PowerPoint Blog
Today's free template is Reflect Checks - download here...
Categories: templates, powerpoint
Today's free template is Waterfall - download here...
Categories: templates, powerpoint
These are free Cell Phone/Mobile Phone PowerPoint templates created by the designers at Indezine.com. Just click the thumbnail for any of the designs to get to its download page.
At Indezine.com, we love your feedback - if you want to share your stories about how you use our templates, send them through our feedback form...
You can also suggest a template theme, but be aware that we already have a long list of requested themes that we are working on.
Categories: templates, powerpoint
These are free Father's Day PowerPoint templates created by the designers at Indezine.com. Just click the thumbnail for any of the designs to get to its download page.
At Indezine.com, we love your feedback - if you want to share your stories about how you use our templates, send them through our feedback form...
You can also suggest a template theme, but be aware that we already have a long list of requested themes that we are working on.
Categories: templates, powerpoint
The new ezine issue has now been issued. There are two free giveaways:
To enter, you just need to fill in a form.
There's also coverage on Freepath, a new presentation playlist product as well as a convenient listing of all the new stuff on Indezine.com
Read the ezine here...
Categories: ezine, powerpoint
Today's free template is Orange Butter - download here...
Categories: templates, powerpoint
Today's free template is Canvas Drape - download here...
Categories: templates, powerpoint
Jeff Van West puts his get-the-job-done philosophy into practice in training movies on Effective Presentations which is available online from Lynda.com. Other movies cover Home and Small Office Networking and Illustrator CS2. He is also the author of several books, articles, and custom training curricula for software, hardware, and aircraft systems.
In this interview, Jeff discusses PowerPoint experiences, design and improvement ideas...
Categories: powerpoint, interviews
Today's free template is Starburst Keyboard--download here...
Categories: templates, powerpoint
T-Mobile now makes it possible for its subscribers to leave their laptops behind them for presentations by making available to them Impatica ShowMate, the first and only presentation solution that allows users to project PowerPoint presentations directly from their BlackBerry wireless devices. ShowMate is a pocket-sized hardware device weighing less than nine ounces and supports all PowerPoint presentation features including rich text, images, charts, graphs, animations and slide transition effects.
More on the TMCnet site...
Categories: blackberry, projector, powerpoint
Microsoft has quietly added a high-end retail edition of Office 2007 to the suite's stable, the company confirmed Thursday. The new Office Ultimate -- the name identical to Vista's Ultimate edition -- will be priced at $679 in retail channels, and will include all the applications scheduled to ship within Office Enterprise 2007, the top-end corporation version to be available only to volume license customers. Ultimate will include core applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, but will also offer Access, Publisher, InfoPath, Groove, OneNote, and integrated functions such as content management, electronic forms, and rights management. All of those pieces are also in the Enterprise bundle.
More on the InformationWeek site...
Categories: microsoft_office, powerpoint
Today's free template is Emerald Horizon - download here...
Categories: templates, powerpoint
Today's free template is Solar Liquids - download here...
Categories: templates, powerpoint
Austin Myers, a PowerPoint MVP is a good friend--and he created the wonderful PFCMedia add-in for PowerPoint that makes inserting media files in PowerPoint so easy. And now he has released PFCExpress, his new PowerPoint add-in that makes it so simple for you to email your PowerPoints. The add-in takes care of everything--from links, to file format, attachments, and the actual mailing.
I did a small interview with Austin discussing PFCExpress:
Geetesh: Tell us more about yourself and the PFC range of PowerPoint add-ins.
Austin: Having been a PowerPoint MVP and designing presentations professionally since 95, I've seen just how difficult using the ever increasing types, and sources, of media within PowerPoint can be. With the success we enjoyed with PFCMedia and the feedback from our customers we made the decision to tackle a number of additional media related problems in PowerPoint. With customer feedback it became clear that additional features were both wanted
needed, so many in fact we felt we needed to provide them with multiple add-ins as opposed to building a single large and expensive add in.
By creating multiple add ins with a low price point we hope to meet the specific needs of the customer at a reasonable cost. Value is always the driving force as we design and build our PowerPoint add ins. Hey, I am a user too and I always want a great value for my hard earned dollars, I have to believe other users feel the same.
