A PowerPoint Blog

ZoomIt: Conversation with Vijay Raj

2010-03-17T15:49:00.003+05:30

Vijay Raj is a a Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) in Setup-Deploy, and a Springboard Series (STEP) Member for Windows 7. He is passionate about technology evangelism, and blogs at msigeek.com. He is also a regular speaker at the user group communities and events.

In this conversation, Vijay talks about ZoomIt, a convenient tool that allows presenters to zoom into a part of their presentation, application, or the desktop.

Geetesh: Tell us more about ZoomIt, and how you discovered this tool.

Vijay: Like many others, I do presentations at offices and user group meets. While doing so, I tend to show programing codes or configurations (or a section of the desktop or even a zoomed in portion of a slide) during some demos. Now, when you have a large audience or a large venue, the audience may not be able to see the little fonts or the small detail that appears on your screen! That�s when you need to zoom in and show them exactly what you are talking about. ZoomIt helps you in doing just that, and it provides options to annotate as well.

Sysinternals, who create ZoomIt provide some amazing tools as a part of their Sysinternals Suite -- and ZoomIt is definitely one among them. You have keyboard hotkeys to control the zoom and annotations. ZoomIt runs quietly in the system tray until summoned, and it gets activated whenever you use these hotkeys. Once you zoom into an area, you can move around, draw annotations, and even draw images to showcase a particular section. The best thing I like about this tool is that it is a small download and it can work in almost any machine that runs Microsoft Windows.

I first saw ZoomIt while watching a session by Mark Russinovich (incidentally Mark created ZoomIt), where he used it in one of his demos. That was a wow moment for me -- I have been using ZoomIt ever since.

With ZoomIt, I can easily emphasize and showcase some section of my presentation, or the desktop without using a pointing device. I always end up using this tool during my presentations, no matter what size the audience is!

Geetesh: Can you share scenarios in which ZoomIt can be helpful for presenters within PowerPoint, and beyond.

Vijay: ZoomIt can be used anywhere while presenting. I recollect an incident -- I was once traveling back from office by public transport and a few of the passengers were discussing whether Windows 7 would be a hit. After some intense discussions, I thought it was time to pull my laptop out, and show them what this OS is really about! I moved to the last row and several passengers flocked around. ZoomIt was really handy in showing my laptop screen to the people who were sitting 2 seats away from me! That�s so powerful.

You can use ZoomIt in many scenarios wherever you want to zoom, draw, or annotate on the screen. Let me explain more.

Zoom: In this screenshot below, you will see that I have zoomed into my desktop to show the 'progress status', which is one of the Aero features of Windows 7. I have also drawn an arrow to showcase this to the audience. This is so much clearer to the audience, rather than asking them to see the bottom of the screen!

Draw Sections and Annotate: As an IT Professional, some of my demos evolve around the command prompt. In the default command prompt window, the text might not be clear and the audience would hardly see any difference when you show them multiple lines of output. As you can see in the screenshot below, I have actually showcased a schema file and explained that each DLL contains references to their respective virtual DLLs. If you observe, I have created 2 boxes in different colors to show the Virtual DLL groups. This keeps the presentation and demo more lively and interactive, and the audience knows what they are seeing!

Also, if you are a developer who needs to do presentations, you'll have plenty of programing scripts and code snippets to show during a demo. This annotation feature in Zoomit will really be handy.

I have more info on ZoomIt on my site.

Categories: delivery, interviews, powerpoint, presentation_skills

The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: The Carmine Gallo Interview

2010-03-17T15:05:00.003+05:30

Carmine Gallo is a communications coach for the world�s most admired brands. His client list includes Intel, Chase, Barclays, IBM, Nokia, and many others. He is an Emmy award-winning journalist and former anchor, host, and business correspondent for CNN, Fox, CNET, and CBS. He is a sought after speaker and author of the new book, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience -- read what Carmine has to say about his new book.

Read the interview here...

Categories: books, delivery, design, interviews

PresenterMedia: Conversation with Art Holden

2010-03-17T11:24:00.002+05:30

Art Holden has been in the animation and presentation industry since 1996. He helped start Animation Factory in 1997 and served as general manager of Animation Factory for thirteen years. He currently lives in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, USA and works with PresenterMedia, a media content creating company.

Geetesh: Tell us about PresenterMedia -- in which ways can this site help PowerPoint designers get good content?

Art: PresenterMedia is a unique design company. We utilize 3D design and video animation applications to create vibrant and compelling imagery exclusively for PowerPoint. Some may call what we are doing 3D clip art, and while that may be appropriate, the term �clip art� really fails to do justice to the high quality 3D imagery we are producing on a daily basis.

We have created 3D animations and images in a variety of business subjects tailored directly to the PowerPoint user. Our special PNG images fit seamlessly into existing presentations due to their unique transparent backgrounds.

PresenterMedia is also unique in that each of our images and animations can be customized before downloading. A customer can control the amount of reflections and the shadow strength our 3D images cast on a presentation slide.

We also are one of the first PowerPoint template designers to release animated templates for PowerPoint 2010. The new video features of PowerPoint 2010 have allowed us provide our customers with a very rich media experience.

PresenterMedia customers are able to download unlimited templates, animations and clip art through a PresenterMedia subscription.

