The PowerPoint Ezine - 68

by Geetesh Bajaj, June 29th 2006

Giveaways and More

First things first, and that will be the goodies - ppted is giving away five copies of their Educational 02 collection of PowerPoint templates. To win, all you need to do is fill in this form. This sweepstakes ends on July 2nd.

Also, Serious Magic is giving away two licenses of Ovation for PowerPoint, their award winning product that adds new looks to PowerPoint presentations. To win, all you need to do is fill in this form. This sweepstakes also ends on July 2nd.

And here is the winner's list comprising winners from the last 5 giveaways:

• Spirograph collection from ppted: Dave Harden, Doug Orwig, Janette Vercoe, Lynn Buzzard, and Stephanie Fells.
• Jim Gordon's Grayscale Printing add-in: Diana Orlemann, George Costigan, Kyle Remphrey, Niela Redford, and Shoshana Ben-Yaakov.
• Geometry and Grunge collection sfrom ppted: Chris Gambill, Dave Pallay, Jack Meagher, John McFarlane, and Slade Geiger.
• TechSmith SnagIt 8: Rae Drysdale and Sudhakar Sadasivuni.
• Impatica for PowerPoint: Echo Swinford and Jeanne Bowen.

Congratulations to all the winners!

Interview -- Michael Doyle, Impatica

Michael Doyle is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Impatica.

Geetesh: What about Impatica for PowerPoint in the corporate world? What sort of initiatives are you exploring there?

Michael: We’re very happy to see our business growing with organizations of all kinds; from small and medium size enterprises through to Fortune 500 companies. We have found that corporate users of Impatica products have been very successful in using our products to create effective, attractive, and efficient advertising material. Impatica software offers the same high quality, media rich content output as flash but without the plug-in issues – it really is the best of both worlds.

Read the full interview here...

Interview -- Echo Swinford, MVP

Echo Swinford is a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP (Most Valuable Professional). When she's not working on new media, she is answering almost all the questions on the PowerPoint newsgroup.

Geetesh: What's the single, most important thing people could do to improve their presentations?

Echo: When presenting, don't read your slides to the audience! When developing a presentation, make sure it's readable. That means making sure there's enough contrast between the text and the background and also making sure the font is large enough..

Read the full interview here...

Conversation -- Fred Han, Vyew.com

Fred Han is the marketing and business development manager for Vyew.com, a new, free browser-based conferencing and collaboration tool.

Geetesh: What motivated you to create something like Vyew? And what direction do you plan to take it.

Fred: To quote our founder, Vyew came from an idea to enhance the interactive learning experience in our SimuActive Simulation tools. These tools, which are utilized by major corporations, such as Microsoft and McAfee simulate a network environment so users can use a product in its natural environment without any setup. We began building real-time collaboration platform to support this idea -- that students and instructors can train in a simulated environment in real-time. Eventually we realized that platform itself was viable outside of the e-learning space..

Read the full post here...

Conversation -- Kurt Dupont, PresentationPoint

Kurt Dupont heads PresentatonPoint, creators of DataPoint, an interfacing product that links PowerPoint to database sources.

Geetesh: Tell us more about the new DataPoint enhancements and how can users benefit from them.

Kurt: DataPoint is our Microsoft PowerPoint add-in that links your presentation to dynamic and external data sources like databases and Microsoft Excel worksheets. It can be used as an information board or to keep your sales presentations really up-to-date.

Read the full post here...

Conversation -- Doug Little, Wacom

Doug Little is from Wacom, a company that is the leader in pen enabled computing solutions.

Geetesh: How can PowerPoint users benefit from use of Wacom tablets.

Doug: PowerPoint users can benefit from pen tablet use in many ways. Navigating on a computer with a pen and tablet is much faster and a lot more comfortable than using a mouse. Our hand, wrist and arm are in a more comfortable position and the "absolute positioning" that a pen tablet offers allows one to move around the computer much faster and more accurately. The pen can relieve repetitive motion and certainly reduce fatigue.

Read the full post here...

Conversation -- Michelle Gallina, Serious Magic

Michelle Gallina is the Director of Marketing at Serious Magic. Their newest offering Ovation makes it easy to bring professional effects to your existing PowerPoint presentations with a few clicks.

Geetesh: What does Ovation offer to PowerPoint users who have tons of existing presentations?

Michelle: Ovation is a software companion to PowerPoint that quickly transforms plain PowerPoint slides into a great-looking presentation. The result is a presentation that looks as if you hired a graphic design team to create it. It's really quite powerful when you have a lot of presentations that need a face lift. Ovation also offers tools that help presenters stay on point and on time.

Read the full post here...

Conversation -- Lisa Allen, NetCentrics Corporation

Lisa Allen is the Product Manager for the Sociable Media PowerPoint Add-In, developed in conjunction with Cliff Atkinson.

Geetesh: Tell us more about the Sociable Media PowerPoint Add-In -- and how the concept evolved.

Lisa: The Sociable Media PowerPoint Add-In is an add-in to PowerPoint built in collaboration with Cliff Atkinson, author of "Beyond Bullet Points" and in line with his methodology. Cliff contacted us late 2004 after reviewing our other products implementing a methodology into technology and after many discussions and design meetings, we planned for a February 2005 release in line with the book publishing.

Read the full post here...

End Note

More PowerPoint related info on the PowerPoint Blog and PowerPoint Notes. And free PowerPoint templates for all of you...

And here's a link to the previous issue of this newsletter...

Until next time - have a great day. And keep the feedback coming...

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