Geetesh: What prompted you to create PFCExpress - and tell us more about typical usage scenarios.
Austin: The concept of PFCExpress came about from user requests and input from the PowerPoint newsgroup. Because of the way PowerPoint links to media files, and the fragility of those links, users were experiencing very high failure rates when they emailed their presentations. PowerPoint also has a limitation in that should the path to the folder containing the presentation and media be too long the media would fail. PFCExpress was designed to
overcome these issues.
Typically users don't understand how PowerPoint links to media files or how important it is to create the presentation in a manner that secures the links. As an example, if I create a presentation on my computer and save it to "C:\..My Documents", and have a video that is linked from "C:..\MyDocuments\My Videos" it will play fine on my machine but when sent
to another machine it will fail. The reason of course is that the path is different on the other machine and PowerPoint doesn't know where to find the media. In cases where the user follows the guideline to place the video in the same folder containing the presentation before inserting it on the slide we still run into the issue that "MyDocuments" is different on every PC and PowerPoint may still fail to play the media properly.
Assuming a user creates a presentation and includes a media file PFCExpress examines the presentation for media content and creates a temporary copy of both the presentation and media. With a little bit of programming wizardry the path/link to the media is destroyed and in it's place we create what we call a "pathless" link. Once completed the presentation and the media file are combined into a single compressed file (zip) and made ready to email. From within PowerPoint you simply tell it who the recipient is, include any text in the body of the email and if desired run a spell checker on it. From there a simple click on "Send as email" and your done. PFCExpress offers you the option of sending it as a normal (*.ppt) PowerPoint file for editing or as a playable (*.pps) file so the person receiving it simply starts it and it plays.
One other feature we included addresses the issue of an email and attachment being too large. Almost all ISPs have a size limit and as media tends to create large files and the email will not be delivered. PFCExpress will warn the user if they have exceeded the size limit and offers to save the compressed zip file for them so it may be placed on a web site or FTP server. It also lists several sites that are free to use for sending large email and attachments and instructions on how to use them.
Our goal here was simple, when you email your presentation containing media, it will "Play For Certain" on the receiving Windows PC. Or at least as certain as we can possibly make it.
Download a free trial of PFCExpress from the PFCMedia site...
Categories: add-in, powerpoint
PowerPoint 2007 Beta 2
PowerPoint is the ubiquitous tool business people and students use to create multimedia presentations. The 2007 updates are supposed to make it less of a hassle to dress up slide shows. Most of PowerPoint's features are available as icons in a tabbed ribbon atop the interface. And dynamic, visual galleries let you see a change before finalizing it.
More on the CNET News.com site...
Big Beta Day for Microsoft
Microsoft went beta crazy today and has released Windows Vista Beta 2 and a new build of Longhorn Server to testers and has made 2007 Microsoft Office system Beta 2 available to anyone who wants to take it for a spin. Office 2007, oh excuse me, 2007 Microsoft Office system (yes, that's the official name - small "s" and all) is another story. I've been working with the beta extensively, especially with Outlook and OneNote, er… 2007 Microsoft Office Outlook and 2007 Microsoft Office OneNote… and they are close to daily use quality if you're brave and plenty stable enough to install on a test bed system if you're cautious (which is almost always a good thing).
More on the ZDNet site...
Microsoft launches Office 2007 Public Beta
Microsoft has released a public beta of Office 2007, making the forthcoming productivity suite available to a broader group of testers. The first release was limited to a group of about 10,000 customers and partners, and the final product is slated for release in early 2007. The beta is available as a download to the general public, but will expire on 31 January 2007.
More on Vnunet.com...
Categories: microsoft_office, powerpoint
Today's free template is Andromeda - download here...
Categories: templates, powerpoint
Microsoft MVP Jim Gordon has announced his new grayscale printing add-in for PowerPoint that works with both Windows and Mac versions of PowerPoint.
This is what Jim says about his add-in:
"Sending grayscale output to printers can significantly reduce printing times for black and white laser printers. Some color objects don’t display or print as expected in grayscale. GrayScaleTool has grayscale controls for adjusting grayscale properties readily available. The add-in may benefit large organizations that share networked laser printers. GrayScaleTool is for people who often print GrayScale (saves on color ink), or who want to do special effects with grayscale printing."
