PowerPoint Blog
Labels: powerpoint, templates
Ppted's Human Geography 02 collection has been updated with extras! Take a look here to see...
Not only do you get five great template designs, you also get the actual backgrounds so that you can use the same designs elsewhere. In this collection, you also get wide screen templates and backgrounds, and ten transparent PNGs you can use in your presentations -- at no extra cost.
Templates
Transparent PNGs
Categories: powerpoint, templates
Labels: microsoft_office, odf
A standards committee will next week begin the next stage of the process that could see Microsoft’s new Open XML formats formally adopted as a global standard – or not. A vote by standards bodies from 87 countries last September went against the immediate adoption of Open XML as an ISO standard. This gave an immediate boost to the Open Document Format (ODF), which is already an ISO standard, but it did not rule out the Microsoft formats.
Read more on Personal Computer World...
Microsoft Corp. on Thursday responded to continued regulatory scrutiny by reiterating promises to make information about its products more easily available to software programmers, while vowing not to sue those who use such information for noncommercial purposes. The move underscores an ongoing shift for the tech behemoth, as it has sought recently to present its technology as increasingly open to outside developers and compatible with competing products. It also comes only days before delegates from an international standards body are scheduled to convene in Geneva to discuss Microsoft's Open XML file format, which has been derided by critics as insufficiently accessible.
Read more on MarketWatch...
Categories: microsoft_office, odf
Labels: office_mac, powerpoint
Mac users will have to wait four more months to work with documents produced by Office 2007 on Windows and Office 2008 on the Mac. The delay-plagued Open XML converters were slated to show up six to eight weeks after the debut of Office 2008, a schedule that would have put their release by the end of February at the earliest and mid-March at the latest. As recently as last month, Microsoft had confirmed that the converters were on track. Today, however, Microsoft said they would not appear for months.
Read more on the Computerworld site...
Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit on Thursday said the first update for Office 2008 should be available in mid March. However, getting the update out will push back the release of the final Open XML File Format Converter Update to Office 2004 for Mac. “The final converter was previously scheduled for delivery 6-8 weeks after U.S. availability of Office 2008; instead, the final converter will be available to customers by late June 2008,” the company wrote on its Mac Mojo Web site.
Read more on the MacWorld site...
Geoff Price, product unit manager for Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit, posted information about an upcoming update for Office 2008 for Mac on the Mac Mojo blog. The good news is that the developers are working feverishly on the new update, which reportedly "contains fixes for high-priority issues we’ve identified." What the high-priority issues are no one will say, but a spokesperson assured us that the team "will provide further details prior to the release," scheduled for March 11.
Read more on the Ars Technica site...
Categories: office_mac, powerpoint
Labels: powerpoint, templates
Ppted released a new PowerPoint template set -- this one is called St. Patrick's Day. Not only do you get five great template designs, you also get the actual backgrounds so that you can use the same designs elsewhere. In this collection, you also get wide screen templates and backgrounds, and ten transparent PNGs you can use in your presentations -- at no extra cost.
Templates
Transparent PNGs
Categories: powerpoint, templates
Labels: powerpoint, tutorials
Most of the time, slide numbers are not visible on the slide although many users like to enable them. Learn how to add slide numbers, get to troubleshooting if you can't get to see them -- and learn some tricks.
Categories: powerpoint, tutorials
Labels: add-in, powerpoint
While PowerPoint includes a very capable Photo Album feature that lets you quickly insert multiple photos in a presentation, you still need to add the animations yourself -- also there's no navigation between viewing pictures and slides. Our review product is a PowerPoint add-in that simplifies the process of inserting pictures with animation and navigation.
Read the review here...
Categories: add-in, powerpoint
Labels: delivery, powerpoint
Besides good public speaking skills, visual aids are key to keeping your audience interested. This can include PowerPoint if you make it an accessory instead of a crutch to your speech. Fellow financial advisors share their eye-catching accessories below.
Vanessa Richardson tells more on OnWallStreet.com...
Categories: delivery, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, online_presentations, powerpoint, powerpoint_flash
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 Quizmaker, how you can create quizzes, and how Quizmaker integrates with Articulate's other products.
