Media technologies. Media is changing and so are we, page 3. Page 16: Smart interaction in mobile and media. Editorial June 6, 2012: Contents

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1 Media technologies N E W S L E T T E R Editorial June 6, 2012: Media is changing and so are we, page 3 Page 16: Smart interaction in mobile and media Media technology event on Tuesday at 14:00 Contents Page Getting the message right 5 Tablet devices in education 7 Social reading enriches reading experience 8 From data to decision - Visual Analytics 9 Personal profile economy with semantics 10 Municipality reform in Owela 11 Finding key moments in video 12 A look is worth a thousand words 13 A tool for urban and construction planning - Augmented Reality 14 Future travel catalogue 15

2 2 Copyright VTT 2012

3 Media is changing and so are we Editorial The media and communication industry is changing fast. Especially the tablet and smartphone revolution is accelerating the migration towards digital media, which more and more often is mobile. This poses a big pressure also on research. As a consequence, VTT is reorganising its research in media and context topics to better meet the changing customer needs. Research in user behaviour and business models is enhanced, as well as research in new interaction technologies. This newsletter reflects the topics that we at VTT are currently focusing on. Finding the optimal media mix for efficient advertising is one such item. Despite the trend toward digital media, it is important to remember that print still is a central if not the major channel for advertisements and editorial content. Understanding the user is the key to success here as elsewhere. Social media is currently a megatrend and it is fascinating how it can be applied to something as traditional as book reading. Our research shows, that social networks of like-minded readers clearly increase the reading experience. In another project, our social media platform Owela was successfully applied for citizen discussion concerning the municipality reform in Finland. As noted above, tablets are spreading everywhere; also into schools. There, they grant a smoother integration to the classroom setting than traditional laptops. Together with our customers and partners, we have a lot of efforts going on around managing content and data. Our long-time work in personal profile economy is guided by a vision to provide individuals better control over their personal data as well as to create privacy preserving, trusted ways of exchanging profile information between the private and public sector. Visual analytics is another approach that gives novel insights into large data masses. When it comes to video content, we presented a novel solution at the Mobile World Congress for creating video summaries. Using augmented reality as a tool to urban planning and construction is an area where we possess world leading skills, that has accumulated over several years. We have identified this area as our foremost growth arena. Collaboration tools are newer to us, but we see collaboration as a very potential field as work over distance is becoming more and more central in our work lives. Currently we are concentrating on visual tools increasing the thrust between participants in video conferences. The stories in this newsletter are meant to be short and easy-to-read snapshots of our current research. Hopefully you will find them interesting and relevant. We are always ready to explain the results further and to find out ways to utilize them as well as to create totally new ideas. Summer Greetings! Caj Södergård Research Professor Digital Media 3 Copyright VTT 2012

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5 Getting the message right Advertisers expect that their messages and advertisements will be planned and executed in the right media at the right moment in time and space, in order to effectively and efficiently reach the target group in the right mood. However, having the right media mix is getting more and more complicated. New alternatives compete for consumers time and thus for advertisers money and new technologies are changing media consumption habits. In respect of media advertisement buying and selling activities, the discussion is shifting from different media or channels into different media brands. Thus, there is a need for better understanding of how to reach and impact consumers with advertisements regardless of the platform on which they are consumed. Not only is it important to understand how many people have exposed to a certain media, but also who have exposed to the advertising message, and more importantly, what was the response to the message. Print Power and VTT are carrying out a study on how European consumers from 13 countries perceive print advertising. The objective of the study is to better understand the role of print products in the lives of Europeans. The first results for Finland, Norway and UK were presented at Drupa in May ( and more results will be available after the summer. Anu Seisto anu.seisto@vtt.fi Anna Viljakainen anna.viljakainen@vtt.fi 5 Copyright VTT 2012

