Paper Reading #21: iSlideShow: a content-aware slideshow system

Title: iSlideShow: a content-aware slideshow system

Authors: Jiajian Chen, Jun Xiao and Yuli Gao.

Venue: IUI '10 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces

Comments

http://shennessy11.blogspot.com/2011/04/paper-reading-21.html
http://detentionblockaa32.blogspot.com/2011/04/paper-reading-21-social-signal.html

Summary
iSlideShow is a system for automatically analyzing information from photo collections to create compositions and transitions similar to traditional slideshows. The authors describe two modes: a story-telling mode and a person-highlighting mode. The former mode instructs the system to use a theme-based clustering algorithm where multiple photos within a theme are tiled on the same slide. Different layouts are used and the slideshow is animated by transitions between clusters.

The second mode type, the system uses face detection algorithms to highlight faces within the photos and creates clusters based on the presence of certain individuals. Transitions in this mode are preformed between clusters of individuals within the photos.

To the left is an example interface for the slideshow. Each cluster is displayed as a sort of collage, and the location within the slideshow is displayed by the preview bar.

Discussion
While interesting, I felt this system had little to do with computer human interaction, or really anything beyond screen savers. The system described is obviously not intended for the creation of a presentation, and the uses of computer generated collages is fairly low. I didn't feel like the system really did innovated on anything either, as face detection algorithms are widely available through the Intel computer vision library (which is free to use). Themes were clustered by simply using time stamps on the photos, so besides utilizing well established algorithms for facial recognition, the system really isn't intelligent at all as the authors claim.