MediaConnector : a gestalt media sharing system

Abstract

Our desire to have common experiences with other people leads us to share media such as photographs and music. With computer networks as the media delivery system we create new opportunities for recording media utilization and ownership. Using traditional and responsive media we explore systems that enable enhanced shared experiences through modeling groups of users. A series of prototypes built with an experimental framework, MediaConnector, help us document observations and behaviors of participants. MediaConnector is a peer-to-peer media-sharing framework that allows people to develop new peer-to-peer media sharing application. Through engendering each node with its own historical audit trail we can take a crawler approach and dynamically build group profiles and perform trend analysis. Theoretical and practical work that leads to the final framework design is discussed. In particular experiments with GPS enabled cameras that explore metadata interrelationships, networked tables to share photos and two construction tests of the MediaConnector framework in dynamic group level personalization of television and audio content. It is intended that a "constructionist" approach together with new behavioral analysis will foster new and novel sharing applications to emerge. MediaConnector is evaluated by its ability to support the above approach in a community of users.