WHAT'S MULTIMEDIA?
  Multimedia is the attempt to make your personal computer 
overwhelm your senses by feeding you text, music, voice, 
graphics, animation, and video movies on the screen all 
simultaneously! To do that well, you need a fast computer (at 
least an Intel 486 or a Mac Quadra 630) with a CD-ROM drive and 
some circuitry to handle sounds well.
  Microsoft's most famous example of multimedia is Microsoft 
Encarta. It's a CD-ROM disk that contains the complete text of 
the 29-volume Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia, supplemented by 1000 
extra articles, 8 hours of sound, written & spoken samples of 60 
languages, 7800 photos and illustrations, 100 animations and 
video clips, 800 maps, plus more. Using Encarta is fun: using 
your mouse, just click on whatever topic on the screen interests 
you and ___ whammo! ___ you see it and hear it. Discount dealers 
sell it for just $70.
  Inspired by Encarta's success, Microsoft has gone on to develop 
other multimedia titles that are more specific. For example, 
Cinemania is a CD-ROM that contains over 19,000 movie reviews 
written by Leonard Maltin, Roger Ebert, Pauline Kael, and 
Baseline, plus biographies of nearly 4,000 performers and other 
film-biz folks, plus some photographs, audio tracks, video clips, 
and stills. Discount dealers sell it for just $53.
  Microsoft has also done multimedia titles on topics such as 
Beethoven's 9th Symphony (including detailed analysis of the 
music, the man, and his times), Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, 
works by Mozart & Shubert, London's National Gallery of Art, and 
baseball lore.
  Keep your eyes open: more multimedia is to follow!

                TOOLS
                                         Though using multimedia 
created by companies such as Microsoft can be fun, it's even more 
fun to create your own!
                                         Most software purporting 
to help you create multimedia is tedious to use and expensive. 
But here's the exception: buy Magic Theatre, a CD-ROM disk 
published by two companies working together (Knowledge Adventure 
Inc. and Instinct Corporation). Comp USA sells it for just $35.
                                         It lets you create 
animated cartoons with sound, so easily that you can create 
exciting cartoons after just a few seconds of preparation!
                                         Designed for kids, 
you'll learn how to use it in just a few minutes.
                                         The $35 price even 
includes a microphone, accompanied by a CD-ROM disk that includes 
lots of clip art, pre-made animated objects, music, and sound 
effects, which you can combine in just a few seconds to produce 
an on-screen animated movie that you'll like a lot better than 
Saturday morning cartoons ___ especially since you created it!
                                         The cartoons you'll 
produce will seem child-like, but that's their charm!
                                         Try it, you'll like it. 
If you have kids, the whole family can pitch in to make a family 
animated movie. Your neighbors will be jealous.