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Wednesday, May 30, 2007
posted by Geetesh
 
2:59 PM
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Ppted released a new PowerPoint template set -- this one is called Father's Day.
 
 
None of the templates at Ppted.com are free -- these are all designer templates. I just wanted to say that because lots of readers write in to say that their Indezine passwords don't let them download all the Ppted templates for free! Categories: powerpoint, templatesLabels: powerpoint, templates
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Tuesday, May 29, 2007
posted by Geetesh
2:28 PM
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Ppted released a new PowerPoint template set -- this one is called Roads.
 
 
None of the templates at Ppted.com are free -- these are all designer templates. I just wanted to say that because lots of readers write in to say that their Indezine passwords don't let them download all the Ppted templates for free! Categories: powerpoint, templatesLabels: powerpoint, templates
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posted by Geetesh
1:55 PM
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Terry Irwin is a consultant surgeon in Belfast, Northern Ireland working for the National Health Service (NHS). Terry is also a long time PowerPoint user and co-author of a book on PowerPoint geared towards the designing of medical presentations.
In this interview, Terry discusses the use of PowerPoint in medicine, and his book.
Read the interview here...
Categories: interviews, powerpointLabels: interviews, powerpoint
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posted by Geetesh
10:47 AM
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Mike Pearce says the best history teachers in today's schools will tell stories, make students relate to the people and events and use technology in order to do both. Starting in 2001, when he was teaching eighth grade, Pearce began integrating his own lesson plans into a PowerPoint system. "It hits every learning style. We live in an electronic age and kids are now very impressed by instruction that is more contemporary," he said.
Read more on the Killeen Daily Herald site...
Categories: case_studies, education, powerpointLabels: case_studies, education, powerpoint
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Monday, May 28, 2007
posted by Geetesh
1:39 PM
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Ppted released a new PowerPoint template set -- this one is called Meetings.
 
 
None of the templates at Ppted.com are free -- these are all designer templates. I just wanted to say that because lots of readers write in to say that their Indezine passwords don't let them download all the Ppted templates for free! Categories: powerpoint, templatesLabels: powerpoint, templates
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Saturday, May 26, 2007
posted by Geetesh
2:07 PM
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 Jeff Brenman (pictured to the right) is a graduate from Northwestern University where he studied psychology and business. It was pretty early on in his college experience that he became disenchanted with the conventional presentation styles, and started to independently study the theory behind what makes great presentations great. It wasn't long before he was helping out professors and student leaders on campus with their slide decks, eventually having a position created for himself with the university as a presentation design consultant. He started a design firm called Apollo Ideas, based out of Chicago that specializes in presentation design and consulting.
Geetesh: Tell us more about Apollo Ideas, and the type of presentation related services you provide.
 Jeff: Apollo Ideas was created from the collision of a huge demand in the market for innovative communication methods and my personal passion for creating and developing stories and presentations. I first started presentation design consulting while in college, working for professors and lecturers who were speaking at academic conferences and delivering grant proposals. After I graduated, I branched out from the academic market into the business markets, forming Apollo Ideas and building a team of people who share my passion. We're a storytelling company. Services range from taking an existing slide deck and restyling it (similar to what was done to Karl Fisch's original presentation for ShiftHappens), to a full consulting process in which we help generate the original content for the slides, working with the client to design the story from the ground up.
Geetesh: How did your prize winning entry in SlideShare's World's Best Presentation Contest evolve -- and what do you think set it apart from other entries in finally emerging as the winner.
Jeff: I came across Karl Fisch's "Did You Know" presentation online, and thought the content was fantastic. I had just finished reading The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman, so the globalization themes in Karl's presentation resonated hard with me. I decided to re-stylize the presentation as a challenge to myself, to re-make it how I'd like to see it. I am glad ShiftHappens has received so much attention through SlideShare because the reality of the 21st century is a subject we all ought to know about.
 
I think what set ShiftHappens apart from the other entries was its visual style and the power of its content. At over 50 slides the presentation contains a lot of information. It was a challenge creating a visual style that would be bold but still stay visually interesting in a stand-alone presentation with so much content.
Categories: interviews, presentation_samples, powerpoint, slideshareLabels: interviews, powerpoint, presentation_samples, slideshare
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posted by Geetesh
1:55 PM
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 Rick Altman (pictured to the right) is a presentation consultant based out of Pleasanton, CA. Rick is well known as the host of the annual PowerPoint Live event and has a strong sense of the needs of the presentation community. In this conversation, Rick discusses his new book called Why Most PowerPoint Presentations Suck -- and goes on to explain what goes wrong with many presentations.
