WIAMIS 2009: Deadline extended to December 12

10th International Workshop on Image Analysis for Interactive Services
May 6-8 2009, London, UK
http://wiamis2009.qmul.net/

The International Workshop on Image Analysis for Multimedia Interactive Services (WIAMIS) is one of the main international fora for the presentation and discussion of the latest technological advances in interactive multimedia services. The objective of the workshop is to bring together researchers and developers from academia and industry working in all areas of image, video and audio applications, with a special focus on analysis.

WIAMIS 2009, will host keynote talks by:
Prof. Andrew Zisserman, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Prof. Fernando Pereira, Instituto Superior Técnico - Instituto de Telecomunicações, Lisbon, Portugal


Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
* Multimedia content analysis and understanding
* Content-based browsing, indexing and retrieval of images, video and audio
* 2D/3D feature extraction
* Advanced descriptors and similarity metrics for audio and video
* Relevance feedback and learning systems
* Segmentation of objects in 2D/3D image sequences
* Motion analysis and tracking
* Video analysis and event recognition
* Analysis for coding efficiency and increased error resilience
* Analysis and tools for content adaptation
* Multimedia content adaptation tools, transcoding and transmoding
* Content summarization and personalization strategies
* End-to-end quality of service support for Universal Multimedia Access
* Semantic mapping and ontologies
* Multimedia analysis for new and emerging applications
* Multimedia analysis hardware and middleware
* Semantic web and social networks
* Advanced interfaces for content analysis and relevance feedback

Important Dates
---------------
Proposal for Special Session: November 21, 2008 (closed)
Paper Submission: December 12, 2008 (DEADLINE EXTENDED)
Notification of Acceptance: February 1, 2009
Camera-ready Papers: February 20, 2009

Submissions
-----------
Prospective authors are invited to submit papers in any of the areas listed above. All papers must be written in English, and the length should not exceed 4 pages in IEEE double column, single space format (including figures and tables).

Instructions for preparing the manuscript (in Word and Latex formats) are available at the following web page:
http://wiamis2009.qmul.net/submissions.php

Papers (in PDF format) should be submitted electronically via the web-based Easy chair submission system:
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=wiamis2009

Workshop Proceedings
---------------
All accepted and registered papers will be published in the workshop proceedings which will be indexed and distributed by the IEEExplore. All submissions will be peer reviewed by at least three members of the technical program committee.

General Chairs
---------------
Ioannis Patras, Queen Mary, University of London, UK
Nicu Sebe, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Program Chairs
--------------
Aggelos Katsaggelos, Northwestern University, USA
Mihaela van der Schaar, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

Special Session Chairs
----------------------
Yiannis Andreopoulos, University College, London, UK
Benoit Macq, Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium

Industry Liaison
-----------------
Jan Nesvadba, Philips Research Laboratories, NL

Publicity and Publications
--------------------------
Andrea Cavallaro, Queen Mary, University of London, UK
Maja Pantic, Imperial College, UK / Univ. of Twente, NL

Local Arrangements
------------------
Tijana Janjusevic, Queen Mary, University of London, UK
Sander Koelstra, Queen Mary, University of London, UK
Tomas Piatrik, Queen Mary, University of London, UK

