Home     PowerPoint     Photoshop     Photos     Other     Studio     Info

Bookmark and Share  





Product Showcase




 



PowerPoint Blog


Monday, August 03, 2009
posted by Geetesh at 4:37 PM IST



Most of us are familar with PowerPoint to Flash conversion -- this happens automatically on slide sharing sites like Slideshare, Slideboom, Authorstream, etc. and there are tons of add-ins available that do the same locally on your computer. However, converting PowerPoint to a video format and sharing it on a video site like YouTube has never been as easy as the PowerPoint to Flash option. The product I am reviewing today addresses this area and also converts your PowerPoint presentations to the MP4 format so that you can upload it to YouTube or watch it on your iPod. And did I mention that the product is free!

Read the review here...

Categories: add-in, powerpoint, youtube

Labels: , ,

0 comments

Links to this post



Friday, July 17, 2009
posted by Geetesh at 4:55 PM IST



Umesh SharmaUmesh 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'ętre?

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: , , , ,

0 comments

Links to this post



Thursday, July 16, 2009
posted by Geetesh at 8:45 AM IST



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.

authorSTREAM Desktop tab in the PowerPoint 2007 Ribbon
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:

  1. Search images from Bing image search, and insert them into your slides.

  2. Search videos from YouTube, and insert them into your slides.

  3. Publish any created presentations to the authorSTREAM site.
The image and video searches open up as a separate task pane called Search and Insert, as shown in Figure 2, below:

authorSTREAM Desktop Image Search
Figure 2: authorSTREAM Desktop Image Search

Video searches work in the same way, as shown in Figure 3 below.

authorSTREAM Desktop - Video Search
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: , ,

1 comments

Links to this post



Thursday, January 22, 2009
posted by Geetesh at 12:08 PM IST



SlideShare announced the capability to embed YouTube videos within SlideShare uploaded presentations in an open beta. Embeded YouTube videos show up as separate slides inside the SlideShare player. The embedded demo below explains the entire process.


Categories: online_presentations, powerpoint, slideshare, youtube

Labels: , , ,

0 comments

Links to this post



Thursday, July 31, 2008
posted by Geetesh at 10:52 AM IST



We already looked at Omnisio a few months ago -- it's a lot of fun, and you can mash up your media in creative ways. And now the news is out that Google has acquired Omnisio.

It's still not clear how Google will use Omnisio technology -- but it does seem like a natural synergy as far as using Omnisio and YouTube together is concerned.

Update: David Berlind from InformationWeek says Omnisio is sort of like Twitter or IRC meets Internet Video+PowerPoint with a dash of TiVo tossed in.

Categories: google, movies, youtube

Labels: , ,

0 comments

Links to this post



Tuesday, July 22, 2008
posted by Geetesh at 10:25 AM IST



Flypaper announced the launch of Flypaper Pro. Adotas.com reports that "Flypaper Pro is a business solution that allows subscribers to track viewer stats, capture data, host content online and add design elements (i.e. charts/graphs). The service is available as a yearly subscription of $195 a year (with an introductory offer that’s valid through August 31)".

Indezine earlier looked at Flypaper -- Flypaper is a cool, new presentation creation program that lets you create Flash presentations that you can instantly upload to sites like YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook.

Categories: online_presentations, youtube

Labels: , , , ,

0 comments

Links to this post



Wednesday, June 25, 2008
posted by Geetesh at 12:45 PM IST



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

Labels: , , ,

0 comments

Links to this post



Tuesday, April 01, 2008
posted by Geetesh at 4:11 PM IST



Flypaper is a cool, new presentation creation program that lets you create Flash presentations that you can instantly upload to sites like YouTube, MySpace,a nd Facebook. In its present beta incarnation, it has some rough edges and any comparison with PowerPoint would be probably like comparing apples and oranges since Flypaper seems to provide a very different concept altogether.

Flash presentations with Flypaper

Flypaper is a free application that runs on Windows XP and Windows Vista only (no Mac yet) -- it's a large download at 89 mb whereabouts, but it's fun to play with and may evolve into something very useful. The screenshot above shows the interface -- click on the screenshot to see a larger preview.

Flypaper does get into new terminology though: slide layouts/designs are called 'models'! Here's a quick one slide pres that I created in Flypaper, and then uploaded to Youtube.