Geetesh: Tell us more about your new book, and what prompted you to do such a book.
 Rick: I have had the idea for this book in my head for over three years, and candidly, I could have authored it years ago, from a big publisher, with a lot of marketing muscle behind it. But each of the publishing houses that I spoke with wanted the book to contain introductory material, and I was unwilling to do that. There are plenty of books that cover PowerPoint basics and rudimentary presentation skills training. Too many, in fact! What is there for the more seasoned user? I wanted this book to pick up where the others left off, and I wanted it to be uneven, full of bias and commentary, and not be afraid to be inflammatory. As I say in the introduction, "you are invited to disagree -- in fact, if you agree with everything I say in the book, its value is probably diminished."
The best way to accomplish these objectives was to publish the book myself, and today there are plenty of resources to support that. I might not sell a half-million copies in the first year, but I'm confident that I'll get it out there to the people who might be interested in the message and that the message will strike a respondent chord with them.
Geetesh: What are the most common mistakes that PowerPoint presenters and presentation designers do, and how can this book help them?
Rick: If I had to boil it all down to just one thing, I would cite the popular sentiment that the PowerPoint file is the presentation. I have colleagues who even refer to the resultant effort as "a PowerPoint." This is way off. A collection of images projected behind you is not the presentation; you are the presenter and what you have to say is the presentation.
Once you approach from that point of view, then tactics around use of the software can begin to make some sense. If the PowerPoint file is not the presentation, then for heaven's sake, don't dump your entire speech there.
And if it is to remain subordinate to you, then don't fill it with a bunch of attention-getting devices that undermine you.
Projected slides should not work so hard and they shouldn't make the audience work so hard. If that dramatic photo takes too much attention away from you or the text on your slides, then it performs a disservice, no matter how beautiful it is.
My hope is that through all 278 pages, this book never loses sight of the primary role of presentation software - to support the presenter - and the most effective way for it to play that role.
Categories: books, interviews, powerpointLabels: books, interviews, powerpoint
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Thursday, May 24, 2007
posted by Geetesh
3:16 PM
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Although it's easy to add reflection effects in PowerPoint 2007, there is a less obvious way of recreating a similar reflection effect in earlier versions of PowerPoint as well. This tutorial will provide the steps to recreate a reflection effect using Microsoft PowerPoint 2002 or 2003.
Sandra Johnson shows you how...
Categories: photos, powerpointLabels: photos, powerpoint
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Monday, May 21, 2007
posted by Geetesh
1:51 PM
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Ppted released a new PowerPoint template set -- this one is called Accounting.
 
 
None of the templates at Ppted.com are free -- these are all designer templates. I just wanted to say that because lots of readers write in to say that their Indezine passwords don't let them download all the Ppted templates for free! Categories: powerpoint, templatesLabels: powerpoint, templates
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Friday, May 18, 2007
posted by Geetesh
7:34 PM
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 Jeff Koke (pictured to the right) is a graphic designer and creative marketing expert who has been designing professionally since 1992. He is the co-founder of two businesses: Koke Creative, a creative marketing firm that helps innovative companies build strong brands and executes on those brands through Web, print and presentation design; and PointClips, a site that sells high-quality professional graphics for PowerPoint. Jeff lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and two children. He enjoys Tae Kwon Do, soccer, writing and music.
Geetesh: Tell us more about yourself and PointClips.
Jeff: I've been involved in graphic design professionally since 1992, and have been working in PowerPoint since 1997 when I was creative director for an enterprise software company, helping them craft effective sales and marketing presentations. More recently, my design firm Koke Creative has built a practice around creating beautiful and powerful PowerPoint presentations for all kinds of companies.
The idea for PointClips came from the fact that one of our clients required that all the artwork in their presentations be built within PowerPoint, not imported from JPEGs or other external graphics. This was for file size reasons as well as to increase the quality of the presentation when given over NetMeeting. We developed a method for creating beautiful icons and objects using PowerPoint's built-in drawing tools. Our illustrator, Russell Moore, used this method to build the hundreds of objects that we offer on PointClips.
Geetesh: How are PointClips different than other graphics for PowerPoint.
Jeff: When people think of graphics for PowerPoint, they usually think of backgrounds and templates, or stock photography -- or they think of the cartoony clip art that comes with the program. We wanted to break that paradigm with PointClips. PointClips are unique illustrations that convey the benefits of native PowerPoint objects (scalability, transparency, editability) while having the detail and beauty of graphics that are usually created in other design programs, like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. If you've spent any time working with PowerPoint's drawing tools, you'll know that this isn't easy.
