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Tuesday, April 01, 2008
posted by Geetesh
 
10:41 PM
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 Joel Harband heads Tuval Software Industries, based in Israel. Their best known product is Speech-Over Studio, a PowerPoint add-in that enables PowerPoint slides to incorporate narrations using automated voices.
Geetesh: Tell us more about the new features and improvements in Speech-Over 2.5
Joel: Sure. First, I'd like to remind readers of Speech-Over's mission: To use narration and animation in PowerPoint to achieve the impact of a live presentation. This boosts the effectivity of PowerPoint-based e-learning, training and web presentations in a easy and economical way.
Speech-Over lets users build effective narrations from individual narration clips, combining general orientation topics, like introduction and summary, with specific content topics linked to screen objects. PowerPoint animations synchronized with the narration clips are added to illustrate and clarify the narration.
Speech-Over uses articulate text-to-speech (TTS) voices to add and maintain professional narration easily.
The new features in Speech-Over 2.5 are designed to raise efficiency when the software is used by teams of authors. The features include the ability to refresh all narration clips in the presentation after changes in preferences, including the slide notes generated in the notes pane, and an improved voice preview function in the narration clip editor that allows skipping sentences during the preview and stopping it in the middle.
Geetesh: Can you tell us more about the TTS voices, what they are, and how one can get more of them?
Joel: Text to speech (TTS) is the automated synthesis of speech from text. The heart of the system is the text-to-speech engine, a sophisticated piece of software that parses the text input, analyzes its grammar, sentence structure, punctuation and capitalization, and activates voice simulations to produce a vocal rendering of the text.
The data for individual voices are provided in separate files called "voices". The TTS engine can work with any of the voices interchangeably.
Advances in TTS technology have replaced the old robotic computer voices with new, amazingly realistic ones.
Synthesized from real voices, these remarkable TTS voices can read books aloud beautifully without a mistake, guided only by grammar, sentence structure and punctuation. People use them to learn and review while driving.
The exciting news is that these articulate TTS voices have been harnessed by Speech-Over to empower users to add professional narration in presentations easily.
Speech-Over, which has an embedded text-to-speech engine, accepts user narration text and launches TTS voices from within PowerPoint to record professional narrations from the text alone.
Change the narration text as often as you need and these tireless voices record new versions quickly and faithfully without complaint.
TTS voices are separate computer applications which, once installed, are recognized by Speech-Over. They are available in male and female gender, in all major languages, and in various regional dialects.
Basic quality Microsoft voices Mike and Mary are included free. For much better results, premium TTS voices are available from voice vendors such as AT&T and NeoSpeech at affordable prices. Speech-Over uses SAPI 5 standard TTS voices. (For info about premium voices, see here...).
For more info about text-to-speech, see here...
Categories: add-in, interviews, powerpointLabels: add-in, interviews, powerpoint
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Friday, March 28, 2008
posted by Geetesh
3:28 PM
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For organizations and individuals who have been creating PowerPoint presentations for years, these presentations represent a very significant pool of content that needs to be synergised for reuse and reference -- aiding in the creation of new slide content.
Cataloging your presentations to the slide level is therefore a very important aspect of slide management, and our review product does just that and more.
Read the full review...
Categories: add-in, powerpoint, slide_managementLabels: add-in, powerpoint, slide_management
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Saturday, February 16, 2008
posted by Geetesh
11:38 AM
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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, powerpointLabels: add-in, powerpoint
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Thursday, February 14, 2008
posted by Geetesh
8:46 AM
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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 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_flashLabels: add-in, online_presentations, powerpoint, powerpoint_flash
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Friday, February 08, 2008
posted by Geetesh
3:18 PM
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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_flashLabels: add-in, powerpoint, powerpoint_flash
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Tuesday, January 29, 2008
posted by Geetesh
12:54 PM
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A decade or two ago, users played with PowerPoint around twice a month, made some overhead slides through a service provider and hired expensive equipment to show these at really big events. Nowadays, people create PowerPoint slides more often than they sneeze!
The result is that there are billions of slides in the presentation sphere -- slides lost and mixed up in a chaotic land where it's easier to spend to a few hours to create new slides than search and reuse the ones that cannot be found. Our review product Slide Executive Professional may be all the help you need.
Read on to learn more...
