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PointOut- a Twitter client for Powerpoint

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Problem Statement

• In general people are lazy

• A retweet is more likely than tweeting something insightful.

• As a presenter it is your job to get the message out rather than pushing people to be creative.

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PointOut

• Allows you to send messages and slides to Twitter while you are presenting

• It allows for the presenter to keep the conversation on topic by providing information to the “Backchannel”

• Bloggers, Micro-Bloggers and audience is easily able to use or re-use (RT) this information.

• It’s all about the Seeding and Feeding of the “Backchannel”

Backchannel : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backchannel

Use Case - Conference

•Present your slides and keep the on-line conversation on topic.

•Share additional information not shown in your live slides.

•Tweet your key quotes and statements directly and accurately

•Allow people not physically present at the conference follow the presentation and online discussion.

•Comparable to using a Press Release in traditional Media

Twitter and Google Wave during conferences http://blog.freshnetworks.com/2009/11/google-wave-vs-twitter-at-conferences/

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Use Case - Education

• Share the slides and background material during the classes

• Allow students to comment, raise questions or discuss material online

• Allow students who have missed the class, to catch up online, and

follow the discussionflickr.com/photos/olpc/olpc

Enough AlreadySHOW ME

PointOut is build as a Microsoft Powerpoint Add-in

Commands

• Commands are placed in the speaker notes of the presentation.

• !msg <message> : Tweets the message• !pic <message> : uploads a picture of

the current slide to mobypicture.com and tweets the message

• !split : Any command before the split is executed at the beginning of the slide, any command after the split is executed just before advancing to the next slide

Current status of PointOut

• First draft demo-ready• Issues with the lag in posting images,

holding up the presentation• Issues with the lag from Mobypicture

posting to Twitter resulting in messages and images being in the wrong order.

• Currently has issues posting images using Powerpoint 2007

• Planning to release it to the world within the next few weeks.

Integration with Google Wave

• The lifespan of a tweet is very short. (Tweets older than 1 day are very unlikely to be viewed)

• Grouping of tweets through hashtags may not guarantee completeness

• Spamming of popular hashtags becomes a bigger problem by the day.

• Google Wave would be able to address at least some of these issues.

I tried…..

• But failed to integrate PointOut with Google Wave.– API not very stable

• cron not working• not possible to access waves from the

outside• API bug preventing Google Wave robots from

posting

– My Java skills are not great• Writing this robot for Google Wave was my

first real introduction to Java.

Alternative tools

• A similar tool exists for Apple user on Keynote called Keynote-Tweet (http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Internet-Utilities/Keynote-Tweet.shtml)

• Someone has also created a number of tools for using Twitter during your presentation, however it does not have the image upload capability.(http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/powerpoint-twitter-tools/)

Feedback

Any feedback is welcome either in person or via Twitter.