SemanticMetadata.net

ACM Multimedia 2009: Project Natal in the Brave New Topics Session …

2009-10-21T07:19:11Z

Yesterday the “brave new topics” session took place. Initially it was meant to present challenging ideas and new things without the demand for extensive evaluation or being picky or realistic. Hrvoje Benko from Microsoft presented a lot of things regarding new output and input interfaces and closed his presentation with the ad for Project Natal. While some of the audience were astonished I still have to point out that especially the multimedia research community has to get a bit closer to gaming. Many of the engineered solutions there can be applied to common problems in multimedia and the other way round. At GDC europe people said problem in game developments are streaming and asset management. On the other hand gaming provides us with cool I/O devices (Dualshock, Sixaxis, Wiimote, etc.) So get together guys

Caliph & Emir @ ACM MM – Presentation on Thursday

2009-10-20T04:17:44Z

I’m currently attending the ACM Multimedia conference in Beijing (nice city by the way, one only has to survive traffic). Tomorrow is out big day for our user intent classification tool “Intent inside” and the day after Claiph and Emir are presented by myself. If you are also her, I’d be happy to meet & greet and talk about further developments, etc.

Links for 2009-10-12 [del.icio.us]

2009-10-13T00:00:00-07:00

EMail Address Crawler :: Thunderbird Add-ons
This one saved my life :-D

Snake in the water [Flickr]

2009-10-09T12:26:40-07:00

Mathias L. posted a photo:

A snake swimming in lake Maltschacher See

Dragonfly sitting on my finger .. [Flickr]

2009-10-09T12:26:37-07:00

Mathias L. posted a photo:

Mist over Lendkanal [Flickr]

2009-10-09T12:26:34-07:00

Mathias L. posted a photo:

Semester starts in Klagenfurt ... people gather [Flickr]

2009-10-01T02:52:25-07:00

Mathias L. posted a photo:

Semester starts in Klagenfurt ... coming together [Flickr]

2009-10-01T02:52:23-07:00

Mathias L. posted a photo:

CfP 2nd International Conferences on Advances in Multimedia

2009-09-30T08:58:05Z

MMEDIA 2010 aims to provide an international forum by researchers, students, and professionals for presenting recent research results on advances in multimedia, mobile and ubiquitous multimedia and to bring together experts from both academia and industry for the exchange of ideas and discussion on future challenges in multimedia fundamentals, mobile and ubiquitous multimedia, multimedia ontology, multimedia user-centered perception, multimedia services and applications, and mobile multimedia.

>> more information

Links for 2009-09-28 [del.icio.us]

2009-09-29T00:00:00-07:00

Funny: MaggieE-lemonade.jpg (500×375)
Thx to Oge for the website :-D

Workshop on Semantic Multimedia Database Technologies (SeMuDaTe2009)

2009-09-01T10:48:22Z

Call for Contributions

The workshop is collocated with the 4th International Conference on
Semantic and Digital Media Technologies

2-4 December 2009
Graz, Austria

The Workshop on Semantic Multimedia Database Technologies (SeMuDaTe2009) searches for research contributions on the mapping and integration of multimedia metadata and ontologies into databases, on multimedia query languages, on the optimization and processing of semantic queries. Moreover, we are interested how multimedia data services are conceived to ensure interoperability, how to improve security and reliability of access and storage of multimedia data and metadata.
It is the 10th International Workshop of the Multimedia Metadata Community:
http://www.multimedia-metadata.info/

Contributions

We invite the following types of contributions:

* Full papers (8-12 Pages)
* Position papers (4-8 Pages)
* Poster and Demo papers (3-4 Pages)

Submissions should be formatted according to LNCS style and submitted in PDF format. Please use the link below for your submission. The workshop proceedings will be published as a volume at CEUR Workshop Proceedings. Selected papers will appear in a special issue of an international
journal.

In case of questions please contact “Florian.Stegmaier [at] uni-passau.de”.

