PowerPoint Blog
Labels: add-in, authorstream, interviews, powerpoint_2007, youtube
Umesh Sharma is the Product Head at authorSTREAM, an online slide sharing site integrated with social media. Based in Chandigarh, India -- Umesh's profiles includes developing product roadmaps and managing media interactions. In this conversation, Umesh discusses the new authorSTREAM Desktop product.
Geetesh: Tell us more about the new authorSTREAM Desktop product – what is it's raison d'être?
Umesh: To help create more compelling content with PowerPoint -- easily and fast. It so happens many times while creating a PowerPoint presentation that we need visual content like images and videos. You have the words but its really difficult to get graphics to convey the power of the message, or similarly, say you have seen a YouTube video added to your favorites that you thought you would use in some presentation some day. authorSTREAM Desktop does exactly that for you: it helps you search and insert content like images and YouTube videos without making you to leave PowerPoint. We will be adding more features in this direction in subsequent versions.
Ease of upload to authorSTREAM is another reason to use authorSTREAM Desktop. With authorSTREAM Desktop installed, you can upload large PowerPoint files along with all linked media files easily, which otherwise is not easily possible via a web upload. Under the hood, we are using an FTP upload, which is much faster than web (HTTP) uploads.
Geetesh: How does authorSTREAM Desktop handle the copyright issues involved in a product of its nature – do you warn users that some of the search results may not be usable? Tell us more.
Umesh: At the moment, we have an alert at the top search task-pane. In addition, clicking on the title of an image or video in search results will take you to it's source page, which in most cases should contain licensing details. Mostly, image copyrights don't really affect a user for 'fair use' - personal, non-profit or educational and amongst a small group of viewers. However, we do understand that showing users all that there is to the licensing of the image would be more usable. We have plans to include results, which carry these details (Creative Commons or any other) in the next versions of the software.
See Also: authorSTREAM Desktop: Search Bing, YouTube, and Upload to authorSTREAM
Categories: add-in, authorstream, interviews, powerpoint_2007, youtube
Labels: authorstream, powerpoint_2007, youtube
authorSTREAM has introduced the new authorSTREAM Desktop product that installs as an add-in to PowerPoint 2007 for Windows. The product is entirely free, and when successfully installed, it shows up as a new tab in the Ribbon of PowerPoint 2007 as shown in Figure 1, below.
Figure 1: The authorSTREAM tab in the PowerPoint 2007 Ribbon
Although there are several buttons on this tab, there are three tasks that this add-in lets you achieve:
The image and video searches open up as a separate task pane called Search and Insert, as shown in Figure 2, below:
Figure 2: authorSTREAM Desktop Image Search
Video searches work in the same way, as shown in Figure 3 below.
Figure 3: authorSTREAM Desktop Video Search
Inserting YouTube videos does not actually insert the video clip inside PowerPoint -- it places a reference to the clip on the YouTube site, and you need to be online to view the clip. YouTube video clips only show in slide show mode within PowerPoint -- in editing mode, as shown in Figure 3 above, they show up as a box placeholder.
You upload PowerPoint presentations to your authorSTREAM account using the prominent Upload PowerPoint button in the Ribbon tab (refer to Figure 1).
The whole experience of using this add-in is easy and intuitive. However, do remember that most images and videos on Bing and YouTube and copyright protected -- and you ought to use caution before inserting anything that you find while searching!
Harman Singh of authorSTREAM has put up this video walkthrough of authorSTREAM Desktop -- you'll find this embedded below:
Categories: authorstream, powerpoint_2007, youtube
Labels: authorstream, online_presentations, opinion, powerpoint, slideboom, slideshare 
You can easily boost your business and your SEO / SEM efforts with the help of an old friend: PowerPoint. All you need to do is pick a topic that you want to relate your business to, prepare a presentation on that topic and then publish it on presentation plattforms like SlideShare, Slide.com, etc. You can then bookmark your online content and enrich it with keywords and descriptions to further promote your content and boost your SEO / SEM efforts.
Jörg Hahn tells you more in this Indezine exclusive article...
Categories: authorstream, online_presentations, opinion, powerpoint, slideboom, slideshare
Labels: authorstream, online_presentations, powerpoint
authorSTREAM, a leading slide sharing site launched their Premium services that offers many options over and above the free services. The free services are still available, and are unnchanged with the launch of the new Premium services.
Premium services are available in two flavors:
Jagdeep Singh Pannu of authorSTREAM sent me this link that explains the differences between all their services
Comparison of Free, Pro and Plus Premium Memberships
And here's an embedded presentation that explains more.
Categories: authorstream, online_presentations, powerpoint
Labels: authorstream, interviews, online_presentations, powerpoint 
Dinesh Awasthi is Product Manager for authorSTREAM.com at authorGEN (authorSTREAM's parent company). In addition to developing the strategic product roadmap and implementation of various features on authorSTREAM, he works with the development team and keeps an eye on user feedback to formulate new releases. Dinesh holds a Masters degree in Computer Applications, and certifications in Quality Management and Software Testing.
Geetesh: What are these new presentation channels on authorSTREAM?
