PowerPoint Blog
Labels: add-in, powerpoint
Out of the box, Microsoft builds little or no integration or relationships within PowerPoint to other Microsoft Office applications. To provide a quick example, PowerPoint users have nothing close to the mail merge options in Word or Outlook that can access data from an Excel or database source. And that's sort of sad, since PowerPoint is one application that can act as a glue to all sorts of content -- from text to pictures, and movies to charts! Our review product, PPT Merge does try to cover this vacuum -- does it succeed?
Read more to find out...
Categories: add-in, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, microsoft_office, nxpowerlite, powerpoint
NXPowerLite 4 is the new version of a well known file optimizing product that reduces the size of Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations and JPEG images. The files remain in their original format, with almost no loss of quality. Also NXPowerLite works integrated within Lotus Notes, Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express or Windows Mail. In this case, NXPowerLite will automatically optimize email attachments as they are sent and the file recipients don't need NXPowerLite to open or edit the attachments.
Read the review here...
Categories: add-in, microsoft_office, nxpowerlite, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, online_presentations, powerpoint, powerpoint_flash
Adobe Presenter 7 is a PowerPoint add-in that allows you to create high-impact Adobe Flash presentations and eLearning courses from PowerPoint. In addition, you can also create high fidelity PDFs using this add-in. You can add narration, edit audio, add multimedia capture video, animations, interactivity, quizzes, surveys, and software simulations to eLearning courses created using Adobe Presenter -- all inside PowerPoint. Output can be customized as presentations published to Flash, PDF or Adobe Connect Server.
Read the Indezine review here...
Categories: add-in, online_presentations, powerpoint, powerpoint_flash
Labels: add-in, crystalgraphics, powerpoint
Imagine a presentation with moving rather than static backgrounds. Will it add even more value? It all depends on many factors -- whether the movement is subtle enough, or just a haphazard jumble of disparate elements and colors. What you use is certainly a decision left to you, but in this review we are going to show you how these moving backgrounds can be added to PowerPoint presentations with a third party add-in called PowerPlugs: Video Backgrounds from CrystalGraphics.
Read the review here...
Categories: add-in, crystalgraphics, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, powerpoint, slide_management 
Liber Rodríguez of Novatrox sent me this awesome bit of info that should make universities and non-profit educational institutions very happy indeed. They have decided to give away their amazing slide cataloging and management program for free to them for installation on institutional servers.
"Being able to search the entire University knowledge base of presentations to find individual slides, will save scientists and researchers huge amounts of time", says Jonas Fernholm, CEO at Novatrox AB.
Free non-profit educational licenses can be obtained from Novatrox AB. Educational institutions may use the info@slideexecutive.com mail address to initiate contact.
About Slide Executive Professional
Slide Executive Professional enables organizations to store their presentation content in a single slide library, making it available to business professionals and decision-makers throughout the enterprise and through any web browser, from anywhere in the world. Slide Executive provides simple, one-click presentation browsing, advanced slide search functionality, easy assembly of new presentations with approved content, virtual presentations automatically updating to the latest version of each slide and advanced user management functions including audit trail.
For organizations with many presentations, Slide Executive Professional will save lots of time and help improve the quality of their presentations. Slide Executive can also be used as a digital asset management system for the small company since it handles all kinds of documents including Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, PDF, image files, movies and more.
Categories: add-in, powerpoint, slide_management
Labels: add-in, interviews, powerpoint 
James Ontra, co-founder of PPTshare, has been developing presentation management solutions for over thirteen years. His company’s software products range from the high-end Ontra Presentation Management solution known for its ability to play rich animations and video, to applications that enhance and help manage PowerPoint. In this conversation, James discusses the new PPTshuffle product.
Geetesh: Tell us about PPTshuffle, and what does it do?
James: Find the slide you need, when you need it. PPTshuffle is a browser-based PowerPoint slide library that lets you preview slides and then drag & drop them into another presentation. It's a presentation management solution that helps companies with thousands of PowerPoint presentations manage and organize all of that content, so individuals can find the slide they need, quickly and easily. Companies can use it on their Intranet behind a firewall, or use it online as an on-demand service.
Features include:
Geetesh: Who is the potential user of PPTshuffle, and what benefits will a user achieve from this product?
James: PPTshuffle is made for organizations that have hundreds, even thousands, of PowerPoint files that no one can seem to find.
It works on two levels.
First for individual users, it is a library where a user can preview individual slides and then drag and drop them into a new presentation. They can do a key word search for individual slides based on file name, title, speaker notes and content, preview the slide, and then decide whether or not to drag & drop into a new presentation. Or they can click on a PowerPoint file and quickly preview all of the slides within that file. No more hunting and pecking through their e-mail, networks and hard drive looking for the great pie chart or latest sales figures. It saves hours of time preparing presentations.
Second for managers and administrators, PPTshuffle serves as a repository of approved presentations and manages access through user groups. Therefore, it ensures that everyone in the organization has the most up-to-date, branded and compliant presentations.
Categories: add-in, interviews, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, officefx, powerpoint
Have you ever wondered how you might transform your presentations into the kind of integrated media displays you see on television during high profile shows and events? Examples would include the information graphics that appear during network nightly news broadcasts or major sporting events. In those displays backgrounds move subtly, transitions incorporate key branding and design elements, and video is included in visually interesting ways? Our review product, OfficeFX® Presenter version 3.5 offers these capabilities and does so without changing the way your file looks or behaves in PowerPoint.
Read the review here...
Categories: add-in, officefx, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, interviews, powerpoint
Damian McDonald is the founder of Visual Newmedia which has over 15 years’ experience in developing communication solutions for a number of leading global brands. Damian heads the team in the development and implementation methodologies of Visual’s presentation management solution - Visual Presenter.
Geetesh: Can you tell us more about the problems being faced by folks who create and deliver presentations?
Damian: We’ve been developing presentations for corporate clients since the mid-nineties and have found that the issues businesses face in the area of presenting to their own clients have remained pretty consistent throughout that time.
Obviously the most-widely used presentation application is Microsoft PowerPoint, which is simple enough that most presenters can construct a basic piece of work within it. The problem lies in a more macro sense: in particular the management – and control – within the business of the various presentations that have been created.