Technical Program Committee (tentative)
-----------------
Lourdes Agapito (Queen Mary, University of London, UK)
Kiyoharu Aizawa (Univ. of Tokyo, Japan)
Luigi Atzori (Univ. of Cagliari, Italy)
Yannis Avrithis (NTUA, Greece)
Alberto del Bimbo (Univ. of Florence, Italy)
Susanne Boll (Univ. of Oldenburg, Germany)
Adrian Bors (Univ. of York, UK)
Nozha Boujemaa (INRIA, France)
Nikolaos Boulgouris (King's College London, UK)
K. Selcuk Candan (Arizona State Univ., UK)
Tsuhan Chen (CMU, USA)
Touradj Ebrahimi (EPFL, Switzerland)
Moncef Gabbouj (Tampere Univ. of technology, Finland)
Aphrodite Galata (Univ. of Manchester, UK)
Nikos Galatsanos (Univ. of Patras, Greece)
Edwin Hancock (Univ. of York, UK)
Alan Hanjalic (Delft Univ. of Technology, NL)
Allan Hanbury (Vienna Univ. of Technology, Austria)
Hermann Hellwagner (Klagenfurt University, Austria)
Thomas Huang (UIUC, USA)
Ebroul Izquierdo (Queen Mary, Univ. of London, UK)
Francisca de Jong (Univ. of Twente, NL)
Joemon Jose (Univ. of Glasgow, UK)
Moon Gi Kang (Yonsei Univ., Korea)
Yiannis Kompatsiaris (ITI, Greece)
Janusz Konrad (Boston Univ. USA)
Inald Lagendijk Delft UNiv. of Technology, NL)
Riccardo Leonardi (Univ. of Brescia, Italy)
Zhu Li (Hong Kong Polytechnic Univ, Hong Kong)
Rainer Lienhart (Univ. of Augsburg, Germany)
Dimitris Makris (Kingston Univ., UK)
Stephane Marchand-Maillet (Univ. of Geneva, Switzerland)
Ferran Marques (UPC, Spain)
Jose M. Martinez (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain)
Majid Mirmehdi(Bristol Univ., UK)
Rafael Molina (Univ. of Granada, Spain)
Marta Mrak, University of Surrey, UK
Milind Naphade (IBM, USA)
Noel O'Connor (Dublin City University, Ireland)
Antonio Ortega (USC, USA)
Nikos Paragios (ENPC, France)
Fernando Pereira (IST, Portugal)
Andrea Prati (Univ. of Modena, Italy)
Philippe Salembier (UPC, Spain)
Shin'ichi Satoh (NII, Japan)
Thomas Sikora (Technical Univ. Berlin, Germany)
John R. Smith (IBM, USA)
Qi Tian (Microsoft, China)
Christian Timmerer (Klagenfurt University, Austria)
George Tziritas (Univ. of Crete, Greece)
Paulo Villegas (Telefonica, Spain)
Jacob Verbeek (INRIA, France)
Yao Wang (Polytechnic Univ., USA)
Marcel Worring (Univ. of Amsterdam, NL)
Ying Wu (Northwestern University, USA)

WIAMIS 2009 is sponsored by
---------------------------
IEEE Signal Processing Society (http://www.signalprocessingsociety.org/)
British Machine Vision Association (http://www.bmva.org/)
PetaMedia NoE (http://www.petamedia.eu/)
Visnet II NoE (http://www.visnet-noe.org/)
WeKnowIt (http://www.weknowit.eu/)

MobiMedia: Preliminary Call for Papers

MobiMedia
5th International Mobile Multimedia Communications Conference
September 7-9, 2009: London, UK

SCOPE

The successful development of multimedia services and applications in mobile environments requires adopting an interdisciplinary approach where multimedia, physical layer and networking issues are addressed jointly. Multimedia semantic characteristics, human interpretation of audiovisual information, extraction and usage of semantic information, coding standards and their interaction with transmission and networking aspects, mobility and security protocols are research challenges that need to be carefully examined when proposing new solutions. Many are the applications that will be enabled by the new standards for mobile networking, such as triple services for mobile networks, digital television in a converged environment, video streaming, interactive gaming, navigation services, context aware services, emergency and healthcare applications, and immersive communications in virtual environments. The efficient delivery of multimedia applications and services over emerging diverse and heterogeneous wireless networks is a challenging research objective. The research effort for the 4G vision of interworking among heterogeneous technologies to achieve multimedia session continuity, retain multimedia QoS characteristics etc., amplifies the need to evaluate the conditions and restrictions under which the delivery of such services can be accomplished. Within this scope, MobiMedia is intended to provide a unique international forum for researchers from industry and academia, working in multimedia coding, mobile communications and networking fields, to study new technologies, applications and standards.
Original unpublished contributions are solicited that can improve the knowledge and practice in the integrated design of efficient technologies and the relevant provision of advanced mobile multimedia applications.

