A hypermedia link service is system which stores the information describing hypertext links in a database which is separate from the data content over which the links are intended to operate. One of the first open hypermedia link services was Microcosm, which takes this philosophy to the extreme, storing not only the links in a separate database, but also the information about the endpoints of the links. The most important advantage of such an organisation is that the system remains open so that hypertext functionality may be extended to third party applications. The first part of this thesis describes the background to open hypermedia link services and describes the Microcosm system, which was developed by the Multimedia Research Group at the University of Southampton. The major problem with storing all the information about links separately from the content is that such a scheme introduces many opportunities for the introduction of inconsistencies and the loss of integrity of the hypermedia data model. The second part of this thesis examines these problems, and proposes a number of solutions. It concludes that no one solution can resolve all the problems, and that in order to ensure integrity it is necessary to impose some conditions which limit the degree of openness.

A defining aspect of our era is the continuous migration of media consumers toward alternative distribution platforms. These are used to access content formerly available only in traditional media's original format. The intensification of wireless networks and the increasing portability of content, music content in particular, has resulted in radio listeners reverting to wireless delivery technologies to access, discover, listen to, share and store music. This empirical research project explores the consequences of mobile technology on commercial radio by looking at the ways in which mobility is altering the relationship between commercial radio and music fans. The specific research objectives of this study are threefold: (1) to better understand the increasing role of the mobile industry and of wireless delivery technologies as purveyors of music; (2) to explore their repercussions on the viability of commercial radio; and (3) to identify the appearance of effects on the habits and expectations of radio listeners.

This dissertation is concerned with Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and in particular with ways in which insights from ethnomethodology can be melded into the design of CSCW systems—a relationship that has been labelled technomethodology. The dissertation outlines a number of possible ways in which system design can learn from ethnomethodology and concentrates on one particular aspect—namely that CSCW should look closely at its foundational assumptions and, if necessary, re-specify any concepts which appear problematic in their formulation.

Flexible and adaptive quality of service (QoS) is desirable for real-time multimedia applications. Suppose a multimedia system is supporting a 30 frame/second video stream which is using a network bandwidth of 2 Mbps, and due to network congestion the network bandwidth is reduced to 1 Mbps. It is desirable that the system supports graceful adaptation of quality of the video stream, for example, by reducing the frame rate to 15 frame/second. The focus of this dissertation is to investigate the design of an adaptive multimedia system (AMS) with multiple concurrent sessions, where the quality of individual sessions is dynamically adapted to the available resources and to the run-time user preferences. We propose the Utility Model -- a Mathematical model to capture the issues of resource management within multisession AMSs. In this model, each session provides a quality profile, which is a set of operating qualities arranged from the minimum acceptable quality to the maximum desired quality. Any operating quality may be mapped to the required resources using a quality-resource mapping, and also to a session utility using a quality-utility mapping. The main problem in a multisession AMS is to find an operating quality for each session such that the overall system utility (e.g. system revenue) is maximized under the system resource constraints. This is called the adaptive multimedia problem (AMP). The Utility Model formulates the AMP as the multiple-choice multi-dimension 0–1 knapsack problem (MMKP). It provides a unified and computationally feasible way to solve the admission problem for new multimedia sessions. and the dynamic quality adaptation and integrated resource allocation problems for existing sessions. In order to use the Utility Model, we propose two solutions for the (MMKP): a branch and bound algorithm BBLP for optimal solutions, and a heuristic HEU for fast and near-optimal solutions. We report computational experiences, and compare the two approaches for practical applications, finding that HEU solutions are usually within 4% of the optimum but at a much reduced computational cost. The heuristic HEU is suitable for time-critical applications such as real-time admission and adaptation decisions in multimedia systems. We present the Padma Architecture—a system architecture for multisession AMSs. This architecture has two novelties: (1) integrated and adaptive management of system resources based on the Utility Model, and (2) the use of metaspaces to encapsulate the machinery of quality adaptation. The former provides improved resource utilization and dynamic quality adaptation, and the latter provides the application programmers freedom from the concerns of low-level resource management issues while developing multimedia applications. Finally, we present the Utility Model Demonstration Prototype (UMDP)—a prototype which demonstrates the capability of the Utility Model to handle admission control, quality adaptation and integrated resource allocation in a unified way. We evaluate the performance of UMDP using random sequences of events, and show that the system utility achieved by the UMDP is significantly higher than that of a simple reservation model prototype (SRMP). For applications such multimedia service providers, it means that UMDP will generate more revenue than SRMP from the same amounts of system resources provisioned. / Graduate

<p> This purpose of this thesis is to analyze voice-activated recording artifacts, using a playback audio created in Adobe Audition. To show how an automated voice recorder with standby mode treats the silence of a recording. This thesis focuses on the WAV PCM format. The WS-550M, WS-560M, and the DM-520 recorders did not have the option to create a WAV PCM file, therefore the WS-550M and the 560M created MP3 files and the DM-520 created a WMA file. Each of the recorders have automated standby mode. The recorders were set to create a WAV PCM that was a 16-bit stereo file at 44kHz. The following is a list of the devices that will be used in this study. Olympus DM-520, Olympus DM-620, Olympus WS-550M, Olympus WS-560M, Olympus WS-700M, Olympus WS-700M, Olympus WS-750M, Olympus WS-760M, Olympus WS-802, Olympus WS-822, Olympus WS-823, Philips Voice Tracer.</p><p>

Abstract not available.