Geetesh: I looked at your web site, and one page in particular caught my attention -- this page is about the team at PresenterMedia -- can you tell us more?

Art: PresenterMedia is a company made up entirely of artists. Since 1996 we�ve created animations and art work for other design companies and distributors. We�ve created hundreds of thousands of images for companies such as Animation Factory, Clipart.com and JupiterImages. PresenterMedia is the natural extension of the talent and skills we�ve learned working for others.

Categories: clip_media, interviews, powerpoint, templates

PresentationPro PowerSLIDES: The Indezine Review

2010-03-17T10:42:00.001+05:30

Expressing ideas using visuals is always a great option as long as you use relevant content. Visuals are actually a much larger family than just pictures -- they can also include content like maps, illustrations, charts, etc. In addition, they often include collections of shapes that function as frameworks. Our review product is called PowerSLIDES, and it is a collection of such multi-purpose framework slides.

Read the review here...

Categories: powerpoint, presentation_samples, templates

Learn PowerPoint 2007 and 2010: Recolor Picture Backgrounds

2010-03-15T16:25:00.002+05:30

One of the worst things that you can do to your PowerPoint presentation is to add a busy, multi-colored background to your slides. However, people do that all the time and in the process, they compromise the subtlety and contrast of any content on their slides. One option is to recolor your backgrounds to make them more understated, and I do agree that this is a slightly difficult task to accomplish unless you use the new Recolor options available for pictures in both PowerPoint 2007 and 2010.

Learn more here...

Categories: photos, powerpoint_2007, powerpoint_2010, tutorials

GanttChart Generator for PowerPoint: Conversation with Rouwen Stallwanger

2010-03-13T12:49:00.001+05:30

Rouwen Stallwanger studied physics and astronomy in Munich, Potsdam and England. His business career started in large companies for insurance and banking in Germany and France. In 2007, he created his own company involved in development process and control that creates individual software solutions (business intelligence) for clients in finance, human resources and real estate. In this conversation, Rowen discusses his GanttChart Generator for PowerPoint product.

Geetesh: Tell us more about your GanttChart Generator product for PowerPoint.

Rouwen: The GanttChart Generator is a helper application that lets you create GanttCharts right within Microsoft PowerPoint. In general, you need lot of resources and time to generate these Gantt charts and to maintain them, especially if you want to implement them inside Microsoft PowerPoint.

Clearly you can use Microsoft Project to maintain and create Gantt charts, but in practice a lot of project managers, CEOs, and CFOs want to see a simple chart without using any extra software. All they want is a clear visual that shows where they are, what are the next steps, and what is the current status of the project.

Therefore, we decided to develop a Gantt chart generator especially for PowerPoint users, where you can easily manage the data within an Excel spreadsheet and visualize it later in PowerPoint through a simple macro. An additional goal for this product was to ensure that an office secretary, or an amateur PowerPoint user can create professional Gantt charts quickly and easily.

Our GanttChart Generator product is not a full software solution, but an add-in that saves you time.

Geetesh: What are the scenarios you witness for use of Gantt charts within PowerPoint?

Rouwen: We are developers of products for IT in finance and controlling for human resources departments. And lots of clients want to know where they are with our analytics. So my team and I use the GanttChart Generator internally to create a timeline to analyze how often the salary increases in different departments of a company in last 3 or 5 years. For real estate (finance departments), we use the GanttChart Generator to see when it�s the next time to pay the interests (loans). And for myself I use the GanttChart Generator to see how long it will take for my team to create different geographical maps for PowerPoint or what is the next step for developing software products. With the GanttChart Generator, it's easy to create slides to show to my clients, and receive feedback from them.

Categories: add-in, charting, interviews, powerpoint

Launching LegalPPT

2010-03-13T10:35:00.002+05:30

I have some news to share with you all -- especially if you work in the legal field, or if you have friends or colleagues who do.

The legal profession is one of the most high profile users of PowerPoint presentations, and I am glad to announce the launch of a whole new site, LegalPPT.com to address the needs of this niche market.

This site has been a work in progress for far too long! I wanted to make sure that I was not doing any training sessions, or traveling to conferences, or even on vacation when I get this moving ahead. Unfortunately, that was easier said than done -- hence the delay.

Now that we are going ahead with launching this site, let me tell you that we already have a few legal PowerPoint templates for you to download -- more templates and other stuff should be coming soon.

By other stuff, we mean PowerPoint sample presentations, book reviews, resources, interviews, and more -- all for PowerPoint users in the legal domain!

Categories: legal, powerpoint

Special edition: Using Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 -- Now in Chinese

2010-03-11T10:10:00.003+05:30

I can now claim to have written a book that I cannot understand -- at least not in this new language that it has been translated to! My Special edition: Using Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 book has now been released in a Chinese edition.

I am so happy that Chinese readers can now take advantage of all the detailed documentation and techniques in this book.

