Allen Ginsberg

A unified approach to automatic indexing and information retrieval

WorldViews, an experimental system that unites as many aspects of information organization as possible around a simple, familiar, yet versatile knowledge representation framework, is discussed. This framework is a lattice-structured version of the traditional thesaurus. WorldViews focuses on the unified use of the thesaurus to automatically index and retrieve information. The performance of the WorldViews system is outlined.<<ETX>>

Towards intelligent recognition of multimedia episodes in real-time applications

The ability to automatically capture and index multimedia information for later perusal and review is critical to the success of future multimedia services. In this paper, we describe how to automatically generate indexes of real-time streams without requiring deep content analysis. Our techniques involve segmenting continuous audio and video into natural units, and relating these to discrete events from the multimedia application, such as user interactions, control events, and data content. In addition, we describe how to search within multimedia streams using query-based retrieval and visual and auditory retrieval modes. This multimodal retrieval allows for quick browsing and visual comprehension of multimedia streams. Finally we show how our techniques apply to the area of multimedia conference recording.

Automating envisionment of virtual meeting room histories

This paper addresses the problem of how to automatically generate visual representations of recorded histories of distributed multimedia collaborations. The work reported here focuses mainly on what we consider to be an innovative approach to this problem, viz., the use of a temporal representation format that displays the generic meta-information associated with multimedia content in a way that lets users focus on and access the associated content of interest. As a concrete example of the use of meta-information, consider a user who would like to access any historical segments containing video of a particular collaborator. A meta-information-based approach can assist in this search by finding all the times at which the known video channel used by that person was in fact operative. In this paper we focus on elements involved in creating visual histories for meetings held in virtual meeting rooms. Besides showing how these elements can be used in laying out visual layouts for online meetings that may span days, or indeed, months in real-time. Meetings are just one aspect of collaborative work. Our ultimate goal is to expand the approach to deal with all the real and non-real time elements needed to provide users of remote collaboration environments with a sense of shared historical perspective.

Knowledge base refinement and theory revision

Publisher Summary This chapter reviews a few intuitions, beliefs, and speculations concerning the nature of theory revision, its relation to knowledge base refinement, and related topics. The terms knowledge base and knowledge-base refinement seem, for better or for worse, inextricably intertwined with the expert systems movement. The terms theory and theory revision seem to evoke an expectation of something having to do with the sciences or at least with something deeper than the content of a typical knowledge base. While any theory must include a declarative component, that is, the axioms of the theory, it might be appropriate to view a theory as also containing, like an expert system, a procedural component which, among other things, enables someone who learns the theory to use it in problem solving. The procedural component is easily identified in expert systems as these are artificial systems designed according to a certain paradigm. Bridge laws can be thought of as go betweens from the theoretical terms of a theory to either observational terms, or perhaps, the theoretical terms of another theory. A good deal of scientific inquiry and technological progress involves the discovery and use of bridge laws. Given that bridge laws are a part of what makes theories useful in problem solving, they are an ideal candidate for inclusion in the procedural component of a theory. There is a mapping from the terms of the old theory to the new theory such that the laws of the old theory are valid statements in the new theory; this essentially is theory revision. There are basically three issues or processes of importance in knowledge-base refinement: (1) localization, (2) refinement or revision generation, and (3) testing and selection of proposed revisions.

View-rules and representations: a framework for dynamic control of multimedia in virtual environments

Folding multimedia capabilities into virtual environments is a key driver of future applications. However, providing flexible and, user-customizable solutions is problematic. We describe a framework, called AlphaOmega that enables designer/user definition and control of the representational aspects of objects used in applications. Powerful changes in an applications interface and behavior can be achieved by such means. We show the relevance of this work to multimedia by giving concrete examples using a distance learning virtual environment called PERSYST.