Jim Karpen Tips

February 2001

I'll state the obvious: the Internet is endlessly fascinating. And one major area of fascination is multimedia, primarily Real Player, QuickTime, Flash, and Shockwave. Each of these formats can be viewed with a free browser plugin that you can download from the Internet.

You must know by now that Real Player is probably the most widely used means of "streaming media"--that is, listening to audio or watching videos. It's called "streaming" because you can start enjoying the audio or video stream right away without first having to wait until the entire file downloads. Real.Com offers a free player, but because they want you to buy the commercial version, it's not always easy to find the free one on their web site.

QuickTime began as a Macintosh format but now is available for PC as well. It can be used as streaming media, but many of the QuickTime files available online must be downloaded and then viewed. Whereas Real format is primarily audio and video, QuickTime is that pus still pictures or graphics, animation, and virtual reality panoramas and objects. Because it began as primarily a Macintosh format, it's not as widely used on the Internet despite its rich capabilities.

I'm less familiar with Shockwave and Flash (both found at http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/), which seem to be primarily used for animation. Flash is becoming very popular, so I took a little time to explore what's out there--and came away impressed. There's a huge range of fun and useful content available. Note that you typically have to download files that are anywhere from 200K to 2 megabytes.

Most sites that offer Flash content give you a link to download the free player. To use multimedia you will usually need a fairly up-to-date computer and operating system. A good place to start for Flash might be the collection of animations at HotWired's AnimationExpress.Com. If you don't have the plugin you can download it there. In fact, the site will help you determine whether you have it. This site offers dozens of animated shorts and is updated twice each week.

To find more sites offering animation, I went to our old friend About, where I found a nice listing. I tried a couple of the Flash Film Festival Winners and found some delightful--and a bit avante garde--work. I tried and enjoyed "Once Upon a Forest" and "Yugop." At first I didn't realize that there were many selections beyond the initial screen so be sure to explore.

On the more practical side, you can find a great Flash-based search engine tutorial at <http://teams.lacoe.edu/documentation/classrooms/gayle/search/search.html>. It does a nice job of teaching you about directories, search engines, and metasearch engines.

© 2001 by Jim Karpen, Ph.D. (#251)