28. File formats. Multimedia applications. Multimedia techniques.

To identify the type of file, an extension is added to the filename when it is saved on disk.

Common text extensions:

.pdf (portable document format).doc (MS Word document).rtf (rich text format)

.htm or .html (hypertext markup language for Web files)

Graphics include charts, photos, drawings, buttons, .gif (graphics interchange format).jpg (jpeg - joint photographic experts group) .tif (tagged image file) Video refers to recording, editing and displaying moving images.

Common formats:

.avi (audio video interleave) .mov (QuickTime movie) .mpg (mpeg - moving picture experts group)

You can hear sound such as songs, movie soundtracks and speeches. Common audio formats:

.wav (Windows wave audio format).ra (RealAudio file) .mp3 (compressed music files)

Animations are made up of a series of independent pictures put together in sequence to look like moving pictures.Common formats: .gif for animated gifs .swf for Flash files. Files compressed with Winzip have a .zip extension.

A popular format used to compress and distribute movies on DVDs or over the Net is DivX, a digital video codec (COmpress, DECompress).

Multimedia applications

Multimedia has become a huge force in culture, industry and education. Practically any type of information we receive can be categorized as multimedia, from television, to magazines, to web pages, to movies, multimedia is a tremendous force in both informing the public and entertaining us. Advertising is perhaps one of the biggest industry's that use multimedia to send their message to the masses. Where one type of media, let's say radio or text can be a great way to promote an item, using multimedia techniques can significantly make an item being advertised better received by the masses and in many cases with greater results. Software engineers use multimedia in applications such as computer simulations for industrial/military training or even entertainment. In public places (e.g. museums and stations), there are information kiosks that use multimedia. Kiosk systems are being used in a variety of applications, including information directories, customer self-service terminals, electronic catalogs, internet access terminals, tourism guides, and more.

Several software packages can be used in kiosk environment, including a presentation development package and an on-screen keyboard package.

On the Web, audio and video are integrated into web pages. For example, RealPlayer supports streaming, which lets you play sound (e.g. from radio stations) and video files as a continuous stream while they are downloading.

29. Networks and their main purposes. Pan. Lan. A Home area network. A campus network. Man. Wan. Gan. Vpn. Internetwork. Overlay networks.

A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of computers and devices connected by communications channels that facilitates communications among users and allows users to share resources and peripherals with other users. The main purposes of the networks are:

A personal area network (PAN) is a computer network used for communication among computer and different information technological devices close to one person. Some examples of devices that are used in a PAN are personal computers, printers, fax machines, telephones, PDAs, scanners, and even video game consoles.

Local area networks (LANs) are usually placed in the same building. They can be built with two main types of architecture: peer-to-peer, where the two computers have the same capabilities, or client-server, where one computer acts as the server containing the main hard disk and controlling the other workstations or nodes, all the devices linked in the network (e.g. printers, computers, etc.).

Computers in a LAN need to use the same protocol, or standard of communication. Ethernet is one of the most common protocols for LANs. A router, a device that forwards data packets, is needed to link a LAN to another network, e.g. to the Net.

A home area network is a residential LAN which is used for communication between digital devices typically deployed in the home, usually a small number of personal computers and accessories, such as printers and mobile computing devices. An important function is the sharing of Internet access, often a broadband service through a CATV or Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) provider.

A campus network is a computer network made up of an interconnection of local area networks (LANs) within a limited geographical area. The networking equipments (switches, routers) and trasmission media (optical fiber, copper plant) are almost entirely owned (by the campus tenant / owner: an enterprise, university, government etc.).

In the case of a university campus-based campus network, the network is likely to link a variety of campus buildings including; academic departments, the university library and student residence halls.

A metropolitan area network (MAN) is a network that connects two or more local area networks or campus area networks together but does not extend beyond the boundaries of the immediate town/city. Routers, switches and hubs are connected to create a metropolitan area network.

A wide area network (WAN) is a computer network that covers a large geographic area such as a city, country, or spans even intercontinental distances, using a communications channel that combines many types of media. They are usually linked through telephone lines, fibre-optic cables or satellites. The main transmission paths within a WAN are high-speed lines called backbones.

Wireless WANs use mobile telephone networks. The largest WAN in existence is the Internet.

A global area network (GAN) is a network used for supporting mobile communications across an arbitrary number of wireless LANs, satellite coverage areas, etc. The key challenge in mobile communications is handing off the user communications from one local coverage area to the next. Wi-Fi, wireless fidelity, technologies allow the creation of WLANs, where cables or wires are replaced by radio waves. To build a WLAN you need access points, radio-based receiver-transmitters that are connected to the wired LAN, and wireless adapters installed in your computer to link it to the network. Hotspots are WLANs available for public use in places like airports and hotels, but sometimes the service is also available outdoors (e.g. university campuses, squares, etc.).

A virtual private network (VPN) is a computer network in which some of the links between nodes are carried by open connections or virtual circuits in some larger network (e.g., the Internet) instead of by physical wires. The data link layer protocols of the virtual network are said to be tunneled through the larger network when this is the case. One common application is secure communications through the public Internet, but a VPN need not have explicit security features, such as authentication or content encryption. VPNs, for example, can be used to separate the traffic of different user communities over an underlying network with strong security features.

An Internetwork is the connection of two or more private computer networks via a common switching or routing technology and owned by separate entities (public or private). The result is called an internetwork. The Internet is an aggregation of many Internetworks hence it's name was shortened to Internet.

Any interconnection between public, private, commercial, industrial, or governmental networks may also be defined as an internetwork or (more often) an extranet.

The Internet is a global system of interconnected governmental, academic, corporate, public, and private computer networks. It is based on the networking technologies of the Internet Protocol Suite.

An overlay network is a computer network that is built on top of another network. Nodes in the overlay can be thought of as being connected by virtual or logical links, each of which corresponds to a path, perhaps through many physical links, in the underlying network. For example, many peer-to-peer networks are overlay networks because they run on top of the Internet. Internet was built as an overlay upon the telephone network.