In recent years, with the broad use of digital still cameras, digital camcorders and camera phones, the user shoots and stores vast amounts of contents, and thus it has become difficult for the user to manage the contents.
A content management method, in general, is a method used for giving, to a folder for storing content, a title which includes time and date, a name of person, and a name of event, and used also for assigning metadata to content in a content management application program, when content is saved in a personal computer or in a content management apparatus. However, it is extremely difficult to handle such content management operations for the users who are not skillful at operating a device. Moreover, the content management operations may cause some psychological burden on the users who are not so bad at operating a device but have failed to manage contents for a long period of time while the contents have been stored. Sharing of the metadata assigned by other users is conceivable as a way to provide such users with a clue for searching out what they desire to view from the contents that have been stored in large amounts.
Among the conventional content management apparatuses, some compare metadata respectively assigned to plural contents, create a union of sets for the elements of each metadata in the case where the metadata elements are same or associated with each other in a predefined way, and increase/update the existing metadata by assigning the union to the existing metadata as a metadata element of the plural contents (see reference to Patent Literature 1).
In addition, among the conventional apparatuses are those which prestore unshared words indicating the words the user does not want the others to know, such as personal information, create metadata from which such unshared words are excluded, and allow an unauthorized user to share the metadata from which the unshared words have previously been excluded so that the metadata is shared while the personal information is protected (see reference to Patent Literature 2).
Moreover, it is a well-known technology to identify an object of photographing which a photographer intends to photograph, using photographic information (e.g., magnification, a camera-subject distance, etc.) of a photographing device so as to control the camera parameters of the device (see reference to Patent Literature 3).