Speaker: Mor Naaman, Ph.D., Research Scientist, Yahoo!
Computer Science and Library and Information Science Colloquium
Thursday, February 21, 2008: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
CoRE Auditorium (Room 101), Rutgers University
Busch Campus
Abstract:
Public collections of shared photographs can expose large-scale photo-taking patterns, providing far richer information than can be derived from individual images or photo sets. I will first describe how we extract meaningful information from public collections of "geotagged" images on Flickr. This type of information allows us, for example, to produce summaries and visualizations of the photo collections, making the collections more accessible and easier to browse and understand as they scale. I will then describe how the same type of information can also be used to improve any user's photo experience, using new applications such as ZoneTag and Zurfer. ZoneTag is a mobile client that enables capture, upload and "tag suggestions" for cameraphone photographs. ZoneTag thus forms the basis for a rich personal and social media retrieval/organization and sharing system. I will wrap up the talk by describing user studies that investigated user motivations in such photo sharing systems. We looked at the factors that come into play when people are posting photos and tags via Flickr and ZoneTag, thus contributing data to the community and completing the social media cycle: we can then better understand the data when extracting patterns as described above.
Biographical Sketch:
Mor Naaman is a research scientist at Yahoo! Advanced Development Research in Berkeley, where since 2005 he has been leading a team of research engineers and interns. His domains of interests include mobile and ubiquitous computing, interactive multimedia systems, and location- and context-aware computing. Mor employs a human-centered research approach to develop data models, algorithms and applications. Once developed, these tools allow the study of user behavior, user motivations and the characteristics of application use. Mor received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University. His research in the Stanford Infolab also focused on digital media, and in particular the management of digital photographs, thereby allowing (and requiring!) him to take photos throughout his academic career. Mor is a co-chair of the JCDL 2008 Program Committee, a co-chair of ACM Multimedia 2009's Grand Challenge, and a recipient of two JCDL
best paper awards. In previous careers, Mor was a professional basketball player as well as a software developer and a college radio DJ. In subsequent careers, Mor hopes to be a professional backpacker and traveler.