Categories: books, powerpoint_2007

PowerPoint in Medicine: Conversation with Terry Irwin

2010-03-08T15:52:00.000+05:30

Terry Irwin is a consultant surgeon in Belfast, Northern Ireland working for the National Health Service (NHS) at the Royal Victoria Hospital, the main regional centre in Northern Ireland. His surgical specialty is colon and rectal surgery - always a good conversation stopper when people ask him what he does. His response is that he repairs waste disposal systems! Terry is also a long time PowerPoint user and co-author of a book on PowerPoint geared towards the designing of medical presentations. In this conversation, Terry talks about the the usage of PowerPoint in the medicine industry, and his training sessions.

Geetesh: What are the specific areas of PowerPoint usage by the medical community including doctors that sets it apart from mainstream PowerPoint use?

Terry: PowerPoint is of course the main method of supporting communication at medical meetings, training sessions and in teaching students. It is pretty much universal. While in many ways it has much in common with presentation content in other arenas, there are some subtle and some more significant differences.

Most scientific presentations have to be balanced, there is no product to hype up or sell. Instead the arguments for and against have to be presented, ideally with a clear conclusion. A major concern in clinical presentations is confidentiality. Much of the material centres around patient data, but we have to respect patients' rights at the same time. That is not always easy.

Also, medicine is rich in digital data. Radiology and endoscopy systems can now save digitised output such as CT and MR scans, ECGs, colonoscopies and keyhole (laparoscopic) surgery. Many people don't realise that CT, ultrasound and MR images are 3D and can be reconstructed in some very clever ways. They can also be exported as videos. Showing full screen embedded video in a presentation is the holy grail of medical presentation at the minute and being able to overlay text and markers on top of the video without having to learn how to use video editing software, will revolutionise medical presentations.

Geetesh: Tell us more about the type of PowerPoint training you provide.

Terry: Medical staff and students are really good at speaking and really bad at content design! I guess this is no surprise, since they are used to speaking one to one with patients, and their hand-writing is terrible. Still, it drives me crazy that they cannot lay out slide content in a way that enhances their message, rather than distracting from it. I try to help with understanding basic concepts: legibility, color schemes, correct use of graphics, tables and artwork. I work hard at trying to eradicate those old PowerPoint annoyances of reading slides aloud, wordy slide content and irritating animation. In addition, my main focus is on content delivery. No surprises -- doctors are very clinical! They need to learn to tell a story, capture the attention of the audience and communicate their message. This comes easily to sales teams but it is counter-intuitive for medics.

A favorite, and one that always goes down well, is to take a presentation from one of the audience and do a make over on it. This has unearthed some fantastic lessons. Two good examples are the X-ray images photographed on a light box with a digital camera. The resulting color image can be an enormous file. Reducing this by resizing it, cropping out the edges and converting it to greyscale can reduce file size dramatically. A second classic was the beautiful pie chart that included a linked Excel spreadsheet containing three years of PhD research that had been left on a server at a meeting. So much for keeping your data safe from prying eyes!

I do a lot of one-to-one teaching with my own staff. After all, when they speak at meetings, they are representing me, so it had better be good. I also get invites to teach in some other departments in Queen's University in Belfast. On top of that I have been lucky enough to be asked to speak at meetings in places as far apart as Reykjavik, Prague, Athens and Beijing! A highlight was an invitation to spend a week teaching PowerPoint in Dubai. As I write this, I am about to travel to Cuba and Barbados with my other passion - I am the honorary secretary of the Travelling Surgical Society of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We will be doing a teaching session on communication skills in Barbados as part of this meeting. This will include two talks on presentations.

So PowerPoint has been good to me, I have got to meet a lot of interesting people along the way, including my good friend and co-author Julie Terberg and of course Geetesh Bajaj!

Categories: interviews, medicine, powerpoint, training

Brainshark Channel Solution: Conversation with Joe Gustafson

2010-03-02T21:26:00.001+05:30

Joe Gustafson, CEO of Brainshark, Inc., founded the company in 1999 to help knowledge experts accelerate the flow of information to their audiences in a highly effective format. Under Joe's leadership, Brainshark has become a leader in on-demand business communications and a successful Software-as-a-Service company. Joe has been instrumental in the development of Brainshark�s Channel Solution, which solves critical challenges for companies looking to increase channel revenue.

Geetesh: What is the Brainshark Channel Solution, and whom is it geared to?

Joe: We�re excited to launch the Brainshark Channel Solution, encompassing new product capabilities and services that help technology suppliers/OEMs and their channel partners increase the reach and impact of their communications. Suppliers can equip their partners with Brainshark on-demand multimedia presentations, and then partners can use this content for their own sales and marketing outreach, as well as for training and certification. Best of all, everyone can tap into in-depth analytics from Brainshark, letting them measure the value of the communications they deliver.

Here�s a more in-depth look at how it all works. Through our Channel Solution, suppliers and their partners have access to their own unique and secure site with Brainshark content. Suppliers can create and publish Brainshark multimedia presentations � uploading PowerPoint presentations and other documents, and easily adding voice, video, attachments, interactivity and more � and share this information with their global partner community.

Then, when channel partners � for example, distributors and resellers � log into their own sites, they have free access to content from all the suppliers they work with. As I mentioned, they can use the presentations to shore up their knowledge on supplier offerings or to bolster their own sales and demand generation activities. There are upgrade options for partners too, including the ability to add their own logo to presentations � or apply further personalization by adding their own voice-enriched intro and closing to pre-approved supplier presentations. Also, major distributors that want to create their own content and publish it to their own partner networks can license the full Brainshark Channel Solution.

