Blog: "I'm a Material Boy"

[Sexbad]

Bump - Tints pixels based on lighting (making it have much more detail)
Spec - Adds tone based on lighting + player view (think of sun glare off a car)
parallax - Not entirely sure how it works, but it creates the impressive of a 3d surface based on player camera and not lights I believe.

I believe I understand all that but am confused about where normal mapping comes in to play because from what I've seen it just does exactly what parallax mapping does.