CeBIT 2009 - Aftermath

So, how was this year's CeBIT computer fair? The media have been rather pessimistic beforehand. 25% less exhibitors, 20% less visitors, but despite the worlwide economic crisis you'll find confidence everywhere ... at least now.

This year, I visited CeBIT only for a single day as exhibitor as well as a visitor. On friday, March 6th 2009, there was 'startup day' at the HPI booth in hall 9, B.10., and we presented our video search engine yovisto (well, it was almost only Jörg who did the presentation, while I was playing 'visitor'...). As every other year, for me hall 9, the 'future parc', is the most interesting hall of all 26 (!) halls. BTW, did you now that the Hannover fair area is the largest in the world? In hall 9 you could find the latest research of universities and research institutions (as well as some government and public administration...).

One thing that was pretty obvious was that hall 9 was not as crowded with exhibitors as the years before (at least in the rear areas this could be realized pretty heavily). I also was a little bit disappointed about our former booth at the joint exhibition stand of the universities Thüringen, Sachsen, and Sachsen-Anhalt (=Mitteldeutschland), because there was nothing really interesting to see, and most exhibitors were busily sitting in front of their computer screens.....presenting their 'backside' to the visitors and avoiding contact...not really inviting at all. No wonder, if they don't make it in the run for excellence...


But, on the other hand, I really liked the exhibition stands of the Fraunhofergesellschaft and the THESEUS research programme. Esp., at THESEUS (user scenario CONTENTUS) they demonstrated the workflow for digitalization, restauration, and indexing audiovisual media (...just my subject). While digitalization and restauration work pretty well, the indexing capabilities are still rather limited. You might search for 'similar' motives, but identifying individual persons is still subject to ongoing research.



After all, I was really happy to stay just for one day. Some of our co-workers had to stay for the entire week (my sincere condolences!). Was it worth while? For one single day, of course yes it was!

P.S. Alas, there really was a Latvian company that showed 'brains' in various colors.... ;-)

Aus Osotis wird yovisto - Web 2.0 Video Suchmaschine

Gemäß dem Motto "aus Raider wird Twix" stellt sich die Videosuchmaschine yovisto (vormals "Osotis") auf der diesjährigen CeBIT 2008 im neuen Gewand vor. Was ist neu, außer dass es einen neuen Namen und ein neues Layout gibt? Einiges!

Mittlerweile sind gut 3000 Videos akademischer Lehrveranstaltungen in deutscher und englischer Sprache in yovisto verzeichnet und durchsuchbar. Im Gegensatz zu anderen Videosuchmaschinen bietet yovisto die Möglichkeit, in den Videos selbst nach Inhalten zu suchen, d.h. wenn man z.B. nach dem Suchbegriff "Buchdruck" sucht, bekommt man nicht nur Videos als Ergebnis, die sich primär mit dem Thema Buchdruck befassen, sondern man wird punktgenau an die betreffende Szene im Video geführt, ohne lange selbst im Video danach suchen zu müssen.

Neu ist vor allem das übersichtlichere, durchdachte Layout. Insbesondere die Informationsseiten zu den Videos, die sich von den Benutzern selbst in Form eines Wikis erstellen lassen, bieten vielfach Möglichkeiten, Zusatzinformationen, Zusammenfassungen und sogar themenbezogene Werbung mit einzustellen. Am Auffälligsten aber ist die Darstellung der VIdeoinformation als 'Cover Flow', wie wir es ja schon von Apple's iPhone oder vom Leopard Betriebssystem her kennen (siehe unten)



yovisto ist auf der CeBIT 2008 in Halle 9, Stand D04 vom 4. - 9. März in Hannover und natürlich jederzeit im Netz unter www.yovisto.com zu sehen. Wer uns auf der CeBIT am Stand besucht, bekommt exklusiv einen Original yovisto-Button (limitierte Auflage) geschenkt!

P.S. Beitrag mit yovisto im Thüringen Journal (via mdr.de), vom 4.März 2008, 19 Uhr

CeBIT Day 3 ... finally

Finally I'm back home at the HPI in Potsdam. Yesterday (Sunday) was my last day at this year's CeBIT computer fair and there were a lot of interesting things going on...
First, by chance I met HBS-fellow Jan Schmidt. Together with Oliver Gassner and Reinhard Karger as host he was talking about the use of networking platforms such as second life, their use, the hype, and social spam (read more about it in Jan's blog).
Another very interesting talk was scheduled afterwards: Carsten Waldeck, founder of iverse was talking about liquidfile - a file browsing application based on liquid browsing. Liquid browsing offers the possibility to arrange and manage a huge number of data items (e.g. documents) in a rather efficient way by a smart 2d-visualization. This principle is now applied to file system management on your local computer. There is an implementation for the mac and I will test it asap to give you a report.
In addition Carsten Waldek and host Reinhard Karger were talking about the plan of installing a social networking platform for archiving intellectual content (not in the sense of intelectual property). But, you should be able to express an idea, to upload your idea in any form of document, and to receive an official timestamp. Of course maintaining a database of 'ideas' will be rather difficult. Thus, all those ideas have to be translated into 'logic' (means with the help of ontology and rule representation languages). Then, if you have a new idea, you can check, if anyone else has already thought about it and if there are some people with similar interest. The other way around, you will be able justify that you have a claim in some idea because you have registered it previously. The trouble is....translate a natural language document into logic representation...you know that this - if done completely automatically - will fail (at least too often....). Thus, we will have to wait, until the semantic web will come.
On the other hand....we have been thinking and thinking again about possible killer applications for the semantic web. This(!) could be one....

