Any Software Suitable for an Information Screen?

[jim]

I'm intending to get an info screen up at work - we've had one before, which just plays a looping PowerPoint presentation, but I'd like to do something more interesting if at all possible.

Ideally, I'd like something that can incorporate pictures (appearing in a slideshow), videos, a clock, maybe even weather/RSS feeds or something along those lines, perhaps with the screen split into the various sections to get various bits of content on the same page.

I have absolutely no idea where to start looking, or even what to search for - but I know I've seen these types of things in the past, just no idea what they were built on. Either Linux or Windows will be fine, and I'm intending to run it on a little Atom Ion Acer Revo unit, 1080p hopefully.

Any thoughts?

[mycarsavw]

Using something like Rainmeter you can display various stats like weather, RSS feeds for news etc.

I use a mixture of skins to display a large clock on my second screen along with weather, RSS, email and system stats.

Skins are here - customize.org/rainmeter - possibilities are endless.

There are elements that add video and slideshows too, so all you'd need to have is the Revo running something basic (it doesn't work on Linux) and Rainmeter

[jim]

Cheers for that link, just been having a look over it today.

Only thing I can't find any info about is video - according to a couple of posts on the forums it isn't possible, but maybe that's not quite right... do you know how you would go about it?

[mycarsavw]

http://www.rainmeter.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=550

Not quite what you're asking I know, but it has the ability to open other apps from within Rainmeter.

Maybe Rainmeter (+skin) in quarters 1 > 3 and then VLC (or similar) in quarter 4?

Edit: http://www.rainmeter.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=813

Seems you're right (and so am I..ish).

[jim]

Yeah I just thought about that - if I could get a load of videos in a VLC playlist, put VLC onto loop with all GUI functions disabled, and then snap it to the corner of the screen it would probably work.

This machine won't have anybody clicking it, it'll just be sitting on a VESA mount (hopefully). So provided I can sufficiently automate the process it should work well.

I'll be back

[kalniel]

As a slightly more oddball suggestion - how about something like igoogle or whatever it's called - the personalised home page thingy.

[Champman99]

Along the lines of the suggestion above, would a custom web page using Joomla or some sort of content management system work? I know there are all sort of add ins for joomla that could do a gallery, RSS feeds all arranged on a homepage.

Just have it in a full screen browser and you might have a nice solution. Probably not quite what you are after but I reckon it could work.