Check out this site for more info...
Categories: add-in, printing, powerpoint
Today's free template is Backstage - download here...
Categories: templates, powerpoint
Shuttling between the Internet and his computer slide show, Manuel Duarte put the finishing touches on his research project. He outlined his main findings in bullet points, and dragged images and audio files from the Web to liven things up. Duarte wasn’t polishing his PowerPoint presentation for a boardroom sales pitch; it was for his fourth-grade class in Brockton. PowerPoint — once the staple of business conferences and corporate meetings — is lending a high-tech edge to grade-school classrooms across the state. The days of construction paper and poster board projects have been replaced by computer-generated images and laser pointers.
Read more on the Boston Globe site...
Categories: education, powerpoint
Today's free template is Blue Lemon - download here...
Categories: templates, powerpoint
Today's free template is Greenboyant - download here...
Categories: templates, powerpoint
Today's free template is Solar Eclipse - download here...
We love your feedback - if you want to share your stories about how you use our templates, send them through our feedback form...
Categories: templates, powerpoint
This is actually the same review that I posted on Amazon.com--just wanted to let you know since I don't have a star rating system on this blog!
If I had gone strictly with the title of the book, I might have not given this one 5 stars at all. It's not about creating workflows between Adobe applications and doing projects. More than that, this book is about experiences from the authors about how one can do small tasks more efficiently by using the CS2 applications together. Think of this as a book that's left next to your desk that you can pick up and read when you have 5 minutes to spare. That's the way this book will benefit. So if you think that the term "workflow' in the title means that you're going to do great things, then you got it all wrong. This book is about those little things that make great differences.
See this book on Amazon.com...
Categories: books, photoshop
Today's free template is Swirly Corner - download here...
At Indezine.com, we also do custom and corporate template design - get in touch with us for more info - and check our new and evolving Studio page...
We love your feedback - if you want to share your stories about how you use our templates, send them through our feedback form...
Categories: templates, powerpoint
In this interview, Lou discusses Freepath, PowerPoint, and non-linear presentations... Labels: freepath, interviews, powerpoint
As President of Grass Roots Software, Lou Drous' primary role is in securing partnerships to advance the use of Grass Roots Software technology in a broad range of vertical markets and business to business solutions. Grass Roots Software creates Freepath, a new tool that creates presentation playlists from Powerpoint presentations, and several other document and media file formats.
Categories: freepath, interviews, powerpoint
This book extract is from Beyond Bullet Points, a book that teaches how you can use PowerPoint to tell visual stories without using bullet points. Author Cliff Atkinson uses his three-step approach to help readers discover how they can combine the tenets of classic storytelling with the power of projected media to create a rich, engaging experience.
Read the excerpts here...
Categories: books, powerpoint
Have you wondered why some pictures show jaggies on the edges when they are resized larger. Or why some pictures don't show jaggies when enlarged? Those jaggies have more to do with the type of graphics you're resizing--and broadly speaking, there are two types of computer graphics--bitmaps and vector graphics. If you use graphics often, understanding these two formats and how they are created is essential.
Read more here...
Categories: graphics, photoshop, digicam
Today's free template is Cheesy Blues - download here...
At Indezine.com, we love your feedback - if you want to share your stories about how you use our templates, send them through our feedback form...
We also create designer templates--check them out at our other site ppted.com
Categories: templates, powerpoint
Whatever be the numbers or skills, no one disagrees with the fact that many PowerPoint presentations do fail to leave an impact on the audience. And that's exactly what Jeff Van West tackles in his Effective Presentations tutorial that I'm reviewing. Effective Presentations is a movie-based tutorial from Lynda.com that's available both on CD-ROM and an online movie library.
Read the review here...
