Where multimedia meets the Web

MULTIMEDIA AND THE WEB FROM A TO Z: Patrick M. Dillon, David C. Leonard; Universities Press (India) Ltd., Distributed by Orient Longman, 3-5-819, Hyderguda, Hyderabad-500029. Rs. 350.

NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE, the founder-director of that famous creative crucible, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, once said: ``Most people in the trades of screenplay writing or cinematography... are utterly ill-equipped to build no- sequential, highly interactive programmes.'' The last few years have erased forever the distinction between the traditional - or analogue - way of film making, and the new computer-assisted techniques of digital cinema. The idea that audio visual programmes must be tailored for continuous interaction with the user, was born when the CDROM opened the gateways to rich multimedia content.

The new science of multimedia has inevitably given birth to a jargon of its own - and the list of buzzwords seems to grow daily. The authors of this reprinted American reference book initially planned it as an alphabet guide to multimedia. But in a very few years, the emphasis had shifted to the Internet and hence this edition is retitled to emphasise that it covers Web applications as well.The result is a handy volume with some 1500 entries covering the full gamut of multimedia - including Web- based - applications, that will be particularly useful to those who are doing a formal course in CDROM authoring, digital cinematography or Web programming. To them, the book will provide the academic muscle to support more practical course content. An excellent bibliography of Web-based resources will be particularly useful, since printed reference books tend to get outdated very fast indeed. The book would have benefited from some graphics to illustrate the more complex concepts. But even as it stands, it is a welcome ally in one's attempts to master this exciting frontier technology.

ANAND PARTHASARATHY

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