Friday, December 12, 2008

Laughing Til It Hurts

By Herbert Reich

Digital media refers to electronic media. Digital media is the opposite of analogue media. Images, animations, texts, and videos you see on your computer are made of digital media, whereas analogue media are drawings, writings, or sketches on paper or any other media that are not on computer. The digital media is based on binary numeral system, with "1" and "0" representing true and false, respectively. Computers interpret these binary data as information and then represent the information in forms of images, animations, or texts on your monitor. However, computers may also interpret other codes such as ASCII, where a series of binary codes is being interpreted into 2-digit codes.

Digital media is all around us now. Most of us use computers on a daily basis and of course, any information which you view on a computer is, by definition digital media. The internet is nothing more than a collection of digital media. E cards are one popular type of digital media - an E card may consist of images, text, audio and even video content. Besides video based E cards, there are also those which contain animations; these may be two or three dimensional.

Most E cards begin with an image of some sort. These images may be created by the user using Adobe Illustrator or similar software, taken from clip art libraries or scanned from a photograph. Digital photographs, just like printed ones are made up of pixels. In digital media, these pixels are each represented by a bit of data. The more pixels there are in a picture, the more information it contains. For the user, this means a larger (and usually higher resolution) image displayed in the screen.

2D and 3D animations are moving pictures. These animations are composed of a group of images put into a sequence using a scripting language. These animations are larger than a static (non-moving) image. The same kinds of scripts can be used to make moving text on an E card. Audio files can also be added to the E card for effect.

All together, these images text and audio files (or animations and video, if using) comprise the contents of an E card. E cards are far easier to send to your recipient than a regular card - all you need is their email address. They can't get lost in the post and you don't even need a stamp! There are thousands of different E cards out there to choose from; the most popular style are funny E cards. You can send E cards for any occasion - birthdays, holidays and more!

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