Search Computing: Business Areas, Research and Socio-Economic Challenges

Search has become an important and necessary component of many diverse ICT applications. A large number of business and application areas depend on the efficiency and availability of search techniques that are capable to process and retrieve heterogeneous and dispersed data. Such search techniques are directly related to a number of research topics and challenges ranging from multimodal analysis and indexing to affective computing and human aspects as well as to various socio-economic challenges including standardization, legal and ethical issues. The area covering all these issues is also known as “Search Computing”. The objective of this presentation is to provide an overview of the current status and limitations in multimedia search followed by a more specific analysis in the areas of a) mobile devices and applications, b) social networks and social media, c) music retrieval and d) enterprise data access and organization. Then, research challenges arising as a result of application requirements and needs in these areas are listed. Finally, related business models and benchmarking activities are discussed.