Dinesh: authorSTREAM Presentation Channels are your personalized web pages that showcase a collection of presentations -- be it on one topic or a theme. We realized that each individual usually has a bunch of presentations on each topic, and that everyone has a variety of interests. authorSTREAM Channels allow users to create multiple channels, say each focusing on one topic of interest. For example, a channel on photography would cater to photography enthusiasts and another one on China travel would help people find information on traveling to China. One can start a channel on 'Global Warming'. Companies can create a channel for each of their products and services. We went a step further by empowering channel owners to allow other users to upload presentations in their (owner's) channels. Say, an instructor might want to let all her students upload their English assignment presentations in one channel and so on.
Geetesh: How do you think channels will help users in a web-social way? Also, do you plan to provide a pro level channel with more abilities?
Dinesh: We have visualized authorSTREAM Channels as a platform for creative collaboration. Channel owners can also invite other authorSTREAM members to add presentations to their channel. A university department can create a channel and allow its professors to contribute, a journalist can start a channel about a story or an event where witnesses to the event can post their own point of view. A teacher can create a channel on a homework assignment and allow her/his students to submit their assignments there. This gives people the freedom and the ability to keep a lively discussion going about any particular topic or theme.
If you like a particular channel, you can subscribe to it with a single click and authorSTREAM will keep you updated about them on your dashboard. Soon, you will also see the RSS feed of a channel. If you like to embed a particular channel on your blog or website, simply use the channel embed code -- in a small area on your website, all the channel presentations would show up! The buzz has already started with people creating channels on fashion, spirituality, marketing, beliefs etc.
In the coming months, we have plans to add pro level channels with advanced features.
Categories: authorstream, interviews, online_presentations, powerpoint
Labels: authorstream, online_presentations, powerpoint
Many PowerPoint users create and send their cards as PowerPoint presentations, mainly as email attachments. These work great, but do have some disadvantages:
Now authorSTREAM has added a new feature that lets you resolve both the problems. Their new option to create and send custom eGreetings is easy to use -- read more on their site...
Categories: authorstream, online_presentations, powerpoint
Labels: animation, authorstream, powerpoint, tutorials
We took every single motion path animation available in PowerPoint including the preset and custom options -- and created this sample online presentation that you can use as a reference to preview.
Look here...
Categories: animation, authorstream, powerpoint, tutorials
Labels: authorstream, powerpoint 
Harman Singh (pictured to the left) graduated with a Masters degree in Computer Science at the NC State University in Raleigh, NC -- here he did Masters Research in the field of eLearning and distance education. Under the guidance of his mentors, Dr. Steve Walsh and Dr. Tom Miller, he founded authorGEN Technologies in 2002 with the vision of providing teachers with tools to teach online. In this conversation, Harman discusses authorSTREAM, their slide sharing site.
Geetesh: Tell us more about the new improvements at authorSTREAM, including enhanced profile features.
Harman: We've experimented with a lot of things on authorSTREAM. The basic idea behind bringing in the new design was to increase usability, performance, navigation and PowerPoint uploads. We've introduced "Your Stuff", "Like it/Dislike it", "Active Users", and updated the presentation page layout.
"Your Stuff" refers to users' dashboard. Your Stuff is a single page from where you can see all featured presentations, active users, what's up on authorSTREAM, and can easily access "Your Uploaded Presentations" page, Profile and the "Import contacts" page. Now you can add your web address and information about yourself to your profile. Your web address will be visible on your presentation pages and on your Profile page thus providing you as many link-backs as the number of presentations uploaded by you.
"Active users" is a way to acknowledge sincere efforts of dedicated PowerPoint uploaders who spend hours to create wonderful presentations. Recent updates on authorSTREAM include Guest uploads, a Facebook application, PowerPoint for Peace, and Present Live. Improvement efforts are still on, and you will see a lot of other features in the coming days.
Geetesh: How did these new features evolve – did they come about as a result of user feedback? Also, how can a user send feedback to authorSTREAM.
Harman: Well, some came from user feedback and support queries while the others are a result of brainstorming within the team. We always wanted that users should not feel restricted while sharing PowerPoint online. Why would you use PowerPoint if you don’t require animations, sound and automatic timings? You could rather share a document or PDF. We understand that sharing a PowerPoint presentation online should be exactly the same as you are watching a PPT on your computer within PowerPoint. authorSTREAM is the solution that addresses all such issues.
authorSTREAM offers the following features, which any PowerPoint lover would expect from an online PPT sharing platform:
Users can send their feedback through the contact page.
Uploaded on authorSTREAM by rmarsiglia
Categories: authorstream, powerpoint
Labels: authorstream, online_presentations, powerpoint, powerpoint_flash, presentation_samples
Parts of a Shoe: This is a sample presentation we created in-house at Indezine so that we could create a presentation that had lots of internal hyperlinks to other slides in the presentation. And yes, it was a good topic -- we haven't found any visual representation of a shoe that shows its various parts -- anywhere on the net!
We uploaded this to authorSTREAM, and their Flash conversion is awesome -- it retained all the hyperlinks in the presentation.
Uploaded on authorSTREAM by indezine_powerpoint
Categories: authorstream, online_presentations, powerpoint, powerpoint_2007, presentation_samples
Labels: authorstream, online_presentations, powerpoint, youtube
The folks at authorSTREAM have created an easy process through which you can make YouTube movies from your PowerPoint presentations. Rather than explain the entire process, I decided to create a how-to video tutorial on this subject:
Categories: powerpoint, youtube
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