Being vector illustrations, their main advantage is flexibility: they can be scaled to any size, from a tiny icon or bullet, to a graphic that fills the slide -- all without any loss of detail or quality (no jagged, pixellated edges); they have transparent backgrounds, so they can be placed on top of other elements without white boxes around them; and they are easily editable by ungrouping their components and editing the colors or individual points. If needed in other applications, they can be copied and pasted into Word or Excel, or exported as JPEG or PNG for any other application, including web sites.
PointClips are available here...
Categories: clip_media, graphics, powerpointLabels: clip_media, graphics, powerpoint
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posted by Geetesh
12:49 PM
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This book extract from Special Edition: Using Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 is a full chapter on Working with SmartArt that I authored -- it has been put up on Indezine.com with permission from Pearson Education.
The book, which I co-authored with Patrice-Anne Rutledge and Tom Mucciolo is probably the most detailed volume on PowerPoint you'll find anywhere -- in addition it also looks beyond PowerPoint to design sense, presentation and speaking skills. The book has been completely updated for PowerPoint 2007 and includes a free CD that contains software that you can use.
Read the free chapter here...
Categories: books, powerpoint_2007Labels: books, powerpoint_2007
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Thursday, May 17, 2007
posted by Geetesh
11:08 AM
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Helius Inc. announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire PointeCast Corp., a leading global provider of rapid-communication and online training solutions. PointeCast's Publisher product allows users to enhance Microsoft PowerPoint presentations with real time quizzes, surveys, response tracking and other multimedia features and then instantly convert them into the Adobe Flash format for easy integration. PointeCast's robust learning management system (LMS) enables customers to administer and track e-learning and training courses.
More on DigitalSignageToday.com...
Categories: add-in, elearning, online_presentations, powerpoint, powerpoint_flashLabels: add-in, elearning, online_presentations, powerpoint, powerpoint_flash
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posted by Geetesh
11:03 AM
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Microsoft's Mac BU continues to work in the development on Office 2008 for Mac, but in the meantime they have just announced the release of its standalone, drag and drop Word converter for Office 2004 for Mac and v. X users.......PowerPoint and Excel drag and drop updates to the converter will be released this winter.
More on the Geekzone site...
Categories: office_mac, powerpointLabels: office_mac, powerpoint
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posted by Geetesh
10:25 AM
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Some GMail users have reported that they see a "View as Slideshow" option in mails that contain PowerPoint attachments.
Doug Caverly on Webpronews.com says that "whether it's being polite, trying not to scare its competitor, or somehow believes this is true, Google has repeatedly claimed that it isn't challenging the Microsoft Office Suite. But now a feature within Gmail looks a lot like a presentation tool, and onlookers are having an even harder time accepting the search engine giant's word."
Rafe Needleman adds on Webware -- "This is probably the presentation player that will be part of Google's upcoming competitor to PowerPoint. It's not, though, what we're all waiting for, which is the slide show authoring tool that will presumably have cool collaborative features similar to Google's word processor and spreadsheet."
Categories: google, powerpointLabels: google, powerpoint
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Wednesday, May 16, 2007
posted by Geetesh
3:14 PM
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 Scott Schwertly (pictured to the right) Founder/CEO of Ethos3 has loved giving and hearing presentations since he gave his first big speech in the 7th grade. Scott has spent the last eight years working for television network affiliates helping them create story-telling visuals and doing marketing for both the private and public sector. He has a B.A. in Communications and an M.B.A. from Harding University. Helping others design and deliver captivating presentations is his passion.
Geetesh: Tell us more about Ethos3, and the type of PowerPoint work you do.
 Scott: Ethos3 Communications is a presentation design and training company. We essentially help businesses and individuals with building, designing, and delivering better presentations. Therefore, our focus covers three main areas:
- Content,
- Design, and
- Delivery.
This includes everything from theme development to slide design to non-verbal presentation tactics. Under our design services umbrella, we offer our clients services such as basic slide design, video production, audio enhancements, storyboarding techniques, and much more. Presentations can be delivered in any format and in as fast as 24 hours.
Geetesh: Your entry to the World's Best Presentation Contest on SlideShare won a prize -- tell us more about how this presentation was different from normal presentations, and what sort of planning and storyboarding went into developing the concept and slides.
Scott: Together, Cheree and I created the Meet Henry presentation.
