Adaptive multimedia and it's retrieval examples

In every day's work, or fun, we are using (or playing, what would be explained later) adaptive multimedia systems. The topic is really huge, ranging from very simple and old systems, to a very complex and futuristic ones. I will try to show, maybe to your surprise, few of the examples:

1. 

That's right, the most popular video site nowadays (although some says, that it's getting old technologically).

This is a very standard example, as it offers a multimedia adaptive system to a huge amount of people worldwide. So what are the adaptive YouTube elements?

• 
  
• The ability to comment, leave a rating or favorite a video. Rating system give us the power to show other users, that were searching for similar subject, at first video that we think will suit their needs. That's one of the steps (a small one, but always) for creating a semantic network, with a possibility to highlight best results regarding the topic, and bury worst or out-of-topic videos. Comments creates a social network element, when except sound and picture, social exchange of thoughts comes to play. This ability let's us start a discussion, like for example on a forum, but with topic presented in a form of a video. Another social network element is favoriting a video. When video is favorited, if we have a youtube account connected to facebook account, all of our friends will see favorited video. That gives us a possibility to share interesting picture and start a discussion about it.
• Related videos section. This feature lets us know more about the subject that we were requesting, creating a chain of videos with the same or similar tags (keywords describing the video).
• The ability to put a note on the video, explaining something that is happening right now on the video and showing exact location of it.

2.

Rock Band

Games from the very beggining offered multimedia experience with picture and sound, and required a gamer to activate his senses and use input device to steer the game. Although arcade machines existed some time ago, where we had a steering wheel for driving game, or a skateboard connected to machine for skateboarding game, most of the games used standard input device : keyboard, mouse, joystick or pad.

These devices didn't gave gamers opportunity to emulate in real life what was happening on the TV/computer screen. This have changed with games like Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero or aforementioned Rock Band. These games, with their special devices gave that opportunity to emulate things done virtually in real life. The adaptive part of it all is, depending on our skills in playing a controller-instrument, playing the music more or less accurate. So, when the player is not doing well, the music played back to him is sloppy. On the other hand, with a good player, he can play a song perfectly, and so does the game responds with clean and undistorted song coming from the speakers. The social aspect is, that when played with friends, everyone is responsible for the result. If one instrument is played badly, the game responds with a sloppy tune. The next generation of those kinds of games involves motion sensors (Kinect, Move, Wii) that doesn't require any additional controllers and let's us fully control the virtual character with the player's body moves. This is a one step closer to fully virtual realities when we can stimulate any sense by multimedia.

3.

Siri is an intelligent software assistant and knowledge navigator functioning as a personal assistant application for iOS. At least that's what Wikipedia says.

The idea of voice-steered systems is old, but, as i discussed few weeks ago with my teacher, it never really gain success. We weren't sure why is that, the thing is, Apple is trying to change it. And the might succeed with the idea. The software stimulates speaking and hearing senses, and that wasn't seen often  in mobile devices to this point. What's the possibilities of Siri?

"Siri claims that the software adapts to the user's individual preferences over time and personalizes results, as well as accomplishing tasks such as making dinner reservations and reserving a cab."

As we can see, the adaptation element is present in the software and it touches many different aspects of humans life. 

With these examples i was trying to show a wide range of usages that are contained in the subject. Some of these examples are promising for future speculations.