First, it really depends on the platform - PowerPoint presentations
with embedded media aren't inherently cross-platform. It's common, for
instance, to see PowerPoints developed on a Mac have lots of empty
white boxes on Windows; the opposite can be true, too. So if you're
authoring for PowerPoint, always author on the platform you intend for
playback *or* stick to only cross-platform features.
It also depends on the version, and (I believe) on the Windows build
you're running on - for instance, it used to be possible to use the
Internet Explorer browser ActiveX control in PowerPoint on Windows, so
you could embed a Web page - which allowed you ugly (but useful) hacks
like embedding a Quicktime or Flash object in a Web page, and then
embedding that page in PowerPoint - this no longer works, at least not
on my work machine (XP SP3, Office 2007, IE8).
Embedding Quicktime content directly in PowerPoint on Windows never
worked (though there were a few legacy Quicktime video formats which
worked, but only by accident as Windows Media Player was able to
decode them - not the case with QTVR content, or really any modern
video formats).
Embedding Flash in PowerPoint has always been dicey, at best. The best
I can come up with, right now, is a really ugly hack - embed your SWF
in a PDF, and then embed the PDF in a PPT. Should work, but probably
not well. Certainly a lot of trouble - if I went this, route, I'd just
build my presentation in PDF to begin with (recent Adobe Readers and
Acrobat have embedded SWF support, though I've never tried this with
SWF panos it should work).
Also, even if you could get this to work, much as with Keynote and
QTVR there's an interaction problem kind of inherent to the media -
PowerPoint tends to want to capture your clicks, so it doesn't lend
itself well to supporting embedded media that also wants to capture
clicks (such as for panning a pano).
Sorry couldn't be more help - I'm not (entirely) a PowerPoint hater, I
live with it, but it's just not geared for this. Ugly hacks may still
allow it, but they are always that - they tend to be very fragile,
especially across versions and platforms. A Web-based presentation may
prove far easier.
You can *always* link out to a Web page from a PowerPoint slide if you
just have a few instances where you need Flash/Quicktime and are happy
with PowerPoint for the rest - this is easy enough, and other than the
slight loss of immersion when you switch between apps works just fine.
-R
