A PowerPoint Blog

Current Blog | Atom Site Feed | RSS

powerpoint/courses

Monday, April 28, 2008 posted by Geetesh 7:40 AM Comment and PermaLink Subscribe for Email updates Tell A Friend!	PowerPoint 2008 or Keynote 08 The folks at PC World recently created the same presentation in both PowerPoint 2008 for the Mac and Apple's Keynote 08 -- the results make interesting reading. There's no clear winner, but PowerPoint 2008 may have surpassed Keynote 08 in several areas. Read more on the PC World site... Categories: keynote, office_mac, powerpoint Labels: keynote, office_mac, powerpoint 0 comments Links to this post


Tuesday, April 22, 2008 posted by Geetesh 12:52 PM Comment and PermaLink Subscribe for Email updates Tell A Friend!	The Christian Lund-Sørensen Interview Christian Lund-Sørensen is co-owner and serves as Managing Director at SkabelonDesign. He is responsible for all international activities in the company and also focus on strategic development of the company. In this interview, Christian discusses the PresentationEngine product, and how it can make life easier for PowerPoint designers. Read the interview here... Categories: interviews, powerpoint Labels: interviews, powerpoint 0 comments Links to this post


Sunday, April 13, 2008 posted by Geetesh 4:53 PM Comment and PermaLink Subscribe for Email updates Tell A Friend!	Medicine Presentations: Conversation with Echo Swinford Echo Swinford (pictured to the right) is a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP (Most Valuable Professional). When she's not working on new media, she is answering almost all the questions on the PowerPoint newsgroup. Echo is also the co-author of Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit, published by Que. She also creates tons of presentations for the medical industry -- you can contact her for your presentation requirements through her site: Echo's Voice. Geetesh: Tell us more about yourself, and the PowerPoint work you do in the medical industry. Well, I started working for a medical education communications company in 1997. The owner was considering outsourcing her slide work, but she was worried about quality control. I knew my quality control was good in general, so I proposed that she let me create her slides. I didn’t tell her that I didn’t really know PowerPoint, so when she agreed, I had to learn it – and learn it fast! I think my background in journalism and desktop publishing has really helped me with slide development, especially if you think of it as page layout on a large scale. I know that my proofreading skills are a definite plus, and the fact that I’m a bit of a math and puzzle geek sure hasn’t hurt! Here I am, 11 years later, still developing presentations for a variety of industries. In the healthcare and medical education industry specifically, I do a lot of slide cleanup work, making presentations consistent and visible for conferences and meetings as well as developing collateral materials like scientific posters and syllabi. I also do a lot of promotional decks, speaker-led presentations, CME materials, and stand-alone enduring education modules that are distributed in a variety of ways. In addition, I can often be found with the production crew backstage at meetings, running speaker review or minding the presentation equipment. I love being self-employed, so I have the opportunity to do all of those things and more (like write PowerPoint books!). Geetesh: What sets the presentations created for medicine to be different than conventional PowerPoints? Echo: Honestly, I don’t know that there is such a thing as a “conventional” PowerPoint! PowerPoint is used in so many ways…. One thing common to many medical presentations, though, is the sheer amount of data-driven slides. That means lots of charts, lots of tables, and lots of really text-heavy slides. I find that the extreme mix of chart slides is always a challenge in medical presentations – more so than with what I see in other industries. For example, it’s not unusual for a medical presenter to want four or six very small charts on a slide, with the goal of comparing various studies or compounds at different stages. Therefore, understanding what point the speaker wants to make becomes imperative to the design of the slide. If you can eliminate or at least downplay the extraneous information, you can emphasize what’s important – what the audience should remember. So, maybe after this four-chart slide, there’s a column chart. Then a line chart, then a pie chart, then a column chart with a trend line. Some have error bars, some don’t. Some slides have two or three or four charts, others have just one. The challenge is making all of these different charts look like a cohesive set, especially when the data varies so greatly. It’s also important to understand what types of charts show what types of data the best so you can advise your clients appropriately. When you toss in text-heavy slides, it’s important for the presentation developer to understand what’s important and what can be moved into speaker notes or downplayed on the slide. Some text slides work better as tables, especially if the text has lots of numbers and specific data. And then, of course, there’s always the struggle with where to place references, P-values, and acronym definitions, and it’s not unusual to have a lot of all of those on an individual slide! That extreme amount of “fine print” just isn’t as much of an issue in the presentations I work on for other industries. And finding some of the symbols used in medical presentations can be an adventure, too. Categories: interviews, medicine, powerpoint Labels: interviews, medicine, powerpoint 0 comments Links to this post