Categories: books, tutors, powerpoint
O'Reilly Media announced The 2006 O’Reilly Photoshop Cook-Off--a contest featuring eighteen top Photoshop experts as judges--including Mikkel Aaland, Katrin Eismann, Harris Fogel, Tim Grey, Deke McClelland, Bert Monroy, Eddie Tapp, Vincent Versace, and John Beardsworth, among others. O'Reilly is aiming to inspire creativity and discover new and promising talent from the ranks of the 4,000,000 plus Photoshop users. The winners will be recognized with awards and fabulous prizes which will be presented at an event at PhotoPlus Expo in New York on November 2, 2006.
Learn more at the O'Reilly site...
Categories: photoshop, books
Today's free template is Sunset Thunders - download here...
At Indezine.com, we love your feedback - if you want to share your stories about how you use our templates, send them through our feedback form...
Categories: templates, powerpoint
Stamps in SnagIt are my current fascination. I love the way TechSmith has implemented them in the program, and how intuitive they are to use. In this tutorial, I show you how you can use them effectively.
Read more here...
Categories: snagit, techsmith
Barbara Brundage has been teaching people ways to use Photoshop Elements since the product came out in 2001. She's the author of the best-selling Photoshop Elements 4: The Missing Manual, published by O'Reilly and several other books. In this interview, Barbara discusses her book, Photoshop Elements, and how you can use it with PowerPoint effectively.
Read the interview here...
Categories: photoshop, powerpoint, books
Today's free template is Blooms 06 - download here...
Categories: templates, powerpoint
Today's free template is Checkshield - download here...
At Indezine.com, we love your feedback - if you want to share your stories about how you use our templates, send them through our feedback form...
Categories: templates, powerpoint
Today's free template is Popcorn - download here...
At Indezine.com, we love your feedback - if you want to share your stories about how you use our templates, send them through our feedback form...
Categories: templates, powerpoint
Xara Picture Editor is a small program that's bundled with the Xara Xtreme software. Double-click any bitmap inside Xara Xtreme to summon the Xara Picture Editor--alternatively, Xara Picture Editor also works independently as a picture viewer and editor on its own.
Xara Picture Editor provides the basic, most commonly required photo features like quick preview, resize, straighten, crop, and enhance pictures. It also works with photo plug-ins, removes red eye and applies 3D bump maps.
Read more here...
If any of you use Xara Picture Editor, do leave your comments!
Categories: xara, graphics, digicam
These free templates were created based on a request from an Indezine reader who wanted some designs with an Indian flag. The designers at Indezine.com created seven templates--many areas have been faded so that these designs can be used effectively as PowerPoint templates with areas for text use.
Here's the result--just click the thumbnail for any of the designs to get to its download page.
At Indezine.com, we love your feedback - if you want to share your stories about how you use our templates, send them through our feedback form...
You can also suggest a template theme, but be aware that we already have a long list of requested themes that we are working on.
Categories: templates, powerpoint, india
Today's free template is Wind Origami - download here...
At Indezine.com, we love your feedback - if you want to share your stories about how you use our templates, send them through our feedback form...
Categories: templates, powerpoint
Today's free template is Lustrous - download here...
These free templates all depict airplanes--use them as you like. The designers at Indezine.com created these five designs--just click the thumbnail for any of the designs to get to its download page.
At Indezine.com, we love your feedback - if you want to share your stories about how you use our templates, send them through our feedback form...
You can also suggest a template theme, but be aware that we already have a long list of requested themes that we are working on.
These free templates were created based on a request from an Indezine reader who wanted some designs with a television and violence theme. The designers at Indezine.com created these five designs--just click the thumbnail for any of the designs to get to its download page.
At Indezine.com, we love your feedback - if you want to share your stories about how you use our templates, send them through our feedback form...
You can also suggest a template theme, but be aware that we already have a long list of requested themes that we are working on.
This design uses the classic building blocks theme--use it in almost any type of presentation. We love your feedback - if you want to share your stories about how you use our templates, send them through our feedback form...
Today's free template is Building Blocks - download here...
Although it is the norm to place conventional pictures on PowerPoint slides, a little experimentation with transparent effects will provide great looking results. However, it's not too easy to create such effects in Adobe Photoshop or other image editors unless you are well versed with the way those programs work.
Surprising, Xara Xtreme--a program that costs less than $90 makes the whole process so easy that almost anyone can create such effects. Learn more here...