Geetesh: Can you share some scenarios in which the Brainshark Channel Solution will help technology suppliers, partners and end-users?

Joe: Sure. We�re looking forward to bringing the already-proven benefits of Brainshark to the tech channel � and think there�s a great opportunity to help suppliers and their channel partners streamline communications, improve productivity and ROI, and really cut through the communications clutter with high-impact material. Our current customers have realized impressive results with Brainshark � including reducing communication costs by 90 percent over previous methods, cutting training time in half, and increasing lead generation results by five to 10 times (and more).

We tend to discuss benefits of our Channel Solution as they pertain to two audiences: tech suppliers/ OEMs and their channel partners (such as distributors and resellers). For suppliers, there�s no question that they face limitations as they deliver critical information to their channel partners today � through vehicles including underutilized portals, cost-prohibitive travel and webinars that partners can�t find time to attend. In fact, statistics show that 66 percent of webinar registrants don�t show up, 80 percent of marketing collateral is unused and 90 percent of product knowledge is forgotten one month after training. Brainshark�s multimedia format, on the other hand, really makes content stand out from the pack; the on-demand delivery means it can be viewed and revisited anytime, and the incorporation of voice and multimedia makes the content both �sticky� and memorable. In terms of channel communications, Brainshark provides a cost-effective way for suppliers to reach all tiers of partners worldwide � helping them maintain mindshare and build tighter relationships.

In addition to differentiating their communications, suppliers also benefit from message consistency and control. For example, once they change the �master copy� of a presentation, this change is reflected everywhere that presentation exists in the channel, including in any personalized partner versions. In this way, they can keep content timely and relevant, and be of greater value to their partners. And, as I mentioned, the tracking abilities we offer are key � letting suppliers see which content their partners are using, and how effective that content is at capturing audience attention.

Partners realize significant benefits too � a big one being the tracking information as well. The info they receive is on a more granular scale, allowing them to track individual viewing activity so they can qualify interest and prioritize follow-up. In addition, Brainshark�s multimedia format means that partners� customers and prospects are much more likely to engage with the materials they receive. Also, as I mentioned, partners can use the Brainshark content available to them for their own training and certification � viewing the material at a time that�s convenient and doesn�t intrude on their day.

It�s worthwhile to mention, too, the benefits for individual customers and prospects, who can return back to the Brainshark presentations they receive at any time for more information, viewing them online � no downloads required � at their convenience. This can reduce the need to call a company for more info � and still leaves the viewer feeling that he/she has received personalized attention.

Finally, I�d love to point you to a brief (two-minute) Brainshark presentation, where you can see firsthand more examples of how companies can use Brainshark to positively impact channel communications. We�re looking forward to bringing these benefits to an even greater audience.

Categories: brainshark, interviews, online_presentations, powerpoint

oomfo: Conversation with Pallav Nadhani

2010-02-27T14:41:00.002+05:30

Pallav Nadhani is the co-founder and CTO of InfoSoft Global. He co-authored a book on combining the power of Flash and .NET called 'Flash.NET' at the age of 17 and has written several technical articles for international journals ever since. An MS in Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh, he is the founder and lead developer of FusionCharts, the industry's leading Flash charting component.

In this conversaton, Pallav talks about oomfo, an add-in for PowerPoint that adds animated and interactive charts.

Geetesh: What exactly is Oomfo, and how does it work within PowerPoint?

Pallav: oomfo is a charting add-in for Microsoft PowerPoint (2003, 2007 and 2010) that helps render animated and interactive charts within PowerPoint, all using a simple to use GUI. It is powered by FusionCharts Suite which is the industry leader in Flash Charting.

oomfo allows you to import data from Excel, CSV, HTML tables and many other data sources. You can use its smart GUI to enter data or convert data from various sources into a chart. The wide gamut of configuration option lets you configure the chart to look exactly like you want it to.

oomfo offers a variety of 2D and 3D chart types that are highly interactive. All charts support tool-tip. Pie and doughnut charts support dynamic rotation, slicing and transformation from 2D to 3D. The True 3D chart supports dynamic camera angle rotation. Plus, there are business oriented charts like waterfall/cascade charts which are not present in PowerPoint, as well as charts that let you visually drag-drop-n-change data during the course of your presentation - this is just perfect in scenarios like when you're collectively trying to decide on sales projection for the next quarter.

Geetesh: How does Oomfo compare to PowerPoint�s native charts � and are they editable once inserted? Also how do they work within the upcoming PowerPoint 2010 version?

Pallav: PowerPoint has always offered charts and graphs as default. But then, there was only so much you could do with it. No matter how hard you tried, boring could never be beautiful. The need of the hour? To add some real oomph � oomfo. So, there you go! oomfo transforms mundane data into stunning visuals and adds the oomph quotient to your presentations. While at it, oomfo lets you edit and manipulate your data with incredible ease. It helps you captivate your audience in a unique way.

The charts are totally editable even after insertion. In fact, even when you export the charts to run on another machine (without oomfo), once oomfo is installed on that machine, you can edit those exported charts as well. Such is the flexibility and portability offered by oomfo. Additionally, you can also export the charts generated by oomfo within your slides as image if you want to upload to sites like SlideShare.

