Early Home Cinema    

Current developments in high-definition technological systems for home viewing link definitively with early Home Cinema, as practised from the late 1890s, as an alternative to public spectatorship. The traditions of Home Cinema, in encompassing degrees of informality, interaction and control within domestic exhibition, served to lay foundations for a televisual experience which, today, having come full-circle, is defining itself once more as `Home Cinema'.

Chalke, Sheila. Convergence (2008). Articles>Multimedia>Video>History

Effects of Documentation Errors On User Perception of Interactive Programs: Background For a Study  

Typographical errors and grammatical blunders affect the aesthetic appeal of documentation, and common belief is that they affect usability too. Many readers, however, seem not to notice such errors unless they are very frequent or flagrant. We thought it would be interesting, and perhaps useful, to test experimentally the effect of such errors on users’ perception of the information and on their performance with the product that the information supports the product.

Grice, Roger A. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Documentation>Interactive>Multimedia

Embedding Flash Inside of a Powerpoint Presentation

Whenever people talk about "jazzing up" some of the Microsoft Office tools, PowerPoint always rises to the top of the list (but you can use this technique for any Office applications). We've all seen the presentations with that pat clip-art, the checkered fades, and those bullets that slide. Why not add some interactivity and exciting animation? Thanks to Microsoft's ActiveX technology we can.

Flashgeek.com (2006). Articles>Presentations>Multimedia>Microsoft PowerPoint

Enhancing Documentation with Video  

Presents guidelines for developing videos from technical material and discusses the process of video production.

Steiner, Leonard T. Intercom (2004). Articles>Documentation>Multimedia>Video

Ethics and Accountability in the New Media Environment

In May, I had the pleasure of participating in the IABC Newfoundland & Labrador 20/20 Visionary Communications conference. Jo-Anne Polak of Hill & Knowlton, while presenting her thoughts about contemporary crisis communication, made a comment that I haven’t stopped thinking about since her presentation. Jo-Anne pointed out that after September 11th, journalists have had to become more competitive and aggressive because media sources have exploded in number, and technology has provided immediate electronic delivery.

Hattori, Todd. Communication World Bulletin (2006). Articles>Business Communication>Risk Communication>Multimedia

The Evolution of Multimedia

There is no doubt that the World-Wide Web is a powerful medium for us to communicate with each other, but it also presents possibilities for us to think about ourselves in new ways in relation to time, space, borders, other human beings and machines. The World-Wide Web, however, is part of an ongoing historical movement called 'Multimedia,' a movement that has engaged in questions about our relationship to technology and to one another for well over a century. In this essay, I will introduce a number of concepts in multimedia and some of the pivotal thinkers that contributed its development. From this survey, we will see that there is an underlying theme in this movement that prizes centering the user, cultivating audience interaction, and supporting creative expression. In addition, I will discuss the implications of these themes and the future of multimedia.

Detera, Eydie. Elements of Information Design (2001). Articles>History>Multimedia

Examples of Companies Integrating Podcasts into their Mix of Technical Communication Deliverables?

Podcasts aren't very good at delivering step-by-step technical information. Concepts are where podcasts excel.

Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2007). Articles>Multimedia>Audio>Podcasting

FlashHelp: The Ideal Online Help Format for Web Applications

As the web transitions from a relatively static, information-oriented environment to a highly interactive, task-oriented environment, web developers must provide on-demand user assistance to ensure the usability of their applications.

Sibley, Jake. Adobe (2004). Articles>Documentation>Multimedia>Flash

Frozen Memories: Unthawing Scott of the Antarctic in Cultural Memory    

This article explores the staging of memory and death and the connotative differences within still photographs and film. It examines the tenses that can be inferred in reading photographs and film through examples drawn from representations of the British Antarctic Expedition of 1910-13 and Captain Scott's journey to the South Pole taken by Herbert Ponting, and in the 1948 film _Scott of the Antarctic_.

Barwell, Claire. Visual Communication (2007). Articles>Multimedia>Visual Rhetoric

Getting to Know Mic

For a presenter, a high-quality microphone, combined with the right sound system, will give your voice a rich sound that can be heard throughout a room. Here are some things to consider if you want to add a microphone to the company conference room or your presentation traveling kit. The basics A microphone is essentially an energy converter that takes in sound waves and converts them into electrical energy. Two main types of microphones are available: condenser and dynamic. A condenser mic uses a power supply to provide a charge that works with a thin diaphragm inside the unit to create a signal. A dynamic mic creates a signal when the sound pressure moves a coil or ribbon across a magnet. Because they usually produce a richer sound, condenser mics are the more popular of the two; however, they require batteries or a power supply and are more expensive and more fragile than dynamic models. Dynamic mics are usually considered less accurate in sound quality, but they are generally more rugged and can withstand varying temperatures, humidity levels and a lot of abuse. These qualities make dynamic mics ideal for use outdoors or on the road.