So you've been doing PowerPoint for years now. So you've even done your own custom templates. Now it's time to take your PowerPoint game to the next level. Cutting Edge PowerPoint for Dummies was written by Geetesh Bajaj, a Microsoft PowerPont MVP.
One of the things I notice most often in PowerPoint presentations is that the people designing them have no concept of what color combinations look good. Bajaj discusses contrasting colors, and how to use color combinations to make text stand out and be easier to read. Color plates located in the center of the book help to emphasize his point. If more people would pay attention to this simple tip, PowerPoint presentations would be far less painful to view.
Read Warren Kelly's full review on Blogcritics.org...
These days, PowerPoint is used for everything from grocery shopping lists to presentations at large conferences. Cliff Atkinson, who has led a workshop at the Social Security Administration, said PowerPoint is ingrained in the culture of business and government, especially the military.
PowerPoint fans will tell you it’s an easy and convenient way to convey your main points. Adding animation and music to PowerPoint presentations can heighten interest. But detractors argue that PowerPoint presentations are often mind-numbing, especially when people deliver them in a monotone voice and close off discussion.
Judy Welles discusses more on fcw.com...
So why did I name this Organic Circuits? There's nothing circuit-like about this design when you look at it in thumbnail view. That's right--you'll only be able to see the circuit watermark when you download the template and view it within PowerPoint (the way it is meant to be seen).
Today's free template is Organic Circuits - download here...
This template can be used for any type of presentation--have a great day.
We love your feedback - if you want to share your stories about how you use our templates, send them through our feedback form...
Today's free template is Grass Abstracts - download here...
At Indezine.com, we also do custom and corporate template design - get in touch with us for more info - and check our new and evolving Studio page...
We love your feedback - if you want to share your stories about how you use our templates, send them through our feedback form...
Today's free template is Grass Pyramid - download here...
At Indezine.com, we also do custom and corporate template design - get in touch with us for more info - and check our new and evolving Studio page...
We love your feedback - if you want to share your stories about how you use our templates, send them through our feedback form...
Digital imaging guru Deke McClelland introduced the pilot for his new show "dekePod"--a video podcast with a hip, visually compelling style. "dekePod" is personal and entertaining with rapid-fire imagery that keeps the viewer engaged. The pilot episode "It's Your Money, Scan It!" shows viewers a workaround in Photoshop to scan and open money (legal in the U.S. under the specific guidelines detailed at www.rulesforuse.org). Deke is the host of this educational, zippy, sometimes laugh-out-loud show.
To download or view the show, go here...
Apple has released an update for Keynote 3, their presentation program that ships as part of their iWork 06 productivity suite. The new 3.0.1 update adds better texture fidelity and some more features.
Download the update here...
Mediterranean Glow takes a bright color and brings it even more alive with a texture. The Title Master mixes all of these with a simple motif in chrome yellow to set the mood. Use this template to show off your vacation pictures, especially if your pictures show clear blue skies and sea beaches. Or use it as a template for a kiosk presentation! At Indezine.com, we also do custom and corporate template design - get in touch with us for more info - and check our new and evolving Studio page...
Today's free template is Mediterranean Glow - download here...
And wish you a great weekend!
Labels: powerpoint, templates
These are free Mother's Day PowerPoint templates created by the designers at Indezine.com. Just click the thumbnail for any of the designs to get to its download page.
At Indezine.com, we love your feedback - if you want to share your stories about how you use our templates, send them through our feedback form...
You can also suggest a template theme, but be aware that we already have a long list of requested themes that we are working on.
Today's free template is Gold Drape - download here...
All by itself, yellow is a difficult background color to use. But as I discuss in my book Cutting Edge PowerPoint for Dummies, difficult background colors like yellow, red, and orange can be made into great backgrounds as long as you use them as textures.
Textures are different than solid colors not only because they look different, but also because they vary the hue, saturation, and brightness values of any color all over the background graphic. This sort of tones down their intensity.
Make sure you check out the other yellow textured PowerPoint templates we have - to begin, scroll down the Gold Drape page and you'll find twelve more free templates for you to download!
At Indezine.com, we love your feedback - if you want to share your stories about how you use our templates, send them through our feedback form...