Categories: add-in, slide_management, powerpointLabels: add-in, powerpoint, slide_management
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Monday, January 28, 2008
posted by Geetesh
4:20 PM
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There are essentially three PowerPoint related tasks: you either create, give, or archive/share presentations. You know that keeping one or all three of these tasks organized is not a task that can be described as easy as pie.
SlideManager is a slide management software that can assist you in each of the three task scenarios -- it lets you maintain an online presentation library that is cataloged down to the individual slide level.
Read the review here...
Categories: add-in, slide_management, powerpointLabels: add-in, powerpoint, slide_management
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Tuesday, January 22, 2008
posted by Geetesh
12:59 PM
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 Tommy Powell (pictured to the left) is from Neuxpower, a software solutions company based in the UK. Neuxpower custom-build both stand-alone applications and add-ins that enhance existing software such as Microsoft Office. Their commercially-available PowerPoint optimizer, NXPowerLite , radically reduces the size of PowerPoint files.
Geetesh: Tell us what is new in version 3.5 of NXPowerLite.
Tommy: NXPowerLite 3.5 features three big changes. The most important change is that it is now compatible with files saved in Microsoft's new Office Open XML formats (such as DOCX, XLSX and PPTX).
NXPowerLite 3.5 is the only product on the market that can optimize Word, Excel and PowerPoint files created in any version of Office, from Office 97-2008 (of course, it also works with files created in other Office suites, such as OpenOffice, StarOffice and even Google Docs, as long as they are saved in a Microsoft Office format).
Secondly, we've improved the way that NXPowerLite integrates with Microsoft Outlook, making it even easier to optimize your email attachments.
The third change is that NXPowerLite is now available in Chinese, increasing the number of supported languages to six (with more languages to follow soon). NXPowerLite detects the language of your Windows installation and automatically displays in that language - so if you're using a Chinese version of Windows, you'll now see a Chinese version of NXPowerLite.
Geetesh: NXPowerLite has evolved from an optimization program for PowerPoint to an optimization program for Microsoft Office files – tell us a little more about this evolution.
Tommy: NXPowerLite was originally launched back in 2001 as a program to make PowerPoint files smaller. PowerPoint files could (and still can) get incredibly large, making them difficult to store and share. NXPowerLite solved this problem, but customers frequently told us that they also had file-size problems with Word and Excel. You'd be amazed at what some people try to do with large graphics in Excel! So last year we added support for Word and Excel files to NXPowerLite. But we haven't forgotten our core PowerPoint audience -- we've got some cool new features for PowerPoint users coming later this year!
NXPowerLite has evolved in other ways too, NXPowerLite 3.5 is also available as a Server Edition, enabling organizations to automatically optimize all the Office files on their servers, freeing up large amounts of existing server space and, in turn, contributing to a greener storage strategy.
Categories: add-in, interviews, powerpoint, powerpoint_2007Labels: add-in, interviews, powerpoint, powerpoint_2007
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Wednesday, January 16, 2008
posted by Geetesh
8:51 PM
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Tommy Powell of Neuxpower says that NXPowerLite version 3.5 has just been released.
NXPowerLite 3.5 adds support for Microsoft's Open XML (Office 2007) file formats and offers improved Outlook integration. It is also now available in Chinese. In addition, NXPowerLite 3.5 is available as a free upgrade to existing NXPowerLite 3 users.
Download a free trial version of NXPowerLite here...
For those who are not aware, NXPowerLite is a file optimization program for Microsoft Office file formats.
Categories: add-in, powerpointLabels: add-in, powerpoint
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posted by Geetesh
11:57 AM
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If you create your share of PowerPoint presentations, you know that you end up doing repetitive tasks all the time -- for the most common commands such as aligning, distributing, grouping, or resizing objects, you have to access the menus and toolbars hundreds of times.
PowerPoint ShortcutTools 2.0, the product I am reviewing is a PowerPoint add-in which allows users to set defined keyboard shortcuts for specific PowerPoint commands.
Read the review here...
Categories: add-in, powerpointLabels: add-in, powerpoint
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Tuesday, January 08, 2008
posted by Geetesh
4:42 PM
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The new versions of PowerPoint seem to have everything apart from the kitchen sink -- but yet, it's amazing too see vendors create small add-ins that provide an impressive capability that PowerPoint lacks. Opazity is one such add-in that creates opaque effects inside PowerPoint -- and if you are wondering what's so great about an opaque effect in PowerPoint, then read on...
