Multimedia and it's applications

Multimedia:

Multimedia is any combination of text, graphic art, sound, animation, and video delivered to you by computer or other electronic means. It is richly presented sensation. When you weave together the sensual  elements of multimedia-dazzling pictures and animations, engaging sounds, compelling video clips, and raw textual information, you can electrify the thought and action centers of people’s minds.  When we allow an end user – the viewer of a multimedia project-to controls what and when the elements are delivered, it is interactive multimedia.

 Its applications:

 Multimedia is appropriate whenever a human interface connects a human user to electronic information of any kind. Multimedia enhances minimalist text-only computer interfaces and yields measurable benefit by gaining and holding attention and interest, multimedia improves information retention. There are following areas where multimedia is being used.

1. Multimedia in Business : Business applications for multimedia include         presentation, training, marketing, advertising, product demos, databases, catalogues,    and networked communications. Multimedia is enjoying widespread use in training programs. Flight attendants learn to mange international terrorism and security through simulation. Mechanics learn to repair engines. Salespeople learn about product lines and leave behind software to train their customers.

2. Multimedia in Schools : Schools are perhaps the most needy destination for multimedia. Many schools in the United states are chronically under funded and occasionally slow to adopt new technologies, but it is here that the power of multimedia can be maximized for the greatest long-term benefit to all. An interesting use of multimedia in schools involves the students themselves.

3. Multimedia at Home : From gardening to cooking to home design, remodeling, and repair to genealogy software, multimedia has entered the home. Eventually most multimedia will reach the home via television sets or monitors with built-in interactive user inputs-either on old-fashioned color TVs or on new high-definition sets. The Multimedia viewed on these sets will likely arrive on a pay for use basis along the data highway.

4. Multimedia in Public Places: In hotels, train stations, shopping malls, museums, and grocery stores, multimedia will become available at stand-alone terminals or kiosks to provide information booths and personnel, add value, and they can work round the clock, even in the middle of the night, when live help can work round the clock, even in the middle of the night, when live help is off duty.

5.  Virtual Reality :     At the convergence of technology and creative invention in

multimedia is virtual reality. VR requires terrific computing horsepower to be realistic. In VR, we cyberspace is made up of many thousands of geometric objects plotted in three dimensional space, the more objects and the more points that describe the objects the higher the resolution and the more realistic our view.

On the WWW, standards for transmitting virtual reality world or scenes in VRML (virtual reality modeling language) documents have been developed. Intel and software makers such as Macromedia and Adobe have announced support for new 3-D technologies.