From a business point of view, there tends to be no brand consistency across this multitude of presentations, both visually and within the content itself. This is an issue even for smaller organisations. With individuals ‘going it alone’ to create presentation collateral, the brand messages are mixed, confused, personalised and worse, often obsolete. This isn’t necessarily the fault of the end user -- another issue we find time and again is that those presenting cannot find the information within the company’s network drives to even update what they are going to present. This is especially true for those working remotely who, ironically, tend to be in the kinds of roles that have to deliver most of the company presentations, and so they simply create and recreate ‘individualised’ presentations, and the information being delivered becomes more and more off-brand, off-message, and out of date.
We also find that even if businesses want to keep their front line personnel updated with the latest information for client presentations, they often have no mechanism with which to do this. Or you’ll find they can get information to one business channel, but not others, so you still have a frighteningly inconsistent brand message being communicated to clients and prospective clients. So it becomes a vicious cycle, in a sense. These are all issues that we created Visual Presenter to address.
Something else we worked on while developing Visual Presenter was addressing the issues in PowerPoint when it comes to linking associated media files. Clients no longer accept sitting through ‘Death by PowerPoint’ bullet point after bullet point. People expect multimedia, and any effective presentation will include this.
Unfortunately, as multimedia technology has evolved with PowerPoint, media formats such as video, audio, and Flash struggle to maintain valid media links. For example, if you import a video over the network and then disconnect from the network, when it then comes to presenting, PowerPoint can’t play the video as it tries unsuccessfully to search for the file on the ‘non-existent’ network location. Very frustrating for the presenter, and very unprofessional.
And how do you merge interactive custom shows? Again we’ve frequently found that those presenters who do begin to get a bit smarter with the advanced functionality of PowerPoint are hampered by the fact that currently there is no way to merge interactive presentations without losing this functionality and having to recreate it. Again, very restrictive, and very frustrating.
The end result, invariably, is that presenters give up trying to create dynamic presentations, they find they can’t customise material to suit a particular audience, they can’t access new information and so they go out to the market with tired, inaccurate, unprofessional-looking material, despite the best of intentions. And the organisation suffers accordingly.
Geetesh: How does your Visual Presenter product help them in the problem scenarios you explained?
Damian: Working for such a long period of time in this area, and with a large range of businesses has enabled us to address all these problem scenarios effectively. We also continue to develop Visual Presenter to address issues that we anticipate could affect businesses in the future. At a one-on-one level, we work with the organisations to use this knowledge to address their specific needs. Thankfully not every business is affected by every problem we were talking about in the first question!
Specifically, where we help is addressing the needs at both ends of the problem, if you like: those of the business itself, and those presenting.
With Visual Presenter, users can create presentations in minutes that automatically tailor the content and design to their audience. Content that is relevant to a user is automatically updated from a centralised server. This is one of the key pieces of functionality of Visual Presenter: it operates as a Master Library of presentations: easy to access, easy to update, easy to control.
We’ve also designed Visual Presenter to allow users to create presentations remotely while flying or in between appointments without internet or network access. Everything they need to create presentations is cached locally.
From the viewpoint of the organisation, if messaging changes, or if there’s an entire brand ‘look and feel’ change out, it is simply a case of applying a new PowerPoint template to the library of presentations. Visual Presenter automatically reformats the required content to the correct design format. For larger organisations, or those that manage multiple brands, Visual Presenter also enables them to have information dynamically represented with different template designs across the library.
When any changes are published to the main library – and it’s a very simple process to make alterations to the content – online users are automatically notified that updates are available. Through a “one click” update process all required content for the user is updated to enable them to create presentations on or off the network.
We did a lot of work around the media file issue, and the effectiveness of our solution is that it automatically tracks media content supported by PowerPoint. If media is found that is not stored locally, Visual Presenter will automatically copy down the media and make sure it is tracked with the presentation, the key point being that this ensures that media always plays effectively during a presentation whether you are on or off the network.
A concern often raised with us is the inability companies have to tailor presentations to suit their audience. This is where Visual Presenter, as an Agenda Based Presentation Management Solution is streets ahead of Slide Management Solutions. When a presentation is created it automatically selects the appropriate information and structure for a given audience. This allows companies to better manage how information is communicated to different target audiences. Further to that, if a presenter wants to tweak the content while they present, Visual Presenter has a unique agenda-based interface that allows additional information to be made available while presenting, giving the presenter a new level of control.
And to complete the process, Visual Presenter makes it simple for companies to get accurate presentation feedback. They can define what they would like to report on, e.g. presentation results, content feedback, next action and date, market feedback etc. As with the other features of Visual Presenter, this works to ensure a company is delivering the best presentations possible to an ever-demanding market.
Categories: add-in, interviews, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, powerpoint
In the last few years, there have been a spate of products that offer compression and optimization for PowerPoint presentation file formats. Many of these do an awesome job, making PowerPoint files more lean and compact, and easier to share. Now the next generation of these products does the same compression and optimization for many more file formats including the ones introduced in Microsoft Office 2007. Our review product, FILEminimizer Office is one of them.
Read the Indezine review...
Categories: add-in, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, interviews, officefx, powerpoint
Don Brittain is CEO and a founder of Instant Effects, a California company that develops software to visually enhance presentations, communications, and collaboration. In this conversation, Don discusses the new v3.5 release of Instant Effects Presenter.
Geetesh: What’s different in this release of Presenter v3.5, and what are “brandable” themes?
Don: The Presenter product line is known for producing very fluid presentations from content authored in PowerPoint. In addition to the large number of included professional looks, 3D artists have always been able to add fully-branded backgrounds, transitions, and logo treatments to Presenter by using our free theme authoring tools.
Presenter v3.5 takes this ability to create customized motion backgrounds and transitions to a whole new level. With the new “brandable” looks introduced with this release, 2D user-supplied images are seamlessly integrated with our brandable themes in such a way that everyone can produce custom-branded broadcast quality results.
This feature raises the bar for visual branding by allowing people to easily produce customized results that are not possible with any other presentation package available today. And you should see the effect on potential clients and customers when they see their own logos and brands appearing in your presentation in TV-like fashion!
Moreover, with a single button press, the custom-branded looks can be captured, in still form, as PowerPoint backgrounds, so that branding remains consistent across live motion presentations, traditional PowerPoint presentations, audience handouts, and user-produced digital movies made with Presenter.
With Presenter v3.5, we’ve also enhanced the user interface for dual monitor shows, improved support for HD video, and enhanced playback performance for all ranges of hardware. Users can often pay for the Presenter software license with just the savings that come from reduced video equipment rental and setup charges at their first video-rich show!
