Monday, July 31, 2006
posted by Geetesh
11:13 AM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
Documents To Go , the office suite software, is now available for UIQ 3 phones such as the Sony Ericsson M600i, P990i and W950i. Documents To Go enables the viewing and editing of Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint files on your phone. The software costs $49.99, but current Documents To Go users on UIQ 2 devices can upgrade to Documents To Go for UIQ 3 free of charge.
More on the All About Symbian site...
Categories: microsoft_office, powerpoint, pda
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
posted by Geetesh
11:10 AM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
Today's free template is Bubble Splat - download here...
 
Categories: templates, powerpoint
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
Saturday, July 29, 2006
posted by Geetesh
12:34 PM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
So what if you look at a product that provides the option to share your PowerPoints securely -- and then what if that product adds Flash and PDF output as well to the feature list? You'll end up with something that provides value to almost anyone -- that's exactly what Rhapzode, the product we are reviewing does.
Read the full review...
Categories: add-in, powerpoint
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
posted by Geetesh
12:32 PM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
Today's free template is Faraway Vision - download here...
 
Categories: templates, powerpoint
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
Friday, July 28, 2006
posted by Geetesh
12:53 PM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
Earlier this month, Microsoft announced its support for an open-source project to create a translator plug-in for its Office applications that, eventually, will enable Word, Excel and PowerPoint users to read and write word processor, spreadsheet and presentation files saved in the rival OpenDocument for Office Applications format. The key word here is "eventually."
Jason Brooks discusses more on the eWeek site...
Categories: odf, powerpoint, microsoft_office
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
posted by Geetesh
12:51 PM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
Today's free template is Spiropixels - download here...
 
Categories: templates, powerpoint
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
Thursday, July 27, 2006
posted by Geetesh
12:47 PM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
Today's free template is Spiral Biology - download here...
 
Categories: templates, powerpoint
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
posted by Geetesh
12:29 PM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
Today's free template is Blue Desert - download here...
 
Categories: templates, powerpoint
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
posted by Geetesh
12:25 PM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
Today's free template is Bubble 02 - download here...
 
Categories: templates, powerpoint
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
Monday, July 24, 2006
posted by Geetesh
11:03 AM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
Today's free template is Bubble 01 - download here...
 
Categories: templates, powerpoint
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
Saturday, July 22, 2006
posted by Geetesh
10:31 AM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
Colin McBride is from in-shop, a UK based company that creates Flash Toolbar, a Flash related add-in for PowerPoint. Colin says he has a passion for doing things right, and he always thinks of the words spoken by JFK "we chose to go because it is difficult".
When asked for a photo for this conversation, Colin sent an image of his trip to Tibet rather than a conventional head shot -- as he said, this sums him more.
Colin in Tibet
Geetesh: Tell us more about in-shop and your custom PowerPoint solutions.
Colin: The in-shop has been set up to create user friendly software which is both professionally developed and reasonably priced. We have begun with a range of software add-ins for Microsoft PowerPoint. Later, we plan to extend this range to include other software utilities. We have used our experience working with some of the world's leading companies, our typical corporate client has anywhere between 25,000 to 150,000 employees spread across the globe, from this work we have developed rigorously tested, secure and user friendly software solutions. This makes our software the ideal choice for both individuals and corporations.
The Flash Toolbar is a good example of this, it has always been time consuming and difficult to do simple things with a Flash movie in PowerPoint, e.g. insert a Flash movie, change the play setting, change the background color of Flash movies etc. But why? We felt that it just does not need to be this difficult so we decided to create an easy-to-use solution directly within the PowerPoint program
Geetesh: Tell us more about Flash Toolbar -- particularly the export static slides feature. How did that come about and how can it help.
Colin: The Flash Toolbar is a professionally produced tool that allows you to work more easily with Flash movies within PowerPoint presentations. It has been designed both for individual use and/or corporate use, once installed it displays a toolbar with a range of easy-to-use tools, and with a single click you can insert a Flash movie or change its setting. In addition, it automatically fixes the problems commonly know as "flashback", which is when Flash movies do not automatically rewind.
Flash Toolbar
A key tool for many users, especially business users is the 'Create Static Image Slide Tool'. Many sales and business presentations use Flash movies to show their products and services within a PowerPoint presentation, this gives a real wow factor. However, without our solution when using Flash movies in PowerPoint they are left with the problem of not being able to print the scenes or stills from the Flash movie, or, they cannot e-mail the presentation (this can be for a range of reasons, e.g. size, email server security, they don't know if their client uses Flash etc.)
The 'Create Static Image Slide Tool' on the Flash Tool resolves these problems/issues by making it simple for the user to change Flash movies used in PowerPoint into a series of static images. Our tool creates a range of new slides, where each slides is a duplicate of the original slide, and the Flash movie is replaced with a still or frame from the Flash movie which are JPEG images.
So for example; if you have a PowerPoint presentation which uses a Flash movie to show 'The six steps of a new wonder product', our tool allows you to select the Flash movie and with a single click create six new slides, each showing a scene or still from the Flash movie.
You can learn more about Flash Toolbar in Indezine's full review of the product...
Categories: powerpoint_flash, powerpoint, add-in, interviews
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
posted by Geetesh
10:28 AM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
Today's free template is Puzzle 05 - download here...
 
