PowerPoint and Presenting Blog: August 2005

TopByteLabs released an updated version of PowerShrink. With compression rates of up to 95 percent PowerShrink 2.0 not only allows users to send critical business presentations, despite their large size, it also gives them the opportunity to save a lot of Megabytes and, in some cases, even Gigabytes of storage on their Servers. More on the PR Newswire site...

It's so nice to see Betsy's blog go live. It's called The Visual Lounge and its all about sharing ideas on the use of TechSmith products including SnagIt and Camtasia. I have known for some time that Betsy was going to launch this blog - but what you all should know is this will certainly develop into a great resource. Check it now...

PowerPoint. A good name, but all too often such presentations are anything but powerful - and totally pointless. Slide after slide, bullet point after bullet point, bland clip art after bland clip art glide by as the speaker drones on in bone-chilling monotony. Can PowerPoint presentations get any worse? Rachel Lin explains more on the IT AsiaOne site...

This link was no longer active -- so we have pulled it down

During the design phase of your presentation, you may want to change the order of the slides to make your presentation flow more coherently. There are three methods that you can use to accomplish this task in PowerPoint. Chris Curtis explains more on the BellaOnline site...

Microsoft is readying at least two new products aimed at professional designers as part of an aggressive push into the graphics software market. On Monday, the company is expected to release a second test version of a program code-named Acrylic that's aimed at allowing designers to easily create art for Web pages. Microsoft released an initial prerelease version of the Acrylic software in June. Microsoft is also working on a separate graphics product, which was recently described by server and tools chief Eric Rudder during a presentation at a company meeting for financial analysts. More on CNET News.com

"We've taught him how to move things around on a PowerPoint presentation and how to enlarge and emphasize certain things," said Steven Gardner, 21, one of two interns in Yeager's office early this summer. Gardner had learned about the software in school, he said. Gardner has also had some of the pictures he's taken appear in a Bronx weekly newspaper.

More on the Westchester County Business Journal site...

Labels: case_studies, powerpoint

This presentation is a simple multiplication table. There are two slides - one of them includes an animated multiplication table and the other one includes the same table without animation. The multiplication table has all tables uptil 12 x 12. Download here...

Glen Millar, PowerPoint MVP shows how you can do some amazingly simple 3D in PowerPoint with a little help from Perspector, a 3D add-in for PowerPoint from Visual Exemplars. Learn more with Glen...

A system crash: If you're lucky, it only ruins your day. More than likely, you're in for several bad days followed by a few stressful weeks or months. After all, systems rarely fail only once. Rather, they keep crashing until you find the cause and fix the problem. This primer will show you how to solve problems quickly. Using a tool that costs nothing, you can solve approximately 50% of Windows server and workstation crashes in a few minutes. Dirk A. D. Smith explains more on the Network World site...

It's not surprising PowerPoint slideshows have become the norm for visuals in most business presentations. They are quick to produce, easy to update and effective to inject visual interest into the presentation. However, they can also spell disaster even for experienced presenters. The key to success is to make certain your slide show is a visual aid and not a visual distraction. Dr. Joseph Sommerville explains more on the About.com site...

Hello boys and girls, welcome to high school. All of you with computers running Microsoft Office 2003 or Office XP and with broadband Internet access may step to the front of the room for your copies of Microsoft Student 2006. To the less fortunate, I say, "Good luck with the rest of your lives. You're going to need it." James Coates explains more on the Chicago Tribune site...

Here's a note from Tommy Powell of NXPowerLite:

We are currently running an online 'customer satisfaction' survey for NXPowerLite. We'll be happy to invite any of your readers that use NXPowerLite to participate. The survey is online on Zoomerang and should take no more than a couple of minutes to complete.

"When people think of PowerPoint, they kind of sneer, smile and say, `That's nice,'" said Horton, who, with her husband, is presenting at this week's Distance Teaching and Learning Conference in Madison. "But it has a lot of possibilities that many people have not explored." More on the WTN site...

Macromedia announced the availability of an all-inclusive Web event solution, providing customers everything they need to create, host and manage a web seminar for a fraction of the cost of a typical trade show or in- person event. By eliminating travel and external event expenses, web seminars make it easier for prospects to participate and are much less expensive for marketers to attract and qualify leads. Macromedia Breeze supports data exchange with a company’s marketing and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, enabling the easy import of prospect contact information, registration and attendance tracking, and the export of results to CRM systems for sales follow up. More on the Macromedia site...