Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)THE GOOD:
Content in the book is quite accessible and easily understandable by anyone new to the cross-media concept. It is an attractive combination: A list of renowed "contributors" and useful appendix contents.
The whole book in plain text is available online for free at the Carnegie Mellon Research Showcase.
THE BAD:
If you go for the Kindle version, you'll pay a small amount. Surprisingly, it is actually the same as the free version online from the Carnegie Mellon Research Showcase (plain text, no hyperlinks, no figures nor additional features available).
Printed version is different from the one at the "look inside" mode (the Taxonomy of Entertainment Technologies from the ETC figure -preface, page x- appears in color, while in the printed version everything in black and white). No proofreading work reflects in continuous typographical errors along the book.
Image quality in printed edition is very poor (like a printed gif image). Original figures were designed to be in color, so being in a black and white printed version, there is an extremely wide range of gray levels which are nearly impossible to distinguish as color codes. Pages 56 and 57 are left in blank without reason.
THE UGLY:
Author and ETC Press state that while there is a separate Cross-media DVD ROM available, it is not necessary to follow the exercises suggested along the book. Unfortunately, the truth is that the book is actually based on the DVD ROM contents. If this wasn't enough, every black and white figure in the printed version reads: "(full color version on the DVD ROM)", so the "optional" status of the DVD ROM is very questionable.
CONCLUSION:
In theory this book is a good starting point to understand the basics behind the cross-media communications concept. However, some of the contributors texts feel quite low in "substance" compared to their regular writings and interviews in other spaces. It has a bit of the "Aldrich Factor" in his book "Learning Online with Games, Simulations, and Virtual Worlds" where contents remain quite low to what the title and "authorities" recommendations at the front and back covers say it should be.
Ironically, in practice "Cross-Media communications: an introduction th the art of creating integrated media experiences" is an awful example of a cross-media implementation. Neither printed, nor Kindle or DVD ROM versions are designed to take profit of their real potential or even to make it useful.
LAST UPDATE (May 2011)
Browsing in Amazon recently, it seems that this titlte is being re-published by Thomson / Delmar Learning with an approx. retail price of USD $64.95. Expected publishing date was announced March 2011, but no information about the book release date is currently available (at least in Amazon). On "product details", it seems to have about a hundred more pages than the edition I have now (I'm not sure if this means more content).
If this new release means a quality updated (and revised) version of the edition I have now (which, for the suggested retail, it should be a "must"), great news for you all. As for me, It would mean an abuse in what seems has been the selling of a careless "draft version", in pieces (the "printed version" and the separated "DVD ROM"), before a decent publishing release.
Not a good experience.
Hope the author and the editor get this comments.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Cross-Media Communications: an Introduction to the Art of Creating Integrated Media Experiences
This text is an introduction to the future of mass media and mass communications - cross-media communications. Cross-media is explained through the presentation and analysis of contemporary examples and project-based tutorials in cross-media development. The text introduces fundamental terms and concepts, and provides a solid overview of cross-media communications, one that builds from a general introduction to a specific examination of media and genres to a discussion of the concepts involved in designing and developing cross-media communications. There is also an accompanying DVD-ROM full of hands-on exercises that shows how cross-media can be applied. For the DVD-ROM: http://www.lulu.com/content/8179270
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