Categories: add-in, powerpointLabels: add-in, powerpoint
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Monday, December 10, 2007
posted by Geetesh
1:58 PM
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 Henk de Groot (pictured to the left) has been very involved in display and presentation technology. In the last 17 years, he has held various management positions at Tektronix in Europe and the USA; he led the European operation of InFocus projectors right from its startup for 9 years. He is owner of Intelligent Lectern Systems BV and Sho-Q BV where he developed a new presentations systems solutions that creates a product category and new levels of productivity in presenting and teaching.
Geetesh: Tell us more about your role and Sho-Q.
Henk: As CEO of Sho-Q I am very involved is all aspects of the company which fundamentally falls into 2 separate categories- The development of the products and working with end users on making sure that the product has the right features and that these features can be developed into current and future versions of the products. It is the most fun I have had in years -- truly making a difference and enhancing the presentation experience.
Geetesh: What things does Sho-Q do well.
Henk: We are all about enabling the presenter. PowerPoint does a great job at developing presentations. However it does not enable the presenter or presenters to deliver a seamless presentation -- especially in a multi-presentation environment. That is where Sho-Q comes in.
The software has a load of features -- on both the organization and the delivery side.
Figure 1: Show all Slides
Seamless transitions between presenters and presentations, the ability to set up Intermezzo screens so attendees don't have to watch the whole setup process, users' ability to walk up to a presentation device and effortlessly using a USB Flash device run a presentation and when finished walk away with the security of knowing that their presentation is not on the machine they just used are just some of the features.
Figure 2: Presenter View
Figure 3: Selector Screen View
Additionally users can time their presentation, see their notes , navigate their presentation -- all though a very intuitive screen that runs on a touch display. This is the first PowerPoint enabled software application specifically written for touch displays.
So we are both a software and hardware company -- we develop a complete line of touch screen enabled lecterns -- again enabling the presenter. That is what we are all about.
Categories: add-in, interviews, powerpointLabels: add-in, interviews, powerpoint
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Wednesday, November 21, 2007
posted by Geetesh
12:58 PM
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 George McCaskill (pictured to the right) was a founding investor in Perspector and currently enjoys the role of Chief Technology Officer. George is responsible for product strategy and development. He earned his startup stripes by joining QSS in 1993 where he was one of two developers building the market leading requirements management tool DOORS.
Geetesh: Tell us more about the new features in Perspector 4.0.
George: The major new feature in Perspector 4.0 are 3D lists. You can convert from the bullet lists in your existing PowerPoint presentation into 3D list images, or you can start from scratch with our library of list images and fully featured 3D list editor. This presents PowerPoint users with a first easy step in the journey of breaking free from bullet point paralysis towards acquiring a much more visual style.
Perspector 4.0 now uses the presentation color scheme to give your images colors that match the rest of your presentation. This is a real time-saver compared with earlier versions of Perspector.
Professional Edition users can now add their own Perspector images to the Library so that they can save their 3D work for reuse in future presentations.
More information on Perspector 4.0 is available here...
Geetesh: Can you share some case studies on the use of Perspector.
George: Many Perspector customers are consultants and other communicators working with commercially sensitive information, so their presentations often cannot be shared with a wider audience, much as we would love to work with them on case studies. The other thing we have noticed from conversations with customers is that they like to keep Perspector as their 'secret weapon' that gives their presentations a distinctive edge when compared with their competitors' (or even other colleagues'!).
Our website has some example presentations which have come from the Perspector community. Community resources and case studies are areas we are actively seeking to improve, so if any Perspector users are reading this - please consider sharing your work with us if that is possible!
Categories: add-in, interviews, perspector, powerpointLabels: add-in, interviews, perspector, powerpoint
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Saturday, November 17, 2007
posted by Geetesh
11:53 AM
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Presentations with pizzazz require a lot more than slides with text content. To make the slides look relevant, interesting, and coordinated is almost as important as the content these days -- but probably something that's even more important is that your presentations need to look different and stand out in the crowd. The addition of visual content and rich media can help, and PowerPlugs: Ultimate Combo 2007, the product I am reviewing is a one stop solution to resolving that problem.
Read the review here...
Categories: add-in, crystalgraphics, powerpointLabels: add-in, crystalgraphics, powerpoint
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Friday, November 16, 2007
posted by Geetesh
2:48 PM
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Visual Exemplars announced the release of Perspector 4.0, a major new version of their 3D add-in for PowerPoint.
