Job Offer: 4 Ph.D. Positions starting October 2009

Hasso-Plattner-Institute (HPI) is a privately financed institute affiliated with the University of Potsdam, Germany. The Institute's founder and benefactor Professor Hasso Plattner, who is also co-founder and chairman of the supervisory board of SAP AG, has created an opportunity for students to experience a unique education in IT systems engineering in a professional research environment with a strong practice orientation.

Project Description:
MEDIAGLOBE is part of the THESEUS research program initiated by the German Federal Ministry of Economy and Technology (BMWi), with the goal of developing a new Internet-based infrastructure in order to better use and utilize the knowledge available on the Internet. The focus of the research program is on semantic technologies, which determine contents (words, images, and sounds) not through conventional methods (e.g., combinations of letters) but which are able to recognize and place the meaning of a content in its proper context. MEDIAGLOBE deals with digitalization, analysis, and semantic retrieval of historical, documentary audiovisual content. (for more information on MEDIAGLOBE, c.f. http://theseus-programm.de/theseus-mittelstand-2009/ )

Main research topics:
• audiovisual retrieval and analysis
• knowledge representations
• semantic web technologies
• semantic search
• innovative web development
• user interface design for audiovisual content

How to apply:

Excellent candidates are invited to apply with:
• Curriculum vitae and copies of degree certificates/transcripts,
• Writing samples/copies of relevant scientific papers (e.g. thesis, etc.),
• Letters of recommendation.

Please send your application in PDF format indicating in the subject ,Application for PhD position‘ via email or via traditional mail to the following contact.

Contact and application:

Harald Sack
Hasso-Plattner-Institut für Softwaresystemtechnik GmbH
Universität Potsdam
Prof.-Dr.-Helmert-Str. 2-3
D-14482 Potsdam, Germany

phone: +49 (0)331-5509-527
fax: +49 (0)331-5509-325
email: harald.sack@hpi.uni-potsdam.de
web: http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/meinel/persons/sack.html

Presenting at OpenVideoConference in New York City

We are happy to have had the opportunity to give a presentation about yovisto.com at Open Video Conference in New York City. The presentation was part of a metadata round table concerned with time-dependant metadata. During the presentation I gave a short introduction of the shortcomings of educational video and how we overcome those by the use of automatically and manually created time dependent metadata. Additionally, I gave a demonstration of the yovisto.com platform, which causes incredible positive reactions in the audience.

It is exciting to participate at this conference, to join the open video community and to meet so many interesting people here.

"Open Video is a broad-based movement of video creators, technologists, academics, filmmakers, entrepreneurs, activists, remixers, and many others. When most folks think of “open,” they think of open source and open codecs. They’re right—but there’s much more to Open Video. Open Video is the growing movement for transparency, interoperability, and further decentralization in online video. These qualities provide more fertile ground for independent producers, bottom-up innovation, and greater protection for free speech online."

Demo of yovisto

Finally, we have a short demo of yovisto with "foreign" material, historical video from the city of Potsdam.

Potsdamer Stadtschloss in Gefahr

Due to legal reasons we had to remove the very popular video 'Das Potsdamer Stadtschloss in Gefahr" from our collection ( including 4 other videos with historical documentaries about Potsdam from the same series). Too bad for the copyright holder...because we had also made advertisements for the copyright holder's Potsdam DVD (where you may find all the material that has been accessible via yovisto including more in higher resolution and much better quality). Also bad luck for the copyright holder, because there had been tons of Google hits on his videos at yovisto while looking for "Potsdam", "Sanssouci", or "Stadtschloss". And again bad luck for the copyright holder, because there had already been links at wikipedia to the Potsdam videos at yovisto.

From now on, the only way to access these videos will be searching the DVD at amazon.de
and buying the DVD (without knowing what kind of video material is waiting there for the potential buyer). We are rather sorry to shut away these very nice and valuable historical documentaries from the public.

BTW, have you heard of the "Monty Python" effect?
After publishing their content freely on a youtube channel, amazon sales of their DVDs increased rather significantly (about 400%)......

Yovisto has been voted to be among the top German ICT Applications

Yovisto has been voted to be among the top German ICT Applications in the context of the World Summit Award 2009. The World Summit Award (WSA) is the global contest to select best practice in e-Content and innovative ICT applications. The contest shows that new media keep the promise and can contribute to a better world. It increases public awareness for ingenious content ideas and applications with a twist, thus assisting in marketing high-quality multimedia products.

e-Content products or ICT application are entered in the WSA via national contests. The national winners in the eight WSA categories are submitted by the Eminent Expert from each country based on the national jury process. In the absence of an open national contest, Eminent Experts conduct a national selection panel in order to select in an objective and fair manner the best from their countries.

Thus, yovisto has been voted to be among the top German e-Content and innovative ICT applications! Thank you very much...!!

Yovisto goes HPI

Yovisto relocated from FSU Jena to Hasso-Plattner-Institute in Potsdam/Germany to become a research platform for semantic multimedia technologies.

The move was a little adventuresome: First of all, renting a car was scheduled to 8am but the Europcar staff arrived not until 9am. So we lost one hour right at the beginning of this day. Finnally, a surprise, the rental car was a brand new Mercedes Benz :-).
Driving to Potsdam was a pleasure until I the tank turns empty, so I drove to the next gas station for refueling. And then, surprise 2: I wasn't able to open the flap. The manual says: "Press slightly on the left to open the flap." I've done exactly what that manual instructs me to do. I tried to press a bit tougher, on the left, on the right, and again on the left. No way, the flap kept closed. This was embarrassing. After calling Europcar and car manufacturer - both were not able to help me - I decided to drive on with this sip of fuel. So, it was only 30km to HPI. And, thanks to my economic driving talent, I reached the HPI and the destination Europcar station.

So, whatever. The servers are now located at HPI in a well air conditined server room protected by regular backups and uninterruptible power supply. I will post some photographs soon.

Yovisto Embedded Flash Player

We've created a new embedded flash player for your websites. The new version is now equipped with the same features like the regular yovisto flash player.

How to embed the player on your website?
You will find the HTML code for embedding by moving your mouse pointer onto the video display. Click on the EMBED button and select your favorite size by clicking the left or right text area (we provide 400x350 and 600x500, but of course you can change the size later manually). Copy the selected HTML code to your clipboard and paste it to your website.