A Slideshow Catalogue

[spudmachine]

Comrades,
Like many companies we have a large number of PPT files that sit on shared
servers, or intranet pages and the people who really need this info (our
sales folks and their support teams) find it difficult to locate specific
slides they'd like to use in a particular visit.

So I'm looking for a way to create a browsable "library" of slides that can
be:

- Hosted on an internal web server
- Would allow easy and friendly browsing of a reasonable number of PPT files
(say between 10 and 50 different Powerpoint files)
- Would allow me to group presentations into categories (eg. "sales",
"technical", "confidential", "public" etc.).
- Would allow users to download the Powerrpoint file, or other associated
files for a given gallery
- Would allow users to stream a training video (eg. Flash) of how to deliver
the presentation

In fact I've found a solution that does most of this. When I looked at
online picture galleries like Picasa it gave me an idea. If I convert the
Powerpoint files to JPGs, and then display the JPGs in Picasa-style
galleries it would do the trick. I'm actually fooling around with JAlbum
and the Bananalbum skin at the moment and it's working well.

But this involves the "convert to JPG" stage, which would be good to avoid
if possible (not least because Powerpoint is rubbish as saving JPGs - no
anti-aliasing).


Any suggestions?

Cheers,
Geoff

 

[Echo S]

You might look into available solutions. Much easier than rolling your own,
you know?

SharePoint is one option. You need a Windows SharePoint Services setup and
MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Services) installed on top of that in
order to get slide library capability. But definitely worth investigating.

Another option is Slide Manager. http://www.slidemanager.biz/ Again,
definitely worth a look. I really like a lot of the features in this
package.

Presentation Librarian.
http://www.accent-technologies.com/products/presentation_librarian.asp
Haven't used this for years, so I can't comment.

SlideWhere is a good desktop solution, but I don't know if there's a server
version or not. http://www.slidewhere.com/

Just FYI, I think most of these divide an uploaded/added presentation into
one-slide files and then reassemble as needed later based on the user
selection. So there's no image conversion going on.

 

[Sandy]

Kadient provides an online slide database program. I like everything about it
except it's quirks regarding custom shows.

 

[spudmachine]

Thanks for those suggestions.

Echo, this may be a first as every word you write is usually a distilled
pearl of wisdom But when I read that dreaded word "Sharepoint" I had
to shudder. We are indeed already Sharepoint "sufferers"

But I haven't yet found anyone in our organization who actually understands
how to drive it. The web pages it produces are so dull and inflexible that
this is exactly the reason we're looking for an alternative. It also seems
that doing anything simple in Sharepoint is not an option - presumably it's
designed to scale to enormous numbers of items and offer sophisticated
content management. But it seems that it's so sophisticated that none of
our IT staff can get it to do anything. I'm not a Mac user but it occurs to
me that Sharepoint could never, ever have been written by Apple

But I trust your advice and I will bring this up as an option. I have to
say though the "rolling my own" option was so quick and easy - but I can see
it won't scale beyond a small number of presentations.

And Michael thanks for the pointer on image resolution!

Cheers,
Geoff


but I was surprised

 

[Echo S]

Thanks for those suggestions.

Echo, this may be a first as every word you write is usually a distilled
pearl of wisdom But when I read that dreaded word "Sharepoint" I had
to shudder. We are indeed already Sharepoint "sufferers"
ROFL!

But I haven't yet found anyone in our organization who actually
understands how to drive it. The web pages it produces are so dull and
inflexible that this is exactly the reason we're looking for an
alternative. It also seems that doing anything simple in Sharepoint is
not an option - presumably it's designed to scale to enormous numbers of
items and offer sophisticated content management. But it seems that it's
so sophisticated that none of our IT staff can get it to do anything. I'm
not a Mac user but it occurs to me that Sharepoint could never, ever have
been written by Apple

I do hear you. And I actually agree with you. I know I discussed Sharepoint
a gazillion years ago at the company I was working for at the time, and the
assumption was that it would be very flexible and solve all their problems
right out of the box. Unfortunately, nothing works that way. Sharepoint
does need to be customized -- I believe you need someone on board who knows
it and can do that before it's really useful. (And so when I told the
company that, they lost all interest. Silly me for dispelling Microsoft
Marketing Myth (TM).)

In addition, I'd ask if you have the MOSS stuff installed also. That's what
adds functionality like slide libraries. Just WSS (or whatever it's called
now) itself won't give you that.

You might want to pop over to the Sharepoint groups and see if some of the
MVPs there have ideas for you regarding customizing Sharepoint in general. I
think it's sad that people (companies) invest in things like Sharepoint but
then can't really use it to its potential. Maybe try these to start:

news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.sharepoint.design_and_customization
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoftpublic.sharepoint.general

Then again, maybe you've already tried that. But I'm thinking if you can
find a good consultant, that might be less expensive and painful than
starting over with a completely different alternative (to Sharepoint in
general -- I'm not talking about slide libraries specifically here).

But I trust your advice and I will bring this up as an option. I have to
say though the "rolling my own" option was so quick and easy - but I can
see it won't scale beyond a small number of presentations.

Check into Slide Manager. It's a nice tool.

 

[spudmachine]

Thanks again! I did wonder if it was just me finding a problem with
Sharepoint

Those pointers will at least help me appear (barely) knowledgable on the
subject.

Have a great weekend.

Cheers,
Geoff

Thanks for those suggestions.

Echo, this may be a first as every word you write is usually a distilled
pearl of wisdom But when I read that dreaded word "Sharepoint" I
had to shudder. We are indeed already Sharepoint "sufferers"
ROFL!

But I haven't yet found anyone in our organization who actually
understands how to drive it. The web pages it produces are so dull and
inflexible that this is exactly the reason we're looking for an
alternative. It also seems that doing anything simple in Sharepoint is
not an option - presumably it's designed to scale to enormous numbers of
items and offer sophisticated content management. But it seems that it's
so sophisticated that none of our IT staff can get it to do anything.
I'm not a Mac user but it occurs to me that Sharepoint could never, ever
have been written by Apple

I do hear you. And I actually agree with you. I know I discussed
Sharepoint a gazillion years ago at the company I was working for at the
time, and the assumption was that it would be very flexible and solve all
their problems right out of the box. Unfortunately, nothing works that
way. Sharepoint does need to be customized -- I believe you need
someone on board who knows it and can do that before it's really useful.
(And so when I told the company that, they lost all interest. Silly me for
dispelling Microsoft Marketing Myth (TM).)

In addition, I'd ask if you have the MOSS stuff installed also. That's
what adds functionality like slide libraries. Just WSS (or whatever it's
called now) itself won't give you that.

You might want to pop over to the Sharepoint groups and see if some of the
MVPs there have ideas for you regarding customizing Sharepoint in general.
I think it's sad that people (companies) invest in things like Sharepoint
but then can't really use it to its potential. Maybe try these to start:

news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.sharepoint.design_and_customization
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoftpublic.sharepoint.general

Then again, maybe you've already tried that. But I'm thinking if you can
find a good consultant, that might be less expensive and painful than
starting over with a completely different alternative (to Sharepoint in
general -- I'm not talking about slide libraries specifically here).

But I trust your advice and I will bring this up as an option. I have to
say though the "rolling my own" option was so quick and easy - but I can
see it won't scale beyond a small number of presentations.

Check into Slide Manager. It's a nice tool.

--
Echo [MS PPT MVP] http://www.echosvoice.com
What's new in PPT 2007? http://www.echosvoice.com/2007.htm
Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances http://tinyurl.com/36grcd
PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit http://tinyurl.com/32a7nx