Geetesh: How well does Presenter v3.5 work with PowerPoint 2007 files.
Don: We put a lot of work into Presenter v3.5 to provide tighter integration with PowerPoint 2007. Due to bugs and missing features in Microsoft’s programming interface for PowerPoint 2007, some features in the previous release of Presenter were only available to people running PowerPoint 2002 or PowerPoint 2003.
Presenter v3.5 uses alternative approaches to get around many of the limitations present in the PowerPoint 2007 programming support. In particular, support for bitmapped text has been dramatically improved. This feature is critical for presentations that contain text that reads right-to-left, and for improving text clarity on computers with minimal 3D graphics support (e.g. integrated Intel graphics).
As with earlier releases of PowerPoint, we now support the use of external sound files and event triggering in PowerPoint 2007. And all new features and benefits of v3.5 also work well with PowerPoint 2007.
Geetesh: Do you provide any samples that can be downloaded and viewed?
Don: Yes. We encourage people to try our software with no need to buy anything. You can download a free copy of Presenter from this link. This free version runs with a "watermark" on the images that is removed if you purchase a license. There is no time limit to the trial, so you can test out various features of Presenter as your schedule permits.
We also have videos throughout our web site that show our software in action, and, of course, we would be very happy to discuss how Presenter can help you improve your presentation effectiveness. Feel free to contact us via the links or numbers on the contact page of our web site.
Categories: add-in, interviews, officefx, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, elearning, online_presentations, powerpoint
The amount of content available in the form of PowerPoint slides is amazing -- almost every computer literate person has a bank of slides, be it at their company, home, school, university, or elsewhere. Most of this content won't work too well when saved as a document -- but since slides typically have (or should have) small portions of large sized text with contrasting backgrounds and visuals, they end up becoming perfect as content from PDAs and Smartphones.
Products like ToolBook Instructor do a whole lot more than just such conversion, but in this review, we will focus on the PowerPoint capabilities of Toolbook Instructor, which will help you to convert your PowerPoint files into online, interactive learning course content with ToolBook's rapid eLearning content creation capabilities.
Read the review here...
Categories: add-in, elearning, online_presentations, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, narration, powerpoint, sounds
Tuval Software announced the new 3.0 release of SpeechOver Plus, a joint offering of Tuval and Acapela Group, producers of premium text-to-speech (TTS) voices.
Here's a list of the updates, provided by Joel Harband of Tuval Software:
Bundled Premium TTS Voices: In addition to SpeechOver, a software for generating narration in PowerPoint presentations with text-to-speech voices -- customers receive a high-quality, natural sounding text-to-speech voice that is automatically installed for immediate use with SpeechOver. This is a marked improvement over the regular version of SpeechOver, which comes only with the basic quality text-to-speech voices provided free by Microsoft.
Low Cost Commercial License: The Acapela TTS voices in Speech-Over Plus come with a commercial license that allows you to produce narrated presentations for internal business requirements such as corporate education and training, e-learning, and marketing presentations, -- and you can put the material on an internal corporate network. For the price, this is an excellent value and can help businesses save costs in these difficult economic times.
Additional Voices and Languages: Acapela Group produces 50 premium TTS voices in 25 languages. Right now, US English and Danish versions of SpeechOver Plus are available and different language versions are being added all the time. A basic language version includes one TTS voice in that language (for example, the US English version includes Heather) and TTS voices in the same language or in different languages can be purchased and added to the basic version. In fact, any vendor voice can be added as long as it is SAPI-compatible.
More info and free trials can be found on the SpeechOver site...
Categories: add-in, narration, powerpoint, sounds
Labels: add-in, delivery, powerpoint
Ebba Åsly Fåhraeus (pictured to the left) is VP of Sales Markeing Forms at Anoto, a leader of digital pen & paper technology. Anoto was founded in 1999 and is the pioneering leader of digital pen & paper technology, based in Lund, Sweden. Anoto technology optimizes paper-based processes by rapidly and reliably converting handwritten information from business forms into digital documents.
In this discussion, Ebba discusses the use of Anoto technology for PowerPoint usage.
Geetesh: Tell us about the Anoto product line-up, and which of the Anoto products work best with PowerPoint.
Ebba: Anoto is the pioneering leader of digital pen & paper technology. Anoto technology optimizes paper-based processes by rapidly and reliably converting handwritten information from business forms into digital documents.
By far the most exciting product offered by Anoto is a PowerPoint® add-in called Anoto penPresenter. It utilizes the Anoto digital pen and Bluetooth® technology, enabling real-time collaboration during presentations. Users can make notes or sketch on their printed PowerPoint® slides using an Anoto Digital Pen and instantly see them appear on their computer, projector, monitor or flat screen LCD screen. The slide can then be saved, printed or e-mailed.
Geetesh: Can you share some scenarios in which PowerPoint users can benefit from the Anoto penPresenter?
Ebba: Anoto penPresenter allows users to have a more engaged audience in a meeting room environment and put focus on the meeting itself.
Scenarios in which users can benefit from include, having to use an electronic whiteboard and not being able to easily transport it from room to room or floor to floor. They aren’t as portable as penPresenter.
Have you ever needed to transcribe notes for data entry after a meeting? Or have you ever brainstormed an idea on a whiteboard only to have it erased before anyone “took notes”?
Anoto penPresenter allows you to make notes and sketches on your PowerPoint® slides with the Anoto Digital Pen and see the results instantly on the meeting room screen. Later on, they can easily be saved, printed and emailed to the meeting room participants.
Most importantly, have you ever tried to do something to make your PowerPoint® slides more engaging? Anoto penPresenter enhances your slides in creative ways and you certainly won’t put people to sleep with them!
Categories: add-in, delivery, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, charting, excel, powerpoint
Andy Pope (pictured to the right) works in London, UK, developing in-house reporting systems. He uses VBA to automate Excel and PowerPoint. In his spare time, he frequents various Excel forums and maintains his own website on Excel charting. His contributions to the Excel community have resulted in him being awarded as Microsoft Excel MVP since 2004.
In this discussion, Andy discusses the Chart Pattern Fills add-in for Excel 2007.
Geetesh: Tell us more about your Chart Pattern Fills add-in for Excel 2007, and what motivated you to create this add-in.
