TUESday, August 2, 2011

Multimedia presentation: Drugstore soda fountains

The major assignment of Dr. Tim Bajkiewicz's Multiplatform storytelling class is a neighborhood story: a journalistic work that incorporates a mix of static text and photography with video, audio, and other mixed media components. The requirements included two video pieces, two audio pieces, a Google Maps presentation and a Vuvox presentation.

Drugstore soda fountains: A bit of nostalgia, a lot of homeMy story focused on drugstore soda fountains. While they have all but disappeared from the American landscape, Mechanicsville features two, at Mechanicsville Drug Store adn Colonial Pharmacy. I wanted to find out why, so I interviewed the owners, workers, and patrons of both establishments.

Below is a media player featuring audio from interviews with Roger Carroll and Howard Townsend, regulars at Mechancisville Drug's soda fountain.

NOTE: The original ActionScript code activated the media player automatically—a feature I dislike on most Web pages. I modified the code to disable the autoplay feature, but for reasons I cannot understand, the "Play" button will not start the initial playback. Try hitting the "Fast Forward," "Play Next," or "Play Previous" buttons instead and all will subsequently work as it should.

More excerpts from this story are posted on the Moving Images page.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Deploying more streaming audio

Here I didn't edit the sound file. This was just more practice on encoding and uploading streaming media.

You need to have Flash Player and Javascript enabled to hear the audio.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Testing weapons of mass communications

We have been asked to experiment with non-text-based media, such as audio files. Below are some of my experiments in sound.

This first one is a straightforward link to a .wav file.

Now here's a link to the same audio, but in the form of a streaming Flash file.

You need to have Flash Player and Javascript enabled to hear the audio.

More experiments will be forthcoming.