New book - Distributed Multimedia

We are proud to announce publication of the second edition of our book, Distributed Multimedia - Technologies, Applications, and Opportunities in the Digital Information Industry, A guide for Users and Providers by Palmer W. Agnew and Anne S. Kellerman, ISBN 1-931442-13-4. We went with a new publisher, Atomic Dog, because they offered to publish our book not only as hardcopy (available now) but also in online form with interactive figures in color (to be available in May). Atomic Dog Publishing's addresses are 1203 Main St., Third Floor, Cincinnati Ohio, 45210 and http://atomicdog.com. We have also posted a Web site containing new content and additional teaching aids at http://www.geocities.com/distributedmm/i...

In addition to self study and reference, the book is suitable as a text for undergraduate and graduate courses in computer science, engineering, and business schools. It includes questions and activities for each chapter. There will soon be an accompanying Instructor Manual containing sample syllabi and lesson plans for 3 representative courses, along with extensive lists of class-discussion questions.

Multimedia is the science, business, and practice of using computers to interact with media such as text, graphics, images, audio, and video. Distributed multimedia adds interacting with the media by way of networks, including the Internet. The subject of the book thus touches many of the most important topics of many computer science and business curricula.

The most important aspect of multimedia is that hardware and software tools for creating all media are within the reach of non-specialist consumers. Video cameras suitable for posting video on the Web are available for about $60, including rudimentary video editing software; most mid-range computers are suitable for editing high-quality video and many come with functional software installed. Creating your own media is the ultimate form of interacting with media.

The book tells how to take advantage of multimedia's becoming a commodity consumer item, no matter where your students' primary interests lie. If they are interested in using multimedia, the book tells how to apply it in their personal life, job, and education. If they are interested in new technologies, it tells how multimedia is uniquely positioned to make good use of rapidly increasing processing power, storage size, and other functions, as all media converge into digital forms. If they are interested in marketing, managing, or providing multimedia products and services, it tells how interacting with media over networks is important to them.

A few parts of the book are moderately technical, with such concepts as the Shannon Limit on the amount of digital information that an analog connection can carry. A few other parts are totally practical, such as giving the color code for cables that carry audio and video. Most of the book is in between these extremes, including discussing over 50 types of connections' suitability for carrying different media over all 5 length scales: wide area networks, metropolitan area (city-wide) networks, local area networks, personal area networks, and desktop area networks.

Go To Page: 1 2

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic