Personalization of Interactive Multimedia Services : A Research and Development Perspective

The advance to the so-called Information Society is leading to an enormous growth in the amount of multimedia information available. The success or failure of the information technologies depends ultimately on the services provided to the final user, and an unmanageable amount of information can render them useless. To tackle this problem, personalisation techniques are being developed to help consumers find the specific contents that match their preferences, interests, likings, and needs. Taking into account the strategic role of personalisation in the future of the information technologies, this book provides a technical overview of the current research and development trends, considering the wide range of application areas (education, government, commerce, news, entertainment,...) and the multiple devices (personal computers, digital TV set-top boxes, mobile phones, PDAs, watches, GPS navigators, etc., they embrace. The book comprises chapters authored by outstanding authors from academic institutions, describing their particular works in an extensive and self-contained manner, though with a global approach that will allow the readers to easily understand the core commonalities between the different algorithms, techniques, applications, and technologic platforms.