Supporting content discovery and organization in networks of contents and users

• Published in: Multimedia systems Vol. 17; no. 3; pp. 199 - 218
• Main Authors: Carmagnola, F., Cena, F., Console, L., Grillo, P., Perrero, M., Simeoni, R., Vernero, F.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer-Verlag 01.06.2011; Springer
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Broadcasting. Videocommunications. Audiovisual; Computer Communication Networks; Computer Graphics; Computer Science; Cryptology; Data Storage Representation; Exact sciences and technology; Interconnected networks; Networks and services in france and abroad; Operating Systems; Regular Paper; Services and terminals of telecommunications; Systems, networks and services of telecommunications; Telecommunications; Telecommunications and information theory; Telemetry. Remote supervision. Telewarning. Remote control; Teleprocessing networks. Isdn; Television; Web 2.0; User modelling; Social networks; Personal space; Content navigation support; Folksonomies; Content discovery; Recommender systems; Interactive television; Range finding; Semantic analysis; Social network; Resource sharing; Modeling; Annotation; Content sharing; World wide web; Artificial intelligence
• ISSN: 0942-4962; 1432-1882
• DOI: 10.1007/s00530-010-0219-4

The design of approaches for supporting the user in the navigation of a variety of contents is an interesting area of research with many potential applications. In particular, interactive television (iTV) offers users the opportunity of accessing a huge amount of contents, ranging from general to specialized ones. As a consequence, the exploration of such contents must be supported in some way. In this paper, we present an innovative approach that integrates some recent methodologies and technologies developed in different areas of Artificial Intelligence and the Web: user-model-based adaptation, social networking, semantic annotation, and content sharing. We show how the integration of these technologies can provide interesting opportunities for a new approach to content navigation and discovery based on the possibility of exploring personalized networks of contents, users and concepts. Also, we focus on the specific goal of designing a platform for accessing iTV contents with the aim of providing the user with many alternative ways of exploring and discovering potentially interesting videos. After discussing the application, integrated in a project by Telecom Italia for a new paradigm of iTV, we preset the architecture we designed for integrating the methodologies discussed above.