Interactive Multimedia Applications

The objective of this work is to recognize all the frontal faces of a character in the closed world of a movie or situation comedy, given a small number of query faces. This is challenging because faces in a feature-length film are relatively uncontrolled with a wide variability of scale, pose, illumination, and expressions, and also may be partially occluded. We develop a recognition method based on a cascade of processing steps that normalize for the effects of the changing imaging environment. In particular there are three areas of novelty: (i) we suppress the background surrounding the face, enabling the maximum area of the face to be retained for recognition rather than a subset; (ii) we include a pose refinement step to optimize the registration between the test image and face exemplar; and (iii) we use robust distance to a sub-space to allow for partial occlusion and expression change. The method is applied and evaluated on several feature length films. It is demonstrated that high recall rates (over 92%) can be achieved whilst maintaining good precision (over 93%).

Progress in image sensors and computation power has fueled studies to improve acquisition, processing, and analysis of 3D streams along with 3D scenes/objects reconstruction. The role of motion compensation/ motion estimation (MCME) in 3D TV from end-to-end user is investigated in this chapter. Motion vectors (MVs) are closely related to the concept of disparities, and they can help improving dynamic scene acquisition, content creation, 2D to 3D conversion, compression coding, decompression/decoding, scene rendering, error concealment, virtual/augmented reality handling, intelligent content retrieval, and displaying. Although there are different 3D shape extraction methods, this chapter focuses mostly on shape-from-motion (SfM) techniques due to their relevance to 3D TV. SfM extraction can restore 3D shape information from a single camera data.

This article discusses a particular project that attempted to make art-historical research evocative as well as analytical by employing rich, interactive multi-media. This reliance on evocative material extended techniques practiced by television drama-documentaries and considered their legitimacy and potential within academic art history.

Interactive product presentation techniques have recently gained importance in online marketing of house products. Real‐time simulation offers a high level interactive presentation with more powerful features to present product functions and variations. This article presents a novel computational approach for engaging and supporting consumers in making informed choices about purchasing house products. It involved the development and testing of an online interactive real‐time simulation for house product marketing (the Virtual House Showroom‐VHS). This model also included optional humanoid avatars, representing a virtual buyer–seller experience. The research assessed the effectiveness of the VHS on consumers’ cognitive and affective responses. In particular, it examined whether consumers’ responses to real‐time simulation with a humanoid avatar are significantly different from their responses to the model without the avatar. Participants (n = 110) were organized into two groups. Group 1 (n = 56) evaluated VHS without the humanoid avatar and group 2 (n = 54) appraised the model with the avatar. The results confirmed that interactive online real‐time simulation technologies without the avatar have significant effects on consumers’ cognitive learning, affect, and behavior. However, it was found that the humanoid avatar had no significant effect on respondents’ decision‐making. Further research was suggested to improve the usability of real‐time simulation in the marketing of house products.

Figure 1. Creepy Tracker is an open-source toolkit that provides spatial information about people and interactive surfaces. To do this, it resorts to multiple depth sensing cameras (A, B). It helps the design of systems that handle, for instance, (C) interactive tabletops, (D) vertical surfaces, (E) floor projections and even capture avatars for (F) telepresence or (G) virtual reality. ABSTRACT Context-aware pervasive applications can improve user experiences by tracking people in their surroundings. Such systems use multiple sensors to gather information regarding people and devices. However, when developing novel user experiences , researchers are left to building foundation code to support multiple network-connected sensors, a major hurdle to rapidly developing and testing new ideas. We introduce Creepy Tracker, an open-source toolkit to ease prototyping with multiple commodity depth cameras. It automatically selects the best sensor to follow each person, handling occlusions and maximizing interaction space, while providing full-body tracking in scalable and extensible manners. It also keeps position and orientation of stationary interactive surfaces while offering continuously updated point-cloud user representations combining both depth and color data. Our performance evaluation shows that, although slightly less precise than marker-based optical systems, Creepy Tracker provides reliable multi-joint tracking without any wearable markers or special devices. Furthermore, implemented representative scenarios show that Creepy Tracker is well suited for deploying spatial and context-aware interactive experiences.

This study has important implications for microworlds such as Logo, HyperGami, and Newton's World, which use interaction to learn spatial mental models for science, math, geometry, etc. This study tested the hypothesis that interactively rotating (dragging) virtual shapes primes mental rotation. The independent variable was observation vs. interaction: a) watching an animation of a shape rotating, versus b) manually rotating a shape on the computer. The dependent variable was mental rotation of the same shape. Two age groups, 9-year-olds and college undergraduates participated. For 9-year-olds, the interactive group mentally rotated significantly more accurately and faster than the observational. Therefore, interaction primed mental rotation. For the college undergraduates, the interactive group mentally rotated significantly more accurately, but significantly slower than the observational group. This suggests that the interaction disrupted a routine process, causing undergraduates to switch strategies. Results from both age groups reinforce the educational value of more naturalistic interaction with virtual shapes, i.e., dragging is better than clicking. 93 Ó 2005, Baywood Publishing Co., Inc.