Technical program

The conference will also include invited panels to facilitate for exchanging ideas and discussion, and specific sessions and workshops on focused interest areas. Submissions of proposals on workshops and special sessions on emerging topics are invited

Paper submission and publication

Mobimedia 2009 invites manuscripts that present original materials not previously published in, or currently under review by, another conference or journal. Submissions should be full-length papers of up to 7 pages or short papers of up to 4 pages (including all figures and references) formatted according to ACM publication template. Full-length papers should report on completed work and will be considered for oral presentations. Short papers should report on work in progress or discuss open problems, and will be considered for poster presentations. A separate abstract of no more than 200 words should be submitted as well. Submissions will be judged by their originality, significance, interest, clarity, relevance, and correctness. Papers will be submitted electronically through the COCUS system: http://cocus.create-net.it

Important Dates

Proposals for Workshops and Special Sessions proposal deadline:	Feb 20, 2009
Paper submission deadline:	April 30, 2009
Notification of acceptance:	June 19, 2009
Submission of camera-ready papers:	July 23, 2009

Students Award & Grants:

Student prizes will be awarded to the best papers authored by full time students as first author.

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

Please visit the Submission page for detailed submission requirements and procedures.

PUBLICATION

Please visit the Publications page for more information.

ICT FP4 Call 4

Call identifier: FP7-ICT-2009-4
Date of publication: 19 November 2008
Deadline: 1 April 2009, at 17:00.00 Brussels local time
Indicative budget: EUR 801 million

Challenge 1: Pervasive and Trusted Network and Service Infrastructures

ICT 2009.1.1 The Network of the Future: Collaborative projects (STREP, IP)
Target outcomes:

1. Future Internet Architectures and Network Technologies: (a) novel Internet architectures and technologies and (b) flexible and cognitive network management and operation frameworks.
   
2. Spectrum-efficient radio access to Future Networks: (a) next-generation mobile radio technologies, (b) cognitive radio and network technologies, and (c) novel radio network.
3. Converged infrastructures in support of Future Networks: (a) ultra high capacity optical transport/access networks and (b) converged service capability across heterogeneous access
   

ICT 2009.1.5 Networked Media & 3D Internet: Collaborative projects (STREP, IP), Networks of Excellence, Coordination and Support Actions
Target outcomes:

1. Content aware networks and network aware applications: (a) Architectures and technologies for converged and scalable networking and delivery of multimedia content and services dynamically optimized with policies taking into account the content and adaptation needs, the user contexts, requirements and social relational network for a variety of contents, services that may include home management, applications, locations and mobility scenarios. They enable multiple user roles as content producer, user or manager. (b) Maintaining the integrity and quality of media across media life cycle to optimize quality of experience in collaborative media creation and delivery scenarios, with optimized sharing, storage, retrieval, fusion capabilities
   
2. 3D Media Internet: (a) Architectures and technologies for Future Media Internet and 3D processing and (b) technologies for 3D content representation with configuration/adaptation capabilities in multiple virtual worlds.
3. Networked search and retrieval: (a) Networked technologies and architectures with repositories and cached content optimizing networked search, adaptation and access to relevant multimedia information composed of several information sources, types and origins, including physical world event information. It covers interaction with content, media-to-network and to (mobile) device dynamic adaptation, search capabilities across distributed media systems and P2P networks, and adaptation to context and to specific application domains. (b) Adaptive technologies based on relevance or contextual and user feedback enabling personalization of multimedia networked search, as a function of user contexts, perception and usage profile.
   
4. Immersive media experiences beyond HDTV and electronic cinema: End-to-end architectures for next generation multimedia and cinema experiences beyond
   HDTV.
   
