Keynote for Digital Signage?

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Keynote for Digital Signage?

Hmm...? I thought that the new Keynote provided some means of pulling in RSS feeds. Was that a dream? Or perhaps wishful thinking with respect to the Web View feature?

Our goal is to use Keynote to provide Digital Signage support for an education technology conference we host at Arizona State University in the Spring ( http://mec.asu.edu). We'd like to provide updates and information and such to attendees. Keynote would be nice, and the ability to pull in dynamic RSS info would be fantastic.

Any ideas on how this might be accomplished?

Thanks.

Message was edited by: dotguy

24" iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Posted on Oct 6, 2008 5:06 PM

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Answer 1

Tulse

Level 5

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Oct 6, 2008 5:09 PM in response to dotguy

Keynote can't do live updating of websites or RSS feeds. You can use a widget to create an "overlay" on top of a Keynote presentation that could show RSS info, but it would have to appear above all the slides (that is, it is not integrated with the show itself, but runs independently on top of the presentation). With some clever scripting you could likely put together something quite nice, but it would involve some work.

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Answer 2

Oct 6, 2008 6:41 PM in response to Tulse

It's not Keynote but you could use the RSS Visualizer screen saver. You need to have your RSS feed set as a bookmark in Safari, then go to System Preferences/Desktop & Screen Saver and select the RSS Visualizer. Click on the options button and select your feed.

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Answer 3

dotguy Author

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Oct 7, 2008 10:24 AM in response to Tulse

Okay, thanks for setting me straight. I'll file this under the category of "Wouldn't It Be Nice If..."
Appreciate your all's feedback and ideas.

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Answer 4

whibal

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Oct 9, 2008 12:17 AM in response to dotguy

There is a new digital signage application for Mac OS X: ~sedna presenter. You can export your Keynote presentation and use it in ~sedna presenter to enhance it with RSS feeds, etc. You can also use Quartz Composer files natively for fancy real-time animations while your Keynote slides are being displayed.

~sedna presenter allows you to manage, schedule and deliver digital content to any display, from single-screen delivery to perfectly synchronized multichannel, multi-display video walls.

Here's their web site:
http://www.sedna-presenter.com

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Answer 5

Nov 20, 2008 6:15 PM in response to dotguy

I have a plasma screen in our school lobby connected to a MacMini. I wanted to use Keynote to display weather station data kiosk style. One of the Keynote slides would include a web view of the weather station webpage (not exactly RSS, but a related problem that has been discussed widely online). Unfortunately, web views do not update once presentation mode is started. Here's the work around:

1. Use Automator to create an app that (1) stops current presentation & (2) immediately starts it again
2. Using CronniX, create a crontab entry that launches the App created above at a given interval
3. Play the presentation, and walk away.

My attempts at scripting a "stop/start" were unstable, but this has been running smoothly in our lobby for a week. The only drawback is the second-long "blip" followed by the show restarting at first slide, but it's a minimal distraction in this particular environment.

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