This study aimed to determine the usability of a 3D touch screen kiosk system for way-finding at a shopping mall in Ankara, Turkey. The usability testing was conducted in collaboration with 15 authentic users and the usability problems were determined by giving authentic tasks to them. The data were collected using a usability testing form. The participants were given six authentic tasks and asked to complete them using the kiosk. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistical methods, content analysis, and the Mann-Whitney U Test. The tasks were completed with a high rate of success. There was no significant difference between the task durations of male and female participants. The main findings of the study show that prior experience using the kiosk and giving guidance during usage reduces the duration of the tasks, that there are certain problems with the touch screen and its 3D properties, participants' transfer of the types of interaction with which they are familiar to the kiosk experience leads them to make mistakes, and there are some usability problems related to the interface and content design. The results of this study and its suggestions about information and interface design can be used to design more usable kiosks.

This article describes a knowledge-based method for generating multimedia descriptions that summarize the behavior of dynamic systems. We designed this method for users who monitor the behavior of a dynamic system with the help of sensor networks and make decisions according to prefixed management goals. Our method generates presentations using different modes such as text in natural language, 2D graphics and 3D animations. The method uses a qualitative representation of the dynamic system based on hierarchies of components and causal influences. The method includes an abstraction generator that uses the system representation to find and aggregate relevant data at an appropriate level of abstraction. In addition, the method includes a hierarchical planner to generate a presentation using a model with discourse patterns. Our method provides an efficient and flexible solution to generate concise and adapted multimedia presentations that summarize thousands of time series. It is general to be adapted to different dynamic systems with acceptable knowledge acquisition effort by reusing and adapting intuitive representations. We validated our method and evaluated its practical utility by developing several models for an application that worked in continuous real time operation for more than 1 year, summarizing sensor data of a national hydrologic information system in Spain.

This paper explores requirements that authoring tools and development platforms should satisfy for the development of cultural applications tailored for deployment on Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and mobile phones. To effectively determine such requirements the paper reviews the use of mobile technologies in the context of cultural organizations and tourism and examines three 'real world' case studies that focus on the use of PDAs and mobile phones for providing cultural and tourist information, keeping the visitors' interest and attention, as well as promoting various cultural organizations and tourist facilities. This approach allows the extraction of a set of PDA and mobile phone application requirements, the implementation of which is based on the apparatus offered by authoring tools and development platforms. The paper reviews and evaluates the design and development facilities provided by state-of-the-art multimedia application development tools for PDAs and mobile phones: Macromedia Flash Lite, Navipocket, Java 2 Micro Edition and Microsoft .Net platform for the Mobile Web. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations related to the way authoring tools and development platforms should be exploited in order to gratify application and designer needs for developing cultural and tourist applications.

As a problem of high practical appeal but many outstanding challenges, computer-based face recognition remains a topic of extensive research attention. In this paper we are specifically interested in the task of identifying a person using multiple images both in training and as a query. Thus, a novel method is proposed which advances the state-of-the-art in set-based face recognition. The introduced approach is based on a previously described invariant in the form of generic shape-illumination effects. The contributions include (i) an analysis of the computational demands of the original method and a demonstration of its practical limitations, (ii) a novel representation of personal appearance in the form of linked mixture models in image and pose-signature spaces, and (iii) an efficient (in terms of storage needs and matching time) manifold re-illumination algorithm based on the aforementioned representation. An evaluation and comparison of the proposed method with the original generic shape-illumination algorithm shows that comparably high recognition rates are achieved on a large data set (1.5% error on 700 face sets containing 100 individuals and extreme illumination variation) with a dramatic improvement in matching speed (over 700 times for sets containing 1600 faces) and storage requirements (independent of the number of training images). Theoretical and empirical findings of the present work are used to identify and discuss avenues for future research.

The understanding of characteristics of gestures, such as ergonomic, cognitive and social aspects could potentially contribute to an interface design mediated by hand gestures. In this research, a questionnaire model is implemented to suggest some guidelines about the use and gestures of MYO armband in a map application. The user-feedback and observations found during our testing have led us to offer some practical insights to designers and developers on how the prototype of gesture applications on MYO can be extended.

