Not surprisingly, some of the challenges faced today by people working with interactive multimedia technologies are not new. Here are some thoughts on the relationships that exist.
Disney announced in
September 1997 that they would be releasing movies on the DVD format, and Sony,
Philips, and HP announced about the same time that they are developing a new
DVD-compatible technology that is re-recordable. If the Disney announcement is
the good news, is this the bad news? Read this new piece and find out.
The computer was
excitedly preparing the release of DVD-ROM technology and came to the abrupt realization
that there are many incompatibilities within DVD-ROM implementations and
between DVD-ROM and DVD Video. Read about the recent General Meeting of The
DVD-ROM Initiative of the Software Publishers' Association in
World Wide Web
Technology: What's Hot and What's Not. Here we move on down the information
superhighway in this look at the strengths and weaknesses of World Wide Web
technology. It reflects the author's growing interest in Web technology and
shows how "research on the Web can be conducted on the Web and be placed
on the Web for publication." Topics include Lack of Bandwidth, Evolving
Standards, Low Interactivity, the Web's Developing Economic Model, and other
issues.
Developers of
maturing software packages continue to invest increasing amounts of money
developing new features, despite the fact that only a small percentage of the
existing capabilities of the packages being enhanced actually benefit users.
This article, published in September 1994, contains advice that is still valid
for many software producers who need to recognize that multimedia software has
the capability to help users get more out of any program. Multimedia
presentations enable users to move up from the usability plateau, or their
individual comfort zone where they find themselves, to a point closer to the
Software Functionality Ceiling. This ceiling is the theoretical limit for total
features toward which software developers continue to push, a point that lies
beyond the point of diminishing returns. Rather than push this limit,
developers would do well to put the resources they expend into helping users
get increased benefit from the features of their software that already exist.
Too many times companies make decisions based on what one might call politics rather than sound business analysis or even intuition. For example, in the late 1970's one division within Texas Instruments had planned on releasing three powerful 16-bit (the Apple II was 8-bit) desktop computers based on TI's TMS 9900 microprocessor. Managers within the company's minicomputer division argued that such products would be unfair competition for their business machines and successfully convinced management to release only the low-end, closed architectured, TI 99/4, appropriately adorned with its "chiclet" keyboard. Despite later efforts to open that machine's architecture and add expandibility, the TI 99/4A sold in the millions only to fade into oblivion. This article explains how closed, proprietary architectures are virtually doomed for failure from the outset. Even in other cases where technical superiority can be argued (the Amiga?), this characteristic alone does not insure success. Unfortunately, several parallels exit today: Windows machines vs Web computers, for example?
In this first article from 1989 the author wanted to show why the days of MS-DOS were numbered. After its publication he received numerous phone calls complaining that graphical user interfaces were impractical. As late as 1992, similar attitudes existed at WordPerfect where the author was working with Alpine Media, a company in which he is a partner. A few people there even ridiculed the idea of using Microsoft Windows as a multimedia development and delivery environment. This article summarized presentations the author made at conferences from 1987 through 1990 on the importance of graphical user interfaces in general and Microsoft Windows in particlular. Today, many multimedia developers insist on using Apple's Macintosh for development, despite the fact that there are 10 or 15 times more PCompatibles (George Gilder calls these Wintel machines) in the marketplace than Macintoshes. Supporters will argue that this amounts to using the "best tool for the job." Perhaps. But when I can't get such software to run correctly on my PC, I have to wonder about the wisdom of such a strategy. With Apple's recent firing of CEO Michael Spindler their multimillion losses in recent quarters, it will be interesting to see how all this sorts itself out.
Combining video with graphics for display on computer monitors was a big problem in 1988. Guess what! We haven't seen the last of this one either! There are lot of people talking about Web-surfing soon on the family television. Into the foreseeable future one of the big considerations for multimedia designers and developers will be how to deal various screen resolutions. Read some history directly related to finding a way to move from today's problems to tomorrow's solutions.