Andy: I developed the add-in in response to posts by users who need the pattern fills feature that was depreciated in Excel 2007. Apparently pattern fills are heavily used by those in academia. I was aware that actually only the user interface for the feature had been removed so I went about reconstructing the Patterns dialog. I enjoyed the challenge of creating a dialog that would dynamically reflect the users color choices, rather than just using static images.
It’s a totally free add in and available on my site.
Geetesh: PowerPoint 2007 users also no longer have access to the pattern fills so will this add-in work for them too?
Andy: Unfortunately not directly within PowerPoint. The porting of the add-in to PowerPoint is not currently possible. This is due to limitations in PowerPoint’s VBA Object Model and how the add-ins function works compared to those in Excel. As and when/if Microsoft make appropriate changes I will attempt to make a PowerPoint version.
In the mean time for those wanting to use the add-in, you can create their chart in Excel, format it as required using the add-in and then insert the saved file as an Object within PowerPoint.
See Also: Pattern Fills Add-in: Conversation with John Wilson
Categories: add-in, charting, excel, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, interviews, powerpoint
John Wilson (pictured to the left) is a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP who creates some cool add-ins for PowerPoint. He participates in the PowerPoint newsgroups and runs the PPTAlchemy site. John is based out of UK, and his newest add-in brings back the pattern fills that were removed from PowerPoint 2007.
In this discussion, John discusses the Pattern Fills Add-in product.
Geetesh: Tell us more about your Pattern Fills add-in for PowerPoint 2007, and what motivated you to create this add-in.
John: While answering questions on the PowerPoint newsgroup I noticed a fair number of questions about how to use pattern fills in PowerPoint 2007. The most usual answer was to create a texture fill that mimicked the old pattern fills and for a while this was my solution also. However it isn’t totally satisfactory and even if you create the fills carefully the final product isn’t really the same.
When I noticed that pattern fills still existed in Word 2007, I posted a tutorial on how to use them to create proper pattern fills in PowerPoint 2007. Pretty soon, I was getting 4 to 5 emails a day mainly thanking -- so there is clearly a desire to use them!
In-house, we were using VBA to create the fills but VBA code is a little scary for many users, and we didn’t have the knowledge to at that time to create a ribbon tab or group in PowerPoint 2007 to make the code simple to use. When I read an article by Eric Patterson I realized that it would be easy to adapt his Excel Ribbon to PowerPoint and Pattern Fills was a reality!
It’s a totally free add in and available on our site.
Geetesh: Who are the folks who miss the Pattern Fills? And why are the Pattern Fills so special?
John: Mostly, they seem to be people who need to print diagrams and charts in black & white. The pattern fills make it much easier to identify parts of the diagram and usually print out much clearer than textures and gradients.
Everyone that writes in now wants to know how to get pattern fills in graphs in 2007! So far I don’t think this can be done as the object model doesn’t expose the new graphing engine. One answer is to switch back to the old MS Graph from earlier versions of PowerPoint temporarily. You can do this with a registry hack. Steve (Rindsberg) has a tutorial on his site here.
Categories: add-in, interviews, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, interviews, powerpoint
Vikas Joshi (pictured to the left) is regarded as a thought leader for pioneering e-learning and knowledge management. He is also known for his groundbreaking work in the online learning industry, product innovations, and offshore outsourcing models. Under his guidance and leadership, the Harbinger group has built innovative software products for the global marketplace.
In this discussion, Vikas discusses the new YawnBuster product.
Geetesh: Tell us how YawnBuster evolved -- and what is its raison d'etre?
Vikas: As presenters, we all know how difficult it is to keep boredom away in meetings and enliven them. We try various tricks to make the presentations more interactive. With this need in mind, we thought of YawnBuster. YawnBuster is useful for every person in the world who needs to make a presentation since it brings together PowerPoint and Flash, two most popular tools used in presentations and web development. With YawnBuster, a PowerPoint user can quickly and easily introduce Flash based group activities in the presentation, with no need for programming.
YawnBuster is the ideal tool for enhancing PowerPoint with group activities for the busy presenter. Its quick-to-learn and easy-to-use interface allows you to create lively interactive presentations without having to learn Flash ActionScript or the Flash timeline. It's a great way to add Flash to the PowerPoint presentations.
Geetesh: Can you share some usability scenarios for YawnBuster.
Vikas: Well, YawnBuster can be used in corporate training, education, sales presentations, business meetings, and many more such applications. YawnBuster allows the presenters to include various Group Activities such as audience polls, games, group exercises and competitions in your presentations. With these, the presenters can get their audience to think, enjoy, participate and identify key takeaways quickly and easily.
Categories: add-in, interviews, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, powerpoint, slide_management
Novatrox AB, a Sweden based company announced the release of their new version 2.3 product: Slide Executive Professional enables organizations to store their presentation content in a slide library, making it available to business professionals and decision-makers throughout the enterprise through any web browser, anywhere in the world. Slide Executive can also be used as a digital asset management system since it handles document formats other than PowerPoint, including Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, PDFs, graphic files, movies, etc.
More info can be found on the Slide Executive site...
Categories: add-in, powerpoint, slide_management
Labels: add-in, powerpoint_flash
With the plethora of options available for PowerPoint to Flash conversion, it's no longer an easy decision to decide upon one particular product. In the midst of this scenario, we were invited to review another product of this genre -- this one is called PowerFlashPoint -- let's see how it fares.
Read the review here...
Categories: add-in, powerpoint_flash
Labels: add-in, powerpoint
Creating a quiz in PowerPoint normally entails one of two approaches: the first is to learn VBA and code a quiz with responses, and the second one is to keep things simple, and create a basic quiz. Also some users tend to use Flash based products like Quizmaker or YawnBuster for the quizzes, thus ending up with an embedded Flash quiz on their PowerPoint slides.
While all these approaches get the task done, a specialized product like Atrixware's PowerPoint Quizmaker can help create quizzes that look like they were created in PowerPoint without having to spend long hours creating them.
Read the review here...
Categories: add-in, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, animation, powerpoint
Motion path animations can illustrate a process, show how a piece of machinery works, or just work with poetic abandon! Much of the work involved with motion paths can be painstakingly slow and repetitive. Our review product lets you do these tasks in a click or two, and amazingly enough, this is a free product.
Read a review of Motion Path Tools...
