VERTIGO: Find, Enjoy and Share Media Trails Across Physical and Social Contexts

VERTIGO: Find, Enjoy and Share Media Trails across Physical and Social Contexts Luca Galli1, Renata Guarneri1, and Jukka Huhtamaki2 1 CREATE-NET, Trento, Italy 2 Hypermedia Laboratory, Tampere University of Technology, Tampere, Finland [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Abstract. On the grounds of media sharing in social networks, visualisation mash-ups and early hypertext idea of associative “trails”, the opportunity for a new system to explore and enjoy connections among mainly linear media is de- vised. A novel system called VERTIGO is to be crafted to tackle the current limitations in media consumption across different contexts. On the end-user side, VERTIGO would provide a context-aware, personalised and proactive dashboard with innovative discovery and interaction capabilities; on the enter- prise side, media professionals would gain access to a common platform ena- bling new collaboration models in the value network. Keywords: Multimedia, Media consumption, Video, Television, Music, Con- text-awareness, Home, mobile, Geolocation, Social Network, Mashup, Visuali- sation, Scenarios, Business Model, Value Network. 1 Introduction The wave of social networks and Web 2.0 services is putting the media industries un- der an increasing pressure. Long standing models in broadcasting, movies and music sectors are threatened by the overwhelming success of the Internet. Yet there is limited experience of successful endeavours in bringing the best out of the once clearly separated worlds of mass media and personal technologies. Interactive television ex- periments, for example, have been around for many years, but they have still to de- liver on the promise of a big change [1]. Of course, games make for a huge realm, but despite some contaminations they are not to be mixed with mainly linear media. In this respect, novel approaches to create more interactive media experiences are needed as ever before [2]. VERTIGO1 aims at tackling this challenge by focusing on the opportunity to expand and enrich the users’ capabilities in finding, enjoying and sharing media connections or “trails” across the different physical and social contexts. These media trails are now just part of the user personal experience, at individual 1 “Vertigo” is one of Alfred Hitchcock's most powerful, deep, and stunningly beautiful films (in widescreen 70 mm VistaVision); this classic 1958 noir, that functions on multiple levels simultaneously, has been a recurring case in the very initial project discussions and it is actu- ally included in one of the project original scenarios. L. Telesca et al. (Eds.): DigiBiz 2009, LNICST 21, pp. 64–73, 2009. © Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering 2009 VERTIGO: Find, Enjoy and Share Media Trails across Physical and Social Contexts 65 level or in the close social sphere of her immediate companionship (e.g. when watch- ing a movie with someone); social networks do have sharing features, but they are scattered among many services with limited interoperability and have little or no inte- gration with the linear media consumption setting. The VERTIGO vision is to trans- form such currently ephemeral “media trails” into a working technology. The system, currently in the early design stage, envisages providing people with a dashboard that would inherit the old-fashioned TV remotes function by reshaping this rigid tool, tied to the living room environment, into a personalised, context-aware, proactive media- rich interface. First, the “trail” concept in relation to media and social networks is introduced, as grounded in the historic developments of hypertext and illustrated with a mash-up example. Getting closer to market dynamics, a comparative perspective on multimedia consumption across the living room, desktop and mobile context allows highlighting key phenomena at the intersection of the technology and business dimensions. Then, following a scenario-based approach [3] VERTIGO is presented by means of two original stories then followed by some hints to related technology challenges and con- cluding remarks. 2 Visualising the Trails in Media and Social Networks One of the most prominent phenomena of Web 2.0 is the concept of a mashup, an application that is “generated by combining content, presentation, or application func- tionality from disparate Web sources” [4]. Whereas in its simplest form a mashup is a combination of a map or some other visual instrument and a set of data, the recent definition by Yu et al. [4] gives a more elaborate context to mashup development. In fact, mashup development can be seen as a form of information visualisation where the underlying objective is to provide visualisation users with expressive views that serve as an amplifier of the cognition of a user and give insight on a certain phenomena represented by the