Geetesh: Tell us more about Articulate Quizmaker -- and how it makes it easy to create quizzes fast.
Gabe: Articulate Quizmaker 2.0 is a comprehensive yet easy-to-use quiz creator for making highly customized Flash-based quizzes, assessments and surveys without the need for difficult programming. It provides a form-based interface with one-click publishing to Flash so that anyone who can use PowerPoint can create attractive, Flash-based quizzes in no time -- no Flash development experience required. There are 21 different graded and survey question types, which can be published to a stand-alone quiz or survey for use in your own Learning Management System or Articulate Online -- with full tracking and reporting capabilities.
Geetesh: How does Articulate Quizmaker integrate with other Articulate programs.
Gabe: Quizmaker publishes seamlessly to Articulate Presenter so that you can embed your quizzes and surveys directly in your Presenter-powered courses. You can even choose to send the embedded quiz results directly to your own Learning Management System or Articulate Online. Publishing from Quizmaker to Articulate Online is simple - just plug in your account details once, then publish to your account in just one click.
You can see a demo of how easy it is to publish content from Quizmaker to Articulate Online in the tutorials section of our site. Look for the demo called Publishing from Quizmaker.
Categories: add-in, online_presentations, powerpoint, powerpoint_flash
Labels: add-in, powerpoint, powerpoint_flash
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: add-in, powerpoint, powerpoint_flash
Labels: graphics, interviews, microsoft_office 
David Salaguinto (pictured to the left) is a writer on the Office User Assistance team at Microsoft who uses comics he creates to have fun, and to connect with readers -- see his Office Online Web Comic blog. In this conversation, David discusses how he got started, and where he gets inspiration from.
Geetesh: Tell us more about your work at Office Online. And how did you get started with the web comics blog?
David: Mostly, I write about Visio for the people who use it, although I do occasionally write about other Microsoft Office programs if a team needs my help. Every month, we look at the feedback we receive from customers, and we try to address it. Sometimes it means we write new articles or update existing ones. Sometimes it means we produce a video demo or online training. Sometimes it means we try new things. They don’t always work, but we like to think we learn from our failures.
One of the things we wanted to try was a comic. A colleague of mine found a fascinating article about comics being used in unusual places. What if we did a comic for Office Online? I thought it sounded like a fun idea, so I jumped at the chance to create a comic using Visio. For my first comic, I did a rather simple one about printing:
I personally thought it was kind of corny, but my coworkers seemed to like it, so I made more. Pretty soon, I was posting them online. You can read more about how I got started in this column I wrote for Office Online.
Geetesh: I love all the content you put up on the Office Online Web Comic blog -- what inspires you for all the ideas based on Microsoft Office applications.
David: I get a lot of my ideas from my coworkers. Sometimes, someone will send me an idea for a comic, but more often than not, I’ll read something in an e-mail or overhear something in a meeting that strikes me as a possible source of humor. It turns out that jokes aren’t that hard to write. Finding irony and surprise in everyday things—like Microsoft Office—now, that’s hard. For example, I was reading something written by a coworker about how a PowerPoint deck can have multiple slide masters. I immediately thought of the saying, “No man can serve two masters,” which lead me to this comic about PowerPoint and Marketing:
That’s where the ideas come from. As for the punch lines, well…I don’t actually know. They seem to come out of nowhere, but only after throwing out dozens of bad ones. You’d cringe in horror if you saw some of the bad punch lines I came up with for the preceding comic.
Geetesh: Tell us about some favorite posts you have put up, and why they are your favorites?
David: I think my favorite comics are the ones with the little pink girl in them. I have two young daughters myself, and I love the way they talk and how they look at the world. For example, I‘ve noticed that a lot of kids have started using PowerPoint in their school projects, which lead me to this comic:
For this comic, I spent a lot of time crafting the words so they would ring true and sound believable. I also wanted to capture the excitement in the child and the caring in the father. In so far as the comic succeeds, I think it succeeds because of that (and not just because of the jibe at marketing—although that certainly helps). As you can probably tell, I have a lot of fun creating these comics—probably even more than you have reading them.
Categories: interviews, graphics, , microsoft_office
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