Friday, April 11, 2008 posted by Geetesh 9:59 AM Comment and PermaLink Subscribe for Email updates Tell A Friend!	Google Presentations Now Saves As PowerPoint Google Presentations, a component of Google Docs now provides a much-requested feature that allows you to save your presentations as PowerPoint files. This will allow users to create presentations using Google's online office suite, and then share them in the omnipresent PowerPoint file format. This is a great move on Google's part and will help users exchange information in various file formats easily. I like this option because I can now create the skeleton of the presentation using Google's great collaboration tools, and then save the outline to a PowerPoint file. Once this is saved as a PowerPoint file, I can then use PowerPoint's powerful features to create a great presentation. Here's a link on Google's blog that explains more... Categories: google, powerpoint Labels: google, powerpoint 0 comments Links to this post


Thursday, April 10, 2008 posted by Geetesh 10:58 AM Comment and PermaLink Subscribe for Email updates Tell A Friend!	The Christina Deatherage Interview Christina Deatherage serves as Vice President of Sales and Marketing for ShowLogicTM for Catevo. Prior to joining The Catevo Group, she worked for IBM/Lenovo where she held various marketing, sales and strategy positions. In this interview, she discusses Catevo's new ShowLogic presentation platform. Read the interview here... Categories: interviews, powerpoint Labels: interviews, powerpoint 0 comments Links to this post


Wednesday, April 09, 2008 posted by Geetesh 12:31 PM Comment and PermaLink Subscribe for Email updates Tell A Friend!	Net: New PowerPoint Template Set From Ppted Ppted released a new PowerPoint template set -- this one is called Net. Not only do you get five great template designs, you also get the actual backgrounds so that you can use the same designs elsewhere. In this collection, you also get wide screen templates and backgrounds, and ten transparent PNGs you can use in your presentations -- at no extra cost. Templates Transparent PNGs None of the templates at Ppted.com are free -- these are all designer templates. I just wanted to say that because lots of readers write in to say that their Indezine passwords don't let them download all the Ppted templates for free! Categories: powerpoint, templates Labels: powerpoint, templates 0 comments Links to this post


Wednesday, April 02, 2008 posted by Geetesh 4:22 PM Comment and PermaLink Subscribe for Email updates Tell A Friend!	Announcing Medicine PowerPoint Users in the field of medicine are among the largest users of PowerPoint as a medium of information, instruction, and distribution. These users however tend to use PowerPoint in a very different manner than conventional PowerPoint users -- they also need a different set of resources that is geared towards their profession. After years of running Indezine.com, one of the largest PowerPoint sites I realized that there really isn't a PowerPoint resource available that has been created exclusively for end users in the medicine sector. And thus MedicinePPT.com was born. If you work with PowerPoint in the medicine sector, please do share this resource with your colleagues -- and do send me your feedback so that we can make this site better. Categories: medicine, powerpoint Labels: medicine, powerpoint 0 comments Links to this post


Tuesday, April 01, 2008 posted by Geetesh 10:41 PM Comment and PermaLink Subscribe for Email updates Tell A Friend!	Speech-Over Studio 2.5: Conversation with Joel Harband 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, interviews, powerpoint 0 comments Links to this post


