Documentation & Books OT

[Chipp Walters]

One of the absolutely 'best documented' products for newbies is SketchUp.
It's a 3D application.

And IMO what makes it so absolutely great are the video tutorials found at:

http://www.sketchup.com/training.php

You can't watch but a few of these and you are compelled to buy the 
product (at least I did!).

Which brings me around to 'the best multimedia app ever'.

First, some boring background. Many of you know I founded Human Code in 
the early 90's. We created 100's of commercial CD-ROM's over a period of 
8 years including games, edutainment and multimedia demos. One of our 
claims to fame was all the awards we won-- mostly due to the fact the 
core group had a very strong design background. The only reason I 
mention this, is to say I've had a lot of experience working with 
'compelling media integration' (Apple's old buzz words;-).

But, the best multimedia I ever saw, I had nothing to do with it.

Frankly, It was a most surprising revelation, as the CD-ROM had 
extremely poor production quality. The graphics were lame, the interface 
brutally simple, but it did one thing EXACTLY correct. It did not get in 
the way of displaying the content.

And, for me, the content was SO COMPELLING, the rest didn't matter.

The CD-ROM was simply a video introduction to coding in Visual Basic.

The onscreen video tutorials were done well, and you could have it open 
next to the VB IDE and  actually work right along with it. It made 
things SO EASY!

I learned a lot about compelling media integration vs design that day. I 
guess it's one of the reasons I'm not so Flash gung-ho, because while 
the 'designs' are fabulous, most of the Flash websites I've seen have 
little compelling content on them.

So, to Judy and Marian and others (if you're still reading by now)-- I 
hear you! I can certainly see the benefits of having video tutorials as 
opposed to the text only approach currently used. The issue is only one 
of cost and priorities for RR. I think they're listening, too ;-)

best,

Chipp