Auto-updating USB Key Marketing Materials

Question

Marketing development isn't my strong suit by any stretch of the imagination, so when I was asked about designing a marketing USB key that could update itself I ended up doing quite a bit of searching around on Google. Building some HTML that hosts some (say, not married to the idea) Flash and presents the information on the USB key is easy. Building a link out to a website for those materials is also easy. The request I received was more unusual that that, however.

The company in question has a large number of marketing documents which change fairly frequently and are modestly large due to graphical content. The request I received was to create a USB thumb-drive that could present these materials in an interesting manner and also update those documents from the web if necessary. Once updated the content would then be accessed locally in the future. In other words, the USB thumb-drive would act as a cache for the documents, minimizing access to the website to an update check for new versions and a download of those documents if necessary (necessary meaning, say, that the document is actually requested or a full update is requested of all documents).

My first thought was a simple Flash presentation hosted in HTML on the USB key, but I note that version 8 restricts the ability to both access the web and the local filesystem: http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/8/main/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=LiveDocs_Parts&file=00001604.html

The reason I though of Flash was the ease of getting the marketing materials developed in this form (most web houses can hammer out a user interface that looks professional fairly quickly) and the cross platform compatibility with both Windows and Macintosh. However, it appears that this new limitation might prevent the content from being updated.

What I'm requesting of the StackOverflow community is any suggestions for alternative ideas or possibly some information I'm missing about building an update local Flash presentation on a USB key. I am open to dropping Flash if there is a better solution that would be cross platform and able to update itself in the way describe or something similar.

Summary: The presentation needs to be Mac and PC compatible, runnable directly from USB thumb drives and able to update itself. Ideas?

Answer 1

If you're bent on using Flash, you could give Adobe AIR a try. It's built off Flex which is built off Flash and gives a lot more access to the machine.

Answer 2

Lucky man, my company has developed this website which does offer the WebService you need!

It allows you to keep all kind of document (pdf/openoffice/msoffice), mobile/mail contacts, website links, and so on, UP TO DATE forever!

The idea is pretty simple: the service does couple an unambiguous key with your stuff, then you can retrieve it through our clients and you can keep your WhereIsNow documents up-to-date.

We made available lots of clients/plugins for our WebService. You can download plugins for Firefox, OpenOffice, MS Office, contextual menu for Windows/Linux platform, and a mobile phones client too!

All our products (the website and WebService included) are under heavy development, so you should hold in check it, in few days you will find a new interface with more informations and lots of demonstrative videos...

Note that all our products are FREE OF CHARGE and open-source, however there is only a limit about the number of WhereIsNow documents you can register (you can register up to 50 "documents" and you can update each one infinite times you want, if you need to register more than 50 documents, the company provides you customized flat or per-document offer).

The website has a control panel which allows to clearly manage your stuff.