This study was designed to examine the effect of the redundancy principle in a multimedia presentation constructed for foreign language vocabulary learning on undergraduate students' retention. During the experiment, students received a multimedia presentation on Turkish vocabulary and answered questions on retention test. Some students received animation, concurrent narration and concurrent text (ANT group); other students received only animation and concurrent narration (AN group). According to the redundancy principle, adding redundant on-screen text to a multimedia explanation where it is already narrated, results in poorer learning (Kalyuga, Chandler & Sweller, 1999; Mayer, Heiser & Lonn, 2001). That is, when making a multimedia presentation with a narration and animation, the designers should not add on-screen text that duplicates words that are already spoken in the narration although students have more exposure to the multimedia presentation when it is delivered in three ways (animation, narration and text). The reason for removing on-screen text from the multimedia presentation is because of the cognitive theory of multimedia learning that is based on three assumptions: dual-channel (Clark & Paivio, 1991), limited capacity (Baddeley, 1992) and generative learning assumption (Mayer, 1996) or active processing. On the other hand, the reason for adding on-screen text is based on the information delivery hypothesis, which states that students learn more when the same information is delivered by means of more paths rather than fewer paths (Mayer et al, 2001). That is, " adding on-screen text to a narrated animation will result in better performance on tests of learning that focus on remembering verbal explanation (ie, retention test) " (Mayer et al, 2001, p. 190).Therefore, the underlying hypothesis of this study is that when the students are exposed to the material in multiple ways through ANT, the learning and the retention will have better results in foreign language learning. Early research on vocabulary learning with text and pictures has consistently found that when the written vocabulary words are paired with pictures, there is a better retention of vocabulary words (Paivio, Clark & Lambert, 1988; Plass & Jones, 2005). Besides, presenting both on-screen text and narration at the same time is better than presenting just on-screen text or narration because students might choose the one that best fits their learning style (Mayer et al, 2001). This small study is expected to contribute to the cognitive theory of multimedia learning literature in three ways. First, the study was realized in ecologically more valid environment than Mayer's experiments, because the experiment was done through authentic classroom experience. Unlike the experiments done in Mayer's cognitive laboratory, this study was done within regular classroom settings. Classroom research is an important way to establish external validity of findings when using multimedia. Second, the study was done in a different content area, foreign language learning. It was suggested by Plass and Jones (2005, p. 483) that an area for future research is " the integration of second-language acquisition theory and cognitive theories of multimedia learning. " Third, the study was conducted with non-Turkish speaking students, which is also another contribution to the literature on multimedia learning. Besides, students'

The figure of the VJ or visual jockey is key for understanding the appearance and current
uses of what we shall call the “environment-image”, a kind of image which is produced for
an audience in situ, whose emotional reaction has a retroactive effect on the actual production
of the image flow. It is important to discuss a function related to this type of image, that of
influencing a social environment in order to establish a shared rhythm. Furthermore, this
coordinated rhythm influences the perception of each person in respect to the social group
which circumstantially forms the audience. Citing arguments such as those of the historian
William H. McNeill, the anthropologist Michael James Winkelman or the architect and theorist
Iñaki Ábalos, but also drawing on the observations of audiovisual media creators like Jonas
Mekas, we will see how a considerable alliance of stimuli and conditions in the environment
has an effect on the participants’ states of consciousness, resulting in the appearance of this
idea of the “us” as a link of identity. In short, the research places the practice of VJing as part
of the history of art and the contemporary modes of sociability, taking as principal evidence
the aesthetic and political dimensions of image. In this way, we gain access to a conception of
image by placing attention on the bonds established with the resonant rhythms produced by the DJ and, in addition, with an entire system of environmental and relational stimuli. What’s
more, this leads us to elaborate on the project of Gilles Deleuze, adding to the two types of
image he proposes, the “movement-image” and the “time-image”, a different typology, with
functions and effects that are both also radically distinct.

Waste disposal is one of the major contemporary topics which is being discussed globally. The main reason for this issue to have such prominence is due to the fact that people are not aware how far-reaching this topic has become. In this paper we propose ScrapWrap, an interactive game for garbage disposal where the main objective is to make people aware how imperative it is to dispose garbage and assist people to have a change of attitude towards this complication. In Scrapwrap, people will be awarded considering several facts such as for notifying littered areas, for cleaning the area, for verifying the cleaned area, and for arranging cleaning campaigns. A chat-based community is created within ScrapWrap so that players could interact with each other, and this strategy is useful when arranging campaigns or scavenger hunt activities to clean the waste. An assistive chat bot is introduced to solve the problems a player might have, and to remind the event details and guide the player throughout the game flawlessly. The long-term goal of introducing Scrapwrap is to let people be aware of the importance of garbage disposal in an interactive manner and to improve the cleanliness of the surroundings.

— An automatic verification of person's identity from its voice is a part of modern telecommunication services. In order to execute a verification task, a speech signal has to be transmitted to a remote server. So, a performance of the verification system can be influenced by various distortions that can occur when transmitting a speech signal through a communication channel. This paper studies an effect of the state of art wideband (WB) speech codecs on a performance of automatic speaker verification in the context of a channel/codec mismatch between enrollment and test utterances. The speaker verification system is developed on GMM-UBM method. The results show that EVS codec provides the best performance over all the investigated scenarios in this study. Moreover, deploying G.729.1 codec in a training process of the verification system provides the best equal error rate in the fully-codec mismatched scenario. Anyhow, differences between the equal error rates reported for all of the codecs involved in this scenario are mostly nonsignificant.

John Grierson’s classic definition of documentary as the “creative treatment of actuality” emphasizes both the genre’s indexical link to reality and the maker’s perspective on this reality. In recent times, a substantial number of so-called “interactive” documentaries has seen the light of day. In this paper, one dimension of such online documentaries, namely the freedom of users to access content via different paths of navigation as well as to skip material, is discussed from the perspective that a documentary, in a necessarily subjective way, attempts to convince the viewer of something. Interactivity limits the maker’s opportunities to do so.

