Tele-action objects for an active multimedia system

We present the concept of tele-action objects (TAOs), which possess private knowledge specific to the object instances. The user can create and modify the private knowledge of a tele-action object, so that the tele-action object will automatically react to certain events to pre-perform operations for generating timely response, improving operational efficiency and maintaining consistency. Moreover tele-action objects also possess a hypergraph structure leading to the effective presentation and efficient communication of multimedia information. The active multimedia system (AMS) is provided to manipulate and maintain the TAOs. The user interface and the system architecture for the AMS are described. A multimedia mail system is implemented to illustrate the usefulness of tele-action objects. Finally, we discuss the advantages of the proposed approach and future research