New type of electronic encyclopedia for boys and girls-an application of multimedia videos to consumer electronics

A progressive concept of an electronic encyclopedia has been proposed for boys and girls in order to satisfy their interest in nature, i.e., butterflies and/or wild birds. Based on the new concept, a system application has been developed utilizing the integrated technologies of the computer systems, communication networks, and consumer electronics. Center facilities and navigation are important features of the new concept for realizing an electronic encyclopedia of butterflies and wild birds. The electronic encyclopedia stores more than one thousand items of butterflies and wild birds in MPEG2 format videos and/or JPEG format still pictures. Boys and girls can arbitrarily retrieve them though optical free-space transmission facilities, CATV or Internet lines, and broadcast transmitters utilize the navigation. At the final step of the retrieval, the boys and girls can see a frame of pictures of the designated butterfly without requiring any other knowledge other than touch-panel operations.