The concept of Meet Henry was inspired by the need for a presentation revolution which happens to be the name of our Ethos3 Communications blog -- Presentation Revolution. Today we live in a business culture that abuses the art and science of presentations and public speaking every day. It is a sad reality when every presentation is an opportunity to make a difference, to make an impact, to change the world. Thus, Ethos3 believes that if we can help others change the way they present, then they will be empowered to present change to the world. This is the message we wanted to articulate through the characters of Henry and Erica.
All in all, creating Henry and Erica was very simple. All images were found via Google or iStockPhoto and the entire presentation was done in Apple's Keynote. After everything was gathered, we wanted to simply state the problem (Henry) and then offer a solution (Erica). Presentations are not about egos, fancy suits, or MBAs. Presentations are about hard work, diligence, and practice. If someone simply focuses on every facet of their presentation - content, design, and delivery... then they are set-up to succeed. This is the story we wanted to communicate.
 About Cheree:
Cheree Moore, Creative Director, brings five years of professional experience to Ethos3 Communications. She has worked in several different types of companies, acquiring her skills as a graphic designer. Cheree's combination of knowledge, marketing and design experience will help make your presentation memorable. Cheree also heads up the design services that Ethos3 offers.
Categories: interviews, presentation_samples, powerpoint, slideshareLabels: interviews, powerpoint, presentation_samples, slideshare
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Tuesday, May 15, 2007
posted by Geetesh
2:27 PM
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Mind mapping is a great way to brainstorm, store ideas, and create visual relations between concepts. I found a great application to do mind mapping -- and it lets me save those mind maps as PowerPoint presentation outlines -- a great way to create great outlines.
With ConceptDraw MINDMAP 5, you can present processes, ideas, complicated relationships, and other concepts graphically. The program helps you present your learning material in a logical and structured way -- it also includes a comprehensive library of graphics, colors, figures and connections which helps in creating and sustaining the outline structure.
Read the review here...
Categories: graphics, powerpointLabels: graphics, powerpoint
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Monday, May 14, 2007
posted by Geetesh
3:58 PM
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Voice-over artist Rodney Saulsberry has put up some great voice-over warmup excercises on YouTube -- these vocal warmup videos will help you tone your voice before that important presentation you need to deliver -- or an important meeting.
Take a look here...
There are also excerpts from Rodney's books available on Indezine.com:
You Can Bank on Your Voice
Step Up To The Mic
Categories: books, soundsLabels: books, sounds
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posted by Geetesh
10:51 AM
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 Sonja Van Halder (pictured to the right) from Tjool has years of experience in sales and marketing for shareware and software. She's been part of several European and US shareware conferences. In her present role at Tjool, Sonja interacts with PowerPoint users.
Geetesh: Tell us more about yourself and Tjool.
Sonja: Tjool is a company based in south of Germany near Stuttgart. We work with clients worldwide, and offer tools in both English and German. We provide add-ins and tools to PowerPoint users. In the past, we developed customized solutions and add-ins for customers and enterprise businesses. We realized during our consultancy services to our partners and customers that tens of thousands of PowerPoint presentations are saved on customer's sites -- and employees were still using different slides with different styles or old masters in their presentation -- or their slides contained wrong information, such as out-of-date revenue figures, numbers, etc.
We first developed a web based presentation management tool (Tjool) for enterprise customers, which is being used to organize and manage their slides and presentations in an indexed server database. This allows their employees to access the presentations anytime, and from anywhere -- or to pick the desired presentation and generate a new one based on a template using the corporate design of the company. Over a couple of years, several small and enterprise companies found this solution very practical and useful to manage their slides, maintain a unified look, and provide up-to-date information in their presentations.
We felt the need to provide Tjool as a single user license compared to a web based solution. Users needed an add-in tool to PowerPoint, to be used by the sales or marketing departments -- and therefore a small number of users between 2 to 30 will use the Tjool -- PowerPoint Manager. Therefore we developed Tjool as a single user license with a local database or network repository.
The user interface of Tjool comprises 4 parts:
- Search
- List of Presentations
- Categories
- Slides Overview
Here's a tour of Tjool to walk you through...
And here's a presentation of the software...
Geetesh: How is Tjool different from other presentation optimizer programs, and do you plan to make Tjool compatible with PowerPoint 2007.
Sonja: Tjool indexes all words in the scanned presentations and categories, in the slides and in the diagrams and within the objects to make it easy for the users to find the desired slide. The search function of Tjool goes further than the Microsoft search function in PowerPoint. In comparison to other tools, Tjool is available in 3 editions:
- Single user license for laptop users or one person use,
- Network edition for a team to use the same database and presentations, and
- A web based management edition for external users or for all employees.
