InterMedia NOE
The InterMedia Network of Excellence is a research project focussing on user-centered multimedia. The project is co-funded by the European Commission within the Sixth Framework Programme. 16 international partners from industry and academia seeks to ProgresS beyond home and device-centric convergence toward truly user-centric convergence of multimedia.
Participants
Most project partners are either European universities, such as Lancaster University, the RWTH Aachen, and the Interdisciplinair instituut voor BreedBand Technologie in Belgium or research institutes like Fraunhofer and OFFIS. Industrial partners such as Telefonica and ICU are mainly from the telecommunication industry. Partners from outside Europe are the Information and Communications University in Korea and Carleton University in Canada.
Goals
An assumption of the project is that there is a point were multimedia applications and the means for interacting with them converge. The project seeks to develop methods to enhance the user's experience when interacting with mobile multimedia. An example is the mobile consumption of video and audio streams on mobile handsets. These mobile devices have limited inut and output capabilities which must be considered when delivering content to the user. Another aspect is the development of new mobile interaction techniques e.g. by using new and emerging technologies.
Events
The project organizes and supports a number of scientific events. The project states that it aims to discuss emerging research areas and identify important challenges. The scientific workshop on Hypermedia and 3D, for example, focussed on overcoming the limitation of the 2D information access provided by the internet today. In 2009 the project sponsors the mobile HCI workshop on Mobile Interaction with the Real World which focus on overcoming the limited output and input capabilities of current mobile devices by embedding digital information in the real world.