Look here to view all the new features in Perspector 4.0...
Categories: add-in, perspectorLabels: add-in, perspector
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Sunday, October 21, 2007
posted by Geetesh
11:32 AM
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 Steve Hards (pictured to the right) plays with PowerPoint all the time, and creates add-ins. His newest project is Opazity, about which he discusses in this conversation. Steve is also involved with Perspector, a 3D add-in for PowerPoint.
Geetesh: Tell us more about Opazity, and how it can help PowerPoint users hold the attention of the audience.
Steve: Thanks for the opportunity to expand on this. I only hinted at these things on the Opazity website. There are a couple of aspects to the way I see it helping to hold audiences’ attention.
First, and rather superficially, you can use Opazity to create some interesting effects. These range from shapes with mysterious, soft fills, as in the second demonstration video on the website, to a sense of depth in the visuals where you can make the foreground stand out because the background is ‘out of focus’.
It irritated me for years that PowerPoint is so ‘hard edge’ everywhere. My first attempt to produce these effects started when I was taking photos to use in presentations. I used to try and take pairs of them, one sharp, and one out of focus. That was a bit hit-and-miss, but then I realised that I could take any photo and create a blur on it using facilities in photo-manipulation software. That was better, but going backwards and forwards between the programs until I got the effects I wanted was very time consuming. Also, you couldn’t do it with shapes and text generated in PowerPoint unless you converted them to a picture first. It was all very tedious and frustrating, so I eventually came to the idea of getting an add-in made.
So a more subtle approach to visual effects is one thing that Opazity has going for it and, once you start noticing it on TV and in movies, you see the effect in use everywhere, particularly in transitions.
This is where the second of my points about audience attention comes in. Curiosity is a very fundamental human instinct and we are particularly curious about, and therefore pay attention to, things which we believe are being hidden from us. It’s my personal theory that, of our ancient ancestors, only those who were intensely curious survived to breed, so this trait is probably ‘hardwired’ into us. We can imagine them around the fire at the entrance to a cave, peering into the shadows... and you can see it in us from childhood — parents universally play ‘peek-a-boo’ with a baby, for example. Also, revealing the hidden is always used to great effect in story telling, in literature, in theatre and other entertainment (and a presentation is a performance, after all). I hesitate to mention striptease, but that is the ultimate attention-getter, at least for most men!
So, to bring it back to PowerPoint, without Opazity, I think it is actually quite hard to arrange things visually so that people in the audience are attending to the screen before something is shown to them. Images are either there or they are not. Using fades and other animations means that it is only fractions of a second before it is obvious what they are.
Geetesh: Can you share some usability scenarios for Opazity?
Steve: There are some obvious ones, but I’m hoping – and expecting – Opazity users to discover others!
The first (although it wasn’t obvious to me until someone pointed it out) is that Opazity can be used to construct visual quizzes very easily. You have a picture, such as a familiar object or a famous person, overlay it with a blurred image and ask a question. People will search for clues in the blurred image, which you remove to reveal the clear image underneath when they have answered. You can arrange two blurred images, with different degrees of blur if you want to be able to give them a clue after an incorrect answer. I can see uses for this in certain kinds of teaching, especially with young children or in language teaching, but other people can use quizzes to good effect. Some presenters might want to have a fun quiz up their sleeves to show if they have to wait for more audience members to arrive before starting their serious presentation. The point is that with Opazity it is so easy to set up a quiz like this, whereas with anything else it is too time consuming to be worth it.
Then I think it will be used in situations where someone’s identity has to be protected. Possibly in courtrooms, but more likely in medical presentations where patients’ faces need to be obscured for confidentiality reasons.
I am hoping too that artistically inclined presentation makers will use it to make interesting effects, and if any Indezine readers do that, I’d love to see some!
Finally for now, I’ll point out a use which is particular to Perspector 3D add-in users. Perspector creates fantastic looking lists as an alternative to PowerPoint’s bullets but it is not possible to animate the list items to bring them in one after the other on command. The current workaround involves creating a series of images with different list items added, and then aligning and animating those. With Opazity, it is much quicker and easier to overlay the list items with their blurred images and to remove those items one-by-one. That way, the audience can see something is still to come, but can not read ahead – which brings us back to the point about increasing attention because of the power of curiosity.
