1 Introduction

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to this special issue, which collected the best papers form the 1 st ACM International Workshop on Semantic Ambient Media Experience (NAMU Series) SAME’08. The first article in the special issue contains a full analysis of the contribution to the workshop, as well as it contains the results of the workshop, which was actually a ‘workshop’ in form of a creative think-tank instead of simple paper presentations.

1.1 About the SAME workshop series

SAME was premiered this year, and is aiming at a series of conferences and workshops for presenting cutting edge research results, case-studies, artistic installations, user-experience studies, and innovations of semantic ambient media technology, content, art, and applications. The workshop aimed at the creation of a think-tank of creative thinkers coming from technology, art, human-computer interaction, and social sciences interested in glimpsing the future of semantic ambient media technology. The aim was to collect multidisciplinary, future oriented submissions that help to develop the ‘ambient media form’. SAME gives especially innovative and visionary scientists a unique opportunity to share their perspectives with others in a distinguished way.

1.2 Ambient media association (AMEA)

The workshop organizers are currently establishing the international Ambient Media Association (AMEA) www.ambientmediaassociation.org, which also contains further information and resources about ambient media. The workshop homepage to be found at: http://namu.cs.tut.fi/acmmm2008/same2008/. Any interesting parties are invited to subscribe to our newsletter or see follow-up activities that we are undertaking.

2 SAME’08 general chairs

  • Artur Lugmayr (Tampere Univ. of Techn. & lugYmedia Inc., Finland)

  • Thomas Risse (L3S Research Center, Germany)

  • Bjoern Stockleben (Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg (RBB), Germany)

  • Juha Kaario Nokia, Finland)

  • Kari Laurila (Nokia, Finland)

3 Papers in this Special issue

  • Semantic Ambient Media: An Introduction

    • ○ Artur Lugmayr, Tampere Univ. of Technology (TUT), Finland

    • ○ Thomas Risse, L3S Research Center, Germany

    • ○ Bjoern Stockleben, RBB, Germany

    • ○ Juha Kaario, Nokia, Finland

    • ○ Kari Laurila, Nokia, Finland

  • Towards Environment-to-Environment (E2E) Multimedia Communication Systems

    • ○ Vivek Singh, University of California, Irvine, USA

    • ○ Hamed Pirsiavash, University of California, Irvine, USA

    • ○ Ish Rishabh, University of California, Irvine, USA

    • ○ Ramesh Jain, University of California, Irvine, USA

  • Mid-air Display Experiments to Create Novel User Interfaces

    • ○ Ismo Rakkolainen, University of California, USA

  • A Framework for Human-Centered Provisioning of Ambient Media Services

    • ○ M. Anwar Hossain, University of Ottawa, Canada

    • ○ Pradeep K. Atrey, University of Winnipeg, Canada

    • ○ Abdulmotaleb El Saddik, University of Ottawa, Canada

  • Virtual Assistant: Enhancing Content Acquisition by Eliciting Information from Humans

    • ○ Motoyuki Ozeki, Kyoto University, Japan

    • ○ Shunichi Maeda, Kyoto University, Japan

    • ○ Kanako Obata, Kyoto University, Japan

    • ○ Yuichi Nakamura, Kyoto University, Japan

  • Creating Ambient Music Spaces in Real and Virtual Worlds

    • ○ Jakob Frank, Vienna University of Technology, Austria

    • ○ Thomas Lidy, Vienna University of Technology, Austria

    • ○ Ewald Peiszer, n/n, Austria

    • ○ Ronald Genswaider, n/n, Austria

    • ○ Andreas Rauber, Vienna University of Technology, Austria