The customer can decide which edition fulfills his requirements. In addition, Tjool offers the creation of virtual presentations. Virtual presentations mean that the user will be able to build up their own presentations based on slides from other presentations and Tjool will keep these virtual presentations automatically up-to-date. This means if a slide 7 in a presentation XYZ was changed and this slide is linked to a virtual presentation, then this will be automatically changed for the user who generated this virtual presentation.
The number of users of PowerPoint 2007 is increasing from day to day. We are expecting the new release of Tjool to be released either at the end of third quarter, or at the beginning of the fourth quarter of this year. We are glad that Microsoft released PowerPoint 2007's file format based on XML -- as this will allow the scanning function of presentation in Tjool to perform faster.
Categories: add-in, interviews, powerpointLabels: add-in, interviews, powerpoint
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posted by Geetesh
10:15 AM
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Instant Effects announced the release of version 2.6 of both OfficeFX and OfficeFX Professional, their PowerPoint add-in that metamorphoses the look and play of your presentations using themes included inside the product.
This new release includes Windows Vista support, and partial compatibility with PowerPoint 2007. This release is a free upgrade for anyone running OfficeFX V2 or higher.
More info on the OfficeFX site...
See Also: OfficeFX Indezine Review
Categories: add-in, officefx, powerpointLabels: add-in, officefx, powerpoint
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Saturday, May 12, 2007
posted by Geetesh
2:39 PM
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 Gabe Anderson (pictured to the left) takes care of support and community initiatives at Articulate, a provider of rich media products used for e-learning.
In this conversation, Gabe discusses Articulate Online, and how this service integrates with Articulate's other products.
Geetesh: Tell us more about Articulate Online, and how it is helping people deliver content.
Gabe: Articulate Online allows you to effectively track e-learning activity without the usual cost and hassle. You can publish directly to your Articulate Online account with a single click from either Articulate Presenter or Articulate Quizmaker. All content is hosted on and delivered from the Articulate Online server, so you can easily get your content to your target users with just a link or via a personalized user portal.
Then you can run a number of detailed reports to see how your users are interacting with your content -- who's viewing your presentations and how your users are scoring on your quizzes and answering your survey questions.
And with plans starting at just $199/month, Articulate Online is easier to use and more affordable than complex and expensive corporate learning management systems that are difficult to use and have more features than you need.
You can learn more about Articulate Online here...
There's a 3-minute overview here...
Finally, there's an in-depth, 19-minute overview of Articulate Online here...
Geetesh: How does Articulate Online integrate with other Articulate offerings such as Presenter and Quizmaker.
Gabe: Articulate Online is the only fully integrated hosting, tracking, and reporting platform available that allows direct, one-click publishing from either Articulate Presenter or Quizmaker. You can even embed Articulate Engage interactions, 3rd-party Flash movies, Web Objects, and more directly in your Presenter content before you publish to Articulate Online.
There's no more worrying about FTP applications, LMS integration, or file management. Just click and publish to Articulate Online, and your content is ready to be shared publicly or with your private users.
A number of tutorials, including how to publish from Presenter and Quizmaker, are available here...
Categories: articulate, elearning, interviews, online_presentations, powerpointLabels: articulate, elearning, interviews, online_presentations, powerpoint
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posted by Geetesh
1:13 PM
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The results of World's Best Presentation Contest on SlideShare is now up on the site. Two of the three top presentations won in both the judges and people's choice award sections.
See the results here...
Categories: powerpoint, presentation_samples, slideshareLabels: powerpoint, presentation_samples, slideshare
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posted by Geetesh
12:19 PM
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This book extract is from Relational Presentation: A Visually Interactive Approach by Robert Lane, a book describes all aspects of a presentation style known as Relational Presentation.
Relational Presentation methods completely change the way speakers use presentation software such as PowerPoint. With this approach, a presenter does not simply advance from slide-to-slide, or bullet point-to-bullet point, as is the case with standard performances. Instead, he or she has dynamic access to potentially thousands of slides, any of which can be displayed at any time, in any order, within seconds.
Read the excerpts here...
Categories: books, powerpointLabels: books, powerpoint
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Friday, May 11, 2007
posted by Geetesh
10:07 AM
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Ppted released a new PowerPoint template set -- this one is called Rectangles.
 
 
None of the templates at Ppted.com are free -- these are all designer templates. I just wanted to say that because lots of readers write in to say that their Indezine passwords don't let them download all the Ppted templates for free! Categories: powerpoint, templatesLabels: powerpoint, templates
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Thursday, May 10, 2007
posted by Geetesh
2:24 PM
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