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Interactivity examples

© Anne Kellerman

We are not yet able to experience the renowned Holodek in which the Star Trek TV show's creators' imagination allows user/participants to enter a person-made but seemingly real digital 3D world. Nevertheless, we have made considerable progress, even if only baby steps, in the last year or so toward experiencing and benefiting from increased interactivity.

I recently experienced an exciting interaction with images when I received a scanned ultrasound from a relative in California. It was completely incomprehensible to me. A couple of seconds after receiving it, I fired it off to a medically inclined relative in upstate New York who brought up her image editor, added arrows with annotations, and sent it back. Not to be outdone, yet another medically inclined relative, in downstate New York, took the improved version and added still mote annotation. I then returned this twice-improved information to the original owner who fired it off to her parents in France. All of this took place in less than 60 minutes.

The ultrasound would have been still better if it had included audio annotation, best yet, an original annotation by the doctor. You can add audio annotation to an image on a Web page using an image map with audio targets that have been pre-recorded. Another way to annotate an image with audio (as well as text) is to import the image into Microsoft PowerPoint and record your annotations on portions of the image. Such annotations are marked by a little speaker icon. There are several research efforts intended to devise better ways to annotate other media with appropriate media.

As an other example of interacting with images, I used my cellphone camera to photograph a well known local fish market that was out of service inside a shocking exterminator's tent, a few seconds after discovering that we would not have the expected crabs for dinner.

The cellphone camera would be better if the camera's resolution were about twice what it is and if the various plans to send image information were less complex. Unfortunately, in this country, the progress toward better resolution camera cellphones is very slow. About the best we can hope for is the introduction in the next couple of months of Motorola's V710. Verizon is expected to offer this phone. Information on cell phones can be obtained at several Web sites; our favorite is http://www.phonescoop.com.

After dinner we had DVD, a movie that contained interesting interactive features. The DVD had two versions, one of which was a decidedly seamy version called a "director's cut." It also had alternative endings and a director's perspective.

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