Categories: templates, powerpoint
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
Friday, July 21, 2006
posted by Geetesh
10:22 AM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
Today's free template is Puzzle 04 - download here...
 
Categories: templates, powerpoint
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
Thursday, July 20, 2006
posted by Geetesh
11:57 AM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
Today's free template is Puzzle 03 - download here...
 
Categories: templates, powerpoint
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
posted by Geetesh
10:10 AM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
There are many advantages in converting a PowerPoint presentation into a Flash SWF movie since they tend to be smaller in size, cannot be edited, and can easily be viewed in almost any operating system or computer these days. And with dozens of PowerPoint-Flash converting applications available, it's easy to be spoilt for choices.
And with so many choices, every such application has to either do things better than others or add more capabilities. WildPresenter, the product we are reviewing tries to do both -- and in this review, we will explore if it succeeds or not.
Read the full review...
Categories: wildpresenter, powerpoint, powerpoint_to_flash
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
posted by Geetesh
1:32 PM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
Today's free template is Puzzle 02 - download here...
 
Categories: templates, powerpoint
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
posted by Geetesh
1:23 PM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
Today's free template is Puzzle 01 - download here...
 
Categories: templates, powerpoint
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
Monday, July 17, 2006
posted by Geetesh
9:58 AM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
Today's free template is Dusk Delight - download here...
 
Categories: templates, powerpoint
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
Sunday, July 16, 2006
posted by Geetesh
9:53 PM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
Today's free template is Fractoid Red - download here...
 
Categories: templates, powerpoint
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
Saturday, July 15, 2006
posted by Geetesh
3:08 PM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
Kirk Cunnigham is Executive Director, Marketing at Business Objects, creators of Crystal Xcelsius software. In this interview, Kirk discusses Business Objects, Crystal Xcelsius, and its charting abilities in comparison to Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint.
Read the interview here...
Categories: add-in, powerpoint, xcelsius, interviews
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
posted by Geetesh
12:12 PM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
WildPresenter is a new product from Wildform that has more abilities than you can count -- it is one of those things that you want to keep always installed on your system.
 In this Indezine exclusive interview, Wildform CEO Jonathan Blank discusses WildPresenter and its PowerPoint specific abilities.
Geetesh: Tell us more about Wildform and WildPresenter.
Jonathan: Wildform develops and sells presentation, animation and video software. Our products are designed to empower our customers to easily create multimedia presentations, product demos, online tutorials, websites, and e-learning courses that are ready for the widest possible deployment on the Web, intranets, CD-ROMs and mobile devices. We started in 1999 and are based in Los Angeles, California, USA.
Our latest product is WildPresenter, a powerful yet easy to use software that is the ideal solution for creating Flash and video presentations, product demos, training videos, and sales & marketing materials. As Tom Arah of PC Pro Magazine (which gave WildPresenter 5 stars) wrote: "WildPresenter offers everything you need to produce impressive results. In particular, it brings together the core features from a whole host of applications - Adobe Flash Professional, Microsoft PowerPoint, Articulate Presenter, Sorenson Squeeze and Adobe Captivate - and at a fraction of their cost, especially at the heavily discounted introductory price. That's extraordinary power and value."
In creating WildPresenter we built on our long experience developing easy-to-use Flash software such as our text animators and Flash video encoders, as well as our experience as Internet marketers who often found ourselves looking for software that could do what WildPresenter can do. We found a number of products which could be purchased separately for a few thousand dollars and which still did not provide all the capabilities which we were looking for. So we created WildPresenter and are offering it at a very affordable price. Our goal is for WildPresenter to be the best Flash and video presentation software on the market and we believe that we are well on our way.
Geetesh: Can you explain more about the PowerPoint conversion features in WildPresenter.
Jonathan: One of the great capabilities of WildPresenter is its PowerPoint to Flash converter which features a unique editable import option. Using this option, when you import a PowerPoint .ppt or .pot file, WildPresenter will convert it into WildPresenter's native format, so that all the text, images, animations and transitions can be edited after import. This method of conversion has many benefits including:
- The file size of the Flash output is drastically reduced (because unlike other PowerPoint to Flash conversions we are not just taking a screen capture - or bitmap - of the elements in the PowerPoint).
- The clarity and quality of the images and text are maximized.
- Vector based text and images scale to any size without pixilation or distortion.
- You can make changes to your project.
- You can use your existing PowerPoint projects as templates.
- You can use PowerPoint .pot template files directly in WildPresenter.
- You do not need to have PowerPoint installed to use the PowerPoint to Flash converter.
Admittedly, PowerPoint is a huge program with a lot of features, and we do not support all of them, but we support virtually all transitions and the majority of animations and we are continuously adding support for the rest of the features. In fact, since we released WildPresenter in February, we have already provided two significant updates that have greatly enhanced our PowerPoint support. Our goal is to support all the features which can be implemented in the Flash format.
Categories: add-in, powerpoint, wildpresenter, interviews
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
posted by Geetesh
8:52 AM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
Symantec released an advisory about a new trojan that may arrive as a PowerPoint attachment in an email. The presentation itself shows some Chinese characters.
More on the Symantec site...
Categories: powerpoint
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
posted by Geetesh
8:50 AM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
Today's free template is Textured 07 - download here...
 