We're currently also working on enabling drill-down charts within PowerPoint. Say for example, you've a chart that shows yearly sales of three years (say 2007,2008 and 2009). Now, in a typical PowerPoint slide, if you were to show detailed data of the year 2007, 2008 and 2009, you'll possibly add one slide per such chart. With oomfo, you can create linked charts (containing detailed data of 2007, 2008 and 2009) that show up in your presentation when a particular year is clicked in the main chart. This lets you build full dashboards and reporting within your PowerPoint slides without the need for your IT team. And this can be shared with anyone across the world.

oomfo works flawlessly with PowerPoint 2010 as well.

Categories: add-in, charting, interviews, powerpoint, powerpoint_2007, powerpoint_2010

Learn PowerPoint 2007 and 2010: Ungrouping Maps in PowerPoint

2010-02-24T15:11:00.000+05:30

In a previous tutorial I showed you how to download vector map files from the Microsoft Office website. In this tutorial you'll learn how to ungroup these files. Our example looks at a map of the United States of America that also shows each individual state -- your map may be different but the principles explained below will be useful. With your downloaded file ready, follow these steps to place the downloaded file in PowerPoint 2007 - 2010 and ungroup it.

Read more here...

Categories: maps, office_online, powerpoint_2007, powerpoint_2010, tutorials

Learn PowerPoint 2007 and 2010: Downloading Maps from the Office.com Site

2010-02-24T15:03:00.002+05:30

One of the most frequently asked questions in the PowerPoint forums is about having access to a map of the United States of America on a slide that has each state available as a separate selectable shape. In this tutorial you'll learn how to do just that by first downloading a suitable map clip art file from Microsoft Office.com website.

Learn more here...

Categories: maps, office_online, powerpoint_2007, powerpoint_2010, tutorials

Indezine Stories: Buddha Teaches Ananda About Accepting or Not

2010-02-16T17:50:00.005+05:30

For a change, this post has nothing to do with PowerPoint at all! In fact, this may help you create better presentations -- but more because you might find that being open and receptive is such an important part of any learning process. So it is story time!

This story was told by Sujita Khemka of Hero Honda before one of my PowerPoint training sessions for their company -- Sujita always starts any session with a story -- and this is one of the several that I have heard her retell.

This story is about an event from the life of the Buddha -- one day, Gautama Buddha was on one of his rounds asking for alms along with Ananda, his trusted attendant. When they called out for alms outside a particular house, the lady of the house came out and abused the Buddha for coming to her doorstep and asking for alms first thing in the morning. Also, she was no mood to share food for alms with them. Thus, she hurled some unacceptable words upon him. Now, almost everywhere that the Buddha visited, people would give him utmost respect -- and this was not a very pleasant incident. The Buddha remained calm and peaceful, but Ananda had not overcome anger as yet and was seething with fury. The Buddha calmed him, and they moved on.

Ananda was still furious -- and the Buddha wanted to show Ananda how futile anger is -- so he took his kamandalu (an Indian metal water bottle with a handle) and gave it to Ananda asking him to hold it a while. Soon thereafter, the Buddha asked him whose kamandalu he was holding? Surprised Ananda answered that the kamandalu belonged to the Buddha. The Buddha then told Ananda that from now onwards, he was gifting the kamandalu to him.

After a little while, the Buddha surprised Ananda again by asking him the same question about whose kamandalu he was holding? Ananda forthwith replied that this was his kamandalu because he had received it from the Buddha and accepted it as a gift.

Now was the time to make that point -- and the Buddha told Ananda that there was not much difference in the abuses handed to them by the lady and the kamandalu that Buddha gave to Ananda -- both of them were gifts but for a gift to be effective there needs to be two conditions: first the giver should want to provide the gift, and the receiver should accept it -- the kamandalu fulfilled both conditions since the provider and accepter were both involved. But that was not the case with the abuses they received from the lady since there was only a provider in that case, and no receiver -- so as long as the Buddha refused to accept those abuses, where was the need to get angry -- anger would only be a result of accepting those abuses.

Now Sujita's point in telling this story was that the participants have to be willing to learn each technique that the trainer teaches them -- unless they are accepting, they will get no benefit from the gifts of knowledge provided by the trainer -- amazing how simple things can hold so much wisdom!

Categories: inspiration, stories

Convexion PowerPoint to Silverlight Converter: The Indezine Review

2010-02-04T13:43:00.003+05:30

With the proliferation of PowerPoint to Flash converters everywhere, you might have wondered why there are almost no PowerPoint to Silverlight converters anywhere. After all, Silverlight is considered by many as Microsoft's response to Adobe's Flash. Add the fact that PowerPoint and Silverlight are both from the Microsoft stable, and the complete absence of PowerPoint to Silverlight converters is like a puzzle with no solution!

Luckily, someone listened and created the first ever PowerPoint to Silverlight converters -- and in this review we are looking at Convexion, a PowerPoint add-in from Electric Rain.

Read the review here...