Categories: add-in, animation, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, powerpoint
A number of applications plug-in to PowerPoint, and provide the ability to insert Flash based rich media objects on your slides -- in the form of interactions, training games, quizzes, and surveys. YawnBuster, the product being reviewed here adds group activities such as audience polls, games, group exercises and competitions -- and embeds these group activities as part of your PowerPoint file.
YawnBuster includes ready to use Flash templates, and the group activities can be easily customized without any technical knowledge.
Read the review here...
Categories: add-in, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, delivery, powerpoint
Austin Myers is a PowerPoint MVP (Most Valuable Professional) -- he is an expert in issues related to the use of multimedia in PowerPoint. Austin creates the PFCMedia and PFCPro add-ins for PowerPoint that have made life simple for many users -- he also maintains a detailed FAQ on multimedia issues within PowerPoint on his site. In this conversation, Austin discusses Calculate, a small free utility that he created for PowerPoint users who face a dilemma trying to figure out what their slide size should be to take up the entire screen.
Geetesh: How did Calculate evolve – and what is its purpose of existence?
Austin: As monitors, flat screens and projectors have changed from the NTSC standard 4:3 ratio for display, users needed a simple way to determine PowerPoint's slide size in order to fill the display completely without distorting their slides. Calculate is a small utility where the user simply provides the resolution (width and height) of their targeted screen in pixels and the utility will determine the correct slide size to meet the required screen ratio .
The user is presented with 3 different options for the slide size, all of which will produce the correct ratio for the targeted screen. I decided to provide 3 options as some users must also meet printing requirements. With Calculate all they need do is select one of the 3 options that best fits their printer.
Figure 1: The Calculate interface
Geetesh: What type of scenarios can benefit from Calculate?
Austin: Anyone that uses a standard (4:3 ratio) display to develop PowerPoint resolutions but must display the finished presentation on a display with a different ratio will benefit from Calculate. Laptop users that have a non-standard display resolution also can see a real benefit in determining the exact slide size for their display (no black bars along the sides or top & bottom of the screen).
I have many clients that prepare PowerPoint presentations on their PCs but must then display it in a conference room with large displays. This has been a real issue for them in the past as they were unable to use the entire display or their slides became badly distorted when "stretched" to fit the display. With Calculate all they need to know is the display's resolution and they can easily set up the correct slide size in advance and avoid the issue completely.
Categories: add-in, delivery, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, powerpoint_flash
iSpring Pro is a PowerPoint add-in that allows you to convert your PowerPoint presentations into Flash SWF movies with all the animations, slide transitions, audio and video clips, and inserted Flash SWF files intact. It works with all PowerPoint for Windows versions from 2000 to 2007.
iSpring Pro is from iSpring Solutions, Inc., a software development company based in Virginia, USA. You can learn more about of iSpring Pro from their site. Apart from iSpring Pro, they also provide a considerably adequate free version of iSpring -- this review however only explores the Pro version.
Read the full review here...
Categories: add-in, powerpoint_flash
Labels: add-in, interviews, nxpowerlite, powerpoint
Neuxpower creates NXPowerLite, a popular optimization program for Microsoft Office file formats including PowerPoint -- Andrew Molyneux leads Neuxpower's in-house team of developers -- and in this Indezine exclusive conversation, Andrew gives us detailed responses on the evolution of NXPowerLite, and more.
Geetesh: Tell us more about how NXPowerLite has evolved – all the new features you add, and the acceptance by users.
Andrew: The original idea for NXPowerLite came from a client for whom we had been doing some bespoke development work. He told us that he'd received a very large PowerPoint presentation which he needed to edit and pass on to several other people, but his organisation's outgoing email size limit meant that he couldn't send it out without first reducing the size considerably. He spent hours painstakingly copying the images into Photoshop, scaling them down and then inserting them back into the presentation. He asked us if this process could be automated, and the idea of NXPowerLite was born.
When we released Version 1 of NXPowerLite in late 2001, the response from users was overwhelmingly positive; they were astonished at the huge reduction in the size of their files, the speed with which it could be achieved, and the incredibly simplicity of NXPowerLite.
Over the next few years, we gradually improved NXPowerLite's performance, adding support for new versions of PowerPoint as they were released. The software was also translated into French and German at the request of our increasingly international customer base.
By 2005, we'd reached the limit of what we could accomplish by automating PowerPoint. Optimizing very large presentations could take a long time, and there was a limit to the size reduction that could be achieved using this method. Customers were also increasingly asking for a version of NXPowerLite that could run on servers, which wouldn't have been practical with the automation approach. To address these problems, we obtained documentation on the PowerPoint file format from Microsoft and completely rewrote NXPowerLite's optimization engine. The result was NXPowerLite Version 2, released in late 2005. This offered considerably better compression and was much faster than previous versions. Version 2 also saw the introduction of the Integrated Edition of NXPowerLite, which enabled the software to be easily launched from within PowerPoint itself, or by right-clicking on a PowerPoint file in Windows Explorer.
By the time NXPowerLite 2 was released we had a large and rapidly growing international user community, who gave us a constant supply of ideas for development. In a period of just over a year, in addition to improving the core optimization engine, we added several major features including integration with Microsoft Outlook, batch processing, Spanish and Japanese translations, and a Server Edition, allowing NXPowerLite technology to be integrated with our customers' server-based applications.
Customers had been telling us for some time that they would like to see NXPowerLite's optimization technology applied to other file formats. This led to the release of NXPowerLite Version 3 in early 2007. This added support for Microsoft Word and Excel files. We also included Chinese and Italian translations and began packaging NXPowerLite using Microsoft's Windows Installer (MSI) technology to improve manageability for our larger enterprise customers.
With the addition in version 3.5 of support for Microsoft's new XML-based Office 2007 formats, the number of supported file formats has grown from the original one (PowerPoint 97-2003) to six (PowerPoint, Word and Excel 97-2003 and PowerPoint, Word and Excel 2007). We've also devoted considerable resources to improving NXPowerLite's core optimization technology. Unique features of NXPowerLite's optimization engine, developed as a result of sample files sent to us by our customers, can result in files that are over 25 times smaller than any of our competitors can achieve. These features can be found in NXPowerLite 3.6, released earlier this month as a free update for NXPowerLite 3 users.
Geetesh: What’s your favorite NXPowerLite feature that you believe is not too well known or under-utilized?
Andrew: That's a tough question, because we've carefully designed NXPowerLite to make it as simple as possible to use all of its features.