data [5]. Complemented with information visualisation tools such as Prefuse Flare [6] and others [7], mashup technologies and other Web technologies enable the development of highly interactive information visualisations that, according to Kosara, Hauser and Gresh [8] “allows the user to implicitly form mental models of the correlations and relationships in the data, through recognition of patterns, marking or focusing in on those patterns, forming mental hypotheses and test- ing them, and so on”. From the very beginning, the concept of a trail has been present in hypertext. While describing a fictional device memex, Vannevar Bush was the first to present the idea of hyperlink connecting pieces of information by association (instead of in- dexing) back in 1945, so in a similar fashion than the human mind operates: “The human mind does not work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. It has other characteristics, of course; trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory. Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring beyond all else in na- ture.” [9] Indeed, Bush added that “[m]an cannot hope fully to duplicate this mental 66 L. Galli, R. Guarneri, and J. Huhtamaki process [the intricacy of trails in human mind] artificially, but he certainly ought to be able to learn from it”. However, different levels of association (e.g. geo-location, social ties, personal mood, activities) are already made explicit in social networks, even though it is difficult to trace and make use of them in the current scattered multimedia consumption landscape. To reuse McGonigal’s [10] excellent metaphor inspired by Lewis Carroll, it would be possible to craft “rabbit holes” through which multimedia consumers are drawn into new multimedia landscapes beyond their imagination to find new, interesting piece of multimedia or a similar-minded fellow consumer [11]. The easy-to-access Web information (Web APIs) and text-based data formats (e.g. Extensible Markup Language) introduces great possibilities to implement such applications. An example of a possible application is the (still fictional) Multimedia Trails. Col- lecting pieces of multimedia as hubs composing a set in interrelated multimedia, say a concert by Mondo Cane performing new versions of the Italian pop music of the 50’s and 60s’s. The setlist of the concert can be retrieved from Setlist.fm, the live re- cordings are available e.g. at http://concertlive.co.uk (in addition to unlicensed sources including BitTorrent), attendees of the concert from Last.fm, related videos can be collected from YouTube, images and trivia of the band from Last.fm API et cetera. In the screen capture (Fig. 1) we can see that the keyword-based filtering of videos expose both performances by Mondo Cane as versions by other actors. Fig. 1. Example mashup of a Mondo Cane concert Whereas individual interest hubs of multimedia can be visualised with methods of traditional mash-ups, the connections between the hubs or between individual ap- preciators of the digitalised culture can be represented e.g. as graphs in the tradition of social network analysis and visualisation [12] [13]. An excerpt of a social network is included in Figure 1: two users of Multimedia trails, Luca and Jukka, are connected to each other. Further, Jukka is interested in Mondo Cane that performs modern versions of Italian pop, one of Luca’s favourite genres. 3 A Comparative Perspective on Multimedia Consumption across Three Key Contexts Today, there are still clear boundaries between different multimedia consumption contexts. Each context has seen the growth of distinct ecosystems, very heterogeneous in VERTIGO: Find, Enjoy and Share Media Trails across Physical and Social Contexts 67 terms of business models, openness of markets and role of the user. Yet at the edges they start to overlap and build interfaces between each other. This is quite evident from the following discussion on three generic contexts corresponding to the main segments in the media business: broadcasting, the Internet and mobile telecommunications. 3.1 The Living Room Context The living room is still dominated by classical mass media, even though various forms of interactive entertainment are making increasing inroads into it. Its traditional strength lies in creating high-quality laid-back entertainment and information experiences, focused on consumption: going beyond this legacy is an open challenge for those willing to innovate the interactive TV experience [14]. There are a number of multimedia solutions on the market targeting the living room, based on streaming access or personal digital libraries. Apart from large TV screens, set-top-boxes, game consoles or PCs in adapted design [15] have already gained a prominent role there. Proprietary platform solutions include the entire range of “media centre” software, e.g.

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