Date: April 8, 2000
Author: Ronald Wolak
Subject: Reply 1 to Chaelynne Wolak's Discussion Topic #3
Reply 1 to Chaelynne Wolak's
Discussion Topic #3
As Chaelynne pointed out, video is playing an increased role in multimedia presentations in spite of the difficulties it presents. Areas of increased use include multimedia training and streaming job interviews. The emergence of streaming job interviews is one example of the effectiveness of multimedia collaboration (Nicol, Gutfreund, Paschetto, Rush, & Martin, 1999).
Examples of recent technologies that make the online job interview a reality include RealServer by Real Networks, OnLive Conferencing Server by OnLive Technologies, VDOLive On-Demand Server by VDOnet Corporation, and NetShow Server by Microsoft (Nicol et al., 1999). NetShow, for instance, is an extensible streaming platform that supports the playback of streaming audio, video, and event-driven presentations. NetShow is well suited for interviews over ADSL and other multimegabit per second network connections. VDOLive is better suited for slower 28.8 kbps and ISDN connections.
The various streaming technologies mentioned above seek to minimize the effects of poor network connections. Network QoS is vital to the online interviewing process. In fact, a recent study has shown the negative effects of poor QoS on a subject's capacity to assimilate the factual and emotional content of an online multimedia presentation (Procter, Hartswood, McKinlay, & Gallacher, 1999, November 14-17). The research showed that a loss of quality impaired a subject's level of interest and recollection of information content. Finally, it is reasonable to assume that a user's lack of tolerance of a service, which is perceived as poor, will be reflected in the job interview process.
References
Nicol, J., Gutfreund, Y., Paschetto, J., Rush, K., & Martin, C. (1999). How the Internet helps build collaborative multimedia applications. Communications of the ACM, 42(1), 79-85.
Procter, R., Hartswood, M., McKinlay, A., & Gallacher, S. (1999, November 14-17). An investigation of the influence of network quality of service on the effectiveness of multimedia communication. Proceedings of the International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work, ACM, Phoenix, Arizona, pp. 160-168.