PowerPoint add-on allows online collaboration
InfoWorld | at | by Mike
A developer of peer-to-peer (P-to-P) technology released a new application this week that allows groups of users to view a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation over the Internet in a collaborative setting. Called Presence-AR Adapter for Microsoft PowerPoint, the product is sold as an add-on for Microsoft's presentation software and allows multiple users to simultaneously view a PowerPoint presentation over the Web. The presentation can be stored on several PCs across a network with the goal of providing faster access to the files being viewed, said Derek Ruths, chief technology officer of Advanced Reality, based in Houston, Texas.
Using a standard compression technology, images contained in a PowerPoint presentation would load almost instantly on a users machine, regardless of the size of the image file, according to Ruths, regardless of the speed at which a participant is connected to the Internet. One caveat is that images will first appear fuzzy for users with slow connection speeds, and then sharpen as the download process completes.