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7 Tablet devices in education Mobile devices provide fast access to the internet and to versatile digital learning materials regardless of time and place. However, new technological solutions and practices need to be introduced step by step, with a good understanding of the users and the learning contexts. Our study on the use of tablet devices in school showed that the smooth integration to the current classroom setting is a clear advantage of the tablets over the laptops. Furthermore, the results indicate that the technology supports adoption of new approaches to teaching and learning and may promote informal and self-directed learning. To increase the efficient use of technology in schools, investments on infrastructure and training are necessary. Watch our video Mobile technology in education (VTTFinland) on YouTube: Maija Federley maija.federley@vtt.fi See the full report of the user study on the website of Next Media-research program. 7 Copyright VTT 2012

8 Social reading enriches reading experience Digital social reading services have the possibility to expand both traditional and digital reading. VTT, together with Bonnier Books, studied book club members attitudes towards different social reading concepts. The study was conducted within Next Media research programme. Many respondents of the questionnaire (N=1316) saw that online networks of like-minded readers enhance social interaction around books and thus enrich the reading experience. The concepts that support finding new books and social hobby-related problem solving are the most desired ones. The near future prospects are promising for digital social reading services: While only 3,5% of the respondents were currently (autumn 2011) reading ebooks on mobile devices, 26% plan to do that within 2 years. In 4 years, 48% of the respondents imagine they will read both printed and digital books depending on the context. Timo Kuula timo.kuula@vtt.fi See the report at Internet. 8 Copyright VTT 2012

9 Visual Analytics From data to decision Visual Analytics is a recent approach for finding knowledge and insight from data masses. It is a new multidisciplinary research area, defined as the science of analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces. It provides visual tools to support analytical reasoning and decision making. Visual Analytics uses the human capacity to perceive, understand and reason from visual representations. Data management and data mining techniques are utilized to derive information from massive, dynamic, complex and often conflicting data. Visual Analytics uses the human capacity to perceive, understand and reason from visual representations. Data management and data mining techniques are utilized to derive information from massive, dynamic, complex and often conflicting data. Visual analytics has been an active research area in VTT since In addition, VTT has long expertise in the building blocks of Visual Analytics: user interfaces and interaction technologies, information visualisation, both in 2D, 3D and virtual environments, data management and integration, and data mining. The attached pictures are from a Visual Analytics pilot, constructed for analysis of energy efficiency and indoor conditions of buildings. Paula Järvinen paula.jarvinen@vtt.fi 9 Copyright VTT 2012

10 Personal profile economy with semantics VTT has been actively developing new technologies for recommending content easily and intelligently to the users of digital services. This goes hand in hand with the idea of semantic profiling systems, which allow the users to define their interests with the help of semantic web. These methods have been tested and demonstrated already in various pilot projects. Our Semantic Portable Profile service supports the creation and utilisation of semantic user profiles that can be used in multiple services with the user in control. Our future vision is to provide individuals better control over their personal data as well as to create privacy preserving, trusted ways of exchanging profile information between private and public sector. We supply content providers with consulting, design and implementation services in using semantics to facilitate better matching of content with users true needs and requirements. For a related video, see YouTube Asta Bäck asta.back@vtt.fi Sari Vainikainen sari.vainikainen@vtt.fi Profile service at profile.vtt.fi 10 Copyright VTT 2012

11 Municipality reform in Owela The Ministry of Finance used VTT s Owela platform for two months for public citizen discussion concerning the municipality reform in Finland. Each of the 18 regions had their own discussion space that aimed at helping decision makers and citizens to share thoughts and opinions. For the Ministry of Finance, the online discussions provided material that can be used in the further preparation of the municipality reform. A lot of activity was expected, since the topic has been heavily debated in media. More than 300 people participated in the discussion and contributed thousand comments. This indicates that there is room for online citizen discussion and this opportunity could be advertised more. Online collaboration also requires strong commitment and active participation of the challenge owners. The Owela platform has been used in more than 60 co-creation projects with companies and public sector. It provides good means for direct interaction between different stakeholders in various development processes. owela.vtt.fi Pirjo Näkki pirjo.nakki@vtt.fi 11 Copyright VTT 2012

