I work in a large company and our group is going to put an iPad on display - we've solved the kiosk security issue, and the unit will always be connected to power. I'd like to have it automatically page through eg: a pages application (powerpoint) up till the point someone clicks or swipes on something, but then after a few minutes of inactivity resume cyclying through the slide show, or re-play a video etc.

Any ideas would be appreciated, thanks in advance.

The iPad is not a multitasking machine so, I don't think it can be done. Once you move to another program, it is the only program running. Nothing can run in the background with some kind of an active timer.

There are specific functions that will multitask. So it may very well be possible to code a simple app-switcher that runs in the background, monitoring input.

There is an iPad Development Forum on this board. They may be able to help you and your app-writer there.

iPad Development - Apple iPad Forum