Semantic ambient media are today in a high stage of maturity, and found their way from research laboratories into several aspects of our daily life. They turned from an experimental setting into business, which is demonstrated by the articles collected within the scope of this special issue. Many still believe that ambient media solely relate to ambient advertising, where ads are distributed throughout our urban environment. But ambient media are a new genre of media, as television, print media, or digital media are. They create a media environment within the natural living environment, are intelligent, and react pro-actively to the consumer. Semantic media underlay 5 principles: manifestation, morphing, intelligence, collaboration, and experience, as discussed in [1,2,4–6,8]. With this special issue we collected eight ground-breaking articles shading new light on the world of ambient media. Several articles contribute through various aspects which are briefly discussed within this editorial.

A special feature of this special issue is the first article, which discusses several contributions and attempts to provide a topical introduction into the themes addressed. The article is entitled “Ambient Bloom: New Business, Content, Design, and Models to Increase the Semantic Ambient Media Experience” contributed by B. Pogorelc et al. This special issue ranges a wide range of applications of ambient media—ranging from gaming, TV, assisted living, mobile contexts, ambient displays, business models, and health care. The articles discuss a wide range of new ambient technologies, algorithms, business models, and methods to demonstrate the innovation aspects that ambient media bring.

The second article contributed by A. Lugmayr et al, entitled “Categorization of Ambient Media Projects on their Business Models, Innovativeness, and Characteristics – Evaluation of Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Award Projects of 2010” gives an overview of a wide range of ambient media applications, and shades insight into the defining ambient media from a business viewpoint. The remaining six articles focus on specific aspects of semantic media. The following two articles devote to new display technologies, or the way how the consumer awareness of interactive displays can be increased: “On Designing Interactivity Awareness for Ambient Displays”, contributed by R.-D. Vatavu, and “AmbiKraf: A Ubiquitous Non-Emissive Color Changing Fabric Display” written by R. L. Peiris et. Al. The application of ambient media in health care or for supporting ambient assisted living is discussed in the next two articles of the special issue, which are entitled ”Detecting the Health Problems in the Elderly using Dynamic Time Warping” contributed by B. Pogorelc et. Al. and “Assisted Living Solutions for the Elderly Through Interactive TV” written by E. Stojmenova et. Al. Interaction technologies, such as speech and language recognition are discussed in the remaining two articles. They are entitled “Automatic Speech Recognition- An Approach for Designing Inclusive Games”, contributed by M. M. Mustaquim; and “Towards Mobile Language Evolution Exploitation” written by G. Zenz et. Al.

If you should be interested in joining activities around the wider field of semantic ambient media, we would like to draw the attention to activities such as the AMEA - Ambient Media Association (see http://www.ambientmediaassociation.org), the Semantic Ambient Media (SAME) workshop series (see e.g. [3,7]), or the Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Award (see http://www.numa.fi).

We definitely wish to give the reader a fully new perspective on the newly emerging field of ambient media. We also would like to thank all the contributors of this special issue, especially our team of reviewers.