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.