Now that you are aware of the people in the business, what can you do, what can you create or be part of the team which can create something for the market out there?

When working as a multimedia person, you could create a number of products. Some of them are: Electronic Books, Electronic Magazines, Kiosks, Corporate Training, Interactive Education, Interactive Games, Interactive Music, Interactive Art and Performance, Interactive Sales and Marketing, Presentations and Communications, Productivity and Authoring Tools, to name just a few.

Lets just take a brief look at some of the above mentioned products, what they mean in multimedia terms, and what are some of the general issues involved in producing them.

Electronic books extend the printed word into a digital domain. They offer not only text, illustrations, and photos but add sound, video, and animation, providing access and understanding not available with printed books. Electronic books, like printed books, can be developed for many markets, adult, professional, corporate, educational, children's, to name a few. Some books are rich with video clips and spoken text, while others are simply compact digitized versions of printed books that come on diskettes or CD-ROMs.

The cost and complexity of producing a title will vary according to the size and sophistication of the title. A primary need is a delivery vehicle or authoring tool that displays screens and buttons or other control elements and provides basic capabilities, like turning pages, creating bookmarks, and searching text. If the text is not already in digital form, a scanner and optical character recognition (OCR) software can help convert it.

A magazine is a collection of stories, photographs, illustrations, essays, and advertisements packaged and distributed in a regular and periodic form to a general or specific audience. Electronic magazines extend the magazine concept into the digital domain by allowing the inclusion of sounds, animation, video clips, an information database, and other elements of an interactive interface.

The production of an electronic magazine is not much different from that of an electronic book except that most tasks must be repeated with each issue. Most electronic magazines have a consistent format to establish an identifiable style and to optimize production. Another challenge in publishing electronic magazines, aside from technology and production, may be adapting the revenue stream of the print-based magazines and broadcast TV to an electronic form. Most magazines obtain two-thirds to three-quarters or more of their revenue from advertising.

Kiosks are public installations designed to make information accessible to many people. These days many multimedia kiosks (computers housed in attractive shells) are found in corporate lobbies, hospital waiting rooms, museums, shopping malls, airline terminals, and other public and semi public spaces.

A multimedia kiosk can provide and even collect information, promote business, and show and distribute products.

A sophisticated network of kiosks might include a dozen kiosks stationed throughout an area, such as a shopping mall, and networked to a single server.

Two rules of thumbs mentioned by many developers are to keep the interface simple and to provide prompt feedback. The organization of the information and the design of the interface is important, since much of the audience may not be familiar with computers and may not have a lot of time to try to figure out how a system works.

A common hardware component in most kiosks is a touchscreen interface, an alternative to a keyboard and mouse. It allows peoples to easily interact with a kiosk by physically touching selections on the screen.

The custom nature of kiosks, the frequency of use, and the hardware components often make support and maintenance a big issue.

Every company has a need to train its employees on a wide range of subjects, from personal policy to equipment maintenance. Studies have shown that interactive learning environments, such as hands-on tutorials, under the guidance of instructors are more helpful to students. In an attempt to augment the power and reach of direct interaction, many companies have turned to computer based training methods. Interactive training commonly performs three principle functions: supporting in-class training, providing individual instruction materials, and facilitates on-demand/just in time training.

Some companies may be able to create in-house multimedia training materials, but many others need to contract to outside production houses, at least initially, until they acquire the necessary knowledge and tools.

Once appropriate content material is collected, training developers use storyboards to demonstrate key interaction screens of the planned system. Corporate personnel involved in these projects include training and technical individuals, possibly sales and marketing, as well as content experts and test participants.

Any activity that entertains or amuses can conceivably be called a game. The category of electronic games can be relatively broad. Common types include electronic board games, 3D sport or adventure games, and interactive movies featuring control over characters and story lines. Electronic games can be based on a key premise or paradigm that appeals to a particular audience. For some, combat and sports seem common themes. Others feature medieval fantasies with magic and fortune telling, historic simulation with time travel, and futuristic worlds with space travel. Most developers create games that require high performance for retrieval, display, and interaction, such as futuristic 3D adventure games.

The development process for a typical CD-ROM based adventure game takes between nine months and a year to complete. Such games usually require heavy use of scriptwriters, programmers, animators, and musicians.

Interactive games have more advanced outlets of distribution than many other areas of multimedia. They usually appear in stores outside of the computer realm and in the general consumer market.