Monday, March 31, 2008 posted by Geetesh 12:29 PM Comment and PermaLink Subscribe for Email updates Tell A Friend!	Mix and Mash Online Video Clips with Omnisio Omnisio, a new startup allows you to mix and mash videos from several online video sites like YouTube, Google, and Blip.tv to create new videos. You can choose start and end points to trim the existing video clips, combine them in a sequence you want, and create a new online video clip that you can share. These shared clips are entirely embeddable -- and you can have comments that actually hover over the video on these shared clips (see screenshot above). Many users find this distracting, so it's nice that you can turn them off. More importantly Omnisio is about to introduce new features soon that will allow you to synchronize PowerPoint slides with video -- this will take Omnisio to the professional league. Membership is free and very quick -- and you don't even need to be a member to view some sample clips. The clips are great -- and can allow you to get hours of fun. Learn more at the Omnisio site... Categories: movies, online_presentations, powerpoint, , youtube Labels: movies, online_presentations, powerpoint, youtube 0 comments Links to this post


Friday, March 28, 2008 posted by Geetesh 3:28 PM Comment and PermaLink Subscribe for Email updates Tell A Friend!	Slide Executive 2.4: The Indezine Review 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, slide_management 0 comments Links to this post


posted by Geetesh 12:58 PM Comment and PermaLink Subscribe for Email updates Tell A Friend!	Poetry Slideshows in PowerPoint! This is among the most interesting and original uses for PowerPoint that I have read about. Jill White, who has finished 10 years of teaching with Memphis City Schools uses PowerPoint with first graders so that they can add their poetry to PowerPoint slides with a picture. This works great because it's the first time the children use PowerPoint -- so it's nice to start with simple stuff. These poetry slides then make great presentations to show at Open Houses, parent meetings, school meetings, and even district-wide meetings. Read more on the Scholastic site... Categories: case_studies, powerpoint Labels: case_studies, powerpoint 0 comments Links to this post


posted by Geetesh 11:49 AM Comment and PermaLink Subscribe for Email updates Tell A Friend!	More on SlideRocket SlideRocket gets more exposure each day -- and the product gets better too. I have been working with this online presentation product for a long while now, and the implementation is awesome. I do miss a few things -- surprisingly, I miss PowerPoint 2007's tabbed Ribbon interface since SlideRocket options do require many clicks. And I wish they built in some Flickr authorization so that I can access all my Flickr photos from my account. As of now, I can only access the public photos. And my minor rants may not be too fair, since this is still a beta product. The screenshot below shows the SlideRocket interface -- click on the screenshot to view a larger picture. SlideRocket is based on Adobe's Flex technology, and Josh Catone provides a great intro to the underlying architecture of SlideRocket on his ReadWriteWeb blog... Josh Lowensohn provides another walkthrough on the Webware site... If you want to see a sample presentation, here's a quick one-slide presentation that I made... Categories: online_presentations, powerpoint Labels: online_presentations, powerpoint 0 comments Links to this post


Thursday, March 27, 2008 posted by Geetesh 5:20 PM Comment and PermaLink Subscribe for Email updates Tell A Friend!	Telecommunications: New PowerPoint Template Set From Ppted Ppted released a new PowerPoint template set -- this one is called Telecommunications. Not only do you get five great template designs, you also get the actual backgrounds so that you can use the same designs elsewhere. In this collection, you also get wide screen templates and backgrounds, and ten transparent PNGs you can use in your presentations -- at no extra cost. Templates Transparent PNGs None of the templates at Ppted.com are free -- these are all designer templates. I just wanted to say that because lots of readers write in to say that their Indezine passwords don't let them download all the Ppted templates for free! Categories: powerpoint, templates Labels: powerpoint, templates 0 comments Links to this post


posted by Geetesh 2:35 PM Comment and PermaLink Subscribe for Email updates Tell A Friend!	Interview on Storybored Scott Schwertly of Ethos3 recently interviewed me in the first of his series on 7 Questions -- this interview can be found on his new Storybored blog... Categories: interviews, powerpoint Labels: interviews, powerpoint 0 comments Links to this post


