Reflecting
the generic, or buzzword, nature of the term multimedia is the range of
applications that claim to be multimedia. Existing and planned applications
list such diverse target areas as electronic magazines, video--on-demand,
patient monitoring systems in hospitals, remote robotic agents, distance
learning, and interactive (WAN-)distributed virtual reality games. Using some
rough categorizations we can sort multimedia applications into the following
categories (this list is not exhaustive):
Information systems: All systems whose main purpose is to
provide information to a user (or a group of users). Example application areas
are :
· electronic publishing: Electronic newspapers (e.g., the
Age or The Australian and magazines (e.g., HotWiRED or Time
Magazine online)
· hospital information systems: Patient monitoring systems,
multimedia patient databases, mixed reality surgery(e.g., virtual reality
goggles)
· navigation and information
systems: shopping
center /airport and other public spaces offer touch screen multimedia
orientation systems
· museums:Online catalogs using high
definition rendering of paintings, interactive online museum tours (the Virtual
Museum in Victoria or the Paris Louvre WebMuseum offer virtual
reality museum trips ).
(Remote) representation: Systems which represent a user at a remote
location. The representation can be either passive or active---that
is, the user can either just receive information about the remote location and
the actions taking place there (passive representation), or she can take part
in the action and even influence the process at the remote location (active
representation). Notable example applications include:
· conferencing applications: The user takes part in a
conference; he/she can see and hear the other participants; usually some kind
of tool for showing text and graphics to the other participants is available.
· distance learning: Distance learning is essentially
the same as conferencing; instead of transmitting a conference session or a
group meeting, a seminar, a lecture, or a class is transmitted to students
somewhere on the network.
· remote auctions: a growing area which is and
extension of online shopping
· remote robotic agents: The remote location might be
situated inside a hazardous environment (e.g., the core of a nuclear reactor,
or a deep-sea exploration) which is too dangerous for the user as that she
could be there in person, yet, the task which the user wants to carry out
requires human intervention.
· remote task agents: Taking the concept of remote
robotic agents one step further we can employ a piece of software, an agent,
to act on behalf of us: For example, the agent would travel across the
Internet, visit a pre-determined set of machines, carry out the instruction
that we programmed it to do, bundle up the results (which, of course, would be
multimedia documents), and return to our workstation.
· virtual reality:Whereas the conferencing and
remote robotic agent applications represent the user at another, existing,
location, to which she could travel to instead, virtual reality applications
represent users inside a physically-nonexisting environment; for example,
rather than accessing the records of a database through an arcane retrieval
language, the database user might enter a virtual reality representation of the
database, which would present individual records as old-fashioned folders.
Entertainment: This area attracts most of the attention of the
general public as a lot of telecommunication and media companies expect that
the entertainment market will be the one with the largest audience and, also,
the market which is best suited for the employment of multimedia techniques.
The following list presents just a short excerpt of the projects planned and
worked on:
· digital television: Originally, digital television
started out as a technology to deliver television broadcasts that were to be of
substantially higher quality and size than current, analog technology based
broadcasting services (the term high-definition television (HDTV ) was
coined to describe these new broadcasting services). However, the service
providers that are implementing those services are already looking at other
uses of the digital television technology: Data transmission, paging systems,
wireless telephony, and multiple television programs within one channel are
just a few of the uses in consideration, thereby pushing the original HDTV goal
aside
· video--on-demand: Cable companies want to
distribute a customized program to each viewer---that is, the user
instead of the cable company shall have the authority to decide what kind of
program the cable company delivers; additionally, all the features which the
user has come to know from her video-cassette--recorder shall also be available
with video--on-demand
· widely distributed interactive
games: Companies
like Sega or Nintendo are working on creating networks of game-boy machines,
that will interconnect using the existing telephone network or future networks.
· interactive television: This kind
of application is especially attractive for television companies and multimedia
"evangelists". The interactive part refers to the user's ability
to partake in televised voting or game shows. The attractive aspect of
interactive television stems from the fact, that the necessary technological
infrastructure is already installed: Cable television and telephony services
are available almost everywhere. Hence, startup-costs are low; set-top boxes
link the television set, the telephone, and the user.
SUMBER : http://www.olinda.com/ArtAndIdeas/lectures/mm/mm_applied.htm
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