The HotMedia Architecture: Progressive and Interactive Rich Media for the Internet

This paper introduces the HotMedia architecture, a novel scaleable solution for delivering interactive rich media over the internet. A key feature of the technology is a delivery suitable file format that can contain heterogeneous compositions of media bit streams as well as meta-data that define the behavior, composition and interaction semantics. This enables the creation of lightweight single-file representations of interactive, multiphase presentations involving multiple media type content. At the core of a HotMedia client is the smart content algorithm that infers types from the incoming data stream and fetches the media renderer components, user-interface components and hyper-linked action components, all just-in-time, resulting in progressive and context driven enrichment of the user experience. Users over the internet are treated to a simple initial experience involving minimal latency with the arrival of the the first object and their interactions with it drives the subsequent enrichment of this experience. the HotMedia technology derives power by offering an open and extensible architecture, which enables and encourages the inclusion of new media types, user-interfaces, and hyper-linked actions. By componentizing and distinguishing media rendering and action-performing entities, it enables the association of media interactions with computational consequences making it ideal for interactive commerce applications. HotMedia also offers the capability to track on the server-side, user interactions and user experience associated parameters. In its simplest incarnation HotMedia requires no more than a regular web server for delivery and no client-side pre-installation.