PowerPoint is fine for your business presentation, but getting your message across with a few pictures and text alone may not fit when you’re trying to give a product demo on a website or present your findings via email. That’s where a new project from Satoshi Nakajima comes in.
With Swipe, announced today, users can build media-rich documents with animations, video, vector graphics and audio via any touch-enabled device. The open-source platform will make its official debut next month at the Silicon Valley Comic-Con.
Nakajima, who was the lead architect of Windows 95 and 98, is the founder and interim CEO at UIEvolution. He built Swipe as an alternative to branded design apps and complex programming often required to create seemingly simple interactive documents. The open-source platform also lets users build its Swipe Engine document viewer into other projects.
UIEvolution is the first to adopt Swipe. The company’s cloud-based ExperienceManager will allow its clients to create content using Swipe and push that content to interactive screens. With UIEvolution’s software running on more than 18,000 screens in hotel rooms and cruise ships, this will allow its clients to quickly create new experiences made with touch in mind.
The potential applications are more widespread than just the hospitality industry. Since Swipe uses tablets and smartphones for creation, adding in audio, video and simple touch-driven animation is easy and highly encouraged. Swipe could be used to create product demos with built-in videos and animations showing how to operate complex appliances or to replace PowerPoints with voice overs as users create more asynchronous presentations at timezone-spanning companies.
Swipe has a free demo app for iPhone in the app store now, and users can access the open-source code over on Github now to try the project before it is officially unveiled next month.