Categories: templates, powerpoint
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
Friday, July 14, 2006
posted by Geetesh
12:46 PM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
First, look at this screenshot:
You might find nothing unusual about this -- it's just the OfficeFX interface inside Microsoft PowerPoint. And I won't even ask you to look closer, or look again because that's exactly what it appears to be. What's surprising is what you can't see!
Here's a picture that will show you what I want you to see.
Mike Wilson of Instant Effects sent me this screenshot and picture -- for the rest of this post, I'll take this over to Mike...
It may not be obvious, but this is OfficeFX running on a MacBook Pro (with Intel processor and ATI X1600 graphics). The only thing that gives it away is the window style.
To be VERY clear -- this is NOT OfficeFX running under MacOS. We did nothing to enable this. It's done with an Apple utility called BootCamp that allows users to install Windows XP and Windows applications on their Intel based Macs. What I find impressive is that it also allows very Microsoft proprietary layers like DirectX and .NET to run -- which in turn enables relatively complex 3D apps like OfficeFX.
Obviously this is a pretty expensive way to go as you have to own both operating systems. The perspective of our users is that for those higher end types running Mac based applications like Final Cut Pro for video and DVD creation, it's a great option to be able to also run their 3D apps like 3D Studio MAX and OfficeFX on the same system.
Don is less amazed than I am about this from a purely technical standpoint. He may have a comment or two. From a business "chess board" perspective, we both find it an intriguing turn of events.
Thank you, Mike. Don Brittain, referred by Mike in this conversation is also from Instant Effects, the company that creates OfficeFX.
Categories: officefx, powerpoint, add-in
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
posted by Geetesh
12:43 PM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
Today's free template is Squareback - download here...
 