Over the last decade or so, significant research has
focused on defining Quality of Experience (QoE) of Multimedia Systems and identifying the key factors that collectively determine it. Some consensus thus exists as to the role of System Factors, Human Factors and Context Factors. In this paper, the notion of context is broadened to include information gleaned from simultaneous out-of-band channels, such as social network trend analytics, that can be used if interpreted in a timely manner, to help further optimise QoE. A case study involving simulation of HTTP adaptive streaming (HAS) and load balancing in a content distribution network (CDN) in a flash crowd scenario is presented with encouraging results.

We present ArtVis, an application combining advanced visualisation techniques and tangible interaction to explore a large digital collection of almost 28000 European artworks managed by the Web Gallery of Art. In order to get new insights by exploring, analysing and browsing the artworks, our graphical ArtVis user interface offers three complementary but synchronised visualisation components. We further developed a tangible ArtVis user interface for the playful exploration and seamless integration of the digital artwork collection with physical artefacts. A formative evaluation of the ArtVis prototype revealed that users are able to answer relatively difficult questions as well as get some new insights based on the vast amount of data. A second user evaluation of the tangible ArtVis interface has shown that this sort of physical interaction attracts users and stimulates them to further explore the digital artwork collection.

This paper presents an interactive thumbnail-based video browser for mobile devices such as smartphones featuring a touch screen. Developed as part of on-going research and supported by user studies, it introduces HiStory, a hierarchical storyboard design offering an interface metaphor that is familiar and intuitive yet supports fast and effective completion of Known-Item-Search tasks by rapidly providing an overview of a video's content with varying degrees of granularity.

An important competence of human data analysts is to interpret and explain the meaning of the results of data analysis to end-users. However, existing automatic solutions for intelligent data analysis provide limited help to interpret and communicate information to non-expert users. In this paper we present a general approach to generating explanatory descriptions about the meaning of quantitative sensor data. We propose a type of web application: a virtual newspaper with automatically generated news stories that describe the meaning of sensor data. This solution integrates a variety of techniques from intelligent data analysis into a web-based multimedia presentation system. We validated our approach in a real world problem and demónstrate its generality using data sets from several domains. Our experience shows that this solution can facilítate the use of sensor data by general users and, therefore, can increase the utility of sensor network infrastructures.

In this paper we discuss how the band 000000Swan uses machine learning to parse complex sensor data and create intricate artistic systems for live performance. Using the Wekinator software for interactive machine learning, we have created discrete and continuous models for controlling audio and visual environments using human gestures sensed by a commercially-available sensor bow and the Microsoft Kinect. In particular, we have employed machine learning to quickly and easily prototype complex relationships between performer gesture and performative outcome.

Streaming of an arbitrary region of interest (RoI) from a high resolution video is essential to supporting zooming and panning within a video stream. This paper explores two methods for RoI-based streaming, referring to them as tiled streaming and monolithic streaming. Tiled streaming partitions video frames into grid of tiles and encodes each tile as an independently decodable stream. Monolithic streaming applies to video encoded using off-the-shelf encoder, and relies on a pre-computed dependency information to send the necessary bits for the RoI. We evaluated these two methods in terms of bandwidth efficiency, storage requirement, and computational costs under different video encoding parameters. Experimental results show that bandwidth efficiency of tiled streams for RoI-based streaming reduces when tile size increases, despite improvement in compression efficiency. In the case of monolithic streams, use of a larger motion vector range coupled with careful run-time optimization can still improve the bandwidth efficiency, despite an increase in motion vector dependency.

In the past decade, museums have experienced a revolution with the arrival of new technologies, capable of enhancing their visitors’ experiences by introducing multimedia content. Amid these new technologies, website and computer-based interactives in the gallery have augmented exhibitions to provide additional educational material. However, the web is mainly suitable for access to information before, after or often even instead of visiting an exhibition or museum. A kiosk provides a physically fixed facility that can be used during a visit to an exhibition, but only for part of it generally. In contrast, a multimedia tour delivered through a handheld device allows the visitor to gain information at any point during the visit and in any order, without interfering with the aesthetics of the gallery. This means it has some unique properties that could be beneficial, if used suitably.

http://www.readinglists.manchester.ac.uk/items/19385D8F-E893-267A-33DD-20742D8A4F8B.html

The development of an interactive Internet-based TV system designed to cover the broadcasting needs for new media artwork introduces various complexities accross the organisation, production and interaction forefronts. Our work presents and discusses real-life strategies and solutions employed during the development of iMediaTV, an open-source academic broadcasting system that permits various presentation modes to be employed, extending the presentation needs for artistic and non-uniform content. We demonstrate how an open-source Internet-based production/broadcasting system may be customised to include advanced content enhancing features, enabling interactive new media arts presentation over the Web.

Substantial progress has been achieved in voice-based biometrics in recent times but a variety of challenges still remain for speech research community. One such obstacle is reliable speaker authentication from speech signals degraded by lossy compression. Compression is commonplace in modern telecommunications, such as mobile telephony, VoIP services, teleconference, voice messaging or gaming. In this study, the authors investigate the effect of lossy speech compression on text-independent speaker verification. Voice biometrics performance is evaluated on clean speech signals distorted by the state-of-the-art narrowband (NB) as well as wideband (WB) speech codecs. The tests are performed in both channel-matched and channel-mismatched scenarios. The test results show that coded WB speech improves voice authentication precision by 1–3% of equal error rate over coded NB speech, even at the lowest investigated bitrates. It is also shown that the enhanced voice services codec does not provide better results than the other codecs involved in this study.

