Digi-Card Help File.

What is Digi-Card?

Digi-Card is a proprietary software program that allows you to create an Interactive interface for distribution on a CD-Rom Business Card.

This electronic business card replaces the paper business card in both look and function. It can also play sound, video, power point presentations and link up to web Pages on the Internet, when inserted in a computers CD-Rom drive.

Actual Size (Holds up to 50MB of data)

What are Some of its applications to the real world?

The Electronic business Card not only offers many new ways of presenting your business, but it can also act as a direct marketing and presentation tool for your business. For example: Lets say you have a new product or service that you are selling and you need to acquire investment capital to produce this product in mass. An Electronic business card allows you to visually demonstrate your products or services utilizing digital video or interactive media.

Previously VHS videotape was used as the medium to distribute this type of information. An Electronic business card however has a number of advantages over VHS tape and cost about the same, if not cheaper to produce. VHS tape cannot interact with the Internet while an electronic business card can.

Because of its size it can be sent through the mail using a standard mailing envelope reducing your bulk mail cost.

Non-profit and educational organizations could also use the Electronic business card in this manner to provide video documentation on how successful their programs or community projects are, and then solicit for funds or donations for these programs via the Internet.

Another example of how an electronic business card could be used is as an electronic catalog. Lets suppose you have an existing Web site that acts as an on-line catalog for you products or services. You could literally take the entire web site and put it on the card. Your business card now becomes a portable store and a mirror to your On-line catalog that can be used in direct mailings or handouts to potential clients and customers.

Finally the card can be created as a sellable product itself especially if your business deals in the selling of knowledge and information. For example imagine a mini disc product card that could teach a person how to set up a restaurant business. Digital video could be used to visually show a person how to operate the necessary equipment and manage everyday business operations. Furthermore partnerships could be made with food and equipment vendors by directly linking your customers to their e-commerce Web site for a percentage of sales made through your product.

How do you use Digi-Card to Create a CD-Rom Business Card Interface?

Designing an electronic business card interface using Digi-Card is as easy as

filling out an information form and loading files using a file requestor.

This makes it possible for people with very limited computer skills to use the

software.

To start using Digi-Card, just insert the Digi-Card Authoring Disk into your computers CD-Rom drive. The program will automatically start up and

you will be presented with a blank business card template.

Blank business card template

In the middle of this template you will see a text link that says

“Edit Business Card Settings” Click on this text link to open the Authoring Window. (See picture bellow)

Authoring Window

Once the authoring window, opens up you can begin to enter

your information into the appropriate text fields, Start by typing

in your name, business title, company slogan, street address, email,

phone number and web page address.

You may have noticed that any changes that you made in the authoring window were automatically reflected on the Business Card Template.

This feature allows you to preview every aspect of the business card

Live while you are are building it. This is true for everything you do in the authoring window, including loading multimedia, which is discussed in detail in the next section.

How do I add Multimedia to the Template?

As was said before, pictures, audio, video and PowerPoint presentations can be added to the template simply by selecting the multimedia file name using the requestor. Multimedia files can be previewed either by clicking the Play buttons to the right if each selection or by clicking the appropriate text link on the template.

For Example: if you have a picture Of your Company logo that you want to add to the template, click on the Button labeled “Logo” and load the image file using the file requestor. Your logo will automatically appear on the top left hand side of the template.

Load pictures, audio and video by clicking on the

appropriate buttons and then using the file requestor.

Creating additional text links in the template

Multimedia Files can also be linked to other text in the template by using the

Link To button. Just select the text you would like to link to in the pull down menu as shown in the picture above.

Next click on the “link to” button and select the multimedia file you want play in the file requestor. You can then preview the by switching to the business card template and clicking on the text link that you just created.

This feature is useful for creating custom text links in the template.

For example: You may not want your address to appear in the business

Card template. You could type “Play Video 1” in the ‘address field’, “Play Video 2” in the ‘City / State’ field and “Play Video 3” in the ‘zip code’ field

and then assigned a separate video to each of these text links.

Using Digi-Card to Record Your own Audio or Narration.

Digi-Card also has a feature that allows you to record your own audio narration. To do this you must have a microphone plugged into your

Computers sound card and Microphone selected in the Recording

Control accessed in the options menu windows Volume Control

Panel as shown in the picture.

To begin recording, simply click the record button in the Authoring Window

And a file requestor will appear. Type in a filename or select a wav sound file to overwrite, then click the “OK” button to begin recording. You are now recording; this is indicated by the red blinking text in the authoring window, which says Recording. To stop your recording session, press the Stop button. You can now preview your recording by clicking on the “Name” text link in the business Card Template.

Changing the look of the Business Card Template.

Digi-Card also has features that allow you to change the background and

font color of the business card template. To do this just use the pull down menus as illustrated in the pictures bellow.

Selecting a “Custom” Stock will open a file requestor that will allow

you to use any picture file for the Business Card Templates Background.

(See picture bellow)

Building a Distribution folder.

When you have completed creating your Business Card Interface, you now

Need to build a distribution folder this folder will have all the necessary files

For a standalone distribution of your CD-Rom business Card.

To create the distribution folder click on the “Save” button in the authoring window. After the destination requestor appears (shown in the picture bellow) select the location on your Hard drive where you want destination folder to be built. Check the project name and type in a one word, 8-character name for your project. Next, click the button labeled “Create a Distribution”.

The complete distribution will be created in the named folder.

Distribution Requestor

To burn your Master CD just burn the entire contents of this folder into the

Root directory of a data CD using any of the standard CD-Rom burning softwares such as Easy CD Creator or Nero.