Categories: online_presentations, powerpoint, silverlight

SlideShare Channels: Conversation with Rashmi Sinha

2010-02-04T07:33:00.000+05:30

Rashmi Sinha is cofounder and CEO of SlideShare, the world's largest community for sharing presentations. She manages design and business development at SlideShare. Rashmi blogs at www.rashmisinha.com about social software and running a startup.

In this conversation, Rashmi talks about the new Channels feature on SlideShare.

Geetesh: What exactly are SlideShare Channels, and how can they help target content for an audience?

Rashmi: SlideShare channels are custom branded spaces for businesses and brands. If you have content on SlideShare, this gives you a place to have all your content in one place in with a highly customized look and feel.

Channels are less about targeting and more about branding. The targeting is a core part of SlideShare - you put up a piece of content. It reaches people who are interested in through tags, search, sharing on networks. Channels let you have more control of the exprience people have when they land on your SlideShare page and content.

Geetesh: Can anyone create a Channel? Or is there a process that involves approval?

Rashmi: Channels are for businesses and brands who want to have a rich presence on SlideShare and interact with the community. Right now, you do need to talk to us in order to setup a channel. Each is a custom project based on the needs of the business.

The channels available now range in variety of content and organizations. For example,

Microsoft Office has setup a channel focused on parenting topic (project done in collaboration with our partners, Federated Media)
Ogilvy has setup a concept channel for Pharma
Razorfish Marketing uploads about interactive marketing & technology
Pew Internet has shared a lot of their research reports about the internet & internet usage
Whitehouse is sharing almost 1000 presentations and documents

We're also rolling out topical Channels that are curated by our content team. For example we have channels on Cloud Computing and Social Media. These types of channels will be curated by our content team. You'll more of them in the coming months as we roll out new topics.

Categories: interviews, online_presentations, powerpoint, slideshare

Presentation Tree: The Paul Tumey Interview

2010-02-03T13:53:00.003+05:30

Paul Tumey is the founder and director of Presentation Tree, a 10-year old PowerPoint design company in Seattle, Washington. Paul's background includes notable achievements in graphic design, writing, public speaking, publicity, and marketing consulting. In this conversation, Paul shares some wisdom about creating PowerPoint presentations, and talks about Presentation Tree, how it was founded and the type of work they do.

Read the interview here...

Categories: design, interviews, powerpoint

25 Million Brainshark Presentation Views: Conversation with Joe Gustafson

2010-02-02T14:38:00.000+05:30

Learn PowerPoint: Changing Chart Types in PowerPoint

2010-01-28T14:51:00.001+05:30

Learn how you can change your existing PowerPoint charts to other types -- for example, changing a column chart to an area chart. PowerPoint provides ample choices in chart types for almost every kind of graphical data representation. There are some basic chart types such as column, bar, line, pie, etc. -- and advanced charts like radar, surface, bubble, doughnut, etc.

Follow these steps change the chart type in PowerPoint 2002 and 2003...

Categories: charting, powerpoint_2003, tutorials

myBrainshark: Conversation with Andy Zimmerman

2010-01-22T11:02:00.001+05:30

Andy Zimmerman, VP of Business Development, is responsible for developing and managing strategic partnerships and programs for Brainshark, the leading software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution provider for on-demand presentations. Andy played an integral role in the launch of myBrainshark.com in September 2009 and continues to drive the initiative. Prior to Brainshark, Andy launched SaaS offerings for other software providers including Theikos, a leading Salesforce.com partner (acquired by Astadia) and e-billing provider Edocs (now part of Oracle). Andy earned his BA from Brown University and MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

In this conversation, Andy talks about myBrainshark.

Geetesh: Tell us about the raison d'�tre for myBrainshark � how did it evolve?

Andy: Brainshark has experienced substantial commercial success over the years � serving as a critical communication vehicle for more than 1,000 companies across industries. We conceived of myBrainshark as a way to reach out to a much larger audience of business professionals, enabling individuals to tap into the benefits of our product with absolutely no price barriers.

Registration is simple and free � then it�s an easy process to create and share on-demand multimedia presentations. You simply upload a PowerPoint presentation or other content, and dial a Brainshark-provided number to add your voice narration or upload MP3 audio. If you�d like, you can also add in video, survey questions and attachments to enhance your presentation. Then, it�s time to share it You can send out a link to your target audience, embed the presentation in your webpage or blog, or share it through social media tools including LinkedIn and Twitter. myBrainshark�s reporting capabilities also enable you to see when people are viewing your presentation, how often it has been viewed and even from where in the world it�s being viewed.

myBrainshark offers a way for people to communicate on and off the job � delivering far-reaching messages at no cost, but with maximum impact to promote themselves, promote their products/companies, and share expertise. We�ve been pleased with the site�s reception and with the creative ways people are using myBrainshark to showcase content �creating everything from sales and marketing materials to training content to �talking r�sum�s� to real estate listings to holiday greetings and much more.

Geetesh: How is myBrainshark different from Brainshark, and the other slide sharing sites like SlideShare, SlideBoom, authorSTREAM, etc.?

Andy: Among our key differentiators as compared to slide sharing sites is the ability to easily incorporate phone or MP3 audio � which has been one of Brainshark�s hallmarks throughout the last decade � helping users create high-quality, personalized presentations. Also, our service preserves PowerPoint animations, so it�s very easy to time your audio appropriately with those animations to deliver maximum impact.