In interactive multimedia environments, different digital elements (i. e. video, audio, visuals, text, animations, graphics and glossary) can be combined and delivered on the same digital computer screen (TDM 1997: 151, CCED 1987: 81, Stenton 1998: 11, Mangiafico 1996. This also enables effectively provision and presentation of feedback in pedagogically more efficient ways, which meets not only the requirement of different teaching and learning theories, but also the needs of language learners who vary in their learning-style preferences : 156, Peter 1994. This study aims to bring out the pedagogical and design principles that might help us to more effectively design and customise feedback in interactive multimedia language learning environments. While so doing, some examples of thought out and customized computerised feedback from an interactive multimedia language learning environment, which were designed and created by the author of this study and were also used for language learning purposes, will be shown.

Since the introduction of information and communication technologies, many consider the rise of social software a cultural phenomenon. This paper focuses on exploratory learning, from the student perspective. University level Audiovisual Arts students are presented with basic programming knowledge in the classroom and subsequently asked to develop a customised interactive multimedia game, acquiring knowledge and resources from Internet sources. Observation of this process has revealed a plethora of interesting points, including a wide variety of approaches used in task-completion, collaboration techniques and learning difficulties. Ultimately, oral presentation and written examination were used to reveal the depth and breadth of knowledge gained, for both knowledge covered by the courses syllabus, and experience gained through the research process. As social software technologies provide true and direct communication, interaction and research capabilities, the examination of creativity aspects in one of the most demanding application areas, may aid the identification of working and learning patterns which subsequently can be employed for the development of adaptive and user-customisable e-Education pedagogies and systems.

A escassez de estudos sistemáticos sobre a utilização pedagógica de software educativo e a quase ausência de padrões de qualidade pedagógica, foram algumas das constatações abordadas na reflexão que tivemos oportunidade de fazer no primeiro seminário SACAUSEF
e que, em nossa opinião, continuam a justificar a necessidade de trabalho cuidado e em profundidade no domínio da avaliação da qualidade deste tipo de materiais de apoio aoensino e à aprendizagem (Costa, 2005). Como nessa altura também defendemos, é necessário, por outro lado, que os critérios de avaliação usados acompanhem a evolução tecnológica que se tem verificado nos últimos tempos e nos permitam, igualmente, uma avaliação adequada da qualidade dos diferentes tipos de conteúdos educativos cada vez em maior número disponíveis na Internet. No entanto, como estes conteúdos podem assumir propósitos e configurações muitodiversas, será prudente que qualquer sistema de avaliação comece por definir o que se entende por “conteúdos educativos” e, só a partir daí, estabeleça os critérios de qualidade mais pertinentes e relevantes. Embora a diferenciação resultante da aplicação do que se entende por “conteúdo educativo” não seja o objectivo central deste texto, far-lhe-emos referência, uma vez que está na baseda ideia nuclear que aqui nos propomos defender, isto é, a aprendizagem como principal critério de avaliação dos conteúdos passíveis de utilização para fins educativos.

A didactic project based on computer technology and advanced computer graphics combined with an active classroom experience is presented. The final purpose is the creation and the test of a new authoring tool for building 3d interactive environments inside a narrative context.

The paper considers an influence of packet loss on a remote speaker verification in Voice over IP (VoIP) environment. A lossy speech coding and packet loss represent a significant part of speech degradation in the VoIP environment. As an extent of packet loss impact is tightly related to a type of speech coder used to transmit speech data, different transmission conditions along with different speech codecs are investigated here. The speaker verification system used in this experimental study is based on a probabilistic GMM-UBM approach. In this paper, a speaker verification accuracy is evaluated against a level of packet loss in narrowband and wideband communication channel.

The aim of this study is the creation of a multimedia totem with the use of video mapping techniques, representing a particular form of augmented reality, in order to provide new means - different from the existing ones- for museum enjoyment. The object of the totem was the creation of a documentary about the full scale reproduction of block NXLVI of the north frieze of the Parthenon. With the words “augmented reality” we mean the addition of more information than what the observer would normally perceive, mediated by the use of a computer. Thus the human sensory perception is enhanced by information generally manipulated and electronically channeled that would otherwise not be perceived by the five senses. Three main aspects define the multimedia totem: indoor use of augmented reality, it’s use for the enhancement of cultural heritage, and the digital anastylosis that makes it possible to reconstruct the missing part directly on the element or on a copy of it. These options provide the opportunity to engage different age groups with the expressive potential of augmented reality also in terms of performance, with the possible transformation of any surface into a dynamic display.