One feature that will be increasingly important, however, is the ability to optimize files specifically for mobile devices. This is already important for mobile workers using the current generation of Smartphones and PDAs based on Symbian, Windows Mobile and other platforms, but will be even more valuable as the next generation of mobile devices evolves, such as the upcoming iPhone 3G.
Categories: add-in, interviews, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, nxpowerlite, powerpoint
Neuxpower announced the release of NXPowerLite 3.6, an update to their optimization program for Microsoft Office file formats.
Tommy Powell of Neuxpower says they've "made some big improvements to the optimization engine, resulting in a number of improvements. For example many more EMF and WMF images can now be optimized and we've improved the way image sizes are detected, achieving even better quality on some files, and better compression on many more".
Read my full review on NXPowerLite 3.6 here...
Categories: add-in, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, interviews, powerpoint
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, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, powerpoint, slide_management
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_management
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: 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: add-in, powerpoint, slide_management
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, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, powerpoint, slide_management
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, powerpoint
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_2007
Labels: add-in, interviews, powerpoint, powerpoint_2007
Labels: add-in, powerpoint
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, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, powerpoint
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, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, powerpoint
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, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, interviews, powerpoint
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, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, interviews, perspector, powerpoint
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, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, crystalgraphics, powerpoint
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, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, perspector
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, perspector
Labels: add-in, interviews, powerpoint
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, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, powerpoint
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, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, powerpoint, powerpoint_flash
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_flash
Labels: add-in, powerpoint
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, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, interviews, powerpoint, sounds 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.
Categories: add-in, interviews, powerpoint, sounds
Labels: add-in, online_presentations, powerpoint, powerpoint_flash
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_flash
Labels: add-in, keynote, office_mac, powerpoint
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, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, online_presentations, powerpoint, powerpoint_flash
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
Labels: add-in, powerpoint
MathType 6 is the newest version of a well known program that allows you to create math equations and more within Word, PowerPoint and several other applications. MathType itself is available in both Windows and Macintosh platforms, but MathType 6 is available only for Windows at the time of this writing.
MathType 6 has several improvements over the older versions of the program
Read the review here...
Categories: add-in, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, online_presentations, powerpoint, powerpoint_flash
SWiSHzone creates a well known range of Flash output programs, and when they released their PowerPoint add-in that could create Flash output from a presentation, I really wanted to take a look at the product. Their PowerPoint add-in product is called SWiSH Presenter.
Read the review here...
Categories: add-in, online_presentations, powerpoint, powerpoint_flash
Labels: add-in, powerpoint
Tuval Software Industries has announced the release of Version 2.3 of Speech-Over, an application that quickly adds synced-timed voices in animated PowerPoint presentations. This new version can use any audio source -- microphone recording, prerecorded files and realistic text-to-speech (TTS) voices. Voice-empowered presentations convert to Flash for e-learning. The software has a wide variety of applications in education and training.
More info on the PRWeb site...
Categories: add-in, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, powerpoint
Design Science has released a new version of MathType, their mathematical notation tool that lets you creates equations and more within Word, PowerPoint and several other applications. This is a major update that includes support for Microsoft Office 2007, Wikipedia, TeX, Windows Vista compatibility, and more.
The new version is currently available only by ESD (download) -- CD versions are expected to be available in due course.
More info here...
Categories: add-in, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, impatica, online_presentations, powerpoint
Impatica for PowerPoint takes your PowerPoint presentations, converts them to the Impatica formats that can be as small as 95% of the original file sizes -- and retains most of the PowerPoint formatting. Version 4 of Impatica for PowerPoint adds support for PowerPoint 2007 and Windows Vista. In addition, it adds several other new features.
Read the full review...
Categories: add-in, impatica, online_presentations, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, powerpoint, powerpoint_2007
We have reviewed PowerShrink in the past -- so in this review, we will look at the new features that PowerShrink 2007 (aka PowerShrink 3) offers along with a brief walkthrough.
PowerShrink 2007 is a PowerPoint, Word, and Excel compression product from TopByteLabs Computing, a software company based in Germany.
Read the review here...
Categories: add-in, powerpoint, powerpoint_2007
Labels: add-in, elearning, online_presentations, powerpoint, powerpoint_flash
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_flash
Labels: add-in, interviews, powerpoint
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:
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:
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, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, officefx, powerpoint
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, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, movies, powerpoint
It's very often that users ask for an option to save their PowerPoint presentations to a movie format. And with media distribution options multiplying each day, this is one area that's a sore point with PowerPoint users since PowerPoint for Windows does not provide this ability unlike its versions on the Mac. PPTmovie, a new product that I am reviewing today allows you to convert any PowerPoint presentation to one of the several video formats it supports -- these output formats allow you to burn your presentation to a CD or DVD and and play it back on a DVD player. You can also make your presentation-movie available on YouTube or another video sharing site, or transfer it to a portable device such as iPod, PSP, or mobile phone.
Read the review here...
Categories: add-in, movies, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, powerpoint
In today's media driven age, we are surrounded by audio visual content like pictures, video clips, sounds, etc. And yes, we all like to insert them into our Powerpoint presentations, resulting in huge file sizes. Products like PPTminimizer 3 provide a solution to this problem.
Read the review here...
Categories: add-in, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, microsoft_office, powerpoint_2007
RibbonCustomizer, the add-in product for Microsoft Office 2007 that allows you to customize the tabs within the Ribbon has now been updated to version 1.1 -- the new update is free for all users. See screenshots later on this page.
New features include:
More info on the RibbonCustomizer site...
Categories: add-in, microsoft_office, powerpoint_2007
Labels: add-in, microsoft_office, powerpoint_2007
The biggest feature in Microsoft's new Office 2007 suite is most certainly the interface. Gone are the menus and the toolbars -- now all the commands are available in the various tabs of the Ribbon. The Ribbon is much more intuitive -- but for seasoned users who have been working with Microsoft Office applications for more than a decade, it does involve a serious amount of unlearning.
An interesting add-in for Office applications like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel now brings back the menus and toolbars -- all inside a new Ribbon tab called "Menus"! The add-in is called Classic Menu Manager.
Read on to learn more...
Categories: add-in, powerpoint_2007, microsoft_office
Labels: add-in, interviews, powerpoint
Mike Power is the founder and Managing Director of 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 more about the new NXPowerLite 3.