5. Networks of Excellence for 1., 2., and 4.
   
6. Support measures for 1-3.
   

Quality of Service (QoS) Mechanism Selection in SDP

The IESG (note: part of IETF) has approved a draft which enables negotiating which QoS mechanism to use for a particular media stream: end-to-end with a differentiation between upstream and downstream. Therefore, two new attributes have been defined: qos-mech-send and qos-mech-recv. However, currently only two QoS mechanisms are defined, namely nsis and rsvp. Other mechansims - existing or future ones - needs to be registerd through IANA. The following example describes a session which support RSVP and NSIS in both directions whith a preference on RSVP. That is, the order of the actual QoS mechanisms is important.

   m=audio 55000 RTP/AVP 0
   a=qos-mech-send: rsvp nsis
   a=qos-mech-recv: rsvp nsis

The current draft can be found here.

Working Draft of Representation of Sensory Effects

The Working Draft of Representation of Sensory Effects is available and you may also find an updated presentation thereof on SlideShare.

See also previous posts for details.

International Symposium on Multimedia over Wireless - ISMW 2009

Co-located with the Int'l Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC2009)
June 21-24, 2009 in Leipzig, Germany

http://ismw2009.itec.uni-klu.ac.at/

One of the key elements in the convergence of future networks and services to IP technology is the efficient support of rich multimedia applications and services over wireless networks including sensor and mesh networks. The delivery and transport of multimedia in such wireless environments, to heterogeneous mobiles and users, is very challenging. The multimedia services should face many shortcomings caused mainly by the wireless channel unreliability and its sharing among many users, limited bandwidth, random time-varying fading effect, different protocols and standards, etc. Future multimedia services require innovation and advances in better MAC and routing protocols, session establishment and signaling architectures, cross-layer interaction and optimization, QoS provisioning and continuity, adaptive transmission techniques, and scalability support, among others.

The purpose of this symposium is to solicit high-quality theoretical and practical research on the landscape of recent advances on multimedia over wireless.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to

• Architectures for wireless multimedia communications
• Multimedia over Cognitive Radio Networks
• Multimedia delivery over various types of wireless networks (3G, 4G, ad hoc networks/relay, WLAN, WMAN, multi-hop wireless, and hybrid networks)
• Wireless video sensor networks
• Multimedia over wireless peer-to-peer (P2P) network
• Multimedia delivery for broadband vehicular networks
• QoS support for wireless multimedia networks
• Multimedia delivery over wireless embedded devices
• Scalable multimedia delivery over wireless
• Multimodal multimedia services
• Error resilience and concealment
• Joint source-channel coding and adaptive media delivery
• Cross-layer optimizations and interactions
• Interaction among (MAC), radio link control (RLC), IP and application layers
• Wireless multimedia terminal and devices
• Wireless multimedia traffic modeling
• Multimedia delivery to energy-constrained embedded devices
• Multimedia over wireless testbeds and related research infrastructures and demo
• QoS signaling and protocols for wireless multimedia
• Applications, best practices, and standard's support

Chairs

Toufik Ahmed
University of Bordeaux I, France

Christian Timmerer
Klagenfurt University, Austria

Important Dates

• Paper Submission Deadline: December 20, 2008
• Paper Acceptance Notification: March 25, 2009
• Camera-ready Paper Submissions: April 15, 2009
• Registration Deadline for Authors: April 15, 2009

Submission

Please register and upload your paper via EDAS. All papers are limited to six printed pages, including text, figures and references, and must be written in English and follow the standard IEEE double-column format. The font size must be at least 10 points. All submitted papers would be judged based on their quality through a double peer-reviewing process. Accepted papers will be published in the Conference Proceedings of IWCMC2009, which will be included in ACM/IEEE Digital Library (pending approval). Selected papers will be further considered for possible publication in a special issue of the Wiley Journal of "Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing (WCMC)," and "International Journal of Autonomous and Adaptive Communications Systems (IJAACS)". There will also be best paper and best symposium awards.

Contact

For further details please contact the chairs via chairs-ismw2009(at)itec(dot)uni-klu(dot)ac(dot)at.

Note: Replace (at) by @ and (dot) by . in the above email.

