Media and Virtual Worlds

Political and legal actions recently have shown that the virtual characteristics of modern media are a problem for a business still based on the principles of material carriers for the information. But creation, packaging, transport and reception are dramatically different to previous areas. Teaching at a university for media studies means to recognize these changes and create awareness for them.

On new developments in media and computing

On all things related to games development

Interactive rooms for interacting groups, more...? The classic university lecture is long dead. But at least in computer science it is hard to run interactive seminars which include e.g. source code studies etc. The technology seems to get into our way here. But I might have seen a solution today: interactive rooms. (need to get a link to the Stanford video)

Mediaspace - a next generation augmented room, more...?

A followup to my wishlist for interactive rooms to better support software studies. The articel describes what happens in Jan Borchers group at the RWTH Aaachen (computer science and media)

I just finished a larger study on media asset management and business TV for a large company. The situation with respect to rich media in companies is currently like this: There are four levels of understanding necessary for dealing successfully (means with respect to resonably production costs, good and cheap transport and creating a value at the recipient side) with rich media and most companies still have a long way to go. The

The first level deals mostly with streaming media issues in intranets and on the internet. Most company internal networks could nowadays carry rich media streaming content or could be enhanced to do so using technology like CISCO's ACNS or embedded mpeg streamers etc. Automation of this technology is still a problem.

The second level deals with content management issues. Companies realize after a while that they are creating huge data graves of rich media. Most have a content management system for textual information but they store rich media on file systems, creating search and re-use problems. The problem on this level was and is that professional archive technology e.g. from broadcast companies is too expensive for regular companies. But systems like Media Archive from tecmath AG could be scaled down. The problem is to make the companies realize that they have an archive problem.

The third level is reached when a company realizes that content is the real problem. When Video on demand is becoming a necessity because of usability reasons. When companies no longer use global channel to broadcast very specific information which is only interesting for a small selection of their employees. When the company questions effectivity of rich media. When the differences between professional news presentations and home-grown solutions are realized. When the company realizes that there are political issues behind content. (I owe this to Johannes Schaugg from our audio/visual faculty who made me switch my focus from technology to content). E-learning e.g. needs a good understanding of content and reception of rich media is far from easy.

The last level is reached when the company is able integrate rich media into company communications. Self-service technology is implemented and supports collaboration between groups of employees and also to customers. The company has an internal policy that allows information sharing and therefore interesting and valuable newscasts. One of the companies which are pretty far on this track is probably CISCO which uses rich media a lot for internal and external use (there is an excellent article on http://www.streamingmedia.com on CISCOs internal use.

Digital media touches every level of software and hardware development. From real-time requirements in process control to optimized file system design. From streaming protocols like RTSP to encryption and description technology like MPEG4. The trend to meta-data for media will become even stronger and the small and embedded devices like smartphones will become important rich media players.

Students develop all kinds of media software at HDM, e.g. MPGE4 editors, streaming media packages, content management systems etc. Even funny projects like turning network packets into audio have surprisingly useful applications. Music players on mobile devices are becoming increasingly more important as well.

Some resourcs for automated tests etc.

New business models for new media