Categories: templates, powerpoint
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
Thursday, July 13, 2006
posted by Geetesh
10:48 PM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
ShapeStyles is a nifty, time-saving PowerPoint add-in from RnR. If you create many presentations, this add-in can often save you hours of time that you may have spent doing repetitive tasks. Naturally, this time can be used more effectively elsewhere -- in design or content tasks, or just some extra time for yourself.
 Steve Rindsberg from RnR is a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP -- he also runs the PPTFAQ site -- in this conversation, he discusses the
ShapeStyles add-in.
Geetesh: Tell us more about how ShapeStyles evolved.
Steve: I'm lazy. Necessity may be the mother of all invention, but surely Sloth is its father. I hate dull, repetitive, boring work and love to write software that saves me from it. And I can't think of many things more boring than applying the same formatting, running through the same dialogs and mouse-clicks, time after time to format all the shapes in a large presentation.
My PPTools partner Brian Reilly and I developed ShapeStyles as a tool for what we call "PowerPoint production artists". These are the folks who create lots of attractive PowerPoint slides, formatted to strict specifications, and usually on a short deadline.
PowerPoint makes it simple to apply any needed formatting, but it can take a lot of keystrokes and mouse clicking to do it. For just a few shapes, that's no big deal, but multiply it by the hundreds or thousands of shapes in a large slide presentation and you're talking about a lot of wrist pain. And a huge waste of a creative artist's time and talent.
Sure, there's the Format Painter tool, but it doesn't remember all the formatting we might need, it doesn't remember more than one format at a time and it doesn't remember ANYTHING from one PowerPoint session to another.
That was the problem we set out to solve. In a nutshell, how could we help talented artists make the best use of their valuable time, let them do the things they enjoy and are good at AND still give them the ability to turn out high quality, accurately formatted work at a prodigious rate?
Originally, the idea was to create a kind of Super Formatting Paintbrush, a tool that'd pick up the formatting from one shape and apply it to another but also allow you to save the formatting as a kind of named style. That way you could have a bunch of different saved styles that you could pick and choose from, and that would be available from one session of PowerPoint to another.
That was a good start but it wasn't the right answer. For example, suppose you're working with text. You format a text box to 42 point Arial Bold and save the style. Now you pick another text box and apply the style. Great. The text becomes 42 point Arial Bold. But the text box also gets the size, position, fill and outline and all the other formatting attributes from the text box whose style you saved. Most of the time, that's not what you wanted.
So ... and this is what makes ShapeStyles so useful ... we added the ability to pick and choose the formatting attributes that will be saved with a style and later applied when the style is applied.
So you could choose that same 42 point Arial Bold text box and tell ShapeStyles to remember the font, the size, the boldness but NOT the italic attribute or fill color, size, position etc.
Now when you apply that same style to another text box that happens to be, say, Times New Roman 24 point Italic, it'll change the font to Arial and make the text Bold (because you told ShapeStyles to "remember" those formatting options) but leave the text Italic (because you told ShapeStyles to ignore the Italics of the original text).
To get an idea of the formatting features you can include (or NOT include) in styles, just have a look at the dialog box that appears when you save a style.
All this means that you can format one shape as needed, have ShapeStyles memorize it as a style under whatever name you like. Repeat for each style you think you'll need. You can create as many styles as you like.
Later, pick any shape on any slide in any presentation and apply the style to it. Or to them ... ShapeStyles reformats any currently selected shapes at one time.
Then, because the only constant is change, we added the StickyStyles feature. Another example explains this best: You've created a whole bunch of styles for a client and it's looking great. Then the client decides they don't like the green you chose and want to change it to blue. Which means that you have to change ALL the other colors in your styles that you so carefully matched to that green. And apply them all to ALL the shapes in your presentation. Even with ShapeStyles it's going to be a long night, right?
Wrong. If you chose the StickyStyles option when you created the style in the first place all you have to do is:
- Select a shape formatted in a style you need to change and change its formatting as needed.
- Click the Create Style button and click OK.
- Repeat once for each style that needs editing.
- Choose Update StickyStyles from the ShapeStyles toolbar and sit back while ShapeStyles updates every shape in your presentation with the new styles.
Well, at this point, we figured we had a pretty powerful tool, but when we let a few production artists test ShapeStyles, they had some great ideas for improving it.
"We have different clients. Why can't we save a set of styles for each client? Can we create, say, a Heading Text style and change it to suit each client?"
Done. We added the ability to choose different Style folders so users can have a folder for each client, brand, product, division, etc., each with its own distinct styles.
"We want to create styles and distribute them to our users. We want them to be able to apply the styles but not edit them."
Done. We created a "light" version of ShapeStyles at a very light price. Only the full version can create styles, but the inexpensive light version can choose Style folders and apply styles.
"Why should we have to create a shape and then apply a style to it? Can't ShapeStyles do that for us?"
Done. If you apply a style when no shape is selected, ShapeStyles creates a duplicate of the shape the style was originally created from. If the shape included text, ShapeStyles can even add the original text or "dummy" text and pre-select it. So to add a perfectly formatted footnote, for example, you'd Apply the Footnote style and just start typing.
Geetesh: Does ShapeStyles have a learning curve -- and what about the effects applied using ShapeStyles -- can those be seen by people who don't have ShapeStyles installed?
Steve: With all this power comes a little complexity. When you save a new style or edit an existing one, you see what may be the most complicated dialog box ever created. LOTS of checkboxes, it's true, but that's what gives you so many choices. Once you get used to it, it's really quite fast to use, and most of the time you'll select everything (using the handy ALL buttons) and then de-select just the formatting attributes you don't need for the style and save your style.
But the fact that you can pick and choose what you want to include in your style means that you can create one style that affects nothing but the size of selected text and another that remembers EVERYTHING ... the font, size, color, text box fill, outline and even the text itself.
Despite all of this power, ShapeStyles does nothing to the presentation that you couldn't do manually by formatting each shape individually yourself. The presentations you produce with it are totally compatible with other PowerPoint users, even though they don't have ShapeStyles.
They can still change the formatting of your "styled" shapes, in fact. But if you use StickyStyles, you can always override their changes with your original styles; just reapply StickyStyles as I mentioned earlier.
Download a trial version of ShapeStyles here...
Categories: add-in, powerpoint, interviews
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
posted by Geetesh
10:43 PM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
Microsoft released an update for Office 2004 for Mac, currently available on Microsoft's downloads page, which includes all improvements that have been released in previous Office 2004 updates as well as various new fixes, such as vulnerabilities that "an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer's memory with malicious code".
More on the Ars Technica site...
Categories: office_mac, powerpoint
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
posted by Geetesh
10:39 PM
Comment and PermaLink
Subscribe for Email updates
Tell A Friend!
|
Today's free template is Green Lightening - download here...
 
Categories: templates, powerpoint
0 comments
|
| |
|
|
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
posted by Geetesh
|
