Since this website first went online, the content in this section has evolved radically. At its broadest definition, "multimedia" encompasses virtually every other form of communication. The content and forms remain the same: text, images and sound. But the delivery really makes a difference. Programs are no longer limited to the storage capacity of a kiosk or workstation, but can incorporate data from internal and external networks, including the World Wide Web itself. DVDs in many cases have replaced CD-ROMs, which were just coming into their own when this page first appeared.

Talk about fast change! And it makes this page very hard to keep current. Besides the changes in technology, the people who use it seem to move around a bit. So, please bear with me as I try to keep track of things for you.

Rather than trying to sort out the definitions and controversies, my goal is to provide you with carefully-selected links to high-quality, stimulating information, and let you draw your own conclusions. Writers and designers will find even more resources on the Writing for Interactive Multimedia page, elsewhere on this website.

• Educators have discovered great value in the World Wide Web as an enhancement to traditional learning methods and tools. But, as they say at Dartmouth's Web Teaching Resources page, "Every six minutes someone reinvents the wheel on the Web." They attempt to reduce that redundancy by providing useful tools in one handy location, including interactive CGI scripts, Java applets, and downloadable files of various kinds.
• Multimedia production has many phases, and technically, "authoring" is just one of them. But Multimedia Authoring is a very large website whose breadth of topics belies the narrow focus of its name.
• Gabor Szentivanyi's Index to Multimedia Information Sources [revised URL] has moved yet again. It's now hosted by a company called Scala and continues to evolve. It has always been a large, comprehensive and well-organized starting point. Let's hope someday it finds a permanent home on a fast server!
• Among the "Museum documentation initiatives" of the International Council of Museums are useful resources provided by its CIDOC Multimedia Working Group.
• The University of Nottingham generously offers Guidelines for Multimedia Courseware as part of its "New Frontiers of Learning."
• Jamie Siglar seems to have closed the site that hosted his project, but luckily, version 2.23 of The Multimedia Authoring Systems FAQ [revised URL] has been archived elsewhere. It explains various paradigms for authoring, regardless of hardware platform. It also includes vendor info and other resources, although some of them may be dated now.
• Sun Microsystems has a lot of good stuff online. I particularly like Jakob Nielsen's Alert Box, which has superb information about multimedia user interfaces. Sun also offers extensive, searchable Documentation for Java and JavaSoft Products including white papers, FAQs, APIs, SDKs, and ICBMs (just kidding on that last one).
• NYU's Multimedia Research Lab sponsors practical applications of multimedia, which can be accessed through their site.
• At the University of Pennsylvania, The Center for Human Modeling and Simulation is working on ways to make synthetic versions of you and me.
• Here's what's left of the VRML Repository [revised URL], which includes viewers, utilities, text files and other resources. Its hosts say it has been superseded by X3D, and offer this FAQ to explain why and how. The Web3D Consortium offers many informational and practical resources for those who wish to explore this Open Source approach to Virtual Reality.