PALMEDIA Babble Version 1.0
Copyright1996 Lee Moon
All Rights Reserved.
5/27/96

PALMEDIA Babble is a freeware demonstration application for Newton MessagePads running Newton OS 2.0.  Babble is a demonstration of video and sound playback with a decidedly offbeat twist.  At the press of a button, Babble will randomly select phrases from its (rather limited) vocabulary of video/audio clips.  These phrases will be combined to form one sentence which will then be displayed as one video segment (with sound).  Of course, the video/sentences generated by Babble tend to be rather whimsical...

PALMEDIA Babble requirements:
1) A means of downloading the application from a Mac or PC into the Newton.
2) Lots of free space.  Around 445K of free memory on the Newton.  The audio and video account for almost all the size.
3) A sense of humor.  Babble doesn't solve any worldly problems.  It's strictly for entertainment!

Using PALMEDIA Babble:
1) After installation, make sure you have turned on Pen and Action sound effects in Prefs.  Also, turn the volume up.
2) Launch Babble by tapping on its icon in Extras.
3) Tap the "Talk" button to have Babble randomly generate a sentence and play it back as a video with soundtrack.  The sentence will also be displayed as text near the bottom of the screen.
4) When the video ends, you can tap talk to get another sentence.
5) Tap the close box to quit Babble.

Notes on PALMEDIA Babble:
1) This version has been tested on a MessagePad 120 with 2.0 and a MessagePad 130.  Certain design considerations were taken to ensure proper video/audio playback on multiple MessagePad types from the same application.  As such, a MessagePad 130 tends to play the video back a little too quickly occasionally, while a MessagePad 120 tends to lag a bit from time to time.  (The MessagePad 130 is appreciably faster than the 120).
2) Babble has a vocabulary of 4 words/phrases per sentence part (there are 4 parts in each sentence).  Therefore, the total number of audio/video clips is 16.  These clips are randomly connected into sometimes amusing, sometimes stupid sentences.
3) That's about all there is!  PALMEDIA Babble is big, goofy, and non-productive.  It's sorta neat and funny too!
4) The audio and video clips were captured on my Mac with the Connectix QuickCam.  Moderate processing followed to make the individual movie clips (several passes of image and audio processing).

The future of Babble (going against common sense and good taste, I'll probably put out another version!):
1) Smaller videos and more compression in the audio to get more clips inside less memory.
2) Better video/audio clips.  The current clips end a little too soon.  I need some more "quiet" time at the end (for when the next audio clip begins - so I don't chop off the spoken part of the previous clip).
3) Bigger and better vocabulary!  I'm looking for suggestions for the next vocabulary...

Well, thanks for taking a peek at Babble!  As always, drop me a note with comments and suggestions on any of my PALMEDIA software applications for the Newton.
Lee
email:  LeeMoon@aol.com
NewtonMail:  76641.3317@CompuServe.com
URL:  http://members.aol.com/LeeMoon/