science

Personalcasting

Personalcasting is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Personalcasting rather than just read about it. In short: Personalcasting, or personalized digital television (PDTV), is an application that uses news-on-demand algorithms to deliver tailored broadcast news (from radio or television) on a wide range of computing platforms including mobile phones and PDAs. Unlike podcasting, which is a series of digital media files (either audio or video) that are typically downloaded through web syndication, personalcasting automatically i…

Key takeaways

Personalcasting belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Personalcasting to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Personalcasting from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Personalcasting, or personalized digital television (PDTV), is an application that uses news-on-demand algorithms to deliver tailored broadcast news (from radio or television) on a wide range of computing platforms including mobile phones and PDAs. Unlike podcasting, which is a series of digital media files (either audio or video) that are typically downloaded through web syndication, personalcasting automatically indexes, clusters and extracts information from news sources.

Application With personalcasting technology, users can create complex queries combining keywords, named entities (e.g., people, organizations, and places), sources (e.g., CNN, MSNBC, ABC) 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 analysis, driving to work was the favored means of commute 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 scientists and individual technology 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 used the term personalcasting at an international conference on user modeling in Germany and he also included the term in several research papers. In Japan, Sony applied this concept to television programming in 2000, launching a site called PercasTV that provides live personal video distribution service on the Internet. 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 Patent on personalcasting was awarded in 2008 for "Personalized broadcast news navigator".

References

Further reading Maybury, M., Greiff, W., Boykin, S., Ponte, J., McHenry, C. and Ferro, L. 2004. Personalcasting: Tailored Broadcast News. In Ardissono, L., Kobsa, A. and Maybury, M. (eds.) Personalized Digital Television: Targeting Programs to Individual Users. p. 177-202. Kluwer Academic. Morey, D; Maybury, M; Thuraisingham, B. 2002. Knowledge Management: Classic and Contemporary Works. Cambridge: MIT Press. Special Issue on User Modeling and Personalization for TV Personalized Digital Television

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Personalcasting

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Personalcasting claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Personalcasting before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Personalcasting ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Personalcasting

In research: Personalcasting appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Personalcasting in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Personalcasting is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Broadcast journalism, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Personalcasting outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Personalcasting in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Personalcasting means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Personalcasting out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Personalcasting in simple terms?

Why does Personalcasting matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Personalcasting?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Personalcasting.