Multimedia Books

The encyclopedia is a massive offering that explains the gamut of current multimedia and networking efforts. It encompasses papers that go into numerous topics. Like social networking communities; a recent hot item on the Web. Or the continued rise of malware attacks, like viruses and worms and phishing.

There is a good balance between discussing hardware improvements and higher level software applications and usages. In some ways, the "multimedia" in the title is unduly restrictive. It is the "networking" which conveys the broader scope of the book.

The book also tries to look forward. Several authors offer their ideas as to future trends. It's a tossup how these might turn out. But overall, the book conveys the dynamic, freewheeling spirit of the Internet.

This is an excellent volume on Eric Own Moss, one of the preeminent contemporary architects in the U.S. The inherently multiformat medium of CD-ROM are generally vastly underutilised but not so with this disk. The combination of persentational methods are here well integrated for an extremely comprehensive overview of several of Moss' projects. The 3D panoramas are quite effective and the plans overlayed with photographs give a wonderful feel for the views afforded within the complex forms created by Moss. This is what I would like to see more architecture books and media doing but unfortunately somehow publishers lack the vision to do so. I've been quite impressed with the Planet Architecture Series and look forward to more titles in the future. One last note - It seems that the interview with Eric Owen Moss was conducted with a special attention to clarity and non-technical terminology. The video is easily navigated and delves deeply into a complex architectural practice without becoming tiresome or overly-pretentious. I highly recommend this work to anyone interested in cutting edge architecture.

I found this book to be perfect, especially since I'm more of a hands on person. This book takes you through several projects while teaching you the basics of the program. Since you are completing many projects, you get to see different ways you can use some of the features that Director offers.

Reading this book will save you hours of frustration conducting on-line literature seraches for university and professional writing. Improve your professional practice by knowing what works. Get the results you are looking for by following the recommendations. It works!

This is an excellent CD-ROM packed with alot of very good information. I really enjoyed the presenter and found her to
be professional, accurate, and an excellent speaker.

This book helped me a lot. It reviews the spelling and pronunciation of medical terminology based on latin and greek roots, making easy to understand most of words and expressions used by doctors.

Please note that this review is for the 1998 version of this atlas.

Although out of print so far this is the best CD-based atlas I've seen, with the possible exception of the one that comes with Encarta. I have the Grolier's, Webster's Millenium, the Oxford, and the World Book Encylopedia atlas too, and it is superior to all of them in terms of the interface, ease of use, flexibility, the quality of the writing, and overall features. The interface is, as with all DK products I've seen, very slick and well done visually. In a CD-based encyclopedia or atlas, the interface can make or break the product, because it doesn't matter how scholarly and well-written the text is if the interface is clunky and hard to use. If it is difficult to use, or if it just has a few quirks or limitations people don't like, people just won't use it and will probably go to another atlas or encyclopedia that may not be as good information-wise but which at least is usable. Here the Webster's atlas really falls down, and the World Book's isn't much better. The Grolier's is better, however, and I found it at least acceptable there. Encarta's is quite well done and allows you multiple ways to access information from the main country screen, which is nice.

So the choice for me comes down to either Encarta or DK's. One thing the Encarta atlas allows you to do is to zoom in or out at about 10 levels of magnification. The DK only allows you one far and two close views. This definitely isn't as nice as the Encarta and is one big selling point there. Also, the Encarta allows you to scroll around to neighboring countries at will, which makes it extremely convenient to explore an entire area and visualize geographical relationships more easily. Amazingly, the World Book, Grolier's, and Webster's won't allow you to do this either unless you zoom out to the world view and then reselect the country you want. This is pretty lame and they should really fix that, as this makes the CD version no different from having the different country maps bound together in a book, which requires that you flip back and forth. The only reason to prefer a CD version, besides space, is whether the potential digital and multimedia capabilities are exploited.

One reason, though, to prefer to DK is the very well written country descriptions. Let's face it, the dull, dry country articles typical of most atlases are mostly suitable for putting you to sleep or doing those boring school assignments where you have to pick a country and write a report on it. The DK's are the closest thing to something a little lively and interesting there and I give them a lot of credit for that. For example, I learned that Uzbekistan has the world's largest operating gold mine and is the fourth largest producer of cotton in the world. Another former Russian country, Tajikistan, is mostly bare mountains and only 6% of the land is suitable for agriculture, but although very poor, it contains 14% of the world's known reserves of uranium, and derives most of its income from that. I also learned that Namibia, in south Africa, has the world's largest uranium mine, and is the second largest producer of lead, and the third largest producer of cadmium, in the world. Also, the Okavango river carries a higher volume of water than all of south Africa's other rivers combined. On the social side, amazingly, the constitution not only gives women equal rights but legalizes positive discrimination in favor of women! Those are just of few of the interesting facts you can glean from these articles.

Another nice feature is that along the left side of the screen there are 17 different categories of information you can select to get info about the country, ranging from People, Resources, Economics, and Political, to Health, Education, Crime, and even Communications and Tourism. This makes it easy to pick the topics you want instead of having to read the whole article. It makes cross-country comparisons very easy as you can use these topics as screens and filters to compare. However, the Encarta's articles are probably a little more scholarly and technical, and often run 15-25 pages each for many countries. The most important country articles, such as those for Japan, China, Russia, Brazil, and the various countries in Europe, and so on, can run to 120 pages or more.

Hope my little comparison guide to atlases helps. Happy altas buying and reading!

This book is WOW!!!
Chapter 2 and I loved it!
Produced 1rst Flash animation.
The short projects are GREAT!

The chapters on games are FANTASTIC.
I sold my Flash game!!

My only complaint:
I need to sleep!! Get ideas and before I know-it it is 4 am!!

Best book I have found for Flash!

I used these in a classroom of special needs children. They could be used in typically developing classrooms as well. One child was autistic and the other child was very delayed with emotions. The CD ROM games were excellent to aid both children in actually seeing emotions expressed in a nonthreathening environment at their own pace. As a teacher, I know children must understand emotions and how to express them appropriately.

I wish these could be added to all school curriculum for many reasons. It is technology. It is the best way I have seen to show emotions from happy to disgusted on the market. The face goes from calm to happy right on the computer screen so the child sees the transformation.

It is also a wonderful purchase for homeschooling families or someone who wants to work at home with children. I think this would work well with children preschool age up to 6.

I Just reviewed the dog cd and wanted to do this one two. I am a bit more of a cat person and kindof like this one better, only for that reason.

As owner of 5 cats and 3 dogs I am always looking for useful references and this beats them all! I took a chance buying these and boy ohh boy am I glad I did. It is super easy to use, written for normal people (like meself) and it has everything. The pictures and graphics are fantastic especailly the cat anatomy charts are just works of art, and I found the pet records keeper a very nice bonus an worked great..I have all my pets info in in an hour or so. For us average folk this was increadible. I have the dog cd like I said before; the cost is very reasonable for all you get. I have reviewed the dog cd too.