Content management in a mobile environment: Master's thesis

The amount of digital content, such as videos, images and messages created in mobile devices is increasing. Enabling the controlled management of this large amount of data is a challenging task and cannot be done without developing new content management methods. In this thesis different methods of improving the management of mobile content were studied. Also, a mobile application utilising both metadata content descriptions and Digital Rights Management (DRM) was created. The application is one of the first demonstrations that uses both DRM and metadata combined in a mobile phone for enabling the management of user-created mobile videos. The developed application enables the user to capture video clips with a mobile device, store the captured clips on a remote server and also share the clips with other users. Retrieval of the stored clip is made easier by adding metadata to the clip. This application was evaluated using a field test with real users and the obtained results show that the application can be used sufficiently for its intended purpose. However, because of the immaturity of the applied technologies, there is still need for improvements, e.g. the DRM delivery was too complex for inexperienced users. The novel contribution of this work is the deployment of this application offering new mobile video management services for users. The significance of this work is the evaluation of this service in a real-life environment with real end users.