Just announced today, MacHeadroom looks as though it might be a bit of fun to play with. You can create interactive QuickTime movies of animated figures that speak whatever text you type in. You can add menus around it to control what it says or link to other web pages.
Given that last capability, it seems to me that a given choice can lead to another segment of animated conversation so that you could put together your own My Dinner with Andre. Or a guessing game. Or a FAQ page. It’s $150 and that’s the only thing stopping me.
Attended a demo of Cast:Stream today. I was home and Marcie, Brock, Philip, Gregg, James and others were in various places on campus. I’m very impressed. The interface pulls together a live streaming video (and good audio) of the presenter on the right side, slides and other rich media like Flash on the left, and a chat window down below.
Normally I’d feel that the talking head is unimportant relative to the slides and interaction, but I’m ready to moderate that opinion. Having the presenter there with such, well, presence made a big difference. It was a very different experience than walking through a set of web pages.
The presenter, I learned later, was just using a PowerBook like the one I use all day and a Canon Elura camcorder like the one I already own. If SDSU buys the server (for $6K) then I could originate a presentation from right here at home. This could be very cool.