Additional distinguishing features include our ability to support various media types � going beyond PowerPoint presentations to also include documents, videos, web pages and audio-only podcasts. In addition, myBrainshark enables you to incorporate interactivity � such as survey questions � within presentations, and see how your audience responds. With these analytic capabilities, you can even view dashboards showing how, when and from where people are engaging with your presentation Furthermore, presentation pages are search engine optimized � helping more people find your content.

Here�s another unique feature � through myBrainshark, users who are experts on business or training topics can apply online to become �Learning Providers.� As such, they can price their content if desired, while site visitors can preview and/or buy it. The premium content available on myBrainshark currently spans topics including leadership, selling skills, compliance and more.

Of course, myBrainshark is also backed by the Brainshark brand and proven infrastructure, meaning it�s built by a company with the highest standards of quality, reliability and security, which has been helping businesses succeed with on-demand presentations for more than a decade. In fact, this makes for a good transition into the other part of your question � concerning our commercial offerings and differences from myBrainshark.

Like our commercial offerings, myBrainshark has a powerful feature set that lets users differentiate and extend the reach of their communications. Use of myBrainshark is completely free, and content created on the site is publicly available � letting users easily communicate with a worldwide audience. Brainshark�s paid offerings, meanwhile, are geared toward organizations (versus individuals) that often need to share private or proprietary content with their own target audiences.

Brainshark�s commercial offerings also include other enhanced functionality for businesses. Through Brainshark, organizations can easily manage and organize content created by any number of users and manage their access permissions. The tracking and reporting capabilities available to our enterprise users also provide much more granular reports and viewing details. In addition, our enterprise editions provide numerous optional features such as learning management, marketing campaign management, content approval, content archiving, and offline viewing � as well the ability to integrate with CRM, LMS and other software applications.

With both Brainshark and myBrainshark, we continue to help businesses and individuals create far-reaching, high-impact communications that resonate in a measurable way with their audience.

Categories: brainshark, interviews, online_presentations, powerpoint

PowerPoint Heaven eConvention 2009: Conversation with Shawn Toh

2010-01-19T07:57:00.000+05:30

Shawn Toh is based out of Singapore and loves to do advanced animation tricks using PowerPoint. He is a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP (Most Valuable Professional) and runs the PPT Heaven site.

In this discussion, Shawn discusses the PowerPoint Heaven eConvention 2009.

Geetesh: What happens as part of the PowerPoint Heaven eConvention 2009? Tell us more about this whole concept?

Shawn: PowerPoint Heaven eConvention 2009 is an annual online convention where PowerPointers get together to discuss, review and submit their latest PowerPoint works We have receive many great works such as games, artworks and animations from our members and PowerPoint communities in China, and also demos of their upcoming games.

There's also an eCon Award, which is a form of recognition to recognize a contributor for his hard work and effort for the previous year. The winners are determined through public voting.

Geetesh: How is the 2009 event different than the same eConvention in 2008? And what plans do you have for the next similar event?

Shawn: In this year's eConvention, TrainSignal has sponsored us with copies of PowerPoint 2007 Training Packages which we will giveaway as prizes to the winners. In addition, PowerPointers who have submitted their works on eConvention will also get a chance to win the prize. We will be looking for more sponsors on our next eConvention and if you are interested, start submitting your works on PowerPoint Heaven!

Categories: interviews, powerpoint

Campaign Against Death by PowerPoint: Conversation with Ellen Finkelstein

2010-01-13T12:35:00.000+05:30

Ellen Finkelstein is author of several PowerPoint, Flash, and AutoCAD books -- she has just launched a new campaign that she calls Campaign Against Death by PowerPoint.

In this conversation, Ellen talks more about this campaign.

Geetesh: Tell me what the Campaign Against Death by PowerPoint is, what made you get started with this one, and what you hope you achieve?

Ellen: The Campaign Against Death by PowerPoint is an effort to help presenters present more effectively, so that they meet their audiences� needs, instead of boring them and being irrelevant. I was working on my white paper--putting my thoughts and knowledge on presenting together with the results of a survey on people�s experiences with Death by PowerPoint. The results of that survey were especially thought-provoking and made me wonder why there are still so many poor presentations being given day after day, when there�s so much good knowledge available about how to present effectively. The survey responders were members of an audience and I realized that many presenters simply don�t know that they�re causing Death by PowerPoint. Without that knowledge, they don�t even look for information on improving their presentation skills.

So, the idea came to empower audiences to offer the white paper to presenters. In my personal experience, negative feedback has been crucial to spurring me on to realize I needed to improve and doing something about it, but no one ever offered me a resource to help. That would have been so appreciated and useful! So I decided that, in addition to offering the white paper � which is like a mini-course in presentation skills � free to anyone who was interested, I would reach out to audiences and suggest to them that they offer the white paper to presenters. It�s a very gentle and constructive way to indicate to a presenter that improvement is needed. That�s how the Campaign Against Death by PowerPoint started.

Geetesh: You do provide a full page invitation along with an ebook at the Campaign Against Death by PowerPoint site � tell us more.