Hill, Julie. Presentations (2002). Articles>Presentations>Multimedia>Audio

Harry Miller on Multimedia Documentation

Miller, a technical editor at Microsoft interested in multimedia documentation, talks about why multimedia documentation is a growing trend and how writers can get started. He discusses Microsoft's Channel 9 and the human element with instructional screen demos.

Miller, Harry and Tom H. Johnson. Tech Writer Voices (2007). Articles>Interviews>Documentation>Multimedia

How Would You Like to Have 150,000 Space Shuttle Photos of the Earth at Your Fingertips?  

Explore the Earth on laser videodisc. All the astronaut photographs of the Earth taken on the first 57 missions of the Space Shuttle are now available on two laser videodiscs. Disc 2 also contains selected photos from the earlier NASA missions— Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. With the accompanying data records and software like the program we will demonstrate, you can choose global views of environmental change, graphic illustrations of scientific processes, or simply dramatic scenes to help your manuals communicate.

McKay, Mary Fae, Kathryn D. Sullivan, and Kimberly J. Willis. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Multimedia>Scientific Communication

Humanising Technology: the Studio Lab and Innovation

The central thesis of the report is that in the emerging digitally networked society, the creative arts and cultural institutions are mutating by forming a constellation of productive relationships with the science and technology research system, industry, humanistic and social science scholarship, and with emerging new structures of civil society. This apparently rising density of communication suggests the need to rethink some aspects of the relationship between cultural support policy, innovation and research policy, and the still nascent but interconnected set of concerns about the requirements for widespread creative participation in a 'techno-sphere' increasingly shaped by fast-changing digital media technologies.

Century, Michael. AHDS Performing Arts (2006). Articles>Collaboration>Multimedia

Hypermedia, Multimedia, and Reader Cognition: An Empirical Study    

In this article, we present the results of five tests done in a two-year project examining usability and instructional capabilities of modules developed in hypermedia and multimedia formats. Based on the results of these tests, we reinforce arguments that digitized media may be preferred by learners over traditional media and that learners tend to prefer a graphical user interface metaphor that is personally meaningful over the page metaphor typically used in computer based training. We also reinforce the argument that multimedia does no harm when used to replace more traditional approaches to instruction. On the other hand, we have determined that in some cases hypermedia and hypertext may be counterproductive as instructional media. In brief, we have determined that within the context of this study a majority of students have more difficulty learning in a hypermedia/hypertext environment than in an otherwise identical linear digital environment. In fact, in this study only the very best students were able

Hailey, David E. and Christine E. Hailey. Technical Communication Online (1998). Articles>Education>Multimedia

An iDVD Slide Show

Hardware is easy to talk about, test, evaluate, review and sell. Software takes a little more study. Which is why we remain one of the very few imaging publications to review software in any depth. Most people find software is a solid that must be chewed to derive any nutritional benefits. And so they chew and chew and chew. But, no matter how much they chew, the stuff is still pretty hard to swallow.

Electric Escape (2003). Articles>Presentations>Multimedia>DVD

Impact of Multimedia on Online Documentation  

Multimedia is commonplace in entertainment and the Internet is proliferating the use of multimedia in electronic materials. Online documentation has traditionally been composed of text and some graphics. The proliferation of Intranets and online documentation is pushing the acceptance of multimedia in reference and procedural materials like Help. However, there is little research on the value of multimedia in online documentation nor its effective use.This paper describes an exploratory study done for a Master of Information Science thesis to determine the impact of multimedia on online documentation.

Rockley, Ann. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Documentation>Online>Multimedia

The Impact of the Internet and Digital Technologies on Teaching and Research in Technical Communication    

Technical communication practices have been changed dramatically by the increasingly ubiquitous nature of digital technologies. Yet, while those who work in the profession have been living through this dramatic change, our academic discipline has been moving at a slower pace, at times appearing quite unsure about how to proceed. This article focuses on the following three areas of opportunity for change in our discipline in relation to digital technologies: access and expectations, scholarship and community building, and accountability and partnering.