Topics

* Multimedia metadata models and mappings to databases
* Multimedia ontology and interoperability
* Multimedia ontology to database mapping and processing
* Multimedia query optimization and processing
* Ontology query languages and multimedia
* Semantic retrieval in multimedia databases
* Database management: security, indexing, reliability, distribution, transactions
* Indexing strategies for multimedia databases
* Semantic enrichment and annotation of multimedia
* Semantic metadata management
* Uncertainty in multimedia databases
* Human-computer interfaces for multimedia database access
* Mobile multimedia database services
* Context-aware multimedia
* Semantic adaptation of multimedia
* Proactive semantic multimedia delivery & distribution services
* Self-organization in service oriented multimedia architectures
* Semantic multimedia demonstrations and applications

Important Dates
===============

All Papers
—————–
September 7, 2009 – Deadline for Workshop Papers
September 28, 2009 – Notification of Acceptance for Workshop Papers
October 19, 2009 – Camera-ready Workshop Papers due

General and Local Chairs
————————
Harald Kosch, University Passau, Germany
Ralf Klamma, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Mathias Lux, University of Klagenfurt, Austria
Florian Stegmaier, Local Chair, University Passau, Germany

Workshop Technical Programme Committee
————————————–
* Anna Carreras (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain)
* Baltasar Fernández-Manjón (Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain)
* Bill Grosky (University of Michigan, USA)
* Christian Guetl (Graz University of Technology, Austria)
* Dominik Renzel (RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany)
* François Bry (LMU, University of Munich, Germany)
* Giuseppe Amato (ISTI Pisa, Italy)
* Laszlo Böszörmenyi (Klagenfurt University, Austria)
* Marc Spaniol (MPI, Saarbrücken, Germany)
* Markus Strohmaier (Know Center, Graz, Austria)
* Oge Marques (Florida Atlantic University, USA)
* Pascal Hitzler (University of Karlsruhe, Germany)
* Richard Chbeir (Bourgogne University, France)
* Romulus Grigoras (ENSEEIHT, France)
* Savvas Chatzichristofis (Democritus University of Thrace, Greece)
* Thierry Delot (University of Valenciennes, France)
* Timothy Shih (NTUE, Taiwan)
* Vincent Oria (NJIT, USA)
* Werner Bailer (Joanneum Research, Graz, Austria)
* Yiwei Cao (RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany)
* Lionel Brunie (INSA de Lyon, France)
* Yu Cao (California State University at Fresno, USA)

GDC Europe 09: Peter Molyneux

2009-08-19T12:04:51Z

Game mechanics, especially choices, were the main topic of Peter Molyneux’s (Lionhead Studio) talk. He motivated the whole idea by an example from Populus, were one could choose the color to be a blue or a red god. While this had no effect on the gameplay people liked the idea of choosing between good and evil and – ka-ching – Black & White worked out. With Fable three theyare now working on a system of choices, which are based on judgements the player makes as king/queen. A further mechanic will be the action of touching AI characters in the Fable III world. Touching will create an emotional bond affecting gameplay and story as well as choices later on.

GDC Europe 09: Keynote of David Cage (Quantic Dream)

2009-08-18T15:00:38Z

Second keynote for today was David Cage from Quantic Dream, which one might already know from Fahrenheit or from their title in development Heavy Rain. He made – unsurprisingly – a good chain of arguments against the mainstream game insdustry. In his opinion games are more or less build on primal emotions and feature no or only a very simplistic story. The sequence of narrative elements is constantly interrupted by action sequences, an people just play it for the action scenes …. just like a porn movie (David’s word )

He outlines a way to create games for a mature audience featuring more social and complex emotions. According to the figures he presented (which looked valid according to the studies I’ve read) 75% of the people buying games are 18+ years old, in average 35. This indicates that there actually is a mature audience. His propsed tool for this is interactive storytelling. You might now go and see a video (from E3 2009) of Heavy Rain, so I can stop writing :)

Byline: I found my seat beside the editor in chief of a major german game magazine, which I won’t mention but rhymes on games-car. By trying to communicate I found the complete absence of humour and small talk ability in this guy. I’m again impressed by the selectiveness of journalists towards people they don’t know.

GDC Europe 09: Telltale Games

2009-08-18T13:14:42Z

I just heard the talk of Dan Connors, CEO of Telltale Games. For those of you who are not familiar with the company: they buy licenses for existing franchises and publish story telling games in episodes. They latest big hit in the news was Tales of Monkey Island (originally Lucasarts). He said that they understand themselves as story telling company, while not so much being a game company. In a world of people trying to make AAA games they focus on short dev times (e.g. 8-10 months) and small and fast sequels (e.g. 4-6 months). Judging from the history of Telltale Games thihs approach works out fine They focus mostly on digital distribution, also based on their own platform.

Buying licenses is an interesting thing as Dan stated. Companies either give them away with the freedom of telling the story on and on, while other need to be involved or have lots of handbooks with do’s and don’ts.