This research aggregated key elements discussed during the CRTC Public Hearing on New Media, in order to examine fundamentals for the development of sustainable business models within the new media environment. The use of a qualitative methodology allowed the progressive gathering of in-depth information. Three main data collection techniques were used to obtain the desired information. First, an observational case study focused on the new media public proceeding. Second, a thorough content analysis examined public submissions through grids in order to extract relevant data. Third, formal interviews with regulatory experts were used to access information at a more intimate level. In the context of this study five media groups were chosen for examination. This would include, private broadcasters, public broadcasters, the culture and independent producers sector, telecommunications companies and Internet Service Providers. This gave an overall view of each sector within the Canadian broadcasting system. As a result of this research, the Canadian media industries will have to make urgent changes. To begin, platform-specific content production will be vital to the overall success of the system. This would allow proper distribution, minimizing the need of reformatting the content. Accordingly, maximizing the use of content will ensure that Canadians have access to programming that reflects their realities. Most companies agreed that new online advertising funding methods were needed, that new media initiatives generated economic growth and that content ownership should be a priority for upcoming regulatory decisions.

Human activities can now be captured in real-time using sensor technology. The growth in sensor applications and smart mobile phones that come equipped with built-in sensors has led to the integration of sensors with social networks. These days, people are heavily dependent on online social networks (OSNs); they migrate their real-life activities online through various types of multimedia such as photos, videos, text, etc., which turns OSNs into a soft-sensory resource about users' events. The users use these forms of multimedia to tell their friends about their daily lives. This social network data can be crawled to build personal context-aware stories about individuals. However, the number of social users and the quantity of multimedia that is produced on social media are both growing exponentially, which leads to the challenge of information overload on OSNs. The information needed for stories, such as events and their locations, is not fully available on user's own profile. It is true that part of the information can be retrieved from the user's timeline, but a large number of events and related multimedia information is only available on friends' profiles. In this thesis, we focus on identifying a subset of close friends in order to enrich the content of the story. The amount of time people spend together has been proven to play a key role in determining close ties between people. We propose a DST (Days Spent Together) algorithm to find a user's closest friends based on the days they spent together interacting face-to-face. With the closest friends information, we are able to find additional information to complement what was found on the user's own profile, as well as to personalize the stories to ensure that they are only about the users and their closest friends. Due to the possibility of multimedia (photos in this thesis) overload for events, we propose to use the duration of events measured by DST, to determine the number of representative photos for each event. Our experiments show that the proposed approach could recognize the close friends of users and rank them from the strongest to the weakest. The results also show that with the proposed method we get days-spent-together values that are close to the corresponding true values provided by users.

Typically, instructional designers introduce audio in multimedia environments when a) it appears to be necessary -- for example, to provide feedback; or b) accessibility, availability, and/or hardware issues are insignificant -- in other words, It's there -- -- It sounds good -- It should work -- Why not use it? However, rarely is a decision to use audio based upon a thorough understanding of why, from a learning perspective, it is appropriate or optimal to do so. Clearly a lack of such an understanding can, and often does, lead to the inappropriate use of audio as a useful instructional medium. This study is designed: (1) to investigate the educational value of compressed speech in a multimedia environment, and (2) to evaluate how rate of speech may influence learning in a multimedia setting. It is also concerned with ascertaining whether: a) the recall of information at various levels of compressed speech decreases when audio delivery-rate (words-per-minute) increases; b) there is an interaction between task completion time and recall of information at various levels of compression; and c) relative to recall, there is an interaction between audio delivery-rate and increasing exposure to an audio stimulus. One hundred and ninety-two undergraduate students enrolled in business courses in two southeastern regional universities located in North Carolina and Virginia were randomly assigned to one of three groups. The three experimental test groups were normal speech, 125 words per minute, compressed speech: 175 words per minute and 200 words per minute. In all groups, participants were asked to listen to the solution of the puzzle, given in one of the three presentation rates of speech and they were given three different puzzles to solve. All data were collected at each assigned computer workstation. Data analysis revealed a difference between the three treatment groups (125 wpm, 175 wpm, 200 wpm) in recall scores due to the rate of compression, no interaction between completion times and the recall of information based on compression rate, and a difference in recall scores between the three treatment groups and the amount of exposure to the audio stimulus. / Ph. D.

Goal of this thesis is design and implementation of application for editing multimedia content used for entertaining fans during sport events on stadiums, which will provide easy to use and intuitive graphical user interface. The theoretical part contains description of multimedia data from the perspective of this thesis, namely statical images and video. It provides the overview of multimedia applications, ranging from low end video editors to hi end media control centers. At last the closer look into sport stadiums environment is given in perspective of used digital display devices and multimedia content.