posted by Geetesh 1:15 PM Comment and PermaLink Subscribe for Email updates Tell A Friend!	Automating Microsoft PowerPoint 2008 I ran into this excellent post by Cory Bohon on automating PowerPoint 2008 on the Mac using the Automator program built within the Mac OS X. This may prove a great starting point for automating PowerPoint on the Mac since this new version (PowerPoint 2008) no longer provides VBA programming support. Read on The Unofficial Apple Weblog site... Categories: templates, powerpoint Labels: office_mac, powerpoint 0 comments Links to this post


posted by Geetesh 12:53 PM Comment and PermaLink Subscribe for Email updates Tell A Friend!	New Options on Scrapblog Site Scrapblog is an awesome site that lets you create online digital scrapbooks -- and it works so much like PowerPoint! They have added a slew of new improvements: Photo Cropping: The new photo cropping options now allow you to crop to cookie cutter shapes like circles, rectangles, and stars. There's also a freehand scissors tool that lets you cut edges any way you want. And an eraser option lets you erase areas of photos as required! Photo Editing: Scrapblog now provides one-click effects -- these effects include 12 new built-in effects like black and white, sepia, antique, matte, vignette, a comic book effect, and even the ability to flip your photo. There are also advanced options that allow you to adjust the contrast, saturation, tint, or other fine grained settings. New Themes: Scrapblog now also provides new themes, stickers, backgrounds and frames. Categories: online_presentations, powerpoint Labels: online_presentations, powerpoint 1 comments Links to this post


Wednesday, March 26, 2008 posted by Geetesh 4:37 PM Comment and PermaLink Subscribe for Email updates Tell A Friend!	Every Makeover is Different Doing makeovers of slides is such a satisfying task – maybe that is because removing the ugly and replacing it with near perfection is a reward in itself. Over the years, I have understood that the approach required to do any actual makeover is never the same – in the same way as the fingerprints of two humans don’t match, the approaches required to do various makeovers are dissimilar. Suggesting makeover approaches is a large part of my work – that’s why I find it amusing to hear new schools of thought in the presentation sphere that promise to be a solution to all slide problems. These beliefs range from the no-bullet approach for slides to the total denouncement of slideware. Then there are opinions about keeping things simple and clean – and of providing more visual content. And there’s another school of thought that looks at creating diagrams, charts, and other info-graphic content in a way that’s more effective as is the debate between linear and linked presentations. Each of these approaches is unique and very useful in their own way – and properly applied, each of them may make a difference. But in the same way that a physician will not prescribe a drug for common cold to a patient suffering from body pain, the makeover artist will first examine the slides and then suggest an approach that may use, discard, or combine these approaches. Read more of this guest post I authored on the SlideShare blog... Categories: online_presentations, powerpoint, slideshare Labels: online_presentations, powerpoint, slideshare 1 comments Links to this post


posted by Geetesh 11:14 AM Comment and PermaLink Subscribe for Email updates Tell A Friend!	authorSTREAM now allows downloads of PowerPoint files, and sharing PowerPoints on YouTube and iPods authorSTREAM, a site that lets you upload and share your PowerPoint presentations upped the ante today by offering a slew of new options: Download original presentations: You can now download the original PowerPoint presentation (or other file) if the author of the content enables the relevant option (see figure below). For your existing presentations uploaded to authorSTREAM, this option is turned off by default. You can however edit your presentation properties and check the option (see figure below). Share on YouTube: You can also share your presentations on YouTube. This option is now available for presentations that include narration or rehearsed timings -- these presentations would automatically be available in a video format (MP4) that you can upload and share on YouTube. Share on iPods: Again this option is only available for presentations that include narration or rehearsed timings. Categories: online_presentations, powerpoint, youtube Labels: online_presentations, powerpoint, youtube 0 comments Links to this post


Wednesday, March 19, 2008 posted by Geetesh 4:45 PM Comment and PermaLink Subscribe for Email updates Tell A Friend!	Ppted Solar System Updated with Extras Ppted's Solar System collection has been updated with extras! Take a look here to see... Not only do you get five great template designs, you also get the actual backgrounds so that you can use the same designs elsewhere. In this collection, you also get wide screen templates and backgrounds, and ten transparent PNGs you can use in your presentations -- at no extra cost. Templates Transparent PNGs None of the templates at Ppted.com are free -- these are all designer templates. I just wanted to say that because lots of readers write in to say that their Indezine passwords don't let them download all the Ppted templates for free! Categories: powerpoint, templates Labels: powerpoint, templates 0 comments Links to this post


