An XML Based Interactive Multimedia News System

We present a prototype of an interactive multimedia news system featuring a talking virtual character to present the news on the Web. Talking virtual characters are graphical simulations of real or imaginary persons capable of human-like behavior, most importantly talking and gesturing. In our system a virtual character is used as a newscaster, reading the news on the Web while at the same time presenting images and graphics. The users choose the news topics they want to hear. The content of the news is defined in an XML file, which is automatically processed to create the complete interactive web site featuring the virtual newscaster reading out the news. This allows for very frequent automatic updates of the news. The virtual character is animated on the client using a Java applet, requiring no plug-ins. The bandwidth and CPU requirements are very low and this application is accessible to a majority of today’s Internet users without any installation on the end-user computer. We believe that the presented news system combines qualities of other current news delivery systems (TV, radio, web sites) and therefore presents an attractive new alternative for delivering the news.