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Modern-Day Pointcast Replacement?

Posted by Cliff on from the information-dissemination dept.

toastyman asks: "Is anyone out there using anything similar to what Pointcast used to be? For those who don't remember, Pointcast was a screensaver/taskbar program from the late 90's that constantly displayed news, weather, stock quotes, and more. Pointcast is gone now, but one of my clients wants something similar to install on a few PCs/monitors in a waiting room and have them display the local weather, headlines, sports scores, whatever. Unless there's a pointcast-like screensaver out there that I'm missing, the closest thing I can think of would be some kind of RSS reader meant for full screen unattended operation. It has to be easily readable from a distance, automatically rotating what is displayed on the screen (think automated Powerpoint presentation) and automatically updating the content. Has anyone come across something that would work well for this? If not, does the idea of an 'informative' screensaver sound appealing?"

17 of 35 comments (clear)

  1. Well you could always google by hey! · · Score: 2, Insightful

    RSS Screensaver

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    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    1. Re:Well you could always google by toastyman · · Score: 4, Informative

      I'm kinda surprised to see this story. I submitted this article about 4 months ago, and just assumed it got rejected....

      Anyway...

      First page of google, 7 of those are programming examples or toolkits, not actual applications. The others are screensaves that simply scroll RSS text across like a banner. Not what I'm looking for.

      Anyone who remembers pointcast knows that these are pretty different. Pointcast had weather maps, images, and looked more like a professionally made TV production instead of a window of scrolling text on the page.

      That's what I'm after. I've seen a few businesses that have what look like commercially installed versions of these, but before I ended up writing it myself I wanted to see if there was anything similar already done.

      I did google for this pretty extensively. :)

  2. Lets see by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny
    If not, does the idea of an 'informative' screensaver sound appealing?

    No.

  3. Easier Solution by whoda · · Score: 2, Informative

    Buy a $50 television and tune it to CNN/MSNBC/etc

    1. Re:Easier Solution by exhilaration · · Score: 2, Funny

      And, for the love of God, MUTE IT!

  4. Easy, kludgey solution by ShmuelP · · Score: 4, Informative

    1) Find a web page or set of web pages that contain the desired information.
    2) Set up a quick CGI to cycle through the pages and/or auto-refresh, using a hidden frame if needed.
    3) Set the font on the browser to a large size for readability.
    4) Set the browser to full screen.
    5) Finally, lock the machine in a box.

    That's it.

    --
    Solution to blink tags: wrap them in another blink tag, with a javascript delay loop, so they cancel each other out
  5. Dead Trees by rf600r · · Score: 5, Funny

    All the waiting rooms I'm ever in have these things I understand to be called magazines. They're neat. Full of data; fast direct-access and they never seem to crash. Wave of the future, I tell ya.

    1. Re:Dead Trees by Exocet · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Full of data that was out of date by the time the magazine was originally delivered, not to even speak of when you're reading it. That's assuming you want to read People or Time or any of that crap.

      Waiting - and waiting areas - blow. Bring some headphones, a book, PDA or laptop. Take some control over how your time is going to be pissed away.

      --
      Exocet Industries - Taking over the world, one computer at a
    2. Re:Dead Trees by rueger · · Score: 3, Funny

      All the waiting rooms I'm ever in have these things I understand to be called magazines.

      Just last week I was at the doctor, reading the magazines in her waiting room, and I read about the perfect answer to toastyman's problem. It's a brand new software called "Pointcast", and they say that it's going to be the next big thing.

      Oh - Ok... nevermind....

      --
      Three Squirrels
  6. Were you thinking just Windows? by Proud+like+a+god · · Score: 3, Informative

    For linux and whatever else it's ported to there's Karamba, which has components and forks created for RSS, weather feeds, stocks etc. There's a GNOME rival app too iirc.

  7. konfabulator by comwiz56 · · Score: 2, Informative

    check out konfabulator.

  8. I used to publish content for PC... by BrianRaker · · Score: 2, Informative

    I just need to remember where I put the authoring tools, the server application and the desk-side apps. If you set the client to look at your server and not the now defunct PointCast servers, you might be able to get it to work. (I did this for the business customers of the ISP that I worked for back in Tennessee... the suits really enjoyed it)

    I agree, I *really* miss PointCast. I can't believe that someone didn't buy the tech or IP and implement it somewhere else. Shame.

    You think it could be considered 'abandonware' yet?

    --
    As I walk through the valley of death I fear no one, for I am the meanest sonova bitch in the valley!
  9. Pointcast HTML engine by green+pizza · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The saddest thing I ever saw was a computer lab of newbies surfing the web on semi-modern Macs.... using Pointcast as the browser!! That beast made Netscape 4 look like high class code.

    It's been ages since I've used pointcast, so I don't even remember how one went about enabling it's browser (rather than just have it pass the URL off to Netscape or IE).

  10. Online News Screensaver by phatbuddy · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you have Windows, this one costs almost nothing and does have the nice formatting, selectable background pictures, rss feeds, and weather: Online News Screensaver

  11. ModeElevent by gengee · · Score: 2, Informative

    I googled for 'push screensaver' and found ModeElevent Broadcast Screensaver, which looks promising:

    http://www.modeeleven.com/cgi-bin/doc?sec=Produc ts &subsec=ModeEleven_Products
    And a review: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1401393,00.as p

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    - James
  12. Newsmap by maggard · · Score: 2, Informative
    Newsmap is a Flash-based interface showing Google News in color-coded boxes scaled according to rank. It self updates, broad catagories can be seleted or deselected, supports country-specific news, etc. Use an old Windows box with Flash & MSIE set to run full-screen and you're good to go.

    --
    I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
  13. MythTV/MythWeather by mcknut · · Score: 2, Informative

    While only answering one part of your problem, I've always been impressed with the data retrieved by MythWeather. Perhaps you could put that on one Workspace then use what I'll mention below.

    A few people have mentioned using, say, gDesklets and placing a number around the screen. Could you perhaps put one large one on each of a number of workspaces then work out some simple little program that would tell the window manager to flick workspaces every 5 minutes or something?

    (For the record I don't remember if "Workspace" is the correct word these days. Virtual Desktop would be another word...)