Web album / slideshow tool?

[Patton Echols]

In about a week's time I will have to produce a "photo book" to be 
placed on a thumb drive and handed off.  By photo book, I mean something 
that can display a slideshow and is platform independent, and needs no 
network.  I will be working under some significant time constraints:

Photos will be taken at an event by several photographers.  I will be 
give the cards and have to sort through and pick 20 to 40 of the photos, 
organize them on the thumb drive and give to the recipient within a 
couple of hours.  (It could be 4, I expect 2, and I may be told I get 50 
minutes!)

One solution is to just put the photos in place and the end user can 
just use whatever viewer they have available.  Not very elegant.  I'd 
like to do better.

My current thought is to use gThumb and the built in utility to create a 
HTML album, with largeish (800 x 800) "thumbnails" in a 1x1 grid per 
page and the user can just click "next". 
I would have pre defined hacks to the default css to give the look and 
feel I want.

Does anyone have any other ideas?  Comments?  The technological 
constraint is I know nothing about what platform will be used to view or 
what software will be available.  I am assuming only USB and browser.

Thanks

--PE