Presentations in boardrooms, auditoriums and meeting places often include digital projections of files, slides, pictures or other presentation information, typically using a notebook computer and a digital projector. Wireless technologies are currently being used to free the presenter from wires during presentations by wirelessly sending the video signal from the notebook to the digital projector. The benefit of being freed from cables is being freed from having to use the computer system in the conference room. This has often presented problems of incompatible presentation software between the copy on a floppy disk or CD-ROM. This wireless freedom greatly aids the mobile professional, but it ignores a highly productive and extremely mobile segment of the professional workforce—users of personal data assistants (PDA), most notably, users of PalmOS PDAs.
The PIB is an application for a PalmOS Device with a wireless 802.11b/g adapter that will connect to an 802.11b/g-enabled wireless video projector (projectors with an InFocus LiteShow unit, WiJET adapter, and projectors with internal adapters, for example), allow the users to select the PalmOS device connection type as either 1) DHCP, or, 2) Static IP address, subnet mask, and gateway address, configure the optimum PalmOS ‘simulated?screen resolution to transfer to the projector, send the PalmOS device’s video to the projector via the wireless connection, and provide tap-to-forward, go back, cycle, and other functions to page through multi-page documents, PowerPoint presentation, and other files that can be displayed as images (similar to Picsel Viewer, for example, but with a more elegant presentation-ready interface).
The immediate users of such an application will be the PDA-carrying professionals who use their PDA as a lightweight, unobtrusive interface between the active working world and the computer in the office. E-mail, data files, contact lists and work schedules are already commonly synchronized between the office computer and a PDA. This application will free the PDA user from dragging a notebook (and probably the power cables) to a meeting. No longer will the light traveler worry about a CD-ROM copy of a presentation being incompatible with the boardroom software. This application is the presentation tool—only a wireless projector (802.11b/g) is needed.
Future users will be those users who realize that PIB makes it possible for the audience to participate in a presentation by providing visual aids through the projector to support an interactive discussion.
Since the very first speech class, we have been taught that visual aids are extremely effective presentation aids. Giving the presenter more control and flexibility over the presentation will only improve presentations.
We are part of the group of extremely mobile professionals and our use of the most effective presentation tools will increase the popular use of such tools.
It will be a simple, easy-to-use application that will offer menus for settings and configurations in much the same way as current PalmOS applications.
The boardroom and conferences will become very interactive and effective environments, allowing for just-in-time presentations, on-line research in support of questions during meetings, and the ability to present data and answers to the group. People can truly make use of the power of a PDA—they can leave the notebook in the car and the desktop in the office.