Download Free PowerPoint Templates, Free PowerPoint Backgrounds Templates

Featured Story

Animated Slide: Valentine Mobiles

These Valentine mobiles are suspended from a rope, and are freely moving pendulum-like in the air with random speeds and directions. All the heart mobiles you see are Theme aware so that their fills change when you apply a new Theme. In addition, we used animation sparingly, yet effectively to create this effect – the entire slide uses just the Spin animation and nothing else! And while this entire animated slide was created in PowerPoint 2010, it should work just fine in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows and PowerPoint 2008/2011 for Mac. All animations are set to repeat indefinitely so that the stars and the hearts keep twinkling and moving until you navigate to the next slide.

Animated Slide: Valentine Mobiles

Download and use this slide in your presentation.

New Stories

Jan 27, 12 - Speaking Practically: Conversation with Kelly Vandever

In an attention-deficient, entertain-me-now, wait-while-I-post-that-on-my-Facebook-page kind of world, the typical business presentation is lame. Professional speaker, trainer, coach, tweeter and blogger Kelly Vandever works with organizations who want to take their strategic business presentations from Lame to Fame! In this conversation, Kelly discusses visible changes in the world of presentations, and the use of Twitter as a means to interact with their audience.

Read the conversation here.

Jan 27, 12 - Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Edit Points for Shapes

When you insert any of the shapes available in PowerPoint, you are not limited to what their default appearance looks like. You can change a rectangle to a rhombus, or even edit a curved or freeform line differently. You can do this by using the Edit Points option -- this almost makes PowerPoint a drawing program that provides you the option to play with vertexes (points), handles, etc. -- very similar to what you would do in Adobe Illustrator. A vertex is a point within the outline of any shape that can be dragged or edited to change the appearance of the shape.

Learn how to edit the structure of a shape in PowerPoint 2011 using the Edit Points option.

Jan 26, 12 - AKVIS Refocus 1.5 Photoshop Plug-in Review

AKVIS Refocus is an Adobe Photoshop compatible plug-in that improves sharpness of out-of-focus images. You can also use AKVIS Refocus on images which are sharp enough, to create special effects and draw attention to certain details, so as to create selective focus. Refocus is from AKVIS, a company based in Russia that specializes in graphic programs. Apart from Refocus, AKVIS also creates other Photoshop compatible plug-ins like Retoucher, Chameleon, MultiBrush, Sketch, Enhancer, Decorator, Coloriage, MakeUp, etc.

Read the Indezine review here.

Jan 26, 12 - Learn PowerPoint 2010: Slide Transition Effect Options

By default, no transitions are applied to any slide. However, once you apply transitions to your slides, you can tweak them aplenty. You can adjust the duration and timing of any transition, and even add a sound that will play while the slide transition happens. Further, each transition effect may or may not provide Effect Options. Effect Options enable you to have more control over the transition style applied to the slide -- follow these steps to explore Effect Options for slide transitions in PowerPoint 2010.

Explore slide transition Effect Options in PowerPoint 2010.

Jan 25, 12 - Podium PowerPoint add-in Review

Podium is a PowerPoint add-in which enables you to do quite a bit with your slide content. You can manage your PowerPoint presentations, and you can use provided tools to enhance your presentations. You can also create a new presentation from scratch. Podium provides a huge library of media elements such as images, vector drawings, ready-to-use backgrounds, 3D clip art and shapes, embellishments, etc. All these elements are royalty free, and most of these can also be individually customized to match the look of your slides. Once installed, Podium creates a new tab on PowerPoint's Ribbon.

Podium: The Indezine Review

Learn about Podium, a PowerPoint add-in that lets you customize and enhance your slides.

Jan 25, 12 - Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Drawing Scribble Lines

You have already learned how to use three of the four line drawing tools in PowerPoint 2011: Line, Curve, and Freeform. In this tutorial, we show you how you can use the last of these line tools: the Scribble Line tool. Drawing with the Scribble line is almost the same as drawing with the Freeform line -- but there are two differences. First, you don't need to double click to establish the end point of your drawing when you are using Scribble tool. Just like you draw with a pencil on a piece of paper, your line stops the minute you stop drawing it. Second, the Scribble tool does not allow you to draw straight lines. Having said that, you still need to practice to make your scribble lines perfect.

Learn how to draw with the Scribble line tool in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

Product Showcase

Jan 24, 12 - Learn PowerPoint 2010: Slide Transition Sounds

Sound effects are one of those small touches that PowerPoint allows you to add to a slide transition. However, you need to tread with caution here since a sound playing with every slide transition can not only sound cheesy, but it can also unnecessarily distract your audience. Having said that, there are occasions where a sound effect can be wisely applied to PowerPoint slide transitions -- maybe a chime sound for just one slide? Whatever you decide, let us now show you how you can add a slide transition sound.

Learn how to add slide transition sounds in PowerPoint 2010.

Jan 24, 12 - Indezine News Released

Consider the typical bucketload of slides that most business presentations contain. What if the presenter retrieved the few important slides from that bucketload and concentrated on this important content -- and then he or she practiced these slides, researched possible questions and answers, and made as many improvements as possible all the while. I think this approach would work! So that's the thought of this week -- do ponder and share your feedback with me.

Read the newsletter here.

Jan 23, 12 - MapPrez: The Indezine Review

MapPrez is a PowerPoint add-in that enables you to insert maps, and add place locations as labels directly on inserted maps. All these actions can be done through a dedicated MapPrez tab in PowerPoint's Ribbon. All maps are sourced from Google -- and you can thus insert brilliant satellite and cartographic imagery with a click or two. In addition, MapPrez lets you superimpose vector maps on top of the inserted maps.

MapPrez: The Indezine Review

Learn about MapPrez, a PowerPoint add-in that lets you add high quality geographical maps inside PowerPoint.

Jan 23, 12 - Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Drawing Freeform Lines

PowerPoint provides four line drawing tools: line, curve, freeform, and scribble. You have already explored the Line and Curve tools, and in this tutorial you will learn how you can use the Freeform tool to create lines that can be drawn with more creative freedom -- in fact the Freeform tool lets you draw just like using a pencil on a piece of paper. In addition, you can create straight lines as well. Although the Freeform tool takes a while getting used to, practice will make your attempts perfect.

Learn how to draw with the Freeform line tool in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

Jan 21, 12 - Animated Slide: Hearts Roll

Hundreds of stars twinkle, some more stars revolve and the hearts move along, in all their splendor! Amazing that everything can be animated to such precision using nothing other than shapes found within PowerPoint. Of course, we made sure that all shapes were filled with the perfect gradients that were color coordinated to the Theme of the presentation. And while this entire animated slide was created in PowerPoint 2010, it should work just fine in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows and PowerPoint 2008/2011 for Mac. All animations are set to repeat indefinitely so that the stars and the hearts keep twinkling and moving until you navigate to the next slide.

Animated Slide: Hearts Roll

Download and use this slide in your presentation.

Dummy Text in PowerPoint 2010

Many PowerPoint designers, especially template designers need some dummy text to quickly add to their slides so that they can ascertain how some body of text looks or fits within a certain text box or placeholder. Microsoft introduced an undocumented feature in PowerPoint 2010 that lets you achieve this with just a few keystrokes, and once you are used to these shortcuts, you'll learn to appreciate them so much!

Learn how to insert dummy text in PowerPoint 2010.

iPad Presenting

In our ongoing iPad Presenting series, we have already published 6 posts that have been read, tweeted, shared, and bookmarked by all of you -- we plan on several more posts within this series: