knowledge gained in a way that the customer can use it, usually involves the use of the model selected as best in the previous stage and applying it to new data in order to generate predictions or estimates of the expected outcomes.

There are several advantages of this data mining; here are some of themIn banking: The bank analyzes the information and it can advertise certain products to one group while advertising different products to another group.Marking, researchers and reinforcement.

Regarding of the advantages of data mining still there are some disadvantages which is very bad incase the technology used wrongly. We have:Security issues; It needs the high quality security any leakage of information can cause problems.Misuse of information; if happens the information to leak, then it can be used sometimes in criminal matters and also use the information to harm other people because of their wealth records. Privacy issues; there are some issues which people do not want them to be known as public issues so the information should be kept hidden always.

Conclusion:Data mining is just a better solution and sometimes can act as a cure for certain types of problems in the daily life of human being.