Sunday, March 16, 2008 posted by Geetesh 8:36 AM Comment and PermaLink Subscribe for Email updates Tell A Friend!	Office: mac 2008: What the reviewers are saying? Over the last few days, there have been tons of reviews on Microsoft's new Office 2008 for the Mac. In this post, I'll look at two of these reviews, and link to them as well. Glenn Fleishman has put up a strong verdict for Office:mac on the Seattle Times site. He finds that "Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac OS X is prettier than its predecessors. Fortunately, the upgrade is more than skin deep.....Two of the biggest interface changes you'll find across Word, Excel and PowerPoint are a toolbar that is now part of a document rather than a separate floating item, and a host of separate features (and some new ones) that have been stuffed into a floating palette. These additions may seem minor, but better access can save serious users many minutes. I use both features perhaps thousands of times a day." Read more on the Seattle Times site... Elsa Wenzel of CNET Reviews compares Office 2008 for Mac with Office 2007 for Windows when she says: "Unlike Microsoft Office 2007, the interface changes don't look radically foreign next to the 2004 edition. That's good news for anyone who doesn't want to relearn the locations of common functions. The 2007 applications for Windows arrange functions within tabs, while the 2008 Mac software largely clusters functions within the same drop-down menus including File, Edit, and View. By and large, most of the changes focus on attempting to help users craft more attractive documents. For instance, Office for Mac features the same templates and Smart Art graphics as the Windows counterparts. These are premade templates with 3D and translucent designs" Read more on the CNET site... Categories: office_mac, powerpoint Labels: office_mac, powerpoint 0 comments Links to this post


Saturday, March 15, 2008 posted by Geetesh 4:00 PM Comment and PermaLink Subscribe for Email updates Tell A Friend!	Quick PowerPoint Tricks This Quick PowerPoint Tricks webcast was done last month as part of Microsoft India's initiatives -- it's an hour long, and is available for download. Register online, and download the webcast... Categories: powerpoint, tutorials Labels: powerpoint, tutorials 0 comments Links to this post


posted by Geetesh 11:29 AM Comment and PermaLink Subscribe for Email updates Tell A Friend!	Ppted Connectivity Updated with Extras Ppted's Connectivity collection has been updated with extras! Take a look here to see... Not only do you get five great template designs, you also get the actual backgrounds so that you can use the same designs elsewhere. In this collection, you also get wide screen templates and backgrounds, and ten transparent PNGs you can use in your presentations -- at no extra cost. Templates Transparent PNGs None of the templates at Ppted.com are free -- these are all designer templates. I just wanted to say that because lots of readers write in to say that their Indezine passwords don't let them download all the Ppted templates for free! Categories: powerpoint, templates Labels: powerpoint, templates 0 comments Links to this post


Friday, March 07, 2008 posted by Geetesh 9:45 AM Comment and PermaLink Subscribe for Email updates Tell A Friend!	Ppted Human Geography 01 Updated with Extras Ppted's Human Geography 01 collection has been updated with extras! Take a look here to see... Not only do you get five great template designs, you also get the actual backgrounds so that you can use the same designs elsewhere. In this collection, you also get wide screen templates and backgrounds, and ten transparent PNGs you can use in your presentations -- at no extra cost. Templates Transparent PNGs None of the templates at Ppted.com are free -- these are all designer templates. I just wanted to say that because lots of readers write in to say that their Indezine passwords don't let them download all the Ppted templates for free! Categories: powerpoint, templates Labels: powerpoint, templates 0 comments Links to this post


Sunday, February 24, 2008 posted by Geetesh 4:36 PM Comment and PermaLink Subscribe for Email updates Tell A Friend!	Ppted Human Geography 02 Updated with Extras Ppted's Human Geography 02