Tutorial 3

Multimedia: Making It Work (8th Edition)
pg 101,102

Question 1.
Discuss the difference between bitmap and vector graphics. Describe five different graphic elements you might use in a project, for example, the background, buttons, icons, or text. Would you use a vector tool or a bitmap tool for each element? Why?

A sample of a vector background such as this seen in The Sims 3 by Electronic Arts. The text and background are the only vector images while the rest are bitmap.

Bitmap utilizes pixels to form the image whereas vectors used the measurements of the image. When bitmap is being resized or rescaled, the amount of pixels are fixed therefore reduce the sharpness as the rescaling is made that the image turned larger. For vector, however, the image retain the same amount of quality as some computation is done to recalculate the proportion therefore making the pixels change based on that same length rather than it being fixed making the image maintaining its sharpness as the rescaling is done.

The video explains the core differences between vector images and bitmap images.


The 5 different graphic elements that are commonly used in a project are Backgrounds, buttons, icons, texts and images.

1. Background is the main design of the website. It serves as the main framework for the design. The ideal image suitable for this would be vector. The most important thing for the background is that it must always be clear.

2. Buttons served as a site navigation tool. Usually comprises of bitmap images as the buttons are small. Less focus is on the buttons.

3. Icons serve as small images in a webpage. They usually comprise of bitmap images as they are small.

4. Text- the core component of the webpage. Information is passed through text and therefore plays a crucial role in a webpage. Therefore, text are usually vector.

5. Images/Pictures- the images are usually large photos to help in describing the texts. Can be both vector or bitmap. More commonly used are bitmap due to file size.


Question 4.
You are a designer given the task of creating a web site for a new division of your company. Start by defining the characteristics of the customers of the company and the kind of image the company wishes to present to its customers. Then specify a colour palette to be used for the design of the site. Defend your colour choices by discussing the associations people have with the colours and how they relate to your customers and the company's image.

Colours determine the emotion of the people who are going to read. Sometimes different colours represent different feelings. Colour should also represent the company's image. For example, Apple website gives you a sense of luxurious feeling and simplicity which is why their background colour is white and simple.

The simplicity of Apple's website

Colours are also based on the preferences of a certain group of society because of their different meanings. For example, the Chinese community prefer red because it reflects prosperity. In some cases, the consumers prefer the colours based on their lifestyles. Gamers would prefer a mixture of black, green or red. Environmentalists prefer green. Therefore, to please the customers one must always understand what type of customers we are facing.

The customers in this case are gamers. Therefore a mixture of black, green or red is suitable. Gamers have a preference of a stealthy personality. Therefore, the ideal colours I would choose is a combination of black, green and red. a 24 bit colour palette is also a must. Gamers want the most realistically looking website and therefore would prefer a colour palette that is the most photo-realistic.

An example of a video game website with a fusion of Black, Light blue, Green and red.

Tutorial 2

Multimedia: Making It Work (8th Edition)
pg. 66

Question 4

Discuss the differences among multimedia, interactive multimedia hypertext and hypermedia

Multimedia is any combination of text, art sound, animation and video delivered to you by computer or others electronic or digitally manipulated means. When we put together the sensual element of multimedia that are pictures and animation, engaging sounds, compelling video clips and raw textual information, you can electrify the thought and action of the people's mind.

Interactive multimedia is multimedia which gives the users some navigation controls. A good example is the Internet. Interactive multimedia allows two way interaction with the multimedia course material, another computer or also another user with direct response to the input, as oppose to one way communication from television, video and other non responsive media.Interactive multimedia attributes commonly includes data or text entry, mouse input, touch screes, voice commands, video capture and real time interaction.


Hypertext is text that link to other information. For example, by clicking on the link in a hypertext document, a user can quickly jump from a different content to another. Hypertext is usually related with web pages. Software programs that include dictionaries and encyclopedias have long use hypertext in their definitions so that readers can quickly find out more about a specific words or topics. Today, nearly every page includes links to other pages and both text and images can be used as a link to more content.

Hypermedia is an extension of hypertext that allows images, movie and flash animation to be link to other content. The most common type of hypermedia is an image link. Photos and graphics on the web are often link to another page. For example, by clicking on a small "thumbnail" image may open to a larger version of the picture in a new window.



Question 5

Your boss wants you to create a hypermedia system for Web visitors to find technical support information about your company. What are some of the implications in creation this system? Should you hand-build the links or use an  automatic indexing system? Why?

Hypermedia system can be useful because it contains links that are coloured and underline which is easy to refer. Besides that, hypermedia also allows the images, video and flash to be linked to other content and it is easier  for user to navigate around and find what they are looking for. If a company have a lot of images about it then the description of the image can easily be obtained by clicking on the images.

