Artur Lugmayr

Semantic ambient media--an introduction

The medium is the message! And the message was literacy, media democracy and music charts. Mostly one single distinguishable medium such as TV, the Web, the radio, or books transmitted the message. Now in the age of ubiquitous and pervasive computing, where information flows through a plethora of distributed interlinked media—what is the message ambient media will tell us? What does semantic mean in this context? Which experiences will it open to us? What is content in the age of ambient media? Ambient media are embedded throughout the natural environment of the consumer—in his home, in his car, in restaurants, and on his mobile device. Predominant sample services are smart wallpapers in homes, location based services, RFID based entertainment services for children, or intelligent homes. The goal of this article is to define semantic ambient media and discuss the contributions to the Semantic Ambient Media Experience (SAME) workshop, which was held in conjunction with the ACM Multimedia conference in Vancouver in 2008. The results of the workshop can be found on: www.ambientmediaassociation.org.

Connecting the real world with the digital overlay with smart ambient media--applying Peirce's categories in the context of ambient media

This article is based on the keynote held at the workshop on Events in Multimedia (EiMM09) that took place in conjunction with the ACM Multimedia conference in Beijing in October 2009. The idea of the keynote was to develop and explain the idea of ambient media in general, it is principles, and additionally relate ambient media to information theoretical approaches such as Peirce’s categories, to the theories of decision making, and to theories discussing how smart objects can be made ‘smart’ by simulating the human mind. This article rounds up with practical examples underlining the presented ideas and theories.

Personalization algorithms for portable personality

With the advances in ubiquitous computing, there is an increasing focus on personalization of user information especially in web applications. Currently those personalized user profiles are scattered around the Internet, mostly stored for each individual website. Therefore, this prohibits the usage of those profiles in other environments such as shopping in local stores or sharing interests among people. The so-called Portable Personality focuses on the management and distribution of personalized profiles via mobile devices. This paper provides an overview of related factors, which are to be considered in a portable personality environment. We discuss common user profile categorization approaches and their possible representation. Moreover, we mention the current state-of-the-art of profile acquisition and management algorithms to obtain and handle personalized information. This also includes approaches towards portable profiles. At the end, profile merging and personalization algorithms are covered to handle the challenges of aggregate multiple profiles and personalized recommendations based on distributed (portable) profiles.

Categorization of ambient media projects on their business models, innovativeness, and characteristics--evaluation of Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Award Projects of 2010

Ambient Media describe media environments, where the medium is embedded within the natural environment. They follow the anytime, anywhere, and anyhow principle for media access. The Nokia Ubimedia MindTreks Awards have been established a few years ago to explore the potential of ambient media. In this article we analyze the total project portfolio submitted to the 4th Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Awards in 2010 according to their business value, innovativeness, and use of ambient media. The aim of this article is to gain insights into the general characteristics of ambient media, their properties, and business functions. The article rounds up in providing a substantial framework and guidelines for ambient media developers in their product designs.

Convergence of collaborative web approaches and interactive TV program formats

Purpose – TV changes in several disciplines concurrently: from analogue to digital, from scheduled broadcasts to on‐demand TV on the internet, from a lean‐back (passive) to a lean‐forward (active) media, from straight watching to the consumption of content connected to additional services, from the sole TV viewer to the viewer being part in social networks and communities regarding to the TV content, etc. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the adaptation of design and realization of TV program formats to the changes that happen to television. In addition, the paper would like find out how to support the design of interactions, dynamic narrations and content types as well as the role of the internet within these processes and this application area.Design/methodology/approach – Currently, there exist many approaches towards the development of social, collaborative, and interactive TV program formats and systems. Within the scope of this paper, the authors present latest case studies and example pro...

Brief introduction into information systems & management research in media industries

Within the scope of this paper, a new research field - information systems and management in media industries is introduced. The paper illustrates the importance of viewing the media firm as holistic digital firm from the information systems and management perspective. It reviews current literature, research work, and provides an overview of opened research gaps.

Crowdfunding in Finland: A New Alternative Disruptive Funding Instrument for Businesses

The phenomenon of the crowd on the Internet is widely well known, as well as its collaborative power. Companies use the power of the crowd to improve their products, for marketing campaigns, or co-create their products in collaboration with the consumer. Recently a new phenomenon emerged -- crowdfunding (CF). Platforms such as Kickstarter assist to raise funds for various projects. In Finland very successful ventures, such as e.g. Timo Vuorensolas campaigns for the new movie Iron Sky demonstrated the possibilities. Within the scope of this research work we elaborate the power of crowdfunding, and particularly explore its possibilities in the Finnish context. We conducted a qualitative study based on interviews to explore crowdfunding as alternative mechanism to existing fundraising mechanism, pinpoint to legal pitfalls, risks, and benefits for entrepreneurs. The study rounds up with a thorough discussion how crowdfunding can be a disruption for traditional financing mechanisms in Finland.

Bits of Personality Everywhere: Implicit User-Generated Content in the Age of Ambient Media

This article approaches the way how to think about collaboration with pervasive technology in a new way. It introduces ambient media as new form of media, where the media as such is linked to physical worlds, and smartly aggregated rather than generated with a push or pull model. Collaboration between human man and technology becomes a issue of collaboration, rather than a question of human-computer interaction. As far user contributed content was mostly seen as process, where consumers contribute to online Web forums or create their own videos and upload it to YouTube. The user actively contributes and collaborates to create the content of the media. However, pervasive technology enables much more: pervasive technology allows implicit collaboration, thus the collection of consumer data passively and aggregate the content of the media. One example is the open source platform Portable Personality (P2), whose goal is to generate a personality profile of the implicit collected contextual information. P2 will offer the possibility of personality profiles, rather than simple usage history information or sensor data input. Within the context of this article, the notion of ambient media is introduced. As a practical example to underline the new way of thinking about media, P2 is introduced and the underlying principles explained.

Special issue on semantic ambient media experience

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to this special issue, which collected the best papers form the 1 ACM International Workshop on Semantic Ambient Media Experience (NAMU Series) SAME’08. The first article in the special issue contains a full analysis of the contribution to the workshop, as well as it contains the results of the workshop, which was actually a ‘workshop’ in form of a creative think-tank instead of simple paper presentations.

Ambient media today and tomorrow

Ambient media are novel, and this new media form alters our daily-living experience in many ways. Ambient media refer to media environments that are embedded throughout the natural space where people are following their daily activities. These digital media environments become part of the living space and altering our daily-living experience in many ways. The goal of this article is to elaborate the status of ambient media today and to forecast how ambient media will develop in the next decade. It clearly identifies megatrends and develops scenarios (e. g., ambient-assisted living) for the future. These scenarios shall shed light on the potentials and give a glimpse on the potential future development of embedding digital objects into the daily living space. This paper is based on a future wheel approach and on an analysis of the results of an expert workshop. The article concludes with a discussion of the results and an evaluation of the impact of each scenario.