Tat-Seng Chua - Böcker

This volume is the first focused effort to compile state-of-the-art research and address future directions of UGC. It explains how to collect, index, and analyze UGC to uncover social trends and user habits. The book describes how to mine various media, including social annotation, music information retrieval, and networks, and discusses the mining and searching of different types of UGC, such as Wikis and blogs. It also presents many applications of UGC, including the use of UGC to answer questions and summarize information.

With the proliferation of social network services, more and more social users, such as individuals and organizations, are simultaneously involved in multiple social networks for various purposes.

It was our great pleasure to host the 4th International Conference on Image and Video Retrieval (CIVR) at the National University of Singapore on 20–22 July 2005. CIVR aims to provide an international forum for the discussion of research challenges and exchange of ideas among researchers and practitioners in image/video retrieval technologies. It addresses innovative research in the broad ?eld of image and video retrieval. A unique feature of this conference is the high level of participation by researchers from both academia and industry. Another unique feature of CIVR this year was in its format – it o?ered both the traditional oral presentation sessions, as well as the short presentation cum poster sessions. The latter provided an informal alternative forum for animated discussions and exchanges of ideas among the participants. We are pleased to note that interest in CIVR has grown over the years. The number of submissions has steadily increased from 82 in 2002, to 119 in 2003, and 125 in 2004. This year, we received 128 submissions from the international communities:with81(63.3%)fromAsiaandAustralia,25(19.5%)fromEurope, and 22 (17.2%) from North America. After a rigorous review process, 20 papers were accepted for oral presentations, and 42 papers were accepted for poster presentations. In addition to the accepted submitted papers, the program also included 4 invited papers, 1 keynote industrial paper, and 4 invited industrial papers. Altogether, we o?ered a diverse and interesting program, addressing the current interests and future trends in this area.

The two volume set LNCS 4351 and LNCS 4352 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Multimedia Modeling Conference, MMM 2007, held in Singapore in January 2007. Based on rigorous reviewing, the program committee selected 123 carefully revised full papers of the main technical sessions and 33 revised full papers of four special sessions from a total of 392 submissions for presentation in two volumes.

The two volume set LNCS 4351 and LNCS 4352 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Multimedia Modeling Conference, MMM 2007, held in Singapore in January 2007. Based on rigorous reviewing, the program committee selected 123 carefully revised full papers of the main technical sessions and 33 revised full papers of four special sessions from a total of 392 submissions for presentation in two volumes.

This volume contains the full and short papers of SAMT 2009, the 4th Int- national Conference on Semantic and Digital Media Technologies 2009 held in Graz, Austria. SAMT brings together researchers dealing with a broad range of research topics related to semantic multimedia and a great diversity of application - eas. The current research shows that adding and using semantics of multimedia content is broadening its scope from search and retrieval to the complete media life cycle, from content creation to distribution and consumption, thus lever- ing new possibilities in creating, sharing and reusing multimedia content. While some of the contributions present improvements in automatic analysis and - notation methods, there is increasingly more work dealing with visualization, user interaction and collaboration. We can also observe ongoing standardization activities related to semantic multimedia in both W3C and MPEG, forming a solid basis for a wide adoption. Theconferencereceived41submissionsthisyear,ofwhichtheProgramC- mittee selected 13 full papers for oral presentation and 8 short papers for poster presentation. In addition to the scienti?c papers, the conference program - cluded two invited talks by Ricardo Baeza-Yates and Stefan Rug ¨ er and a demo session showing results from three European projects. The day before the main conference o?ered an industry day with presen- tions and demos that showed the growing importance of semantic technologies in real-world applications as well as the research challenges coming from them.

In recent years, we have witnessed an increasing use of sophisticated graphics in designing and manufacturing complex architectural and engineering systems; in modeling, simulating and visualizing complicated physical processes; in generating, highly realistic images and animation; and, in most man-machine interfaces. These trends are made possible by the improvement in performance and the lowering of cost of hardware since the mid 1970s, and the continuing advances in many areas of computer graphics. The major advances in computer graphics include: greater sophistication and realism of image generation techniques, improved man-machine interaction techniques, superior geometric modeling techniques for the representation and modeling of complex physical and mathematical objects, sophisticated software systems for animation and modeling of incorporating latest AI and software engineering techniques, greater integration of CAD and CAM in CIM, and techniques to represent and visualize complicated physical processes. These advances are reflected in this present volume either as papers dealing with one particular aspect of research, or as multifaceted studies involving several different areas.

Modelling is the main theme of these proceedings. The papers, by scientists from around the world, discuss the latest in efficient representation, processing, interacton, integration and retrieval of multimedia information. In particular, focus is given to common modelling frameworks for integrating the diverse fields of visual information (graphic, image and video) and audio information (speech, music and sound effects).

The process of integrating multiple senses and media into computer systems accelerated recently. This has broaden the applications of multimedia from the traditional areas of information organization, presentation and learning, to the new fields of simulation and virtual reality. Applications that have benefited from the introduction of multimedia include: training, demonstration of products for sales or inventory, education, computer-aided design and engineering, medicine, weather, and entertainment.This volume is devoted to the discussion of effective modeling of multimedia information and systems for a wide range of applications. It is perhaps the only book that devotes entirely to this important but much neglected topic.