CDRoms

Over the last ten years, CDROMs have gone from exotic to mainstream to routine.  When I produced my first CDROM, it was expensive and unusual.  Today, low-end consumer PCs contain CD burners and software and many companies manufacture CDs in high volume at low cost.

Still, the critical factor is content -- everything else is just round shiny disk!

I've produced CD's for presentations, demo software, and Linux tools and applications.  Some of the highlights are described below.

High Performance Technical Computing Presentation Tools

Frustrated with continually modifying presentations each time they were given, I set a goal of creating a single presentation that could be given any time, any place, with no changes.

The result pushes the limits of PowerPoint.  It is a massively hyperlinked composite presentation, much like a Web site -- but entirely developed in PowerPoint.  Like a Web site, it is navigated by clicking links (usually images).  This gives the flexibility to move between subjects, drill down to however much (or little!) detail is needed, and to "bounce around" following customer questions and interest.

Not stopping there, I put the presentation on a self-running, self contained CD.  Walk up to any PC running Windows, pop in the CD, and start talking and clicking!  All necessary software is contained on the autorun-enabled CD; nothing has to be installed on the host PC.

I don't know why this style of presentation isn't more popular.  It requires a slightly different mind set and somewhat greater development effort than a simple linear presentation, but I have found it to be an exceptionally effective presentation tool -- if, of course, you know your material.

Internally, this CD came to be known as the MOAP -- the "Mother Of All Presentations!"  I developed much of the presentation content, and the remainder was taken from other presentations and re-targeted for the new hyper-linked model.

This presentation CD was extremely popular -- the primary field request was "update it more frequently and send me more copies!"

 

Linux Alpha Power Tools

This CD was used in conjunction with Linux distributions (primarily Red Hat and SuSE) to deliver Compaq specific tools and applications.  It included compilers, math libraries and development tools.

 

 

 

PowerStorm Graphics Demonstrations

Targeting Alpha workstations running Windows NT with PowerStorm graphics cards, this CD contained a suite of applications and demonstrations.  The applications were chosen to showcase the computational and graphics performance of the AlphaStation/PowerStorm combination.

The application I found most interesting was the flight simulator developed using the GVS visualization toolkit from Gemini Technology.  A summer intern under my direction did the coding to extend and enhance the very crude flight simulator and scene database and to port it to the Alpha platform.