Interactive media march 2013 | Page 4

Applications Applications are software that the computer uses to perform a task that is not performed by the operating system. Consoles have a large variety of application types and act as multimedia devices. Applications serve a lot of purposes; an example of this is entertainment, that they each play their own part. Games are a type of application; it is either booted from already being downloaded, or from the disk. These are programmed to accept commands from the controller, making the interactivity fairly basic and common. There are Educational types of applications; search engines are very useful to find information quickly. Google will show you the most relevant information to the question searched for without showing many irrelevant websites in the fastest time possible. There is money to be made in applications, so marketing and advertising is a huge business. On consoles such as the Xbox, it will show you advertisements relevant to your game or search history, making you more likely to click on the services they are advertising. This is a very effective way to make people click and use your product. Interactivity and control Interactivity and control is used every time a person grabs the mouse and starts to click. This is prevalent in web browsers using HTML. Anything done that changes the web page, such as hovering, clicking on links or moving the cursor are all types of interactivity media authoring. Buttons are a good way for people to recognise interactivity. And know they have some sort of control, people will instantly recognise what to do if the button is a familiar symbol such as a play button or a pause. Events are created to do an action when interacted with, for example dragging and object around a screen or clicking. These are the controls that execute what the product does. Effects are important in interactivity, that can be overused but they are an important