Ellen: Yes, at www.tellnshow.com, anyone can download a one-page invitation to give to a presenter. The invitation invites the presenter to download the free white paper at www.tellnshow.com/whitepaper.html. Any presenter who downloads the white paper will find a great resource with advice on what to avoid and simple steps to take to improve presentations, including content, design, and delivery. You�re right, the white paper is more of an ebook than a white paper�it�s just over 40 pages!

Categories: interviews, powerpoint

PowerPoint 2010 Animation Engine

2010-01-11T17:02:00.001+05:30

The PowerPoint 2010 team has put up this new video on their YouTube channel that shows how effective the new hardware accelerated animation engine is compared to what you could expect in PowerPoint 2007. Very cool stuff!

Categories: animation, powerpoint_2010

myBrainshark: The Indezine Review

2010-01-11T15:28:00.001+05:30

Almost everyone these days is comfortable creating a set of slides using PowerPoint, but tell those same users to create online presentations or e-learning content, and you'll find them not too happy! myBrainshark is a free online application that makes it easy to create on-demand online presentations with just your PowerPoint slides and a phone connection to add voice-overs -- it all works very intuitively, and you can create your first online presentation in less than an hour.

So how does myBrainshark fare? Read on to learn more...

Categories: brainshark, online_presentations, powerpoint

think-cell: Conversation with Markus Hannebauer

2009-12-22T10:47:00.000+05:30

Dr. Markus Hannebauer is think-cell�s Managing Director and in-charge of Marketing, Sales, Operations and Finance. Markus has studied computer science and business and holds a doctoral degree in Artificial Intelligence from the Technical University of Berlin.

In this conversation, Markus talks about how think-cell chart can help PowerPoint users create effective charts.

Geetesh: Tell us about think-cell, and your PowerPoint add-in products.

Markus: While working for a well-known consulting firm, my colleague and co-founder Arno Sch�dl faced a lot of problems in creating data-driven charts using PowerPoint. The consultants often struggled with small details like integrating graphical elements into charts and getting label-placement right. Arno and his colleagues were also frustrated because at that time, there was a dearth of decent tools which would alleviate this daily grunt.

Eventually he asked me if I was interested in building something to make the consultants� lives easier. Arno is my friend since school and we knew each other very well; besides this, his idea sounded really convincing to me. Thus in the year 2002, think-cell was born.

After carrying out experiments at various partner firms, we launched our first product called think-cell chart. The users were happy with the fact that they could create various PowerPoint charts like Gantt, Marimekko, waterfall and many more within their well-known working environment with minimum effort. What they appreciated most was that after chart creation, it was really easy to edit them and to share them with colleagues and clients. Presently, we are working on a new tool to automate the entire layout of conceptual slides, where the layout is automatically calculated by understanding the user requirements and constraints.

We have come a long way since 2002. An excellent development, support, and sales team is responsible for think-cell�s spectacular growth. Over the last three years we have continuously been featured in Deloitte�s annual Technology Fast 50 ranking, securing the fourth place in 2009 with a revenue growth of 3,154% over five years. Four out of five top consulting firms and a majority of the companies in the Fortune-100 are think-cell�s customers.

This journey has been our reward and the best satisfaction is helping people solve real world issues with our software. think-cell�s users are our greatest assets since their feedback helps us craft our products to a high quality. Arno and I believe that supporting students and non-profit organizations is a good way to give back to our user community. Moreover, this also prepares students for future consulting and related career paths. Licenses of think-cell are available free of charge for students and researchers.

Geetesh: How easy is the think-cell chart product to use, compared to creating the same charts in PowerPoint or Excel alone without using think-cell chart? Explain more.

Markus: The main difference to traditional PowerPoint charting is the user interface and the degree of automation. This is where we put all our efforts, because it makes our software easy to learn and quick to use. A very influential customer once desired some changes in a particular user interface component of think-cell chart. We had to alter and field-test the respective component at-least five times, but finally we achieved the perfect solution. Experience gathered by our users is taken really seriously and we always try to go the extra mile to help them enjoy their work with think-cell.

Claims do not carry much value unless there are measurements to support them. So we conducted case-studies with some of our customers to see if think-cell really improved the users� PowerPoint experience. A test set containing business data visualization tasks in PowerPoint was supplied to a sample group. Using PowerPoint with templates and macros alone required more than ten hours of work. Less than three hours were invested to finish the same tasks using PowerPoint with think-cell chart.

Consequently, after six months of experimenting, it was confirmed that even PowerPoint veterans achieved efficiency gains by factors of 3 to 5 by using think-cell chart as compared to their chosen existing methods. Today, thousands of users trust our products in their day-to-day work and we intend to continue the tradition.

You can start using think-cell and get proficient using the program even if you are using it for the first time. Making a chart with think-cell chart is like scribbling the same on a piece of paper or whiteboard. The documentation and screen-casts on our web site will help you quickly in getting started with think-cell chart.

I can only invite your readers to try think-cell themselves and see their productivity go up while creating PowerPoint charts. Once at a party in Berlin, Arno came across a consultant who really liked an add-in she was using to create charts in PowerPoint. He let her talk about it for a while and then responded with a smile: "Glad you liked it, that�s us!"

Categories: add-in, charting, interviews, powerpoint