Resumo A inclusão da fonte visual (fotografia e vídeo) no jornalismo digital está ganhando importância na área da multimídia. Os recursos principais da imprensa digital são a multimídia, o hipertexto e a interatividade. A multimídia está num processo inicial de evolução. A missão desta pesquisa é observar empiricamente o uso dos recursos visuais pela imprensa digital pure player. Estes meios de comunicação tentam aproveitar as novas possibilidades multimídia na elaboração e apresentação dos conteúdos. Analisámos empiricamente a inclusão de vídeo e de fotografia na estrutura multimídia (texto, fotografia, vídeo, áudio, infografismo e programas de animação) em quatro jornais digitais (Libertad Digital e El Plural, em espanhol, e Vilaweb e e-Notícies, em catalão) analisados por gêneros jornalísticos.

Existing anomaly detection methods in video surveillance
exhibit lack of congruence between rare events detected
by algorithms and what is considered anomalous by users.
This paper introduces a novel browsing model to address this
issue, allowing users to interactively examine rare events in an
intuitive manner. Introducing a novel way to compute rare motion
patterns, we estimate latent factors of foreground motion patterns
through Bayesian Nonparametric Factor analysis. Each factor
corresponds to a typical motion pattern. A rarity score for each
factor is computed, and ordered in decreasing order of rarity,
permitting users to browse events using any proportion of rare
factors. Rare events correspond to frames that contain the rare
factors chosen. We present the user with an interface to inspect
events that incorporate these rarest factors in a spatial-temporal
manner. We demonstrate the system on a public video data set,
showing key aspects of the browsing paradigm.

In this work a new Bangla speech corpus along with proper transcriptions has been developed; also
various acoustic feature extraction methods have been investigated using Long Short-Term Memory
(LSTM) neural network to find their effective integration into a state-of-the-art Bangla speech recognition
system. The acoustic features are usually a sequence of representative vectors that are extracted from
speech signals and the classes are either words or sub word units such as phonemes. The most commonly
used feature extraction method, known as linear predictive coding (LPC), has been used first in this work.
Then the other two popular methods, namely, the Mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) and
perceptual linear prediction (PLP) have also been applied. These methods are based on the models of the
human auditory system. A detailed review of the implementation of these methods have been described
first. Then the steps of the implementation have been elaborated for the development of an automatic
speech recognition system (ASR) for Bangla speech.

The better quality pdf is downloadible from here: "http://www.leoalmanac.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/LEAVol19No3-Mailman.pdf
Through recent artistic practices and technology of interactive systems for music, composition and improvisation have more and more blended and interconnected with each other – a sui generis situation now called comprovisation. The concept of comprovisation applies equally well to the spontaneous generation and manipulation of computer graphics, especially as such graphics are systematically coordinated audio-visually, while being subject to spontaneous manipulation by a performer.
This is explained in terms of the Fluxations and FluxNoisations Human Body Interfaces, interactive dance systems that generate music and graphics spontaneously in response to hand and body movement. They enable spontaneous expressive shaping of coherent complexity and variety. Thus a multi-layered multimodal experience arises. The aesthetic experience of this multimedia spectacle relates to experiences of various prior music and visual art of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, as well as to hypothetical physical realities. Thus a kind of cybernetic phenomenology of art is pursued and enacted through an embodied cybersynthesis of art with simulated alternate reality. Call it a pragmatic speculative realism, an adventurous technoetic ‘what if.’ As compared to more traditional forms of improvisation, the opportunities for risk-taking and aesthetic exploration rise to a new level of uncertainty, as the reactions of the improviser simultaneously draw from and target both visual and aural modalities, such that the intentions toward each fuse together."

"The representation of characters’ intentions in a
story is of great importance for media scholars and analysts,
and it is susceptible of applicative scenarios within the media
industry. In this paper, we introduce an interactive system for
the visualization of a story analysis based on a plan-based
representation of the characters’ intentions. The system relies on
an ontology of drama and builds upon the unrestricted annotation
provided by narrative enthusiasts and media students. The system
is able to build the mapping between a library of plans and the
users’ annotation, and to visualize the contributions of the several
characters’ intentions to the whole plot. The system was tested
on the analysis of a short movie."

This paper presents a practice research project based at The Curzon Community Cinema, Clevedon, UK. Working closely with the cinema to develop a locative or context-aware heritage application for the iPhone, the project aims to enhance the Curzon’s new Heritage Lottery Funded exhibition, enabling visitors to gain further insight into the building, projection equipment and the history of cinema itself. The paper discusses the iterative design process, evaluates the first iteration and outlines plans for the next iteration, when the project will attempt to move seamlessly from the exterior of the building to inside the cinema.

This development aims to create a valid product maze game on Interactive WhiteBoard (IWB) for fine motor learning. Game maze is a game consisting of a path or a collection of roads that branch in order to achieve the goal by finding the right path. IWB use for projection game and place which user can interactive with it. IWB cheaper design by Johnny Chung Lee used for this development. There are ten steps that must be carried out referring to the model of the Borg and Gall, but based on certain considerations are not entirely done. The stages are research and information collecting, planning, preliminary form of product development, preliminary field test, and main product revision. The maze game on IWB has been validated by media experts and fine motor learning experts, with valid results. Nevertheless from the field trials revealed that the ease and smooth use of the tool into a separate note. This is due to infrared light cannot be caught by the sensor because it is blocked by students working on the board so that the interaction between games with IWB is disrupted and there is one child who have difficulty using an infrared pen.

