TRECVID 2008 - goals, tasks, data, evaluation mechanisms and metrics

The TREC Video Retrieval Evaluation (TRECVID) 2008 is a TREC-style video analysis and retrieval evaluation, the goal of which remains to promote progress in content-based exploitation of digital video via open, metrics-based evaluation. Over the last 7 years this effort has yielded a better understanding of how systems can effectively accomplish such processing and how one can reliably benchmark their performance. In 2008, 77 teams (see Table 1) from various research organizations --- 24 from Asia, 39 from Europe, 13 from North America, and 1 from Australia --- participated in one or more of five tasks: high-level feature extraction, search (fully automatic, manually assisted, or interactive), pre-production video (rushes) summarization, copy detection, or surveillance event detection. The copy detection and surveillance event detection tasks are being run for the first time in TRECVID. This paper presents an overview of TRECVid in 2008

Towards Simulating Humans in Augmented Multi-party Interaction

Human-computer interaction requires modeling of the user. A user profile typically contains preferences, interests, characteristics, and interaction behavior. However, in its multimodal interaction with a smart environment the user displays characteristics that show how the user, not necessarily consciously, verbally and nonverbally provides the smart environment with useful input and feedback. Especially in ambient intelligence environments we encounter situations where the environment supports interaction between the environment, smart objects (e.g., mobile robots, smart furniture) and human participants in the environment. Therefore it is useful for the profile to contain a physical representation of the user obtained by multi-modal capturing techniques. We discuss the modeling and simulation of interacting participants in the European AMI research project

Mixed reality participants in smart meeting rooms and smart home enviroments

Human–computer interaction requires modeling of the user. A user profile typically contains preferences, interests, characteristics, and interaction behavior. However, in its multimodal interaction with a smart environment the user displays characteristics that show how the user, not necessarily consciously, verbally and nonverbally provides the smart environment with useful input and feedback. Especially in ambient intelligence environments we encounter situations where the environment supports interaction between the environment, smart objects (e.g., mobile robots, smart furniture) and human participants in the environment. Therefore it is useful for the profile to contain a physical representation of the user obtained by multi-modal capturing techniques. We discuss the modeling and simulation of interacting participants in a virtual meeting room, we discuss how remote meeting participants can take part in meeting activities and they have some observations on translating research results to smart home environments

Multi-party Interaction in a Virtual Meeting Room

This paper presents an overview of the work carried out at the HMI group of the University of Twente in the domain of multi-party interaction. The process from automatic observations of behavioral aspects through interpretations resulting in recognized behavior is discussed for various modalities and levels. We show how a virtual meeting room can be used for visualization and evaluation of behavioral models as well as a research tool for studying the effect of modified stimuli on the perception of behavior

Reality bytes: cyberterrorism and terrorist 'use' of the Internet

This paper examines the concept of cyberterrorism. Fringe activity on the Internet ranges from non-violent 'Use' at one end to 'Cyberterrorism' at the other. Rejecting the idea that cyberterrorism is widespread, the focus here is on terrorist groups' 'use' of the Internet, in particular the content of their Web sites, and their 'misuse' of the medium, as in hacking wars, for example. Terrorist groups' use of the Internet for the purpose of inter-group communication is also surveyed, partly because of its importance for the inter-networked forms of organisation apparently being adopted by these groups, but also due to the part played by the Internet in the events of September 11 and their aftermath

Walter J. Ong, S.J.: A retrospective

Communication Research Trends usually charts current communication research, introducing its readers to recent developments across the range of inquiry into communication. This issue, however, takes a different tack, looking back on the writings of Walter J. Ong, S.J., who died at the age of 90 in August 2003. Ong spent his scholarly career at Saint Louis University, where he served as University Professor of Humanities, the William E. Haren Professor of English, and Professor of Humanities in Psychiatry at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine. In a career that spanned 60 years, Ong published 16 books, 245 articles, and 108 reviews. In addition, he edited a number of works and gave interviews that further explored his wide-ranging interests. Readers interested in a full bibliography of Ong’s works should refer to the web site prepared by Professor Betty Youngkin at the University of Dayton, at http://homepages.udayton.edu/~youngkin/biblio.htm. From the perspective of an interest in connections among many areas of human knowledge over such a long career, he explored a whole gamut of activities by careful observations of the threads that run through western culture and by insightful analysis of what he observed. Communication forms one of those many threads in the West—perhaps the dominant one—and so it occupies a similar place in Ong’s work. The tapestry Ong weaves has, bit by bit, influenced thinking about communication as well as research. And so, Communication Research Trends looks back on the writings of Walter Ong, S.J