Geetesh: You mentioned Perspector, which you are also involved with. Why didn’t you produce Opazity under that brand?
Steve: Yes, I’m still the Sales and Operations Director for Visual Exemplars, which produces Perspector. To be brief, when I saw that PowerPoint 2007 did not have the effect you produce with Opazity, I wanted to get on and produce the add-in. However, the rest of the Perspector team were totally focused on some new Perspector developments and so I branched out on this one. And, no, before you ask, I can’t tell you about those new developments now, but you will not have long to wait!
Categories: add-in, interviews, powerpointLabels: add-in, interviews, powerpoint
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Tuesday, October 16, 2007
posted by Geetesh
1:17 PM
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Opazity is a new PowerPoint add-in that provides presenters and presentation designers the ability to create ‘opaque glass shapes’ without leaving PowerPoint. This effect can help hold and maintain a presentation audience’s attention by obscuring and hinting at something to be revealed.
Once Opazity is added into PowerPoint, the presenter first develops the slide and then, where the opaque glass effect is required, overlays the area with a standard or hand-drawn PowerPoint shape. With a few clicks that shape is converted into a transparent but blurred image of whatever is underneath. The presenter then applies a PowerPoint animation to the shape to reveal the image.
Opazity is compatible with PowerPoint 2007 and some earlier versions.
More info at the Opazity site...
Note: This is the same add-in that Indezine readers voted to name -- look here...
Categories: add-in, powerpointLabels: add-in, powerpoint
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Monday, October 01, 2007
posted by Geetesh
1:35 PM
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It's hard to believe now, but there used to be a time when PowerPoint to Flash converters were so expensive, and few are far in between. Some of those products were in fact hosted on the servers of the program vendors, and you had to use your browser to upload and download content all the time.
Nowadays, this capability is available in products that range from free to a hundred dollars whereabouts. And these products work on your desktop, not on some remote server.
FlashPoint is one such application -- and in this review I am going to see how the application performs using our new PowerPoint to Flash benchmark presentation.
Read the review here...
Categories: add-in, powerpoint, powerpoint_flashLabels: add-in, powerpoint, powerpoint_flash
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Saturday, September 22, 2007
posted by Geetesh
10:29 AM
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Steve Hards has created a new PowerPoint add-in that needs a name! The add-in creates an ‘opaque glass’ effect by converting the properties of a PowerPoint shape to become a transparent blur. You can then apply animations, etc., to produce all sorts of effects, very much in keeping with the trend to picture-oriented slides.
This can be probably better shown than explained -- so take a look at a small demo movie that Steve has posted on his site. When you get there, you will be able to ‘vote’ for a name and sign up for a great discount on the add-in’s launch price.
Help him choose a name, and help yourself to a discount, but be quick, the web page will only be available until Sunday, 30th November only. Head here...
Categories: add-in, powerpointLabels: add-in, powerpoint
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Tuesday, September 04, 2007
posted by Geetesh
2:06 PM
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Joel Harband heads Tuval Software Industries, based in Israel. Their best known product is Speech-Over Studio, a PowerPoint add-in that enables PowerPoint slides to incorporate narrations using automated voices.
Geetesh: Tell us more about this new update to Speech-Over.
Joel: Microphone recording and prerecorded files can now be used in addition to text-to-speech (TTS) voices to add narration to PowerPoint presentations -- substantially broadening the product’s applications. Also, you can now add narration clips to slides without attaching them to objects -– good for general topics like introduction and summary.
Speaking about recording, many people ask us: PowerPoint can already add voice recordings to presentations with the Record Narration function, why would I need Speech-Over? The answer is that Record Narration lets you add a voice track to a slide, and that’s fine for static slides. However, when objects on the slides are animated, you want to be able to easily synchronize the voices with the animations to achieve an effective multi-media, movie-like presentation. Speech-Over provides the solution: it delivers a voice track that is perfectly synchronized with the animations. Using a unique technology that adds voice clips directly to animated objects, it synchs voice media effects with the objects’ animation effects. And it’s easy to use: Speech-Over works in PowerPoint design mode and integrates with PowerPoint functions. Users can preview the results immediately in slide show mode. Its voice editing commands change the voice track without re-recording.
In another recent development, designers that want to add voices to PowerPoint-based Flash presentations are finding it easier to add voices to the presentations with Speech-Over before converting them to Flash. The voice track is automatically converted by the PPT2Flash conversion tools.
