Multimedia is the Message! About MultimediaN
Our society is digitalizing rapidly. Multimedia - that’s image, text and sound (mostly combined in digital form) - is the future. In 2010 our lives will be interspersed with custom-made multimedia; applications that fit the individual needs of people, organizations and communities perfectly. Multimedia will settle itself under our skins, sometimes even literally.
Digital data explosion
But we are not there yet. At the moment we are experiencing a true digital data explosion. Together we create more and more digital content and we keep on running into the boundaries of searching, recognition and finding the right data.
MultimediaN considers it her mission to create order in this digital multimedia haystack by being on the lookout for the secrets it contains.
Solving four fundamental problems
MultimediaN contributes to the solution of four fundamental problems:
- The accessibility of much multimedia content is low.
- The information is fragmented: sound can't be matched to text, text can't be matched to speech.
- A lot of information contributes to the 'information overload' that is characteristic of today's society.
- Multimedia information is often badly organized as a result of legacy systems, self-created standards and heterogeneity in terminologies.
What MultimediaN is looking for are intelligent, self-adjusting computer programs that are able to extract the contextual information. In this way, searching turns into sorting information according to interest. In all cases the research concentrates on the content of the message. In short: what we need is a semantic computer, more than current bit- and byte converters.
High-science. High-tech, highly-involved
The mission of MultimediaN is to develop and absorb knowledge of multimedia technology, for the information-intensive and competitive knowledge-society of the future. To accomplish this, MultimediaN puts the participation of high-science, high-tech, and highly involved partners first.
MultimediaN opts for high-science, because only high-quality research will survive within the worldwide competition of ideas. The interlocutors will mostly be high-tech - big or small - because they articulate advanced questions and are able to absorb high-quality solutions.
The combination of high-science and high-tech offers the necessary condition for the realization of a short development time and a short time distance to the market. Under this condition the competition can be met worldwide.
All this can still fail if the project participation is not highly involved. Knowledge-transfer requires close cooperation in small subdivisions, using short communication lines so that quick adjustments - when desired - can be made. A success factor is the active interaction of high-science research with high-tech partners and first users. This takes place at the work table.
Key point in the objective of MultimediaN is to make an impact in the economical and social field by means of demonstrating and introducing multimedia-technology. This starts out from a high-quality scientific basis and linked projects in the chain from scientific idea to product innovation, (open source) licenses, patents or conveying knowledge and know-how through people, or intensive cooperation in projects.