Kalidotrust will work great when you want to use a neutral background - the design itself and the color lend itself well to presentations that don''t use too much text. In fact, this design will work great as a background for photographs. Speaking of photographs, do you know that PowerPoint has a great Photo Album feature that lets you import tons of photos all at once into different slides?
Today's free template is Kaleidorust - download here...
These free templates were created based on a request from an Indezine reader who wanted some designs with a Chinese flag. Since the Chinese flag is almost entirely red, my designers had to mute it a little in some areas so that the template designs could be used effectively as PowerPoint templates with areas for text use.
Here's the result - just click the thumbnail for any of the designs to get to its download page.
At Indezine.com, we love your feedback - if you want to share your stories about how you use our templates, send them through our feedback form...
You can also suggest a template theme, but be aware that we already have a long list of requested themes that we are working on.
Tonic Systems has released a new Java-based PowerPoint Viewer that works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux platforms. That's great news for Mac OS X users who have been asking for a new PowerPoint Viewer for a long time. And Linux users no longer need to have a copy of OpenOffice installed to just see PowerPoint presentations.
The TonicPoint Viewer is free for non-commercial use and only allows you to see static slides without any animations or transitions. In addition, Tonic Systems plans to eventually release a pro version of the TonicPoint Viewer with additional features like save-to-PDF.
This screenshot shows you how TonicPoint Viewer looks on Mac OS X (Tiger).
Here's a small interview with Chris Nokleberg of Tonic Systems:
Geetesh: Tell us more about your Java-based PowerPoint Viewer, and why you developed it.
Chris: TonicPoint Viewer is an application for viewing PowerPoint 97-2003 files, written in 100% Java. It will run on any platform with JRE 1.5 and is less than 1MB. It is free for non-commercial use.
As for why we developed it, some background is required... Our core business is our enterprise Java libraries. These are primarily used by other developers to create or modify PowerPoint presentations on the server-side. We also have a product which can convert PowerPoint into other formats such as PNG, PDF, SVG, and SWF.
All of that took a few years to develop because it required reverse-engineering the PowerPoint file format, which is probably the least well-known of all the office formats.
Along the way our developers created some tools for in-house use, including a simple viewer application. Because we do most of the development on non-Microsoft platforms, we found having a viewer very useful for testing, and it gave us the idea to release it as an end-user product.
Geetesh: How can this Viewer be useful for viewing PowerPoint on other platforms? And what do you plan to do next with this?
Chris: We were surprised to find out that there is no official viewer from Microsoft for OS X, and less surprised that there is none for Linux :-) Of course there are free full-blown office suites, such as OpenOffice, but they can take a long time to load and aren't necessarily the best choice for quickly viewing a presentation. We've also really focused on rendering fidelity--that is, how closely the slides in our viewer match PowerPoint itself.
The TonicPoint Viewer could also be useful even on Windows, as the thumbnail-based interface and incremental search feature makes "browsing" a presentation easier than the with the Microsoft viewer.
Going forward, we want to add more features to the free version of the Viewer, in particular a slide show mode which incorporates animations and slide transitions. A professional edition of the TonicPoint Viewer is also in the works, which will add features like save-to-PDF. It's hard to predict what users will really find valuable, however, so any feedback is welcome.
Note from Geetesh: Thank you, Chris.
To learn more about the TonicPoint Viewer and download a free copy, visit the Tonic Systems site...
Update on July 25th 2008: Tonic Systems has been acquired by Google -- and there's no download available from their site for the TonicPoint Viewer.
And to get more information, read this post on Root Beer, Chris Nokleberg's blog...
The May issue of Inc. magazine features 6 products to liven up your presentations, including Indezine's own Thermometer add-in for PowerPoint, which is free download, go get it...
Among the products featured are the TurningPoint polling system, Ovation from Serious Magic, Keynote from Apple, Thermometer from Indezine.com, Panasonics's Toughbook CF-18, and Ontra Presentations.
Ellen Neuborne explains how these products "can help make your next presentation less of a snooze and more of a blockbuster".
Read the article on the Inc. magazine site...
Today's free template is Cloud Fractoid - download here...
At Indezine.com, we love your feedback - if you want to share your stories about how you use our templates, send them through our feedback form...
