A couple of years ago I bought a copy of Traktor DJ and a little later on still I got a Hercules Console for controlling Traktor. It’s fair to say that I’ve touched neither for any length of time because of other commitments. The hercules has a soundcard built in, but I also have a MidiMan Quattro USB sound card, too.

Now I want to get setup with something that really does the job and have seen systems like Final Scratch, heard of Serato Scratch but am not really sure what is the best way to go. So, the first thing to know is the stuff I already have (see above); as far as computer, it’s Mac all the way. I have an old Powerbook that is collecting dust which I could dedicate for this or use a newer MacBook or MacBook Pro.

What I want is to do the following:

• Have vinyl that can trigger/manipulate MP3s (or rather AAC encoded files in iTunes)
• Use Traktor DJ, as it’s already paid for and is really good!
• Be able to monitor the sound from the left and right Technics 1210s *and* also monitor the sound of the virtual decks – in Traktor DJ or other – from one point. In other words, a mixer that can handle separate audio feeds from the laptop/soundcard, as if it were a physical deck.
• If the Hercules DJ Console can be put to use, then that’s all good …

I guess I want to get Final Scratch or Serato Scratch, but which one will play nicely with the setup above?

Any recommendations for a small-ish mixer that has enough channels for the above but is still a DJ mixer rather than a small mixing desk, ie it has cross faders and can take you giving it a bit of agro!)

With all of the above going on – real audio from vinyl, audio from virtual records, all going through one hardware mixer and back out – I’d also like to be able to record the output from that somehow, but would this require a second laptop/desktop machine, or could I have one machine handling the audio out from the DJ stuff and also be able to record an audio input?

So there’s quite a lot here, but I really want to get this sorted and get it completely right this time.

So I then considered the possibility of offering some money to a savvy Mac developer to go ahead and built what I was after, for a fixed price, and I take the gamble on making enough sales and not getting screwed in the process. But I realised soon after that bright idea that software that you sell requires ongoing support, support that I would never realistically be able to provide myself and would be over a barrel for a retainer to the developer. So I’ve decided to just put my big idea down in writing and hope that someone sees value in this and makes it happen. So, here it is:

The Problem

I was presenting the other day and was using Keynote with presenter display on my laptop and the big screen showing the proper slides. I was using my Sony Ericsson phone with a Bluetooth connection to advance the slides. This all seems, on the face of it, to be a good approach. But there were problems:

• When I enable the Bluetooth remote on the Sony Ericsson, it disables/hijacks the mouse trackpad on my MacBook Pro, so I was having to turn it off and back on again when I needed to take control of the laptop
• The setup of the room was such that I could not see the presenter display showing on my laptop screen unless I stayed anchored behind the lectern (something I hate to do), and hence I didn’t have the prompts I wanted/was hoping for
• At certain points during the presentation I needed to take control of multimedia elements on slides (the scrub bar – progress of a movie), but in presenter display mode, these elements are not accessible, so I was having to crane my neck to see what was happening on the main screen to locate the mouse cursor (once I had switched off the Bluetooth, of course) – basically, I could not see the mouse movements in front of me because of the ‘helpful’ presenter display. Bah!

I worked out that there could be a way to solve all these problems with a really slick application for the iPhone. I am going to label it the Keynote Buddy. Here’s how I see it working.

The Solution

• The iPhone has Keynote Buddy installed on it and becomes an extension of Keynote on the Mac.
• The iPhone is used to control the slide advance (and back of course) using touch screen controls.
• The display on the main (projected) screen would be the full screen affair, while the iPhone would give the presenter’s display, similar to the existing Keynote presenter display but because it’s an iPhone it probably should be sexed up with a Coverflow-esque appearance ;-)
• Controls on the Keynote Buddy would allow for changes between presenter display and the audience’s view on the fly so at any time the presenter can see exactly what the audience sees without having to turn around and turn his/her back on the audience
• When embedded multimedia, e.g. a movie, appears on a slide, the presenter should get a nice fat thumb-friendly overlay on the iPhone screen so that he/she can pause and restart the movie, while the audience sees just that the movie has paused, with no distracting overlay
• The Keynote Buddy software will, by default, automatically disable the phone from ringing/vibrating during presentation mode – no embarrassing moments
• Finally, and this is a nice to have, for moments when the presenter needs to exit the slides for a live demo, the iPhone should allow the presenter access to the host Mac’s desktop so that with a few double-clicks, he/she can navigate around to a demo file.

Something like this, in fact:

So that’s what I want. What about you? Are you a seasoned presenter with Keynote? Got an iPhone? Long for something that ties the two together in the way I’ve described? Please, tell someone who can make it happen. And if they do make it hapen, and if they want to thank me for suggesting the idea, I’d be happy to take a shiny new iPhone as a form of payment. As long as it’s got a copy of Keynote Buddy installed. Because I’ve got this need, you see, and it’s for a modern-day presentation prompt card thing …

I can’t add pages to del.icio.us at my place work because the login page is blocked – actually anything beginning https is, unless you can make a business case for it to be unlocked (and del.icio.us doesn’t really classify as a ‘business critical’ tool). So I’ve gotten into the habit of routinely emailing interesting URLs to my personal email address and then adding the pages to del.icio.us at home in the evening in a batch. Frankly, it’s a pain.

I was thinking of using del.icio.us on accessify for adding quick links to useful stuff to avoid having to do a full post about it (which always seems like overkill) and thought that with all the WordPress plugins that there might be one that would allow me to add directly from within WordPress – it’s my server, and hence the wp-admin side of things, is not blocked for me at work. Alas, despite the range of plugins, there does not seem to be one that allows this kind of functionality.

So can anyone suggest another way around this annoying little problem?