On Monday I attended the Mobile Monday meeting at Microsoft’s campus in Mountain View. There was an impressive set of presenters all focused on mobile media. The first presenter was Marc Davis of UC Berkeley and the director of Garage Cinema Research.
Garage Cinema Research is interested in adding metadata through context-aware applications. You can infer data about the general location of a cameraphone user from their cell tower triangulation, the time of day, and popular photography subjects in the area. If a user adds a category to their photograph, a server can return a best guess of the object in the photograph.
In the first stage of their system two years ago his group focused on identifying the subject of a photograph. Garage Cinema Research is now focused on helping you figure out with who you would like to share your photographs. Your social network allows you to infer content and use that content to determine the interested parties. Initial research has shown a 200% increase in photography with the sharing sensor enabled.
I recorded Marc’s entire presentation as well as the question and answer session. The MP3 recording is 19 minutes and 43 seconds in length and a 9 megabyte download.