5. Summary

According to INFOTECH president Julie Schwerin, by the year 2000, "99 to 100 percent" of CD-ROM titles will include links to the Web. The Internet is an unlimited source of media. Unfortunately, bandwidth isn't unlimited. While putting your latest and greatest content on the Web is certainly the desired goal, you are restricted by what the user can receive, what they're willing to wait for, and ultimately, the physical restrictions of the Internet infrastructure itself.

Tomorrow's exciting applications will mix multimedia data (graphics, animations, audio and video clips delivered both in bulk and in real time) with the interactivity and community of the Web. Hybrid applications incorporating the key features enumerated in this paper take advantage of the complimentary nature of the CD and the Internet to deliver a compelling end-user experience.