Multimedia and Hypermedia

What is Multimedia

Multimedia is the name given to the use of a combination of media types including still images, audio, video and motion graphics. Multimedia has moved from being an advanced technology to an essential feature of almost any PC. The main benefit is that it makes the whole user experience more dynamic, colorful, interactive and interesting.

Components of multimedia

• Images - Clip arts, photos, user designed graphics
• Audio - sound clips(wav), audio tracks (mp3) Video - Standard video (.avi and .dat), Internet
• Video (real video, video conferencing files)
• Motion clips - animated gifs, quick time animations, mpeg clips.

Advantages of multimedia applications

• Tends to be more interactive
• Preferred by inexperienced users
• Preferred by children
• Gives a whole new dimension to computing
• Reduces boredom since multimedia applications are more interesting to use

Disadvantages of multimedia applications

• Requires a large amount of system resources (memory, disk space, etc)
• Users may loose focus of actual intended tasks. Multimedia applications and systems take a longer times to load up

What is Hypermedia

Hypermedia is a form of media that was brought about in support of the internet. It is based on a linked collection of web pages which in combination form a web resource or web site. Simple web pages are created using descriptions which are placed within specific tags. Hypermedia includes the use of textual web pages, a link based navigation system and the use of other web based content such as web graphics.

Web page
A web page is a single html (hypertext markup language) page.

Web site
A web site is a collection of interlinked web pages which contain content which is relevant to a particular subject or topic.

Hyperlink
A hyperlink is a tag based link which enables users to access other web pages or other web resources by simply clicking on it.
Eg: Clicking on a link at the right side of this website

Web address (URL)
A URL (uniform resource locator) is a simplified web address which enables users to access web resources such as web sites by simply entering their name with the appropriate extensions.

IP address
Internet protocol address is the assigned address of a machine which is connected to the internet.
Type "what is my ip" on the google search to see your IP address.

Download
The term could be considered as either a noun or a verb. The noun implies a download to be a program or file which is saved to ones machine through the net. The verb defines this process.

Mp3
A groundbreaking innovations which enables the compression of audio into a web enabled format with marginal loss of quality. The sound quality in an mp3 file is almost the same as digital CD audio tracks. However its file size is a fraction of its counterpart. Thus making it ideal for transferring audio over the internet.

Search engine
A type of web site that enables users to search for other web sites by simply entering a keyword. The search engine site is likely to have a back end database and using query tools it checks for matches to the users requests. If found matches are indicated along with links and descriptions about corresponding web sites.