Mike: NXPowerLite 3 is a compression tool created specifically for Microsoft Office users. It can dramatically reduce the size of Word, Excel and PowerPoint files -- sometimes by as much as 98% -- with no discernible loss of quality. It does this by intelligently compressing the graphics and embedded documents contained within your files, as well as removing the 'junk data' that builds up during the creation and editing of Office files.
We released the first version of NXPowerLite six years ago as a PowerPoint-only product -- and it quickly became the de facto standard tool for PowerPoint compression. NXPowerLite 2, which followed in 2005, contained a number of significant improvements. It worked directly on the PowerPoint file (rather than by automating PowerPoint), enabling lightning-fast compression times. We also added new features such as batch processing and an Outlook add-in that automatically optimized email attachments before sending them.
Our customers loved the software, but kept asking us to develop something similar to reduce the size of Word and Excel files. We eventually decided to create just one program that worked with Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, in order to offer ease of use and the best possible value for money. We are very proud of NXPowerLite 3, which was released in February. It is currently the only product of its type that works with all three of the main Microsoft Office file formats -- and customer feedback has been fantastic!
Geetesh: Tell us more about your plans to support Office 2007 file formats.
Mike: NXPowerLite 3 does not currently support Office 2007's new XML file formats, as the structures were finalised too late in our development process. But our developers are currently working hard on the new formats and a fully-compatible version of NXPowerLite 3 will be available later this year. Our Office 2007 Guarantee means that everybody that has purchased NXPowerLite since Office 2007 was released last December was will receive a free upgrade.
Meanwhile, the current version of NXPowerlite integrates perfectly with Office 2007, but you will need to save your files in '97-2003' format ('compatibility mode') before compressing them with NXPowerLite. Of course, this will also ensure that your files can be opened and edited by people with older versions of Office.
Categories: add-in, powerpoint, interviews
Labels: add-in, powerpoint
PowerPoint and other Microsoft Office programs like Word and Excel allow you to insert all sorts of media files including high resolution pictures, animated clips, and other formats. And you can often copy and paste almost anything within these applications. The result is that presentations, documents, and spreadsheets gets bloated -- a huge complication if you need to store and share many of these files.
NXPowerLite, the product I am reviewing, optimizes the size of these files without compromising their content or quality -- thus making them easier store and share.
Read the review here...
Categories: add-in, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, powerpoint
SlideAware has two components. First, there's a plug-in you add to your PowerPoint toolbar (it doesn't work for Office 2007 yet, so I couldn't test this component). The plug-in lets you zap your PowerPoint presentations directly to the SlideAware service.
More on the Webware site...
Categories: add-in, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, microsoft_office
Most of us would not want to delete anything -- so how can we do something so that the same files take less space?
PackITSuite is the product from I-Logik which helps reduce the size of stored file data without deleting or archiving them.
Let us explore further...
Categories: add-in, microsoft_office
Labels: add-in, powerpoint, powerpoint_flash
authorGEN announced the release of authorPOINT 3.8 with several new features for rapid e-learning authoring.
authorPOINT is a rapid e-learning presentation creation tool, which installs within PowerPoint as a toolbar and captures PowerPoint presentations when an instructor is presenting. It comes with the option to embed presenters' video through a web cam as they present, or integrate video and audio as required.
Presentations created with authorPOINT can be saved in Flash or Windows Media formats. Further, the Flash file can be uploaded to a dedicated server on authorSTREAM which provides the presenter with a unique URL to deliver streaming Flash presentations.
More info on the authorGEN site...
Categories: powerpoint_flash, powerpoint, add-in
Labels: add-in, interviews, powerpoint, powerpoint_flash
Yury Uskov is Technical Director at CPS Labs, a software development company based out of Yoshkar-Ola, Russia. Yury has a Masters degree in Software Engineering and since 2001, he has been working in rich media industry as the co-founder of CPS Labs Ltd. CPS Labs has launched several Flash technology projects including FlashSpring, a PowerPoint to Flash converter that ships as an add-in for Microsoft PowerPoint.
Geetesh: Tell us more about the new FlashSpring 2, and how it is different from other similar products.
Yury: If you like to know more about the originality of FlashSpring 2.0, I can point out several major strong advantages of our product:
Geetesh: How does FlashSpring aid in the distribution of PowerPoint content?
Most of the other PowerPoint to Flash convertors actually cannot do this and produce some mixture of HTML and Flash files which represents the original PPT after conversion. It is possible to put this presentation on the web, but if you like to send such presentation via email, it can be delivered only as an archive.
Yury: Being converted to Flash, your PowerPoint presentation becomes more portable and distribution friendly, because almost anybody can play Flash content on most of platforms in most of browsers.
Additionally FlashSpring is enhanced with deployment options, and can help you to put your Flash presentation on your web site or send via email as easily as possible.
Categories: powerpoint_flash, powerpoint, add-in, interviews
Labels: add-in, camtasia, powerpoint, powerpoint_flash, techsmith
Capturing on screen activity to create a movie is so much easier these days with more powerful computers and software -- and it is also a more helpful way of explaining how a task can be done. Such a concept works great if you want to create tutorial movies, and TechSmith's Camtasia Studio is most certainly among the best products for this type of work.
Read the review here...
Categories: camtasia, powerpoint, add-in, powerpoint_flash, techsmith
Labels: add-in, interviews, powerpoint
PPTshare is a line of Powerpoint add-ins including the new Desktop Slide Manager. In this Indezine exclusive, James Ontra who heads PPTshare discusses this new product that alternates between organizing and sharing your PowerPoint content -- he also talks about future plans.
Geetesh: How did PPTshare Desktop evolve. James: PPTshare Desktop Slide Library evolved from our clients' need to better manage and control all of their disparate PowerPoint files, and to simplify video within PowerPoint. There's a wealth of valuable content stored within hundreds of PowerPoint's, and our clients needed a better way to tap that resource. Before, users, typically sales people, wasted lot of time hunting and pecking, copying and pasting, and recreating new presentations for every meeting. The PPTshare Desktop Slide Library consolidates all of a user's PowerPoints and videos into one central location. And it automatically formats a video into a full-screen PowerPoint slide. It is the 'go to' place where users can quickly find single slides and videos for making new presentations.
Our clients asked for some specific functionality, and we built it, using the Slide Library as a foundation.
With the user requests in mind, we created PPTshare.com
Geetesh: What do you plan to do this in the near future?