The main problem of this study is whether by using interactive media can improve students’ early reading skill with light mental retardation of fifth grader in SLB Autis Mitra Ananda Karanganyar in academic year 2016/2017?
The objective of this research is an attempt to improve early reading skill by using interactive multimedia on students with light mental retardation in the fifth grader SLB Autis Mitra Ananda Karanganyar in academic year 2016/2017.
This research was classroom action research. The subjects were the fifth grader of private special school of Mitra Ananda Colomadu sub district Karanganyar regency in the first semester academic year 2016/2017 with 4 students. This classroom action research was conducted over 3 months, from October to December from preliminary stage till reporting phase through 3 cycles.
This research used test as a method of collecting data. Technique of data analysis was descriptive qualitative in each cycle.
The result of this study shows that the improvement of learning outcomes can be done by using interactive multimedia in learning early reading of fifth grader of SLB Autis Mitra Ananda Colomadu Sub district Karanganyar regency in the first semester academic year 2016/2017. It is marked by the achievement of students’ average scores in learning early reading which always increases from prior and after action in each cycle. The result presented as follows: the average score of learning material in early reading is 53.75, the average score of early reading in cycle 1 is 60, the average score of early reading in cycle 2 is 66.25, the average score of early reading in cycle 3 is 76.5 and all students are already reaching the passing grade 75.

This thesis aims to analyze, model, and develop a framework for next-generation multimedia authoring tools targeted to end-users. In particular, I concentrate on the combination of automatic and manual processes for the realization of such framework. My contributions are realized in the context of a pan-European project called Together Anywhere, Together Anytime (TA2). More specifically in a community-sharing environment in which users can combine video assets contributed by other community members to form personalized mini-stories that can be shared within their (probably restricted) social groups. The expected outcome of my thesis work is contributing for the design of authoring and sharing tools that better fit end-users' needs.

Das Lernziel für einen modernen Fremdsprachenunterricht lautet seit spätestens der zweiten Hälfte der 70er Jahre "kommunikative Kompetenz" und schon längere Zeit hat sich ein Konsens durchgesetzt, nach dem kommunikative Kompetenz einen tiefgehenden interkulturellen Wissens-und Erfahrungshorizont voraussetzt, für dessen Aufbau interaktive Lernstrategien notwendig sind. In diesem Sinne kann es nicht darum gehen, das Lernziel der kommunikativen Kompetenz durch "interkulturelle Kommunikation" 2 -zu ersetzen (so etwa Hüllen, 1991: 8) oder neben dem Fremdsprachenunterricht eine "interkulturelle Kommunikationskunde" einzuführen (vgl. Hüllen, 1991: 10), sondern die Synthese beider Ideen ist gefragt. Bolten (1993a: 257) resümiert: "Interaktiv-interkultureller Fremdsprachenunterricht sollte [...] den kommunikativen Ansatz dort ergänzen, wo dieser den zugrundeliegenden Kommunikationsbegriff zu eng faßt. Interaktionstheoretisch gewendet, impliziert dies die Berücksichtigung verbaler, non-verbaler, paraverbaler, und extraverbaler Handlungsdimensionen in ihrer Interdependenz -und zwar sowohl im intra-als auch im interkulturellen Kontext." Die rasante Weiterentwicklung und vor allem Verbreitung der Computertechnologie kommt dem Bemühen um einen hochdifferenzierten interaktiven Lehr-und Lernprozess sehr entgegen. Moderne Software vermag den Fremdsprachenerwerb in grundsätzlich allen Bereichen zu 1 Please note: This is a pre-print! For the final version, see Guido Rings: Multimedia im Spiegel aktueller Lehrund Lernziele'), in: Funk, Hermann / Michael König / Erwin Tschirner (eds.): Schnittstellen: Lehrwerke zwischen alten und neuen Medien. Berlin: Cornelsen, pp. 94-109. 2 Bolten (1993b: 18) definiert interkulturelle Kommunikation als "interpersonale Interaktion zwischen Angehörigen verschiedener Gruppen, die sich mit Blick auf die ihren Mitgliedern jeweils gemeinsamen Wissenbestände und sprachlichen Formen symbolischen Handelns unterscheiden." Diese Unterschiede in Wissensbeständen und Sprachformen sind auf die Zugehörigkeit zu verschiedenen "Lebensweltbereichen" zurückzuführen, die von temporären individuellen und sozialen, aber auch von sozial tradierten Selbst-, Fremdund Metabildern geprägt werden. (ebda., S. 20, 24).

