Twelfth Annual Multimedia Computing and Networking (MMCN '05)

Whither Ubiquitous Video? (slides available)

Prof. Lawrence A. Rowe
University of California, Berkeley

The first commercially available video phone service was offered in the late 1930's, videoconferencing systems were developed and deployed in the 1960's and 70's, Internet streaming media first began in the early 1990's. Over the past two decades research has shown how streaming audio and video can be used for a variety of applications. While some audio applications have achieved widespread use, for example, music swapping and radio webcasts, video is not widely used in everyday applications.

This talk will explore this phenomena, suggest reasons why video is not ubiquitous like other media, and suggest directions for future research.

Biographical Information:

Professor Rowe retired from the University in June 2003 after twenty-seven years to pursue projects involving the development of streaming media software and consulting with multimedia research laboratories and small startup companies. He was the founding director of the Berkeley Multimedia Research Center (BMRC), which was created in 1995 to explore the application of multimedia technology including stream media and web-based interactive titles to education and research. BMRC also taught classes on multimedia authoring, setup and operated authoring studios and distributed collaboration and distance learning rooms, and provided advice and technical support on a range of issues relating to multimedia authoring and distributed collaboration. BMRC has closed due to a lack of funding and support.

Rowe headed the research group that produced the Berkeley MPEG-1 Tools, the Berkeley Multimedia, Interfaces, and Graphics (MIG) Seminar Internet webcast, and the Open Mash Streaming Media Toolkit. He was also responsible for the development and deployment of the Berkeley lecture webcasting system.

He received a BA degree in Mathematics and a PhD in Information and Computer Science from the University of California at Irvine. He is a Fellow of the ACM, past chair of the ACM Special Interest Group on Multimedia, and has served on many governmental advisory committees.

Rowe has consulted with and served on the Technical Adivsory Boards of numerous companies, co-founded several companies including Ingres Corporation, NCast Corporation, and Orinda Software, Inc., and served on the Board of Directors of Ingres Corporation and Siemens Technology-to-Business.