Interactive multimedia systems represent a key technology rapidly evolving from marketing hype and research prototypes to commercial deployments. We survey the technological considerations for designing a largescale, distributed, interactive multimedia system, identifying the core problems and examining approaches proposed and implemented to solve them."If you build it, they will interact." -J. Tierney, New York Times, June 20, 1993. f you believe the recent claims about interactive multimedia technology, we will soon be able to view movies, play video games, I browse libraries, order pizza, and participate in office meetings (in our bare feet!) from within the confines of our homes. Some critics have called interactive multimedia "a technology looking for an application.'' This skepticism appropriately highlights the distinction between the technology (computers and communications) and the applications that use the technology and make it ubiquitous.There is good reason for the excitement. Interactive systems will give users the flexibility of selecting and receiving specific information using a hybrid paradigm of the TV remote control and information retrieval techniques. This differs from traditional television delivery mechanisms, in which the user is a passive participant receiving what the service provider offers. The availability of enormous communication bandwidth and computing power has made it possible to process and deliver information on a per-user, per-session basis in real time. The ability to process information at the source enables the information provider to extract relevant data and modify their characteristics to specific user tastes. Users of such services will have flexibility in choosing the kinds of information they receive. They can also control, based on individual preferences, the manner and time of receipt of this information.The kind of interaction supported depends to a large extent on the kind of information retrieved and on the particular application under consideration. (Often, service providers distinguish interactive services as consumption services, in which they deliver information primarily one way-like movies-and communication services, in which a bidirectional channel is necessary-like teleconferencing.) A home user interacting with movies requires the system to support virtual VCR capabilities, such as the ability to play, forward, reverse, and pause. Most systems use a remote-control device to browse a menu and select movies on a TV screen ( Figure 5). Other interactive features include the ability to avoid or select advertisements, to investigate additional details about news events (through hypermedia, for example), to save or annotate programming for later reference, and to browse, select, and purchase goods. Figure 1 illustrates one example of this technology applied to distance learning. Clearly, the distinction between the computer and the television is blurring.'Several applications deliberately take advantage of interactive information retrieval and disseminatio...

No abstract

Purpose -The aims of the article are to not only review existing competency models and offer a comprehensive performance-linked competency model towards sustaining competitive advantage, but also validate the proposed model in an Indian textile organisation. Design/methodology/approach -The article operationalises the term "competency" and intends to develop a comprehensive performance-linked competency model after analysing the existing models with respect to competitive advantage; and the model has been validated empirically in an Indian textile company using data envelopment analysis (DEA), cross-efficiency DEA, and rank order centroid (ROC) methods. Findings -It reveals that the comprehensive performance-linked competency model focuses on competency identification, competency scoring and aligning competency with other strategic HR functions in a three-phase systematic method which will subsequently help the organisation to sustain in the competition. It has further been shown how using DEA, cross-efficiency DEA and ROC, an organisation can align individual performances and their competencies in terms of efficiency. Research limitations/implications -If the number of competencies get increased, DEA cannot be used. Practical implications -This can be applied to industry for more efficient and effective performance measurement tool. Originality/value -The paper enables organizations to systematically manage their employee competences to ensure high-performance level and competitive advantage.

No abstract

Abstract-One approach to supporting continuous media traffic is via resource reservation at connection establishment time. The shortcomings of this approach are the lack of flexibility in re-negotiating bandwidth parameters after connection establishment and the inability to react to changing server load conditions. In this paper we propose a "selected access scheme" for re-negotiating continuous media delivery from a video-on-demand server. We consider the overall system perspective on resource availability rather than a per-connection resource management scheme. The selected access scheme is combined with data placement strategies for the server to dynamically access desired video frames from a shared storage device. This approach is especially suitable for video data compressed and stored using an inter-frame encoding scheme such as specified by the MPEG standard. Simulation results show that the proposed model can utilize server bandwidth, improve the reliability of playback, reduce the buffering needed, and support VCR-like functions without blocking user access to the storage device.