BTW, I also met another HBS-fellow Andreas Scheper after the talk (read more about the CeBIT future talks and see some videos in Andreas sein Blog). We decided to meet again at re:publica in berlin, where als the HBS has a so called plugin that will be filled with some fruitful discussion...

So, CeBIT is over for me now... If you want to stay informed about ongoing CeBIT work and CeBIT after hours, keep on reading Miss Marple's Blog.

It's CeBIT time again ... Day 2

Incredible, but true...yesterday evening we've succeeded in walking through ALL CeBIT halls. If you've ever been there, you know that this means something. Somebody told us, that taking the whole 9 yards means walking almost 10 kilometers. Ok, in the evening without the crowded passages its much easier (except the crowded parties of course). And there the CeBIT often offers Live music of exceptional quality.

But before that you stand there at your booth from 9 am to 6 pm, talking to peoples, explaining and demonstrating your project, making new contacts, taking and planning appointments...
Saturday and Sunday are the days of the so called 'Beutelratten' (meaning non-business visitors that are hunting all possible giveaways and gadgets, gathering all in free giveaway bags that they have to carry around everywhere and everytime). But, anyway besides of those, today we also had some rather interesting business visitors.
Tomorrow on Sunday will be my last CeBIT day...and I must say it's okay. Another three days would be really too stressful...

Please don't forget to register at OSOTIS, our new video search engine, and win an iPod!!
(to be continued...)

It's CeBIT time again ... Day 1

Friday, my first day on CeBIT computer fair. This year, we (Osotis) have a booth at the joint exhibition of 'Mitteldeutschland' in hall 09 - the hall of research and future. Next to us are the other EXIST-SEED funded projects of the FSU Jena -- MobiSoft (watch out for Steffen's Blog, esp. for his pictures) and Navimatrix. On the other hand - my second employer is also present in hall 09 - the Hasso-Plattner-Institute of the University of Potsdam at the joint exhibition of 'Berlin-Brandenburg' with the projects Lock-Keeper (a hardware firewalling system), TeleTask (a simple tele lecturing system), and Tele Lab (a laboratory for security techniques). I will write about the most interesting projects of hall 09 in the upcoming posts.

Yesterday, we had a lot of trouble to keep our system running. But today, Jörg (fortunately) managed to solve the major problems. Thus, I tried to upload a few more videos (including a lot of Berkeley public lectures). If you read this blog, please register at Osotis, because we need a lot of users to keep the system working!

As usual, CeBIT would be half as interesting without it's after business parties. Almost in each of the more than 20 halls there were several parties going on (many including live music, all including free drinks, some including free food...). It's the most difficult task during the day to find out, where and what is going on after business, where to go for 'dinner', for some drinks, and for to listening the best music.

OSOTIS ...winning an iPod...and the CeBIT rumble starts again

I have already talked about the video search engine OSOTIS, but it has again improved over the time. First at all, what does 'OSOTIS' mean? No, it's not some sort of ancient egyptian god. It's just derived from the botanical name for 'forget-me-not', which is greek 'Myosotis'. So, the name already gives some hint for the offered service:
(1) OSOTIS offers search within videos
(2) right now, most videos available at OSOTIS are academic lecture recordings, ranging from short viseo sequences from the famous Solvay conference in 1927 (where Einstein replied to Bohr that God does not throw dice...) up to lectures from Berkeley, MIT, Stanford, Oxford, or also my lectures at the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena (Germany).
(3) OSOTIS does not host the videos (as youTube or Google does). They only provide links to your resources. Nevertheless, OSOTIS downloads the offered video stream for post processing and for generating timed annotations for the video serch.
(4) You can register at OSOTIS (btw if you register before April 15th you have the chance to win an iPod 30GB) and maintain your own video collections, maintain an own user profile, make friends, choose your favourite videos, and (!) you can tag videos.
(5) You can even tag inside video streams. This means that the tagging information also includes time information and that the search is able to replay the video exactly from the right position.
(6) OSOTIS is a social networking tool.
And OSOTIS is at the CeBIT computer fair that has just opened its gates. Visit us at hall 9, D04!
Yes...and tomorrow I will be at CeBIT in Hannover for the next three days. So just stay tuned, because I will write about everything interesting that comes into my way.