Categories: flypaper, online_presentations, youtube

Labels: , ,

0 comments

Links to this post



Monday, March 31, 2008
posted by Geetesh at 12:29 PM IST



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.

Mashed videos on Omnisio

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: , , ,

0 comments

Links to this post



Wednesday, March 26, 2008
posted by Geetesh at 11:14 AM IST



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).

Download option at authorSTREAM
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: , ,

0 comments

Links to this post



Friday, November 30, 2007
posted by Geetesh at 6:59 PM IST



This muvee was created with pictures clicked during PowerPoint Live in New Orleans -- Halloween coincided with the last day of the user conference. I imported some of these pictures in muvee and used their Halloween Horrors superStyle to create this video.



Categories: movies, powerpointlive, youtube

Labels: , ,

0 comments

Links to this post



Wednesday, September 19, 2007
posted by Geetesh at 10:25 PM IST



The folks at muvee released a new PhotoAlbum superStyle that lets you show off your photos (and videos) in three new styles: Scrapbook, Coffee Table Book, and Little Ones.

For those who are not aware, muvee is a cool product that takes out the pain out of creating your own "muvees" from video clips and photos. muvee includes several built-in styles, and you can get more superStyles from them.

Here are YouTube videos of these three styles -- click them to play.

Scrapbook:


Coffee Table Book:


Little Ones:


Categories: movies, youtube

Labels: ,

0 comments

Links to this post



Tuesday, July 24, 2007
posted by Geetesh at 5:12 PM IST



AbsolutePPT has a great, new tutorial that shows you how you can create YouTube content with nothing other than PowerPoint and Windows Movie Maker.

The tutorial uses a step-by-step process -- and each step is accompanied by a screenshot.

Create PowerPoint YouTube movies now...

Categories: online_presentations, powerpoint, youtube

Labels: , ,

0 comments

Links to this post



    Follow me on Twitter...

    Archives:

    April 2003  |  May 2003  |  December 2003  |  January 2004  |  February 2004  |  March 2004  |  April 2004  |  May 2004  |  June 2004  |  July 2004  |  August 2004  |  September 2004  |  October 2004  |  November 2004  |  December 2004  |  January 2005  |  February 2005  |  March 2005  |  April 2005  |  May 2005  |  June 2005  |  July 2005  |  August 2005  |  September 2005  |  October 2005  |  November 2005  |  December 2005  |  January 2006  |  February 2006  |  March 2006  |  April 2006  |  May 2006  |  June 2006  |  July 2006  |  August 2006  |  September 2006  |  October 2006  |  November 2006  |  December 2006  |  January 2007  |  February 2007  |  March 2007  |  April 2007  |  May 2007  |  June 2007  |  July 2007  |  August 2007  |  September 2007  |  October 2007  |  November 2007  |  December 2007  |  January 2008  |  February 2008  |  March 2008  |  April 2008  |  May 2008  |  June 2008  |  July 2008  |  August 2008  |  September 2008  |  October 2008  |  November 2008  |  December 2008  |  January 2009  |  February 2009  |  March 2009  |  April 2009  |  May 2009  |  June 2009  |  July 2009  |  August 2009  |  September 2009  |  October 2009  |  November 2009  |  


    Featured Story

    Adobe Captivate's Edit View

    In an earlier post last week, I discussed Adobe Captivate's views and compared them to PowerPoint's deafult views. I also explained about the Storyboard View. In this post, I'll look at Captivate's Edit view, which in many ways is similar to PowerPoint's Normal view. If you are not already in Edit view within Captivate, choose the View drop-down in the toolbar, and select Edit View.

    Learn more here...


        
    Featured Book

    PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit

    PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit
    PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit is out! Check the book on Amazon.com...

    And here are some free excerpts...


    Home |  PowerPoint |  Photoshop |  Templates |  Blog |  Notes |  Ezine |  Studio |  Advertise |  Feedback |  Info |  Site Map
    Store  |  RSS |  Privacy |  Testimonials
    Free PowerPoint Backgrounds | Free PowerPoint Templates | Free Christian PowerPoint Backgrounds
    Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape
      Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape


      ©2000-2009, Geetesh Bajaj. All rights reserved.

        since November 02, 2000