Macro of the day: Next Slide

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Have you ever found yourself giving a presentation about speech recognition and wished you could simply advance from slide to slide using speech recognition? Well ... I have.

I've been using this really cool microphone I got from eMicrophones, called a RevoLabs xTag. It let's me walk around the audience, and still be able to talk to my PC tethered to the video projection system way back at the front of the room. It makes for an impressive Vista speech demo.

That's pretty cool, but then how can I go from slide to slide. Good question. That's where today's macro of the day comes in: "Next Slide".

It let's you say things like "Next Slide", or "Previous Slide", or even more cool than that, "Go to slide [1to99]". That's really impressive, but only if you can remember the slide numbers for all your slides. I try and do that now for a handful of the important slides in my presentations.

Check it out:

<speechMacros>

  <appIsInForeground processName="powerpnt.exe"/>

  <command>
    <listenFor>Next ?Slide</listenFor>
    <sendKeys>{right}</sendKeys>
  </command>

  <command>
    <listenFor>Previous ?Slide</listenFor>
    <sendKeys>{left}</sendKeys>
  </command>

  <command>
    <listenFor>?Go Forward [1to20] ?Slide</listenFor>
    <sendKeys times="{[1to20]}">{right}</sendKeys>
  </command>

  <command>
    <listenFor>?Go Back [1to20] ?Slide</listenFor>
    <sendKeys times="{[1to20]}">{left}</sendKeys>
  </command>

  <command>
    <listenFor>Go To Slide [1to99]</listenFor>
    <sendKeys>{[1to99]}{enter}</sendKeys>
  </command>

  <numbers name="1to20" start="1" stop="20"/>
  <numbers name="1to99" start="1" stop="99"/>

</speechMacros>