Michael Power (pictured to the left) is the founder and
Managing Director of Neuxpower,
a software solutions company based in the UK. Neuxpower custom-build
both stand-alone applications and add-ins that enhance existing
software such as Microsoft Office. Their commercially-available
PowerPoint optimizer, NXPowerLite, radically reduces the size of
PowerPoint files.
Geetesh:
Michael:
Tell me about Neuxpower and what inspired NXPowerLite?
Neuxpower was
formed in 1997 with the aim of helping businesses improve
their productivity and derive more benefit from their existing
software spend. We custom-build both stand-alone software
applications and add-ons that enhance existing off-the-shelf
software. One of our clients was telling us about a huge
PowerPoint presentation that he had received and spent a
considerable amount of time optimising manually. He asked
us if there was anything we could do that would help him
with this process. After doing some preliminary research,
we decided that there was a large market for such a utility
and NXPowerLite was born.
Geetesh:
Michael:
What type of technology works behind the scenes in NXPowerLite?
NXPowerLite is a stand-alone utility, written in C++, that
examines every graphic and linked or embedded object in a
PowerPoint file, intelligently selects the most effective
file format and compression level for each and then automatically
converts them. This ensures the smallest possible file size
is achieved, whilst maintaining the quality of your presentation.
The physical size of each image is altered to the size that
it will actually be displayed at within the presentation.
Each image is then cropped at the points specified by PowerPoint.
If NXPowerLite encounters any embedded objects such as Excel
charts, Visio drawings or Photoshop images, it will ask the
user if they wish to flatten them. Once all graphics and
embedded objects have been optimised, NXPowerLite displays
the size of the original presentation, the size of the optimized
presentation, and the percentage size reduction achieved.
Geetesh:
Michael:
How has the response to the product (NXPowerLite) been?
Excellent! We have had a great deal of positive comments
and feedback on the product. Although it is possible to manually
achieve the same results as NXPowerLite, it takes a lot of
time and knowledge to do so. People love the fact that they
can just drag and drop their PowerPoint file onto the NXPowerLite
icon and let our software take care of everything for them.
Geetesh:
Michael:
What is your customer support infrastructure like?
We provide a high level of e-mail support to all registered
NXPowerLite users, as well as maintaining a comprehensive
FAQ list on the NXPowerLite website (www.nxpowerlite.com).
Our aim is to ensure we have the best, most stable product
out there. The information that our support team receive
from NXPowerLite users is absolutely vital in helping us
achieve this goal. Whenever an issue is raised that we feel
should be resolved within the product itself (such as somebody
discovering a bug or a type of embedded item that NXPowerLite
is not aware of), we release an updated version of the software,
which is made available free of charge to existing users.
Geetesh:
Michael:
Tell me something about your customer base and how they use NXPowerLite
- also do you have any trivia you would like to share?
The NXPowerLite customer base is primarily corporate, military
and education. We do have a large number of home users, but
by far the most purchases have been by organisations. Corporations
are mainly impressed with the savings they are making in
time and bandwidth costs - one company claimed that the software
paid for itself in the first five minutes alone! The Canadian
Navy is using NXPowerLite to reduce the size of graphic-heavy
presentations before sending them to and from their ships.
We were also contacted by a bridegroom who wanted to show
a PowerPoint presentation at his wedding. He was panicking
that the 300MB presentation was too large to run on his laptop.
NXPowerLite got it down to 3.5MB!
Geetesh:
Michael:
What future plans do you have for this product?
Once PowerPoint 2003 is released later this year, we will
strive to ensure that NXPowerLite is 100% compatible with
it. We are also considering a 'professional' version of NXPowerLite,
which will contain a number of advanced features such as
batch conversion.
Geetesh:
Michael:
Any other PowerPoint products in the pipeline?
Not as yet. This year we are committed to full PowerPoint
2003 compatibility for NXPowerLite, as well as our ongoing
client work. However, we do have some ideas for a new product
next year. As soon as I am able to provide any further information,
you'll be the first to know.
