Personalcasting, or personalized digital television (PDTV), is an application that uses news-on-demand

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specificat ...

s to deliver tailored broadcast news (from

radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

) on a wide range of computing platforms including

mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...

s and PDAs. Unlike

podcasting A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...

, which is a series of

digital media Digital media is any communication media that operate in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital media can be created, viewed, distributed, modified, listened to, and preserved on a digital electronics device. ' ...

files (either audio or video) that are typically downloaded through

web syndication Web syndication is a form of syndication in which content is made available from one website to other sites. Most commonly, websites are made available to provide either summaries or full renditions of a website's recently added content. The term m ...

, personalcasting automatically indexes, clusters and extracts information from news sources.

Application

With personalcasting technology, users can create complex queries combining

keyword Keyword may refer to: Computing * Keyword (Internet search), a word or phrase typically used by bloggers or online content creator to rank a web page on a particular topic * Index term, a term used as a keyword to documents in an information syst ...

s, named entities (e.g., people, organizations, and places), sources (e.g.,

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...

MSNBC MSNBC (originally the Microsoft National Broadcasting Company) is an American news-based pay television cable channel. It is owned by NBCUniversala subsidiary of Comcast. Headquartered in New York City, it provides news coverage and political ...

ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster ** Disney–ABC Television ...

) or time intervals (e.g., specific days, weeks or years). These queries result in selected video stories specific to user interest . Conversely, there are companies that offer personalcasting services directly to news outlets - allowing the organizations to create customized, around-the-clock programs for listeners. By personalizing the selection of stories and the platforms from which they are delivered, users are afforded a more individual and enhanced news experience based on their predilections. This is an especially beneficial application for people wanting to listen to personalized information during their commutes to and from work. According to a

U.S. Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau (USCB), officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy. The Census Bureau is part of the ...

analysis, driving to work was the favored means of

commute Commute, commutation or commutative may refer to: * Commuting, the process of travelling between a place of residence and a place of work Mathematics * Commutative property, a property of a mathematical operation whose result is insensitive to th ...

of nearly nine out of 10 American workers (87.7 percent), with most people (77 percent) driving alone. In addition, algorithms can be created to follow a user’s personalcast sessions to capture user interest. The system can then automatically broaden a user’s queries and selections to include additional content based on preferences. Personalcasting technology was developed by a community of

scientist A scientist is a person who conducts Scientific method, scientific research to advance knowledge in an Branches of science, area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, ...

s and individual

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...

companies during the late 1990s and early 2000s as a way to provide more convenient access to broadcast news. Earlier systems required content to be manually annotated. However, more recent systems automatically extract information from a variety of news sources.

History

The first known reference to personalcasting was in 1999 by a technology company named VoicePress. Shortly thereafter, Mark T. Maybury, editor of ''Intelligent Multimedia Interfaces'' and ''Intelligent

Multimedia Information Retrieval Multimedia information retrieval (MMIR or MIR) is a research discipline of computer science that aims at extracting semantic information from multimedia data sources.H Eidenberger. ''Fundamental Media Understanding'', atpress, 2011, p. 1. Data sour ...

'' used the term personalcasting at an international conference on

user modeling User modeling is the subdivision of human–computer interaction which describes the process of building up and modifying a conceptual understanding of the user. The main goal of user modeling is customization and adaptation of systems to the user' ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

and he also included the term in several research papers. In

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

applied this concept to

television programming Broadcast programming is the practice of organizing or ordering (scheduling) of broadcast media shows, typically radio and television, in a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or season-long schedule. Modern broadcasters use broadcast automation ...

in 2000, launching a site called PercasTV that provides live personal video distribution service on the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

. Building upon content based news understanding algorithms that simultaneously analyzed multiple media streams (e.g., audio, video, textual), a personalization system that automatically generated both content and media tailored to individual queries and preferences was invented to personalize broadcast news. A US PatentPersonalized broadcast news navigator. US Patent # 7,386,542
Maybury, M. et al. June 10, 2008 on personalcasting was awarded in 2008 for "Personalized broadcast news navigator".

References

{{Reflist

Application

History

References

Further reading