You can also suggest a template theme, but be aware that we already have a long list of requested themes that we are working on.
Until Friday, May 6th, Wildform is providing a 10% discount on their WildPresenter product over and above their introductory price – here’s how to get your discount:
It’s easy to create quick Flash slideshows with Wildform’s new WildPresenter product. WildPresenter is like a small Swiss Army knife since it contains so many possibilities and options and I find it a handy program to have on my system. It’s got a nice screen capture program, it imports PowerPoint presentations, and it also creates Flash outputs of all these inputs.
Getting back to the slideshow part, it’s very easy to create one within WildPresenter. Just drag in a folder full of digital camera pictures into a WildPresenter window, and the program allows you to insert each picture on a separate slide. And then, manipulating all the transitions and animations is not too different from what you would do if you were using PowerPoint:
Today's free template is Zigreen - download here...
The Microsoft Office Specialist certification is an acclaimed, worldwide standard for Microsoft Office usage skills. A certification can help career prospects and provide promotions, not to speak about several other benefits that certified professionals receive. No wonder, there are many books dedicated to such certification curriculum.
Linda Johnson, a friend who runs a premier Microsoft Office and computing site has authored a comprehensive guide on what you need to prepare for certification in Microsoft Excel 2003, both the Specialist and Expert levels.
Microsoft Office Specialist: Excel 2003 Study Guide uses real-world scenarios to teach the full range of Excel 2003 skills you need.
Check out the book site here...
And here's the Amazon.com page for the book...
Recosoft's PDF2Office 3 (Standard and Personal editions) claims to create editable PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, and several other formats from PDFs. I'll admit that I was quite skeptical about this one. After all, I have lost count of how many people have asked me about how they can create editable PowerPoint presentations from their PDFs. And maybe you are now wondering why anyone would want to create PDFs from their PowerPoints? There are two reasons for that:
Either problem doesn't have a great solution - and this product seemed to answer (at least to a large extent) both these issues. So when the good folks at Recosoft sent me a copy of their product, I was only too happy to throw a 100 page PDF manual for some software application - and then I demanded that PDF2Office make an editable PPT from it! Now, you'll agree that's not something you'll want to do all the time - yet it is good to know if this can be done or not.
So as I stared at my screen (see screenshot) with a mixture of fascination and doubt, I watched as PDF2Office made a very nice PowerPoint presentation from the 100 page PDF - the result was a 100 page PPT with editable text and high quality pictures!
PDF2Office allows ample control over the conversion - you can change image output resolution (for the PPT), decide which pages from the PDF you want to convert, choose font substitutions, and even ignore pages that don't convert too well. I asked a spokesperson from Recosoft about the "skip pages that don't convert" option and their response was that "...option exists as there are PDF documents where a certain page contains corrupt PDF data. Thus, that particular page becomes impossible to convert. So, PDF2Office will skip such a page and continue with the rest."
One thing PDF2Office won't do is convert password protected PDF files, unless you know the password - and that might be a blessing!
As the next version of Microsoft Office will include built-in PDF output, I think many new users will want a product like this that will convert PDFs to PowerPoint presentations, and Word documents - but then Recosoft will have to make sure that their product is compatible with the next version of Microsoft Office. Recosoft's spokesperson said that "As PDf2Office Personal/Standard v3.0 uses a modern Windows architecture to interface with Office, it works with the latest version of Office (i.e. Office 2007). We simply need to provide final verification once the real version ships. But as far as we know it works with the current versions."
You can download a trial version of PDF2Office, learn more about Recosoft products, or buy them online at their site....
Today's free template is Sky Shadows - download here...
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A lot is at stake -- power, money, reputation, future plans, justice. You need to win this case. Your presentation materials surely will play an important role in helping the judge and jury experience the sights, sounds, and details of the case ... or not. The choice is up to you, says one tech-savvy attorney.
The choice is up to you, says one tech-savvy attorney. It all depends upon whether you are willing to push PowerPoint beyond its normal boundaries to maximize its interactive and persuasive potential. This article by Robert Lane and
Bruce A. Olson
provides a better idea of using PowerPoint in court. 