Technical Program Committee

• Toufik Ahmed, University of Bordeaux I, France
• Eugen Borcoci, University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest, Romania
• Cyril Concolato, TELECOM ParisTech France
• Annie Gravey, INSTITUT TELECOM - TELECOM Bretagne, France
• Mohsen Guizani, Western Michigan University, USA
• Zhihai He University, of Missouri-Columbia, USA
• Hermann Hellwagner, Klagenfurt University, Austria
• ChingYao Huang, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan
• Andreas Hutter, Siemens Corporate Technology, Germany
• Ebroul Izquierdo, Queen Mary, University of London, UK
• Harald Kosch, University of Passau, Germany
• Sastri Kota, Harris Corporation, USA
• Francine Krief, University of Bordeaux I, France
• Pascal Lorenz, University of Haute Alsace, France
• Ahmed Mehaoua, University of Paris - Descartes, France
• Marta Mrak, University of Surrey, UK
• Liam Murphy, University College Dublin, Ireland
• Hamid Nafaa, University College Dublin, Ireland
• Gabriella Olmo, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
• George Pavlou, University College London, UK
• Kostas Pentikousis, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Finland
• Fabrizio Rovati, STMicroelectronics, Italy
• Zafer Sahinoglu, Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, USA
• Harry Skianis, University of the Aegean, Greece
• Christian Timmerer, Klagenfurt University, Austria

Rich Media UI Framework

According to N9895, the MPEG User Interface (UI) Framework is a framework with the following properties:

• The use of a description language capable of designing Rich User Interfaces (including graphics, audio, video, animations, etc.);
• The possibility to personalize user interfaces based on user information and across devices;
• The possibility to exchange UI between devices;
• The possibility to aggregate UI from several devices.
  

The scope of the MPEG UI framework can be clustered into a widget representation and widget package formats as depicted in the figure above. Thus, the requirements (N10231) can are organized in a similar way.

The Widget Packaging Formats

• shall provide means to identify a widget representation and its associated resources
• shall provide means to point to an optional simplified representation
  
• shall provide means to carry widgets, associated resources and simplified representations using existing delivery mechanisms (such as MPEG-2 TS, MP4, RTP)
• shall allow delivery of the widget and its associated resources independent of each other
• shall allow delivery of the widget and its simplified representation independent of each other
• shall support definition of metadata associated to any widget

The Widget Representation Formats

• shall allow for a declarative description (binary or not) of rich media widgets
• shall support external communications (input and output)
  
• shall allow push and pull data delivery model between External Communication Entities and Widgets
  
• shall provide a way to access one or more external communication entities
  
• shall support dynamic access to external communication entities
• shall be delivery protocol independent
• shall allow for relationships between a widget and its simplified representation
  
• shall allow for identification of Widget characteristics
• shall allow for identification of dynamic and/or adaptable Widget characteristics
  
• shall provide the ability for Widgets to store and retrieve user data
• shall provide the ability for Widgets to query the environment (i.e. user, terminal and network characteristics) and to be notified of changes in this environment
• shall define a set of Widget states defined in a Widget Life Cycle, with methods for communicating changes of state, and with associated required behaviour for the Widget
• shall allow for specification of security constraints in storage of user data and communications with external entities
  

Call for Proposals
The call for proposals (N10232) provides all relevant information in case you'd like to submit a proposal that fits the above requirements. The deadline of the calls, deadlines and evaluation of answers are as follows:

• Final call for proposals: 2008/10/17
• Submission Deadline: 2009/04/15 (23:59h GMT)
• Evaluation of answers: 2009/04/18 – 2009/04/24 (during the 88th MPEG meeting (http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/meetings.htm) and the week end before: proponents are strongly advised to present their proposals in person).
  

Preliminary development plan for the MPEG UI framework:

• Working Draft: April, 2009
• Committee Draft: July, 2009
• Final Committee Draft: October, 2009
• Final Draft International Standard: April, 2010
  

Interested parties are kindly asked to respond. The submissions both by MPEG and non MPEG members shall be received by the 15th of April, 2009 23.59 hours GMT, by Joern Osterman, chair of the MPEG Requirements Group, (ostermann_AT_tnt_DOT_uni-hannover_DOT_de).

Further details about the submission procedure can be found in N10232. I'll post the links to the requirements document and CfP as soon as it becomes available on the MPEG Web site.