James: We will provide collaborative workspaces for creating, automating, managing and distributing presentation files. The PPTshare Desktop Slide Library functionality will be extended to seamlessly work with the PPTshare.com online component. And other features, such as search, user groups, and tracking will be added soon.
Categories: interviews, powerpoint, add-in
Labels: add-in, interviews, powerpoint
Simon Turner is the Technical Director for I-Logik Software, a software development company based in Birmingham, UK. Simon has a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Nottingham and now specializes in the development of unique powerful tools to dramatically improve network efficiency and data management.
Geetesh: Tell us more about I-Logik and the PackITSuite.
Simon: I-Logik Software is a software development company committed to building innovative software solutions to a wide variety of industries and enterprises worldwide.
With expertise in both data compression and image optimisation, I-Logik continues to work hand in hand with large segments such as higher education, healthcare and local and central government, addressing the current unmet problems of the management, communication and storage of digital data.
The growth of digital data is only going to escalate over time. Since it is impossible to know what data is needed in the future and what data is important and still relevant, many companies keep all files indefinitely on disk. Consequently the amount of data being stored is spiraling out of control and storage management has become an ever-increasing challenge.
Simply adding more hardware to alleviate the problem is no longer a practical solution. Escalating storage management costs, increased back-up windows and decreasing system performance are creating major corporate problems worldwide.
Here at I-Logik, we believe file optimisation is the answer. The I-Logik PackITSuite is a collection of sophisticated file optimisation libraries that allow common everyday file formats to be reduced to a fraction of their original size. File formats supported are:
The file format is completely unchanged post compression. Therefore there is no zip/unzip process and no proprietary software is required to view the optimised files. For example a PowerPoint presentation (.ppt) is still a PowerPoint presentation (.ppt) after compression. It can be opened and edited in exactly the same way without the need for additional software.
Geetesh: How can the PackITSuite help everyday users of Microsoft PowerPoint and Word -- and will they have to do something to make the whole thing perform?
Simon: The PackITSuite is available in two editions, PackITSuite Server Edition and PackITSuite Workstation Edition.
The beauty of the PackITSuite Server Edition is that it is a centrally managed application and staff need no education or training in order to receive its benefits. In actual fact, users of PowerPoint and Word will have to do nothing at all.
The PackITSuite Server Edition works by giving network administrators the ability to optimise files stored centrally on a file server. File formats supported are:
As I mentioned previously the file format is completely unchanged post optimisation. Therefore users are completely unaware of the change, the only thing they will notice is that their files are dramatically smaller in size.
This has significant benefits to both the infrastructure of the company and the users themselves. Our website has a detailed breakdown of these benefits and these can be seen by clicking on this link...
A Flash movie of the application in action can be seen by clicking on this link...
Categories: interviews, powerpoint, add-in
Labels: add-in, microsoft_office, powerpoint_2007
If you use MathType with Word or PowerPoint, and then upgrade to Office 2007, you will find that you no longer have the icons or buttons to insert a MathType equation in Word 2007 or PowerPoint 2007.
You'll find instructions on bringing them back in Word 2007 on this link -- it works the same way for Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007.
Categories: microsoft_office, powerpoint_2007, add-in
Labels: add-in, powerpoint
Many of us find it easy to share photos online, but as far as PowerPoint files go, the more common option is to email the PowerPoint as an attachment. However, PowerPoint files can be huge and can quickly fill up inbox and mail accounts. The product that I am reviewing today offers a solution -- PPTshare Desktop Slide Library does more than allowing you to share your presentations, it also allows you to manage your presentations at the slide level, and create new presentations from those slides without opening PowerPoint.
Read the review here...
Categories: add-in, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, interviews, powerpoint, presentationpoint
OutlookPoint is a product that lets you use your Outlook content such as messages, calendar, contacts, notes, tasks, etc. as a database source. It doesn't stop there -- using DataPoint as an interfacing product that links PowerPoint to database sources, OutlookPoint can let you send an email that converts itself to a presentation slide in an instant! How more dynamic can you get with PowerPoint?
And in this Indezine exclusive, we have Kurt Dupont who heads PresentationPoint -- creators of OutlookPoint, DataPoint, and other amazing PowerPoint add-ins.
Geetesh: OutlookPoint is not a conventional program -- there's probably no other application that does the same things -- so how did OutlookPoint evolve?
Kurt: Indeed, OutlookPoint is a special product in our business software but the application is definitely related to our main product DataPoint. With DataPoint you can display real-time information in a slide show, coming from various data sources. This kind of functionality is widely used at airports, schools and factories. On the other hand DataPoint is used to regenerate presentations with up-to-date content like sales reports, product information and availability statistics etc.
OutlookPoint is only interesting for the first type of presentations, what we call online presentations. With an online presentation you need a database to retrieve the dynamic information from and most applications are simply displaying messages or announcements, or are welcoming people at a company by displaying their name and company name at a large flat panel screen at the reception desk. The type of database needed here is very basic but requires a database, installation, training and a graphical user interface.
Figure 1: An OutlookPoint Workflow
This is what OutlookPoint does. You can use Microsoft Outlook or Exchange to host the public folders for DataPoint display purposes. You simply identify which folders or maps need to be exported to the OutlookPoint database. Then you use your existing Outlook interface to enter and maintain the map content. So for example you create a new appointment beween 9:00 and 10:00 and its subject will be displayed between 9:00 and 10:00 on the flat panel screen. Interesting options like appointment recurrence etc are included automatically.
The same can be done with email messages, contacts, notes and tasks. With DataPoint you decide what information is displayed.
All of this is very basic, but by using this add-on you eliminate the need of building a new database and user interface.
Geetesh: Can you share some case studies and usage patterns for OutlookPoint.
Kurt: Sure. Many possible applications are possible with DataPoint and OutlookPoint.
Learn more about OutlookPoint here...
Related Post: DataPoint: Conversation with Kurt Dupont
Categories: add-in, powerpoint, interviews, presentationpoint
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A lot is at stake -- power, money, reputation, future plans, justice. You need to win this case. Your presentation materials surely will play an important role in helping the judge and jury experience the sights, sounds, and details of the case ... or not. The choice is up to you, says one tech-savvy attorney.
The choice is up to you, says one tech-savvy attorney. It all depends upon whether you are willing to push PowerPoint beyond its normal boundaries to maximize its interactive and persuasive potential. This article by Robert Lane and
Bruce A. Olson
provides a better idea of using PowerPoint in court. 
