Sophie - Simplifying Multimedia Book Design

Multimedia designs have strained centuries of tradition in telling archiveable stories to the breaking point, from scholarly works to fiction. Yet like a chick pecking its way out of the shell, multimedia composition itself struggles for an easier route and for recognition of its right to existence. Monaghan's article in Chronicles of Higher Education (April 28, 2006, p. A41) reviews not only many of these struggles in higher education, but points to a new software application that promises to greatly simplify the composition challenge of assembling the multimedia work.

Titles are confusing right now as fourthworld.com has also used the same name for a similar product, but will be changing its name to something else. The Institute for the Future of the Book's new version, Sophie 2.0, which accents multimedia design is due, according to a recent email, in May, 2006.

Explanation of the goals of the Sophie project provide a good read, along with review of Sophie's predecessor history. Sophie is a product of the Institute for the Future of the Book http://www.annenberg.edu/futureofthebook/, a USC Institute.

To better understand what Sophie may become, it is helpful to look at TK3, which appears to be the commercial forerunner of the in-development open source and free application coming this summer. Viriginia Kuhn's review of TK3 is exceptionally detailed and thoughtful.