The Basics

In the reading “New Media and Web Production” by Whitaker the characteristics of the new media advancements are explained. Discussed in this article are the functions of text, hypertext, digital imaging, audio, video, and the language in which these websites are designed. Explained by Whitaker are the same principals of web sites we have been discussing in class for the past couple weeks. He mentions the advancement of hypertext, how digital imaging has progressed to make websites more appealing. The author also speaks on video, and how it has made the Internet more interactive and the improvement of media players such as quicktime and realplayer. The author also discussed the HTML language how the web pages are formatted, and the development of new languages such as XML, and CCS.

I wanted to focus my response to the park of the chapter that Whitaker focuses on video and AV basics, and the technology of streaming media. I can remember the time when I used to sit in my basement and wait for the whole song to download. (I couldn’t survive the amount of time needed for a video without food and water..ha) Now we have things such as RealPlayers and Quicktime that allow us to listen to music right away. With the speed of the Internet now a day, you hardly have to wait at all for videos. There are many WebPages I log onto daily that have live streaming videos. Most of which just start by themselves, I don’t even click or download anything at all. This has made the Internet so much more appealing, and it allowed transferring of information free and easy. One other thing I would like to briefly touch on was the importance of hypertext in my day to day Internet experience. Every single day I go on websites such as www.espn.com, or www.laxpower.com and immediately I am presented with thousands of different links that take me to articles of various different topics. I honestly cannot imagine what the web would be like without this technology.