Content-oriented integration in hypermedia systems

Abstract

In this paper, we present the concept and the general framework of a new integration model for hypermedia systems, the content-oriented integration. Content-oriented integration provides an integrated navigational environment that consists of both conceptual-based navigation and media-based navigation. For the conceptual-based navigation, each media representation is translated into a conceptual representation with the help of media recognition techniques and media understanding techniques. The media representation derives its own semantics by connecting the media-independent part to the conceptual representation such as an object name, keywords, etc. Media-based navigation supports media-dependent information difficult to translate into the conceptual representation. Conceptual-based navigation and media-based navigation enrich navigational capabilities in complementary fashion. We also describe our content-oriented integrated hypermedia system 'Himotoki.' It provides a wide variety of navigational tools such as visual content-based navigation, moving hot-spot navigation and schema navigation. Each media translation is modularized as the corresponding media augmenter so that it can flexibly adapt to a distributed environment. Applications such as 'Electronic Aquatic Life' and 'Hypermedia Museum' demonstrate the usefulness of these navigational tools.