Recommendations for presentation software with realtime scrolling text - reporting

What's the best software / tool stack to display realtime scrolling names and a chart that shows a graph of donations? This is for a fundraising event and would be shown on the big screen. Donations will be received real-time and will be entered into a database. We want to have a live presentation that scrolls through the donors names as they are entered in the DB and have a graph that updates to show the total donations. Ideally we would like to be able to run this through a laptop and not be dependent on a cloud service as internet connectivity may not be solid at the event site.

If you're looking to do it yourself, and don't mind paying for the license, DevExpress seems to have the ability to do real time charts, if you don't want to pay for a license, then there is plenty of libraries that can do realtime charting in any imaginable plataform.

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How to effectively document analytical events?

can you tell me how to effectively document analytical events (clicks on buttons, etc. for websites) for further easy updating and easy work of different teams on one product with the ability to change events and so on (because the design of the website changes often).
I currently use excel with event, description, additional parameters, and a screenshot of the place with the button.
I wonder how other people do it, maybe there are already good tools for such tasks. Share your ideas if you don't mind, I would be grateful.

Changing shared calendar row-height in Schedule View

In my company we share calendars. I have somewhat 60 calendars that I regularly check (got that number up from the standard 30 with a registry edit) but the calendar view in outlook is so unprofessional looking and unmanageable compared to for example a Gantt chart. Is there any trick I can do to reduce the height of each shared calendar so that I can quickly see who's busy? Currently I can only see about 20 and scrolling is slow and laggy due to the amount of calendars.
My goal is to have a compact list with appointment headers that can be looked over just with a glance to see who is busy.
I tried searching the web for a setting or system-tweak that would enable me to achieve this goal, but it would seem it is a niche problem...

Is there a way to constantly stream Google Data Studios onto a Chromecast. Looking to create a data monitor for the office

Is there a way to stream it so it constantly plays in the background? I currently have screenshots used in Ambient mode, but would love to have reports that update themselves and on the chrome cast.
yes - https://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/3228332?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en
not sure if it's totally what you're looking for but you can add a community visualization that cycles through all your data on a loop. In the top bar click the community visualizations icon, then explore more, and select AutoPlay.
Here are the instructions to set-up along with a demo - https://datastudio.google.com/u/0/reporting/859cc3f8-8968-43d0-9e2e-f47300b66a31/page/GUgQB

JavaScript interaction with PowerPoint documents

I have a task pane add-in for PowerPoint in mind that can help users with tasks on the active presentation. With Microsoft Office becoming more and more popular on platforms besides Windows using the JavaScript API would make a great portable implementation. There are a number of COM add-ins doing things like these via the PowerPoint object model:
Get the color of a selected shape and apply to another
Change position of shapes to align
them
Copy one or more shapes from a slide in a presentation to
another
Upload a selected image to a web service
Insert a slide
downloaded from a web service
After going through the JavaScript API documentation it seems like these things are impossible at the moment. getFileAsync sounds remotely promising but does not help in the end. getSelectedDataAsync only returns text or titles and IDs for slides. So this isn't a solution either.
Is it correct that for the tasks above I am currently out of luck with the available JavaScript API for PowerPoint? I.e. I will need to wait for a more comprehensive API to become available (like the APIs for Word and Excel)? Anyone knows if Microsoft has something in the works here?
Right now the Office extensibility team has been investing heavily in Excel and Word JavaScript APIs, the PPT API will also be available in the near future, but I cannot disclose any specific date. Stay tuned!!!

Hide or not to hide the system tray in a Windows Phone 7 application?

I am debating whether to hide or not to hide the system tray in a Windows Phone 7 application. I've not found any general suggestions on this issue -the official Windows Phone design guidelines don't address this issue at all - except for Jeff Wilcox's blog post who suggested that he personally likes to see the system tray in applications. I'd like some general advice on this issue from other Windows Phone developers.
Some reasons for showing the system tray are
Doesn't take up that much space
Users may want to see it at times
Reasons for hiding it are
You can't control its background: unless you're using PhoneBackgroundBrush as the background the top row will stand out
Lots of widely used / official apps already hide it: all games as well as the official Facebook and Twitter app.
I'd appreciate all advice on this.
Transparency and colors are now possible with Mango by setting its BackgroundColor and Opacity :
shell:SystemTray.IsVisible="True"
shell:SystemTray.BackgroundColor="Transparent"
shell:SystemTray.Opacity="0"
I would say by default show it unless it really gets in the way in a way you can't workaround, especially if its an app and not a game.
I would say it depends on the application/game you are writing
If the app needs a network connection or if you will be in the application for a long period of time show it so the user can keep an eye on network and battery.
If you need the extra screen space (for a game?), and you rarely need network hide it.
Or... I guess you leave it up-to the user and give them a setting to programatically hide/show it.
I think its best to use the tray in applications that are tools or utilities. Typically these users would prefer more info than less when they're using applications on the phone (battery, network, time).
Also adding the tray in there tends to make the application look more native on the phone (according to me and others I've asked), which is a big plus because the user associates your app as if it was built with the phone OS.
But if the application is a game, media, etc. type of application I recommend you take it off, especially on panorama because it takes away from the intended design. Also these types of applications focus on the content and seeing multiple little icons at the top can take away from the experience.
Really to me the space it occupies isn't really THAT much, so that shouldn't be too much of an issue. But rather the purpose of the app as stated above.
I do like the suggestions that have been given as far as giving the user the choice. Check out this code:
bool ShowTray;
//ASK USER WHAT THEY WANT
//ShowTray = true or false;
SystemTray.IsVisible = ShowTray;
I've been reluctantly hiding, at least on any view where I have a background image; otherwise it looks too strange to me. I've been considering a setting in my app that would allow the user to choose, and persisting that to isolated storage.
Also considering maybe having the top of the screen in phone background brush color and have it fade / blend into another color or background image. Not sure how well that would turn out but as long as it is not a cheesy looking gradient effect, perhaps.
I'm hoping eventually MS will soon add support for transparency in the system tray or otherwise help address this issue. As a user I wish that I could force the system tray to always be visible across all apps, but as a developer I realize that the visual effect often doesn't look good.
Perhaps if the community came up with a new UX metaphor where maybe double-tapping in the system tray area would toggle whether it is visible. A single tap could perhaps start to animate / pop / hint at the system tray...

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