In this paper, we present our efforts towards creating interfaces for networked media exploration and collaborative annotation. The problem is important since online social networks are emerging as conduits for exchange of everyday experiences. These networks do not currently provide media-rich communication environments. Our approach has two parts -- collaborative annotation, and a media exploration framework. The collaborative annotation takes place through a web based interface, and provides to each user personalized recommendations, based on media features, and by using a common sense inference toolkit. We develop three media exploration interfaces that allow for two-way interaction amongst the participants -- (a) spatio-temporal evolution, (b) event cones and (c) viewpoint centric interaction. We also analyze the user activity to determine important people and events, for each user. We also develop subtle visual interface cues for activity feedback. Preliminary user studies indicate that the system performs well and is well liked by the users.

This paper describes a novel, interactive multimodal framework that enables a network of friends to effectively visualize and browse a shared image collection. The framework is very useful for geographically disconnected friends to share experiences. Our solution involves three components - (a) an event model, (b) three new spatio-temporal event exploration schemes, and (c) a novel technique for summarizing the user interaction. We develop a simple multimedia event model, that additionally incorporates the idea of user viewpoints. We also develop new dissimilarity measures between events, that additionally incorporate user context. We develop three, task driven, event exploration environments - (a) spatio-temporal evolution, (b) event cones and (c) viewpoint centric interaction. An original contribution of this paper is to summarize the user-interaction using an interactive framework. We conjecture that an interactive summary serves to recall the original content better, than a static image-based summary. Our user studies indicate that the exploratory environment performs very well.