Gurak, Laura J. and Ann Hill Duin. Technical Communication Quarterly (2004). Articles>TC>Multimedia>Online

Incorporating Film Into the Research Paper    

Teachers face two serious difficulties when assigning research papers. The first appears to be an issue of motivation but is really one of mental disposition. Many students are so deeply influenced by contemporary visual culture--especially by film--that they lack familiarity with close reasoning. They are accustomed to absorbing entertaining, but loosely connected, streams of images in an impressionistic way and are uneasy and anxious when given a major assignment in an exclusively written medium. Inexperienced in the systematic compilation and analysis of information, they often perform poorly. These students may appear to be unenthusiastic about their topics; in fact, they do badly because they are methodologically disoriented. They run aground while sailing in the unfamiliar seas of organized, sequential, linear logic. This problem often shows itself in the frequent, and frequently gratuitous, use of illustrations in research papers. Instructors often comment that 'students love pictures.' It would be more accurate to say that students understand pictures and are comfortable with them. The second difficulty is a by-product of the Web. Plagiarism has become so widespread that it poses a real threat to the academic enterprise. Yet its detection is both difficult and time-consuming, and an instructor must be on absolutely solid ground before bringing a student up on such serious charges. Furthermore, even if available, an expensive counter-plagiarism program such as Turnitin cannot always deliver conclusive evidence. Plagiarism must be addressed, but today, articles that existed previously only in print can be optically scanned, free essays are available online, and papers can be purchased and downloaded from numerous commercial outlets. We have addressed both of these problems by strategically using appropriate motion pictures as entrees into the subject matter and as points of comparison to help organize research papers. We first provide our students with a list of films that bear on relevant topics.

Fontenot, Michael J. and Karen A. Fontenot. Business Communication Quarterly (2008). Articles>Education>Research>Multimedia

Infrastructure for Academic Podcasting

Podcasting involves three activities: capturing content, producing it, and distributing it. Tim Poe and Ben Rogers from the Office of Information Technology at Duke University's Multimedia group talk about the technology initiatives undertaken, and make their audience aware of the plethora of tools available to perform these activities easily.

Poe, Tim and Ben Rogers. Podcast Academy (2006). Articles>Multimedia>Streaming>Podcasting

Intellectual Property Law Primer for Multimedia Developers

This primer will help you understand the legal issues in developing and distributing multimedia works. It is based on the Multimedia Law Handbook from Ladera Press, which has been endorsed by the Interactive Multimedia Association. This summary of the law should not be viewed as 'answering' most questions (the Multimedia Law Handbook discusses these issues in more detail in 340 pages and includes eighteen sample agreements to show how these issues are dealt within actual transactions; you can order the book by calling 800-523-3721). Legal matters in multimedia are frequently complex and you should not rely on the information in this primer alone. You should consult with experienced counsel before making any final decisions. Multimedia products require a knowledge of the four major forms of intellectual property as well as the laws governing rights of publicity, defamation and libel.

Brinson, J. Dianne and Mark F. Radcliffe. Timestream (1994). Articles>Intellectual Property>Copyright>Multimedia

Jump into Digital Video for Multimedia   

Digital video (DV) is relatively easy and inexpensive to produce and has an expanding role in technical communication. It is a powerful media for communication and can be included in favorite online formats such as WinHelp, HTML help, Acrobat (PDF), and web pages, as well as training presentations produced with tools such as Asymmetrix Toolbook and Macromedia Authorware. Delivery of DV spans a range of electronic media including CD, DVD, and the Internet. New technology offers the potential to synchronize the presentation of video, audio, and other multimedia forms. This paper introduces DV concepts. It gives practical tips for investing in DV equipment and producing video and audio.

Robbins, David B., Kathleen Wyrwas and Alice Davinich. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Documentation>Multimedia>Video

Lessons Learned From Instructional Design Theory: an Application in Management Education    

Given that many doctoral programs do not provide extensive training on how to present course information in the classroom, the current paper looks to educational psychology theory and research for guidance. Richard Mayer and others' copious empirical work on effective and ineffective instructional design, along with relevant research findings in cognitive science, are summarized and adapted to the management education context. The goal of this article is to enhance instructors' ability to effectively relay course material and to offer specific advice for how instructors can implement prior research findings.

Burke, Lisa A. Business Communication Quarterly (2007). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Multimedia

Little Players, Big Shows: Format, Narration, and Style on Television's New Smaller Screens    

This article highlights the role that aesthetics play in television's current convergence with mobile telephones and portable media players like the iPod. I contend that contemporary television style does not just constitute a response to the demands of technological convergence -- it is rather an integral component of that which allows television to merge with new devices in the first place. When we engage with style as a precursor to these developments, important continuities emerge between the aesthetics of the small screen and those of the new smaller screens. These continuities underscore that convergence is at once a technical and aesthetic process that entails the hybridization of hardware and cultural forms.

Dawson, Max. Convergence (2008). Articles>Multimedia>Video