12 Finding key moments in video Our lives are more and more captured on video. We meet video devices daily; surveillance cameras control our safety, the surprising events of our lives are often captured with smart phones and the most important moments are recorded with camcorders for later reminiscing. Creating video content is easy, but finding a specific event and editing the content is still a difficult and time consuming task. VTT has created video technology to automatically analyse series of video clips in order to find the key moments. The analyses results can be combined to other existing information such as context. The technology can be adopted for different application domains from media entertainment to industry and security. Johannes Peltola johannes.peltola@vtt.fi Sari Järvinen sari.jarvinen@vtt.fi An example of the developed technology was presented in Mobile World Congress The Finnish tourism related content on the video wall was automatically summarised to summer, winter and night video presentations. This was done using advanced automatic video analysis algorithms and video coding tools. 12 Copyright VTT 2012

13 A look is worth a thousand words Communication is in key role when collaborating either face-to-face or over network. For successful communication, it is necessary for the participants to understand at each time instant, who is the source and who are the targets of the information, whether in aural or written form. This refers to the need of supporting awareness. A special case of awareness is gaze awareness, which is known to help communication e.g. by indicating turn taking, and to build trust between participants. VTT is developing a teleconferencing system Hydra in the on-going project ColPro (Collaboration Environments for Global Distributed Product Processes). This system simulates a meeting, where the participants are sitting around a table face-to-face. The focus is in investigating possibilities to maintain gaze awareness between multiple remote users. Gaze awareness between participants will be supported by using multiple displays and cameras. In the demonstration, the participants can also collaboratively interact and make comments e.g. on a common document, image or 3D representation. In ColPro, the technologies are planned to be applied particularly to industrial production and maintenance applications. Welcome to see the demonstration at our Media Technology Day in September! Seppo Valli seppo.valli@vtt.fi 13 Copyright VTT 2012

14 A tool for urban and construction planning Augmented Reality Would you like to know what kind of view of the neighboring block you will have from your back garden, or your balcony, when the planned housing is Charles Woodward eventually completed? And how will that yet-to-be-built office building look standing on that empty plot you can see on the screen of your smart phone or ipad? This is the cue for Augmented Reality applications that VTT has been getting to grips with. Combining technology originally developed for video and mobile games with positioning software has created new application areas that include urban and construction planning and interior design. The practical applications developed by VTT are the first of their kind in the world, and have caused a considerable stir both at home and abroad. Examples of recent applications, produced in cooperation of VTT and Finnish Consulting Group FCG Oy, are the visualizations for the Kämp Tower building in Helsinki and a projected hotel to Raseborg city officials in demanding decision making cases. In both cases the VTT-developed technology was used to place a sketch of the building in its natural environment. The same images could be examined on site by using, among other means, a smart phone camera display. For related videos, see: 14 Copyright VTT 2012

15 Future travel catalogue Together with UPM and Finnish Tourist Board, VTT created a unique crossmedia concept for binding printed media together with digital content. Concept was demonstrated at UPM stand at the Drupa print media fair ( with an installation In the demonstrator, users could relax on the chair, at the same time experiencing an audiovisual ride through Finland. Audiovisual experience was automatically orchestrated by a software, which followed the pages of the catalogue, as users flipped through them. consisting of big screens, specially designed reading chairs and Insider s Guide to Finland travel catalogues. Detection of the catalogue pages is based on a VTT-developed visual detection method, which is able to identify small tags added to the pages. Tatu Harviainen tatu.harviainen@vtt.fi 15 Copyright VTT 2012

16 Business from technology Smart interaction in mobile and media VTT welcomes you to our annual Media technology event on Tuesday at 14:00 in the address Innopoli 1, Leonardo auditorium, Otaniemi, Espoo Harri Nurmi Our guest speaker this year will be Dr. Ville-Veikko Mattila from Nokia Research Center Media Laboratory. Other interesting presentations cover topics such as the foresights to the future of broadcasting, thoughts and tools of digital content providing, and how users can be involved in developing new digital services. We will also hear news from the current research in the media and mobile technology arena, and have the opportunity to watch and play with a number of demonstrations provided by our researchers. Last but not least, the buffet will be open until late afternoon. You will receive a separate invitation but please make a note in your calendar already now! Technology and market foresight Strategic research Product and service development IPR and licensing Assessments, testing, inspection, certification Technology and innovation management Technology partnership