GDC Europe 09: Dolby & Crytek

2009-08-18T12:04:49Z

After lunch I had the chance to take a look at the demos on the Dolby booth. I’ve heard Pro Logic IIz in action (having two extra channels for high up speaker, left & right) and I’ve seen and heard a multiplayer demo of Dolby Axon. Axon is a rather new technology for voice communication within games. and virtual environments. New is that the environment affects the communication. In contrast to teamspeak and alikes you can’t hear a player when s/he out of reach. Of course it supports surround sound, so you’ll hear colleagues talking from behind and so on. Also walls, doors and windows affect sound based on echos, blocking or distortion of the sound. Real fun seems to be the option to invent spy devices. In the demo an Unreal translocator was used as remote mic.

The first presentation after lunch was on building a level with the Cryengine 3 level editor in 45 minutes. The – obviously experienced – presenter should a rapid level creation process given the fact you already have yourr models and textures While I do not really agree with the Crytek way of doing, seeing and commenting on things I still have to confess that I wasimpressed by the editor.

GDC Europe 09: CCP – Winning the War

2009-08-18T10:14:49Z

A great talk Hilmar Petursson introduces CCP (developer and now also publisher and IP holder of Eve Online). He divides MMOs in thema parks and playgrounds, whereas WoW is the first and Eve of course is the latter. Within a playground people can make new friends compared to the theme parl easily, but the environment is more challenging and not so flashing and rewarding.

Obviously the whole Eve world is in the hand of the players, so there is minor interference by game masters etc. So compared to many other games divine intervention is reduced to a minimum. Hilmar has shown several good examples on how political and commercial alliances form and challenge each other. They even have an economic newsletter produced by an economist quarterly.

Hilmar also announced a new product, called “DUST 514″, a first person shooter integrated in and connected with the Eve Universe. It will be a console game with a lot of real time strategy. DUST mercenaries have to be contracted by Eve cooperations and will fight the infantry wars. It’s developed in Shanghai and kept secret now for three years. The trailer looks great, expect the video to be online soon.

GDC Europe 09: Social Games

2009-08-18T09:05:48Z

Second talk for today for me was the “Lessons learned from social games” presented by Hugh de Loayza from Zynga Inc. He states that social games are meant for socializing, which is also the viral component. One plays, invitest friends, plays again, gets invited, … And thats different from casual gaming, which is not necessarily a social thing. Business models are mainly based on advertising or micro transactions, whereas the latter just starts in the U.S. Hugh states that this is not the end of possible models, but there will be new ones. An interesting thing he pointed out is that he came into Zynga as “the game guy” in a company full of “web 2.0 guys”, which was a clash of culture. They had to work on the integration of game mechanics and social interaction. The focus of social games is more on traffic and interactions (installs,invites, gifts, etc.) than actual game play. The benefit is that one can look at and adopt the game mechanics of other social games (so a big part of the innovation is in the interaction and socializing part). There are also some hints for first approaches:

keep it more casual than casual (kiss),
build viral mechanics into the game (gifting, competition, crewing like building up groups by invites, notifications, etc.),
less game, more social,
use ubiquitous technologies (e.g. flash, php) and
think reach (which and how many social networks will be reached).

He also mentions how to bring a social game to market. One needs to seeds the game by

buying installs,
trading installs with other developers (cross promotion) or
develop a brand, a social network within a social network based on your game.

Biggest mistakes in social games are

licenses (people seem to be not interested),
linking to a destination site (breaks the viral loop),
converting existing games,
overthinking everything (just try it!) and
widgets (they just don’t work, e.g. they break the viral loop).

Links for 2009-08-12 [del.icio.us]

2009-08-13T00:00:00-07:00

Wii Has Fewest Percentage of Active Users, says Nielsen - IndustryGamers
Interesting survey on which consoles are actually used more than others ...

Links for 2009-07-10 [del.icio.us]

2009-07-11T00:00:00-07:00

Compiled QT_FASTSTART.exe at JAMES HAY
A little tool that moves the file index of an mp4 file from the end to the beginning to allow progressive download, e.g. in a flash player.

Links for 2009-07-09 [del.icio.us]

2009-07-10T00:00:00-07:00

Digital Home Thoughts: Zune Video Service Coming to Xbox 360 in 18 Countries
VoD service for the XBox 360 coming to Austria in fall 2009 !!!

Links for 2009-07-08 [del.icio.us]

2009-07-09T00:00:00-07:00

Working with Qt Applications - NetBeans IDE 6.7 Tutorial
Some short article describing a first small application building process with NetBeans using QT.

Links for 2009-07-06 [del.icio.us]

2009-07-07T00:00:00-07:00

GNU R: rbind – Wikibooks, Sammlung freier Lehr-, Sach- und Fachbücher
That's why it never worked the way I wanted it to work :-(