by John Kirkwood
Giving live demonstrations of the Internet to large groups of people, at conferences and similar events, is the electronic equivalent of a high-wire act! There are so many ways that things can fail – such as not making a connection, slow response times or the dreaded “general protection error” – that it is difficult to concentrate on what you are supposed to be saying.
One solution is to save pages from the World Wide Web locally, perhaps on a laptop computer, and then link them to form an off-line display. This, however, can involve a lot of work because the hypertext links have to be edited and, where sites contain numerous graphics, these each have to be captured separately and re-linked.
With care, this approach can produce a very effective demonstration. However, because the Internet changes so rapidly, these demonstrations soon go out of date. Also, sites are now becoming so complex that it is difficult to recreate them off-line.
A possible solution is to use Lotus ScreenCam 2.1, a product with enormous potential for software demonstration and teaching purposes. Lotus states that ScreenCam “lets you record movies of screen activity”. This means that, after you set it running, it records all the activities associated with using a particular package, including all mouse-pointer movements and other screen events. It is also possible to create voice-over narration or text captions.
Lotus adds that “you can play back a screen movie, save it in a file, or link or embed it in another application”. These may then be distributed to others in a stand-alone format that recipients can play, even without ScreenCam installed. I have recently used this approach to record my use of EGi for a forthcoming conference. This minimises the risks associated with a live demonstration. Of course, the projector or the laptop may fail, so I will also prepare overhead slides and carry a piece of chalk in my back pocket!
Lotus ScreenCam may be purchased as a single package or as part of the Lotus SmartSuite 97 integrated package. This includes Organizer (personal information manager), 1-2-3 (spreadsheet), Freelance (presentations), Approach (database) and WordPro (word processing).
For more information see the Lotus Web site (http://www.Lotus.com).
John Kirkwood is senior lecturer in Land Administration at Sheffield Hallam University. His home page address is http://www.demon.co.uk/property