Automatic indexing means the index is make by algorithmic procedures. The algorithm will work based on the database containing representation and record. Automatic indexing may also perform the non-text databases such as images and musics.

Human indexing is done by humans. Human indexer use their knowledge to find what to write when they are analysing. They can find the concepts within the writing and use the terms to help and ease the people who are connected to the writings. Human indexing can also be influenced by personal biases or experience and thus making it inconsistent in contrast to automatic indexing.

I would recommend my boss to use an automatic indexing. This is because automatic indexing cheaper then hand-build indexing. Automatic indexing can also index large amount of information in a short amount of time compared to hand-build index. Hand-build index tend to be more selective and may be limited to abstract or summarizing of text with also limited vocabulary where as automatic indexing is able to routine based on text and words and also have a larger vestibular. In addition, automatic indexing are frequently being used as visual displays like icon and graphics thus we can trust it's reliability. Even so it is also depends on the which the company would prefer to go for.

Tutorial 1

Multimedia: Making It Works (8th Edition)
 pg.15

Question 1

Briefly discuss the history and future of multimedia. How might multimedia be used to improve the lives of its users? How might it influence users in negative ways? What might be its shortcomings?

Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. Multimedia includes a combination of text, audio, still images, animation, video or interactive content forms.

History of Multimedia

the link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuA4mIaO6Z0

Reading material from Wikipedia

- The term "multimedia" was coined by Bob Goldstein, to promote the July 1966 opening of his "LightWorks at L'Oursin" show at Southanpton, Long Island.

-August 10, 1966, Richard Albarino of Variety borrowed the terminology, reporting: “Brainchild of songscribe-comic Bob (‘Washinton Square’) Goldstein, the ‘Lightworks’ is the latest multi-media music-cum-visuals to debut as discothèque fare.” Two years later, in 1968, the term “multimedia” was re-appropriated to describe the work of a political consultant, David Sawyer, the husband of Iris Sawyer—one of Goldstein’s producers at L’Oursin.

- the usage of the term multimedia refers to an electrically delivered combination of media including video still image, audio, text that is interactive.


Future of Multimedia

The future of multimedia is getting more important day by day. Multimedia can be beneficial in many field such as marketing,education, communication, businesses, entertainment, and many more. Today multimedia have involve drastically from hardware, software, devices ans even tools to create multimedia are getting more and more user friendly so that users can use it at ease.
Entertainment companies that own content easily converted to multimedia projects are teaming up with cable TV companies. Film studios are creating new divisions to produce interactive multimedia and wealthy talents have formed new companies to join in on the action. Company that creates games and simulation can benefit from the advancement of multimedia too.   Flash application to create animation so that presentation can be more interesting. Even without a clear business model with known profits, large media corporations are uniting to create huge conglomerates to control the content and delivery of tomorrow’s information. Multimedia is able to drive inevitable evolution and changes in the global communication. One can just use multimedia applications for presentations, talk, workshop and others. In education, multimedia is very important to make and help students to understand better and also stimulate their interest in studying. it is also beneficial to companies who have training and others field as well such as marketing, advertising, product demos, databases, catalogs, entertainment, and networked communications. The video above is how multimedia is important for machicinima,



Even though Multimedia is able to influence a lot positive and good things but multimedia also have it's negative sides. Multimedia can sometimes sent the wrong information and could sometimes tarnish or destroy a person or a company name. Besides that, crime can conducted via multimedia. For example, blackmailing a person by recording a video, editing photo of a person. Identity theft can occur when involve in communication and socializing in social website


Moreover the shortcomings of multimedia is that multimedia is often misused by many unmoral people to gain something. False news can some times travel very fast by video or other resources that are made up just to make someone, organization looked bad. The rules and law are still having a hard time tracking down these ill intention people as multimedia make things a little hard to keep track as the world has become borderless.

In conclusion, multimedia have a very bight future ahead since there is so many thing to be created and also discover especially in the Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality section which is still quite new.

Question 3

Multimedia is shifting from being localized (contained on a CD-ROM) to being distributed (available
on the World Wide Web). What are some of the implications of this? Who will have access to the
presentation? How will you keep it secure? How will you distribute it?



Multimedia projects often require a large amount of digital memory hence they are often stored on
CD-ROM or DVDs. Multimedia also includes web pages in HTML or DHTML (XML) on the World Wide Web, and can include rich media created by various tools using plug-ins. Web sites with rich media require large amounts of bandwidth. The promise of multimedia has spawned numerous mergers, expansions, and other ventures.These include hardware, software, content, and delivery services. The future of multimedia will include highbandwidth access to a wide array of multimedia resources and learning materials. To secure it, set privacy password so that limited people can access. It can also be distributed on the web with downloadable contents