Paper Reading # 18

Comments
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Reference
Embedded Media Markers: Marks on Paper that Signify Associated Media
Qiong Liu, Chunyuan Liao, Lynn Wilcox, Anthony Dunnigan, Bee Liew
IUI'10, February 7-10, 2010, Hong Kong, China

Summary
This paper talks about embedded media markers (EMMs) which are marks on printed documents that help relate certain text areas to associated media. EMMs serve a similar purpose as bar codes and hyperlinks. The advantage EMMs have is that unlike bar codes, EMMs do not affect the appearance of the document. Also unlike hyperlinks, EMMs are printed on a paper document. The authors claim that paper is the most widely device used for viewing information. It has many advantages such as portability, low cost, high resolution, etc. The disadvantage is that it cannot play video or audio, however cell phones are great for this purpose. The proposed design in this paper merges the use of paper and cell phones. The idea is to print iconic marks on paper documents corresponding to media which will then be captured by a cell phone. The purpose of the cell phone will be to retrieve information about the EMMs and play the associated media. Some of the previous work include Microsoft Tag, DataGlyphs, RFID, HotPaper, Mobile Retriever amongst many other applications. EMMs can be printed in low-resolution paper at a relatively low cost. EMMs should be visible to humans, should be meaningful, and should not affect the layout of the document. In order to achieve this there should be different icons to infer distinction between the associated media.

Discussion
The idea presented in this paper is awesome! There is only one thing that worries me, and that is that we are becoming very lazy. As we continue to develop new technology, we also become lazier. How awesome would it be to be reading an essay, take out your phone, scan a text area and retrieve the definition of a certain word you don't understand? This is the idea of the embedded media markers. The neat thing about EMMs is that they are low cost, and they do not change the document layout like bar codes do. This would be a neat thing to add in academia!