The PowerPoint Ezine - 34
by Geetesh Bajaj December
22nd, 2003
Contents
Freebies, Goodies and Special Offers
Jerry Weissman speaks about Death by PowerPoint
and more...
Make PowerPoint talk with PowerTalk
Quick News
Focus on PointCapture
PowerPoint Users can Save Trees!
Events & Seminars
Freebies, Goodies and Special Offers
Let's get started with the best things!
All subscribers of this mailing list can download two free PowerPoint
backgrounds that are going to be part of new unreleased PowerPoint
template collections at ppted.com -
all you need to do is go and download them! It's our way of wishing
you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Start
downloading now...
 
There's more - the good people at Omnivox are allowing
readers of this ezine a great discount on their revolutionary Omnivox
Mobile Sound System.
 The
Omnivox is an amazingly compact device that is revolutionising
computer-driven presentations. No longer will you need to attach
speakers to your laptop and hope that the person at the far end
of the table can hear and that the person closest to you isn't
blasted out of the room. Simply plug the Omnivox into your computer
(or other audio source) and set it on the conference room table.
The table will become your speaker, delivering audio evenly and
pleasantly to everyone in the room. Imagine how your contact experiences
will change knowing that you can set up in less than a minute and
knowing that everyone will be able to clearly hear your presentation. More
info here...
Jerry Weissman speaks about Death by PowerPoint
and more...
 Here's
an Indezine exclusive - Jerry Weissman, author of the bestselling
book, 'Presenting
to Win: the Art of Telling Your Story' speaks about Death by
PowerPoint and much more. Here are some excerpts:
Geetesh: Nowadays, you hear PowerPoint being compared to
death. What do you think about this whole thing?
Jerry: While it is true that many presentations are mind-numbingly
poor, the fault is not in Microsoft PowerPoint, but in the presenter.
To blame the software for poor presentations is like blaming poor
handwriting or spelling on the Montblanc Pen Company. The fault
is not with the pen, but the penmanship. Presenters must learn
to adopt the Less is More rule.
Geetesh: What do you think about online rich media delivery
of presentations - for instance PowerPoint re-purposed to be distributed
online.
Jerry: Online presentations, such as Microsoft LiveMeeting,
present vast new opportunities to improve communication and save
the cost and wear and tear of travel. While many of the techniques
that apply to in-person presentations are applicable online, there
are a number of significant changes that must be adopted.
One is the absence of direct personal contact. To compensate,
the online presenter must provide a richer narration and be mindful
of conveying meaning with vocal inflection. Another important factor
is to make the cyber audience feel involved by using the polling
and interactive techniques available in online software.
Read the complete
interview here...
Make PowerPoint talk with PowerTalk
Surprises can add value to so many things in life. PowerTalk is
one such surprise - imagine a free program that adds speech abilities
to PowerPoint. What's even more surprising is the fact that it
is so less publicized. Few people know about this program, so the
best way to begin would probably be to start with how it evolved.
Steve Lee, a software developer based in the UK explains that
he got to the stage where he wanted to give something to the accessibility
cause. He further adds that he likes the concept of Open
Source Software (OSS) where a community of people work together
to develop solutions and ensure that software can be modified freely.
Steve wanted to put the accessibility and OSS concepts together
and when he discovered Simon Judge of Speechmakers,
they both found that they were thinking along similar lines. Around
this time, a letter appeared in the BCS Disability Group's Ability magazine
requesting help in presenting PowerPoint content to an audience
including blind and visually impaired people. Also, this was to
be presented by some one with aphasia. As Steve explains "This
letter was an ‘ahah’ moment for me and all the threads
came together. I could use a little Python (an
OSS developer language) code to glue together PowerPoint and SAPI (Microsoft's
Speech API) to solve the person’s problem and provide some
starting code for Speechmakers. The code would simply hook up to
PowerPoint events and grab slide text, squirting it at SAPI to
narrate."
PowerTalk is available for download from the Speechmaker's site:
http://www.meru.org.uk/speechmakers/
Find a download link on the page. Installation is easy - after
the setup is complete, you'll find a new PowerTalk group in your
Windows' Start menu.
During installation, you are prompted if you want PPS and PPT
files to automatically be associated with PowerTalk. Unless you
want to open PowerPoint files all the time with PowerTalk, you
will want this feature turned off. After installation, it is easy
to enable or disable this feature anytime through the PowerTalk
Settings option in the PowerTalk menu in the Windows' Start menu.
The installation also includes a sample PowerPoint file called
Power Talk.ppt that includes special tags that the Microsoft Speech
API can understand.
PowerTalk requires PowerPoint 2000 or later to be installed on
Windows 2000, XP, 2003 Server or newer.
Quick News
Read the
PowerPoint Blog here...
Presentations magazine honored Anystream's Apreso product
with its annual Standing Ovation Award for best presentation products. Read
more here...
Tom Bunzel discusses how you would include a Visio timeline
diagram in PowerPoint at the InformIT
site...
Powerbullet Presenter is a free program that allows you
to create quick Flash animations and presentations. More
info...
Dr. Joseph Sommerville discusses The Seven Deadly Sins
of PowerPoint Presentations on About.com. Read
here...
Canto released version 6 of their Cumulus DAM (Digital
Asset Management) software. More
info at the Canto site...
Just found this link to create a multimedia
Christmas card in PowerPoint...
Back
Focus on PointCapture
With over 30 million PowerPoint presentations being created everyday,
you probably have a fair number of them on your hard disk or network.
Nowadays, you need to create PowerPoint presentations at short
notice and searching for a particular slide in a particular presentation
can be both laborious and time-consuming. Thankfully, PowerPoint's
open add-in architecture allows third-party providers to create
new utilities that plug right into PowerPoint. One such third-party
product is called PointCapture.
Read more...
PowerPoint Users Can Save Trees!
Shyam Pillai has announced a free add-in that ensures that users
can print only handouts of the presentation. As Shyam says, "this
will save a lot unwanted wastage of paper when users prints slides.
Ideally for use in colleges."
Find
more info and download here...
Back
Events & Seminars
Winning Presentations Seminar
January 15 and 16, 2004, Boston, USA
Claudyne Wilder, Wilder Presentations
http://www.wilderpresentations.com/
Presentations / Training 2004 Conference & Expo
March 1 to 3, 2003, Atlanta, USA
VNU Expositions
http://www.trainingconference.com/
PowerPoint Live
October 10 to 13, 2004, San Diego, California, USA
Rick Altman, R Altman Digital Consulting
http://www.pptlive.com/
Back
Credits
During the preparation of this issue of the PowerPoint Ezine,
I received assistance, content or feedback from Amy Hatch, Claudyne
Wilder, Glenna Shaw, Jerry Weissman, Paul Ludden, Peter McClard,
Shyam Pillai, Simon Judge and Steve Lee (all in alphabetical order).
I would like to use this platform to thank them for their help.
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