Digital Media
Dr. Jim Rowan
ITEC 2110
Roll Call using Banner
MediaWiki Stuff:
External Links
To place an external link to a webpage
get the URL of the linked-to page
put it in double square brackets
For example:
[http://www.google.com Go to Google!]
placed on your page during an edit will show up on your
page as
Go to Google!
and clicking on it would send you to
http://www.google.com/
MediaWiki Stuff:
Using files other than image
files
While Mediawiki can’t necessarily display all files that you load to it
(.doc files for instance), it can store them and allow others to
download them
Use the “Upload file” link
upload the file
edit the Mediawiki page
put a link on the page with this format:
[[Media:myMSWordFileName.doc]]
save the edited page
You will now see a link Media:myMSWordFileName.doc on your
page and clicking it will cause it to download
MediaWiki Stuff:
PDF files
PDF files can be displayed (rather than downloaded) inside the wiki
If you upload a pdf and you put [[media:myFile.pdf | my PDF file]] in
the page edit
you will see media:myFile.pdf on your page and when you click it
your file will be displayed
To make a pdf file on mac:
file print
save as pdf
The Effect of Media Choice
• The media you choose has an effect on the
way the story is told
• Print? you must describe things well
• Still Image? you have to tell it visually by
setting the scene
• Film/Video? you have moving images and
sound... does the sound emphasize the
moving image or vice versa?
• 3-D amusement ride? moving images, sound
and some actual motion... 3 modalities
New Media/New Technology
• Consider going from the SCROLL to the
BOUND BOOK...
• HMMMmmmm...
• http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv=p
QHXSjgQvQ%26mode=related%26search=
Different Media?
Different Affordances
• affordances is a term from ecological
psychology
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_psychology
– different things afford different interaction
– consider door knobs, levers, push-plates and pulls
Don Norman and Psychology of Everyday Things
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Norman
The Scroll, Book & WWW
• Scroll
– can’t stack scrolls like books
– can’t skip around except to beginning or end
– but reading flows without the interruption of pages
• Book
–
–
–
–
–
you can stack them
you can level a table leg with them!
but reading is interrupted by page turns
with TOC & page numbers you can skip around
with index & page #s you can go to a specific
place
Scroll, Book and now...
• WWW!
– you can consume it in any order you want
– links take you to a place (and back!)
• does a book do this?
– it’s in one place and one change changes
everyone’s version
• Compare to the Book
– doesn’t allow this universal change
– doesn’t take you back... but you can stick a piece
of paper or finger in it to hold your place or fold
down the corner of the page
– you can take notes in the margins
WWW vs Book
Good or Bad?
• WWW allows corrections immediately to
everyone
– no history kept like with book editions
• you go back to “the same place” and it’s
different... were you wrong or did it change?
• http://www.archive.org/index.php
• Did you read all the stuff that is there?
– Book is easy, read front to back
– WWW... not so much...
WWW vs Book
Good or Bad?
• WWW affords searching
– You can Google it and find it
• Book? Not so much..
– the Index will help if the thing you are
looking for is in the index...
– Ever read a book and think... where did I
see this before? and reach for the find?
New Media/New Technology
Adoption
• It takes time for conventions concerning
usage to be formed
• Consider the history of Film...
– No sound
– Performed sound
– Recorded sound
New Media usage follows a
predictable path
• At first the new form tries to act like the old
form
– Newsreels “copied” newspaper layouts
– desktop metaphor is an example of this
– makes it familiar
• Later film developed its own forms
• Hitchcock told the story visually, long scenes
• Tarrentino accents everything with violence and quick
cuts
• But that’s film... is that multimedia?
• Maybe...
Multimedia?
•
•
•
•
Beowolf?
The movie Sin City?
The movie 300?
TV series 24 and the movie Phone Booth?
– several scenes are played simultaneously
• Mix of audio, film and graphics
• We are just beginning to understand what the
possibilities are...
• We are just beginning to understand how to
best use it
Delivery Mechanism?
• Offline
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
scroll, book
Vinyl record
AudioTape
Film (mixed media... but the sound is visual)
Videotape
CD-ROM
DVD
• Online
– Over the Internet
In this class
• We are primarily interested in delivery over
the Internet
• We are interested in media forms found on
and transmitted across the Internet and how
to manipulate them
– audio
– still images
• bitmapped
• vector graphics
– moving images
Media Linearity
• Scroll (mostly linear)
• Book
– You had to turn the pages
– Table of Contents and Index allow some nonlinearity
– encyclopedia and dictionaries are meant to be
used in a non-linear manner
• Film/Videotape
• DVD
– Chapters allows some non-linearity
Hypermedia
• Mixture of time- and page- based media
• Time-based uses time as its central
organizing theme
– Film
– Audio
• Page-based uses a page as its central
organizing theme
– Book
– Internet?
Interactivity within the
Computer
• Yes, they appear interactive, but only within
the constraints placed on the interaction by
the programmer and the interaction
designer
• Myst looked like a real world but you only
had a few choices you could make
• Improvisation (on the part of the user) can’t
happen unless it is provided for in advance
User Interface
• This is central to what my specialty is: HCI
• There are standard forms
–
–
–
–
–
buttons
sliders
radio buttons
check boxes
pull-down menus
• The kind of stuff you see when using the
computer on the internet
• You can design your own
Social and Ethical
Considerations
• Is technology neutral?
• Does human usage define it as ethical or
unethical?
• BUT: new technology affords new means of
interaction and opportunities for behavior that
previously didn’t exist
• Online rape?
– MUD: Multiple User Domain
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD
Access
• Expensive
• Reduce the world to 100 people..
– http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/popul
ate.asp
• Access to internet worldwide? 1/100
would have a computer
• But... there are internet cafes
Access...
• What about disabilities?
– Blind?
– Screen readers
• images are provided alternate text
representations
WWW use broadens
• Initially seen as a “source”... you go to “look
something up”
– seen as economic in nature, only have to put stuff
in one place and everybody can get to it
• Now it is also a transmission medium
– streaming content: live radio
– streaming content: view tv shows online
– podcasts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast
Reading for next week
Textbook Chapter 2
For the first class next week
Questions?