MM4U: A Framework for Creating Personalized

Abstract: In the Internet age and with the advent of digital multimedia information, we succumb the possibilities that the enchanting multimedia information seems to offer but end up in almost drowning in the multimedia information: Too much information at the same time, so much information that is not suitable for the current situation of the user, too much time needed to find information that is really helpful. The multimedia material is there, but the issue how the multimedia content is found, selected, assembled, and delivered such that it is most suitable for the user’s interest and background, the user’s preferred device, network connection, location, and many other settings is far away from being solved. In this chapter, we are focusing on the aspect of how to assemble and deliver personalized multimedia content to the users. We present the requirements and solutions of multimedia content modeling and multimedia content authoring as we find it today. Looking at the specific demands of creating personalized multimedia content we come to the conclusion that a dynamic authoring process is needed in which just in time the individual multimedia content is created for a specific user or user group. We designed and implemented an extensible software framework, MM4U, which provides generic functionality for typical tasks of a dynamic multimedia content personalization process. Such a framework at hand, an application developer can concentrate on creating personalized content in the specific domain and at the same time is relieved from the basic task of selecting, assembling, and delivering personalized multimedia content. We present the design of the MM4U framework in detail with an emphasis for the personalized multimedia composition and illustrate the framework's usage in the context of our prototypical applications