A compression technique that does not decompress digital data back to 100% of the original. Lossy methods can provide high degrees of compression and result in smaller compressed files, but some ...

One student’s desire to get out of a final exam led to the ubiquitous algorithm that shrinks data without sacrificing information. With more than 9 billion gigabytes of information traveling the ...

Most people have downloaded large files, such as music or video, from the Internet. Because of the large size of these files, downloading them can take hours. To solve this problem, and make better ...

The act of "zipping" a computer file or directory into a smaller format has become routine, even though the practice may seem like some dark art of wizardry. Compressing a stack of blankets for ...

Lossless or lossy: If you have big data, know what type of compression to use Your email has been sent Illustration: Lisa Hornung/iStockPhoto Must-read big data coverage What Powers Your Databases?

A process is used when music is compressed into MP3 to discard all the sounds a machine thinks the human ear can't audibly perceive, thus vastly reducing the amount of storage needed to hold entire ...

I regularly get questions about lossless audio files, or files compressed in a lossless format, for my Ask the iTunes Guy column. These questions come from people who seek to listen to the best ...

Using compression software such as WinZip or WinRAR shrinks files so they take up less space. This makes zip and rar files ideal for sharing over email or by USB drive. However, some types of files, ...

When it comes to sharing a file (audio, video, image, or PDF), there is always a size limitation. For example, Gmail only lets you upload files of a maximum of 20MB. If there is anything more, you ...