IBM Adds Multimedia Tools To AlphaWorks Site

IBM

Several of the new technologies on the site focus on using Java and XML for building multimedia applications for the Web, the spokeswoman said.

AlphaWorks is IBM's site that gives developers access to technologies at IBM before they are fully baked. The site URL is www.ibm.com/alphaWorks.

Developers can use any technology on alphaWorks free for 90 days through a license they obtain on the site, and are encouraged to give feedback to IBM on how the company might improve the technology.

Among the new tools on the site is the Session Initiation Protocol Toolkit for Java, a tool using an emerging open standard for Internet conferencing, telephony and instant messaging, according to IBM. The technology enables developers to build voice-over-IP applications integrating voice and multimedia functionality with the Internet.

Another new developer tool is the IBM MPEG-7 Annotation Tool to help developers as they create video sequences, according to IBM. Developers can use this technology to add footnotes to shots in a video sequence with annotations such as static scene descriptions and event descriptions, and then store those descriptions in an output XML file, the company said.

MPEG-7 is an emerging industry standard describing the content within an MPEG file, according to the spokeswoman.

The Multimodal Annotation Tool, another new technology, enables developers to annotate video and audio MPEG files with MPEG-7 metadata, the spokeswoman said. This tool also can open MPEG-7 files to show a developer the annotations for the corresponding MPEG file, she said.