United Devices Global MetaProcessor service to help preserve printed historyAustin 28 March 2001 United Device, a distributed computing company, and iArchives, entered into a partnership in which iArchives will use United Devices Global MetaProcessor service to help preserve printed history. The Global MetaProcessor service works by securely sending a small portion of a project to each of the thousands of individual devices in the United Devices Member Community. This community is made up of thousands of individuals and organizations that have volunteered their PCs' computing power to generate the needed massive power for distributed computing projects.
"We can turn an archived document, whether it's microfilm or paper, into a piece
of digitized media that is conveniently accessible to anyone online," said Russ
Wilding, president of iArchives. "The challenge we face is getting access to the
tremendous amounts of computing power we will need to digitize all the material.
United Devices came to the rescue with a very cost-effective way to perform the
compute-intensive tasks we have lined up. Additionally, anyone with a computer
can get involved and help save a piece of history."
"We think this is a great way for individual computer users to volunteer their
PCs' idle resources to a worthwhile cause," said Chris Sherman, senior director
of consumer marketing. "The idea of helping preserve printed history for future
generations is a very appealing proposition. This continues our tradition of
supporting projects that provide a benefit to society."
iArchives has developed a proprietary process that scans, stores and indexes
images of original documents, from paper or microfilm, to be searched and
retrieved through the Internet and/or intranets. This process provides a rapid,
efficient and affordable means of making vast amounts of previously inaccessible
information available online in a database format that can be indexed and
searched. The company's present focus is to apply this process to the newspaper
market and, in collaboration with newspaper owners and distributors, to make
images of original newspapers available online for search and retrieval.
Terms of the deal include access to United Devices Global MetaProcessor service
for the purpose of digitizing newspaper media, thus preserving the archives of
major US newspapers. iArchives is expected to deploy their application in the
third quarter of 2001.
Ad Emmen |
 |