|
The PowerPoint Ezine - 14
by Geetesh Bajaj
Introduction
We first look at the much-awaited Powerpoint
Live event
announced for October. Some news snippets are then followed
by information on PowerPoint related content on the TechTrax
ezine. Then, there is news about a fabulous SuperSaver offer on
Ppted backgrounds and templates. We then take a look at
the best possible route to traverse when PowerPoint starts giving
you problems. We round up this issue with a listing of links
that will be helpful to anyone who wants to create autorun CDs of
PowerPoint presentations.
PowerPoint Live at Tucson, Arizona
 Users
of Microsoft PowerPoint will have a place to go this fall with
the debut of PowerPoint Live, a three-day conference dedicated
solely to end-users of the product. The first ever PowerPoint Live
event takes place from October 12-15 in Tucson, Arizona, United
States.
This international convention will include seminars, workshops,
hands-on technical support, third-party developers and technology
partners, and keynote addresses covering virtually every topic
of interest to the software community.
PowerPoint Live will showcase world-renowned experts and artists
who turn to PowerPoint to create professional presentations. "My
staff reads like a who's who of PowerPoint authors and experts," says Rick
Altman, PowerPoint author, graphic expert, and conference organizer
of 14 years. "All I have to do to make this event a success
is get out of the way."
You'll find more info about the conference at the event site at http://www.pptlive.com
Back
Quick News
 Adobe has
announced Photoshop Album, a new product that helps you
instantly find and organize your digital photos so you can share
them with anyone, anywhere. Automatic organization by date with
intuitive timeline and calendar views is possible. You can also
instantly fix your photos and easily backup on CD or DVD. Finally,
you can use professionally designed templates for slideshows with
music, video, and audio clips.
More info here...
You
can buy the product here...
Chirag Dalal has announced Smooth Shadows, a free
PowerPoint add-in that enables you to create smooth gradient shadows
for shapes. More
info...
Lycos Asia has a comprehensive new series of themed lessons
and tutorials on digital photography - it's called the Canon
School of Digital Photography.
Back
Focus on TechTrax
TechTrax is an excellent ezine that focusses on the entire
spectrum of Microsoft Office applications. Content is authored
by Dian Chapman, editor of the ezine and several other Microsoft
MVPs including myself. In the past few months, I've authored the
following PowerPoint related articles for the ezine:
While visiting the ezine site, you can opt to subscribe to a mailing
list version of the content.
Back
Ppted SuperSaver Offer
Ppted has announced a new SuperSaver offer
on their range of PowerPoint backgrounds and templates, where you
can make savings of 25%. Five collections (a total of 25 attractive
designs) are available for US$75 instead of US$100 (if you were
to buy the same collections separately).
Buy
The SuperSaver
Collections included in this SuperSaver are:
Urban Textures
Spots Of Success
Kaleidoscope
Simply Azure
Bio Meadows
Back
PowerPoint Help Route
So, what is a 'PowerPoint Help Route'?
It's a suggested successive route you can travel through if you
need support regarding PowerPoint. Best of all, we are talking
about completely free support here. Start counting your stops:
- Search the PowerPoint
Association Search - this facility indexes 10 frontrunner
PowerPoint sites.
- Look at Microsoft's extensive PowerPoint knowledge base - you
can access this from Microsoft's PowerPoint
homepage.
- Search Google Groups for archived newsgroup posts - this link
will search the Microsoft
PowerPoint related newsgroup.
- Post your question on the PowerPoint newsgroup - you'll
find instructions here.
Back
Autorun Resources
To autorun a CD with a PowerPoint presentation - on a system with
no PowerPoint installed, you can actually access the PowerPoint
Viewer off the CD. No files are thus installed to a system - and
yet the presentation will run perfectly. Be aware that this solution
will be unable to show all the cool transitions and animations
of PowerPoint 2002 - since the Viewer in question actually uses
the PowerPoint 97 engine. There are many third party solutions
and self-do articles based on the Viewer:
Sonia Coleman and Steve Hetrick have jointly developed the Autorun
CD Project Creator, now in version 2. There is a full review at Indezine as
well as more information at the ACDPC
homepage.
Jennifer Rotondo of Creative Minds Inc., creates the elegant RunIt!
and RunIt Plus applications. More information at the RunIt!
homepage.
GST PowerLaunch is the third angle of the PowerPoint Autorun trinity.
Surprisingly unknown, and even less publicized - find more information
at the PowerLaunch
homepage - and an Indezine
review.
Creating autorun CDs is half the story - no autorun CD is elegant
without an autorun splash. The best program for this chore is AutoPlay
Menu Studio. You'll find a complete
tutorial on Indezine - also visit the AutoPlay
Menu Studio homepage.
In the days of PowerPoint 97, Microsoft had a tutorial on their
site to manually create PowerPoint autorun CDs. Mysteriously disappeared
since the last few years, I found it finally on an old Technet
CD. Here
it is, in Adobe's Acrobat format.
Microsoft also used to provide the CD Wizard add-in for PowerPoint
97 - you'll find more info at the PowerPoint
Presentation on CD page.
Back
Credits
During the preparation of this issue of the PowerPoint Ezine,
I received assistance and feedback from Dian Chapman, Rick Altman
and Steve Rindsberg (all in alphabetical order). I would like to
use this platform to thank them for their help.
Back
|
