Stepping up ... and out [What is multimedia?]

Six years down the line, and many manuscript submissions later, we have come to the realization that true multimedia is the combination of different elements (whether medium, modality, technology, algorithm, or application) that provides a fuller experience of the effect of that combination. The Editorial Board has discussed, long and often, the key technical areas of multimedia. Our short list includes: convergence of computer vision and graphics; human-computer interface; immersive/virtual environments; joint audio - visual processing; multimedia content protection; multimedia database retrieval; and streaming media over network(s). There may be other key technical areas.