Johan Rosenquist (pictured to the left) is the
founder of w2solutions, a software innovation company. To the PowerPoint
community, he brings experience from the Telecom world via the
HeadsetPresenter application (and there is more to come). Johan
has a MSc in Computer Science from Lund Institute of Technolgy
in Sweden.
Geetesh:
Tell us more about yourself and Headset Presenter.
Johan:
The HeadsetPresenter is a PowerPoint plug-in that turns any
Bluetooth Headset into a very small PowerPoint remote control.
In fact it is probably the smallest remote available on the
market and it is for sure the cheapest. The nice thing with
the HeadsetPresenter is that is allows you to use hardware
that you already own in a new and unexpected way. It also
eliminates the need to carry extra devices when traveling
or giving lectures, the headset behind your ear is magically
converted into a remote with a few quick clicks.
Geetesh:
How did Headset Presenter evolve.
Johan:
I got the idea behind the HeadsetPresenter many years ago and
since I did not have access to any Bluetooth SDK I basically
wrote my own Bluetooth stack from scratch just to make a
proof of concept. Then Microsoft announced support for Bluetooth
in Windows XP SP2 and I started to look into what they offered.
As you might know there is no Headset profile support in
the Microsoft Bluetooth drivers but I found ways around this
and just before Christmas 2004 the first live version of
HeadsetPresenter was released, supporting only Microsoft
Bluetooth drivers. The other key player however is Widcomm
but there are others as well and I wanted to develop a solution
that worked for everyone. I did not however want to buy an
expensive SDK and since the HeadsetPresenter actually bends
the Bluetooth profiles doing something that was not intended
an SDK would probably not work anyway. During spring 2005
I found a complex but working way to achieve what I wanted,
a generic way to implement the functionality of the HeadsetPresenter
without tying it to a specific Bluetooth stack vendor and/or
SDK.
In march 2005 v1.5 of the HeadsetPresenter was ready and
a few months later the two versions called Microsoft and
Generic version was available in a single Setup.exe so that
the customer does not need to care or know what Bluetooth
stack that is used on the PC, the installation program will
find out and install the correction files automatically.
During spring 2006 v2.0 was released introducing Speech Control
allowing the user to give voice commands through the headset
as a complement to clicking the headset buttons.
Geetesh:
Tell us about some customer responses, and success stories.
Johan:
In general customer response has been great. Some people can
hardly believe that it actually works and that they got this
small remote at the cost of a good lunch. I also try to keep
a close dialog with the real early adopters and there is
a small group of real enthusiasts that try out new features,
make suggestions and bear with in testing weird hardware
combinations that I do not have access to myself.
Geetesh:
How is your support infrastructure oriented.
Johan:
There is a small FAQ available on the webpage and there is
a “HeadsetPresenter for beginners” guide supplied
with the installation package. If there still are issues
all questions are answered via mail normally the same day
and if needed support can also be given over the phone or
Skype.
Geetesh:
Can you share some trivia -- or some tip with Indezine readers.
Johan:
I can only recommend you to stop controlling your presentation
with the keyboard. I have attended many courses help by all
kinds of companies and every single one so far controls the
presentation with the keyboard. The worst one is when the
lecturer actually has to ask a person in the audience to
move for him since the laptop must be connected to a short
VGA cable in the other end of the room. Most likely you already
have Bluetooth in your laptop and perhaps you already own
a Bluetooth headset. In that case there is simply no reason
no to invest a few bucks in the HeadsetPresenter to improve
your presentations. If you do not own a headset or a Bluetooth
adaptor you can still buy them and a HeadsetPresenter license
for a fraction of the cost of other PowerPoint remotes and
then you get a nice headset and Bluetooth functionality for
your computer at the same time.