Speech-Over includes the basic Microsoft TTS voices free, and is now available in the Speech-Over Premium Voice Package, which includes the NeoSpeech premium voices Paul and Kate.
Geetesh: Can you share some case studies of people using Speech-Over.
Joel: Here are three case studies, each showing a different application of Speech-Over.
- On-Line University Courses -- Charles Nippert, an engineering professor at Widener University in Pennsylvania, uses Speech-Over to provide on-line demonstrations for his students quickly and economically. Professor Nippert explained that he posts the PowerPoint presentations on his site without converting them to Flash since his students can download them quickly with their fast connections.
- High School Special Education -- Bjarne Lund Henneberg, a high school educator at the Emmerske Efterskole in Tonder, Denmark, pioneered using Speech-Over to add voices (in Danish) to his driving theory course for young people with reading difficulties. The PowerPoint presentation displays the course text on the screen and as the students try to read the text, they hear a voice speaking it aloud, which greatly helps them to understand. Bjarne’s course kills two birds with one stone: the students pass the driving test - and learn how to read in the process.
- Industrial Training -- Daniel Moreno, complex maintenance trainer at Tyson Fresh Meats in Holcomb, Kansas uses the software with text-to-speech voices to train employees. The employees view the audio-visual presentations he creates and it’s easy for him to keep presentations up to date by just editing text.
Categories: add-in, interviews, powerpoint, soundsLabels: add-in, interviews, powerpoint, sounds
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Tuesday, August 07, 2007
posted by Geetesh
11:48 AM
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FlashSpring Pro is a PowerPoint add-in which allows you to converts your PowerPoint presentations into Flash SWF movies with all the slide transitions, custom animations, audio and video clips, and inserted Flash SWF files intact.
Read the review here...
Categories: add-in, online_presentations, powerpoint, powerpoint_flashLabels: add-in, online_presentations, powerpoint, powerpoint_flash
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Saturday, August 04, 2007
posted by Geetesh
3:07 PM
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 Tim Goggin is the VP of Marketing & Sales for PocketMac. He has an extensive background in technology marketing and in direct marketing. In this conversation, Tim discusses PocketMac Remote, an application that allows the use of the Apple Remote to control PowerPoint and Keynote presentations on the Mac.
Geetesh: Tell us more about PocketMac.net, and your products including PocketMac Remote.
Tim: In 2001, we started the PocketMac product line with the introduction of our first product, PocketMac Pro, almost 2 years in development, which was the first-ever tool to synchronize the Macintosh and Windows Mobile Pocket PCs. We then shortly added support for Windows Mobile Smartphones
From there, we've expanded into a variety of different areas, including our flagship PocketMac for BlackBerry, which connects Mac users and their BlackBerry handhelds; other tools work with the PSP, iPods and many more.
In 2004, Research In Motion, the creators of the BlackBerry handheld, licensed PocketMac for BlackBerry and they have continued to distribute it since that time.
Our recent releases include PocketMac Remote which expands the capabilities of the Apple Remote to control Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.
We're always working to expand what computer users can do both in the Mac and Windows arena and PocketMac Remote fits nicely into this area.
Geetesh: Since most Macs can now boot into Windows, do you have any plans to make a Windows version of the product that will work with the Apple Remote?
Tim: At this time, we don't have plans but that's a great idea. I'll definitely ask our engineers to look into this. The Macs running Windows marketing is definitely one we take seriously.
Categories: add-in, keynote, office_mac, powerpointLabels: add-in, keynote, office_mac, powerpoint
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Saturday, July 28, 2007
posted by Geetesh
2:57 PM
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authorPOINT Lite, a free PowerPoint to Flash Converter has been released by authorGEN, a Raleigh, NC based company that creates e-learning and presentation software. This presentation creation tool is a small download, and works on your desktop to create compact Flash files from your PowerPoints. The tool can also perform batch conversion of multiple .PPS and .PPT files.
authorPOINT Lite retains most PowerPoint effects including animations and sounds without any loss in presentation quality in the Flash (.SWF) output. Flash presentations have a number of advantages over PowerPoint format as Flash files are lighter, more secure, multiple browser and operating system compatible.
More on the authorGEN site...
Categories: add-in, online_presentations, powerpoint, powerpoint_flash | | |