Kajian ini bertujuan untuk mengenal pasti penggunaan teknologi pelbagai media dalam kalangan guru pendidikan Islam di maahad Yayasan Islam Kelantan di seluruh negeri Kelantan. Kajian ini melibatkan 127 orang guru yang mengajar subjek Pendidikan Islam, Pendidikan al-Quran dan as-Sunah, Pendidikan Syariah Islamiah, dan Tasawwur Islamiah. Secara umumnya, kajian ini adalah kajian kuantitatif dan instrumen kajian yang digunakan ialah dalam bentuk set soal selidik yang telah dibina serta disemak oleh panel rujukan pakar. Tahap kebolehpercayaan alfa Cronbach bagi semua bahagian dalam borang soal selidik ialah tinggi (>0.9). Data kajian dianalisis secara deskriptif menggunakan Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) versi 25 untuk mendapatkan kekerapan (frekuensi), peratus, min, interpretasi, dan sisihan piawai. Dapatan kajian menunjukkan penggunaan teknologi pelbagai media berada pada tahap sederhana tinggi (M=3.03, SP=. 940). Analisis inferensi mendapati perbezaan yang signifikan bagi penggunaan teknologi pelbagai media berdasarkan pengalaman mengajar (p=0.030, p<.05) dan intensiti penggunaan laptop (p=0.031, p<.05). Kajian ini diharapkan dapat membantu pihak maahad, guru dan pihak Yayasan Islam Kelantan (YIK) dalam menambah baik dan berusaha ke arah penyediaan guru yang boleh mengintegrasikan teknologi pelbagai media dengan baik agar tugas selaku pendidik dapat dijalankan dengan cemerlang.

(This study aimed to identify the use of multimedia technology among Islamic education teachers in the Kelantan Islamic Foundation secondary school throughout the state of Kelantan. The study involved 127 teachers who taught the subject of Islamic education, Quranic and as-Sunnah education, Islamic Shariah Education, and Tasawwur Islamiah. Generally, this study is a quantitative study and the instrument used is in the form of a set of questionnaires that have been developed and reviewed by a panel of experts. Cronbach's alpha reliability for all sections of the questionnaire was high (>0.9). The data were analyzed descriptively using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25 to obtain frequency, percentage, mean, interpretation, and standard deviation. The findings show that the use of multimedia technology is at a moderate level (M=3.03, SP=. 940). Inference analysis revealed significant differences in the use of multimedia technology based on teaching experience (p= .030, p<.05) and laptop usage intensity (p=.031, p<.05). This study is expected to assist the teachers and the Kelantan Islamic Foundation (YIK) in improving and working towards the provision of teachers who can integrate multimedia technology so that their work as educators can be performed well)

The International Journal of Multimedia & Its Applications (IJMA) is a bi monthly open access peer-reviewed journal that publishes articles which contribute new results in all areas of the Multimedia & its applications. The journal focuses on all technical and practical aspects of Multimedia and its applications. The goal of this journal is to bring together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to focus on understanding recent developments this arena, and establishing new collaborations in these areas.

Authors are solicited to contribute to the journal by submitting articles that illustrate research results, projects, surveying works and industrial experiences that describe significant advances in the areas of Multimedia & its applications

This paper presents the findings of the community consultation and research conducted as part of the Digital Exhibits Intern Librarian Project at the Edmonton Public Library in 2016. The research project aimed to understand the local context for a new technology service in Edmonton, including the capacity for content creation and partnership among community organizations aligned with the Library's mission. The study consisted of a survey and a series of semi-structured interviews. Findings include identification of various audiences and topics for digital projects, prioritization of Library and community partner roles in digital project collaborations, and identification of major components of digital exhibits as areas of project management workflows.

"Being, Vitruvian" is the catalog accompanying the first of two exhibitions encompassing the visual narrative of Daniela Bertol’s creative research "Form Mind Body Space Time." In "Being, Vitruvian" practices of ‘making’ intersect practices of ‘moving’ and "Form Mind Body Space Time" is an interdisciplinary approach to the art and science of human movement: ‘making movement’ is inspired by geometric configurations which are also archetypical shapes and symbols in several cultures and are deeply embedded in the human psyche.

A multimedia interactive version is available from https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/being-vitruvian/id1439489651?mt=11

International Journal of Web & Semantic Technology (IJWesT) is a quarterly open access peer-reviewed journal that provides excellent international forum for sharing knowledge and results in theory, methodology and applications of web & semantic technology. The growth of the World-Wide Web today is simply phenomenal. It continues to grow rapidly and new technologies, applications are being developed to support end users modern life. Semantic Technologies are designed to extend the capabilities of information on the Web and enterprise databases to be networked in meaningful ways. Semantic web is emerging as a core discipline in the field of Computer Science & Engineering from distributed computing, web engineering, databases, social networks, Multimedia, information systems, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, soft computing, and human-computer interaction. The adoption of standards like XML, Resource Description Framework and Web Ontology Language serve as foundation technologies to advancing the adoption of semantic technologies.

This exploratory study is about the design, development and evaluation of an interactive application on multi-touch table, in order to enhance students' learning of algebraic generalization in a collaborative learning environment. Multi-touch table technology allows users to work together on a task displayed on its screen, supporting rich forms of interaction amongst them. In order to investigate the context of the educational application, a paper prototype was designed and implemented into two classrooms of 26 students, aged 12-13, in an experimental school of Athens, Greece (pilot fieldwork). Data was analysed with the SOLO (Structure of Observed Learning Outcome) taxonomy. Outcomes obtained from fieldwork fed into the design requirements that the final interactive prototype must meet. Thereafter, the final prototype was evaluated in the laboratory by two focus groups of users. Results show that students engaged in verbal interactions, affecting the understanding of the subsequent algebraic concepts introduced, encouraging further research.