Achieving Content-User Synergy in MPEG-7

The MPEG-7 content-user gap is the imbalance between the range of content metadata that may be represented and the range of preferences that may be expressed about that content using the user interaction tools. The hanging basket model (H. Agius and M.C. Angelides, 2006) specifies isomorphic user and content models, where both are represented by means of existing MPEG-7 content description tools so that all content preferences may be specified and the gap may be closed. A corollary of the content-user gap is that the MPEG-7 user interaction tools provide a wealth of user preference and history metadata which can usefully complement specific content preferences, even though the standard does not allow it to be tied directly with content. We address this corollary and present a means by which the hanging basket models and the MPEG-7 user interaction tools may work together.