Show-Tell & WOW!           FAQ

What is "Show-Tell & WOW!"?

Show-Tell & WOW! is an innovative, slideshow based information kiosk software system produced by Embassy Software.  Show-Tell & WOW! works with touchscreen, trackball, mouse or keypad equipment to intrigue your customers or patrons with easy to access image and sound media.  The primary media format used by Show-Tell & WOW! is JPG and WAV based slideshows.  For in-store counter-top kiosk systems, the standard mouse and monitor will work just fine (with the computer under the counter, safe and sound).  Show-Tell & WOW! is not an internet/web-browser based system and does not require any phone line connection.   

What is the advantage of Show-Tell & WOW! over other kiosk software?

Simplicity.  Once you set up the directory structure (similar to the yellow pages directory structure), you can easily organize thousands of slideshows.  Show-Tell & WOW! would be ideal for a computerized catalog or community information system that contained hundreds or thousands of slideshows.  For example, a famished user would press "R", then Restaurants, then pick from All, Chinese, Mexican, etc. A list would be shown that the user could pick from.  The user can "play" as many items as desired until she decides to look up another subject (the restaurant list retained until another subject is chosen).  In addition to the easy-to-use lookup facility, eight custom buttons can be set up to directly access subjects that the kiosk manager deems to be of significance.   With this balance of static buttons and general purpose lookup facility, there is no need to link complicated menu pages together.

How easy is it to add new content to a Show-Tell & WOW! kiosk system?

Using a digital camera that creates images on a floppy disk, adding new content is a snap. Take a few pictures, insert the disk in the computer, click the Load Files button, choose a category, enter a name for the new slideshow, then click the Load button. If you wish, you can easily add sound files for each image. That’s it!! Very, very quick and simple!! The load screen also has an option for deleting the floppy disk files so as to ready the disk for future use.

What are slideshows?

The term slideshow refers to "content" packages (within Show-Tell & WOW!). Each slideshow can consist of up to 4095 slides, each slide consisting of an image and optional sound file (though typical slideshows consist of only several slides).  Slideshows are played as discreet content packages.  For a real estate information kiosk, a typical slideshow would consist of several images for a particular house, with accompanying sound files to explain each image (picture). Thus, when a particular house "played", the images for that house would show one after another with a sound file playing for each image. The default time for showing each image within a slideshow is the amount of time it takes to play it’s accompanying sound file (a longer image on screen time can be specified if desired).  Within Show-Tell & WOW!, it is quite easy to change the order the images are played, and maintain the slideshow.

I have an office copy of Show-Tell & WOW! and a remote kiosk that uses Show-Tell & WOW! software. How can I export ALL the content of the office copy for purposes of updating my remote kiosk system?

Easy.  From the Show-Tell & WOW! main menu, click the Export button, enter an "Export To Location" (hard drive path), Export date (export will export all slideshows with a last modified date greater than or equal to the export date entered for the export job) and then click the "Export" button.  To create an update package that can be automatically detected by the remote system, use a directory with the name STOWUPD and specify an update package id using the prompts at the bottom of the Export screen.  Each slideshow will be packaged up and placed in the "Export To Location" as a zip file. After the export process is finished, copy the "Export To Location" directory to a zip disk or writable CD-ROM disk. To load the content in the remote (or slave) kiosk system, restart Show-Tell & WOW! (if the update package exists on a floppy or CD in a directory named STWOWUPD).

As they pertain to Show-Tell & WOW! software, what does "slave" and "master" mean?

What is the format of Show-Tell & WOW! data files?

Data tables within Show-Tell & WOW! are all Microsoft Access files. Hence, you can attach to them and create custom reports (in addition to the robust set of reports that comes with Show-Tell & WOW!) or manipulate the data if you need to.

Is it possible to obtain Show-Tell & WOW! source code?

The standard Show-Tell & WOW! CD disk does not come with accessible source code, though special arrangements can be made to furnish access to Show-Tell & WOW! source code.