PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Concept Slides: Animated (People) Triangles

Inspired to create this one when we saw a series of tangram-like triangles, we just went a little ahead and added a second set of smaller triangles to ensure that every part of the slide was covered. And then these triangles were filled with pictures and animated to do a fade and wipe at the same time.

You can download the PowerPoint file here.

Filed Under: Presentation Bank
Tagged as: Animation, PowerPoint, Presentation Samples, Shapes

FILEminimizer Suite: Conversation with Nate Anderson

Nate Anderson is Senior Product Manager for FILEminimizer solutions at balesio AG, a leading provider of file optimization and compression solutions. He is a software industry veteran and was part of the core development team of the company’s FILEminimizer product line, consisting of FILEminimizer Pictures, FILEminimizer Office and FILEminimizer Suite, as well as for the enterprise solution FILEminimizer Server.

In this discussion, Nate discusses the new FILEminimizer Suite product.

Geetesh: You combined several of your file optimization technologies to create FILEminimizer Suite, a single product that works with so many common file formats – what convinced you that users wanted a product like this?

Nate: FILEminimizer Suite now offers the possibility of compressing PowerPoint, Word, and Excel files as well as images, without the need for zipping, under one comfortable and user-friendly interface. The creation of FILEminimizer Suite was driven by the demand of our happy users of FILEminimizer Office and previous versions. They desired a program which could optimize image files without the need for zipping and without losing any quality. Firstly, we designed FILEminimizer Pictures and soon realized that our big corporate customer base wanted this functionality under one interface because they did not want to manage two applications. So we combined the two functionalities and created FILEminimizer Suite. We feel FILEminimizer Suite is enjoying rapid adoption among users who like the high compression factors without the need to zip the file. In fact, we feel that many users choose our file optimization technology over classic zip algorithms as offered, for example by WinZip.

Geetesh: Can you share some scenarios or case studies where users or organizations have made substantial gains by using FILEminimizer Suite?

Nate: Yes, sure. In fact, there are many scenarios where FILEminimizer becomes handy. Look for example, at email. Corporate customers often implement restrictions to the usage of email storage and to the size of attachments either by implementing a direct limit to the size of an attachment or by using group limits which takes into account not only the size of the attachment but also the number of recipients. All this to control email storage and network capacity. The end users have problems getting their big PowerPoint presentations across to their colleagues or clients, and this is exactly the scenario where FILEminimizer comes into play, especially with the Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes add-ons. While this tool immediately resolves the end user’s frustrations, its benefits are enjoyed as well in the data center of corporations. Our large customers who deployed the software to their user base, such as ABB, Audi, Siemens, GE, to name just a few, experience not only tremendous improvements on email storage, bandwidth, and network traffic but they also benefit from faster backups of email servers and contained growth of unstructured data on primary storage.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Add-in, Interviews, Microsoft Office, PowerPoint

NXPowerLite for File Servers: Conversation with Tommy Powell

Tommy Powell is from Neuxpower, a software solutions company based in the UK. Neuxpower custom-builds both stand-alone applications and add-ins that enhance existing software such as Microsoft Office. Their commercially available file optimizer, NXPowerLite, radically reduces the size of PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and JPEG files.

Geetesh: What are these two new file-server versions of NXPowerLite, and who are they targeted towards?

Tommy: There are two new file server versions of NXPowerLite:

NXPowerLite for File Servers is aimed at storage/network administrators in large organizations. Microsoft Office and JPEG files are among the most prolific (and the most bloated) files on most networks. By optimizing these files, organizations can instantly reclaim 30-40% of their overall storage, improving network performance and delaying expensive (and environmentally unfriendly) hardware upgrades. We have a white paper that describes these savings in more detail.

NXPowerLite for Small Business File Servers is a version of the software created to run specifically on Windows Small Business Server. Small Businesses also struggle with the problems caused by bloated Microsoft Office and JPEG files on their networks, and NXPowerLite for Small Business File Servers offers a cost-effective way to deal with those problems at the source.

Geetesh: Would individual users still need the standalone version of NXPowerLite once any of these file-server versions have been implemented for them?

Tommy: The new file server products are designed to be used by the IT department, so that it can optimize all the files on a network. However, there is still a need for individual users to use the Desktop version of NXPowerLite.

If an individual user creates a large PowerPoint presentation that they need to immediately share with somebody, that presentation may well be too big to email. As it’s a brand-new file, it won’t yet been optimized by NXPowerLite for File Servers. In cases like this, the individual would still need to optimize the file using the Desktop Edition of NXPowerLite. We make this process as easy as possible for individuals. NXPowerLite Desktop Edition can be configured to automatically optimize email attachments as they are sent.

Using a combination of the Desktop and Server versions of NXPowerLite, organizations can ensure that their networks and email systems are free of bloated files, saving their IT departments a great deal of time and expense.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Add-in, Interviews, Microsoft Office, PowerPoint

Speech-Over Professional: Conversation with Joel Harband

Joel Harband heads Tuval Software Industries, based in Israel. Their best-known product is Speech-Over Studio, a PowerPoint add-in that enables PowerPoint slides to incorporate narrations using automated voices.

In this conversation, Joel discusses improvements in the new Speech-Over Professional product.

Geetesh: What does Speech-Over Professional do for PowerPoint users?

Joel: Speech-Over Professional is aimed at business, educational, and government users who want to add voice to their PowerPoint training and e-learning presentations without professional voice recording. Our corporate users tell us how happy they are with the increased productivity they achieve by eliminating the professional voice talent from the workflow loop. The thing they like best about Speech-Over is how easy it is to keep presentations continuously up to date by just editing the text. And managers are happy to see the company’s investment in the presentation being preserved.

The main thing these corporate users are telling us is that text-to-speech narration in training and e-learning is an idea whose time has come. The combination of Speech-Over’s ease of use and efficiency, the excellent text-to speech voice quality, and the automation of the workflow dictates that text-to-speech will replace the professional voice talent for these applications.

Geetesh: Tell us about the new improvements in Speech-Over Professional.

Joel: The most significant improvement is that regular subtitles are now created automatically for long speech segments. Users can enter a long transcription of a lecture on a slide, and Speech-Over will automatically display successive 2-line subtitles at the bottom of the screen in coordination with the voice track. This ability supports creating presentations from transcribed lectures by subject matter experts.

There is now an improved ability to control the clip playing order. New controls now appear on the Clip Organizer depending on which mode you are using: Order with Organizer or Order with Custom Animation.

Speech-Over Professional is now available with the amazing NeoSpeech voices Paul, and Kate. Paul is already familiar with Speech-Over Professional users; Kate is also very expressive and very exact. All the voices provided with Speech-Over Professional have commercial licenses that support business presentations.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Add-in, Interviews, Joel Harband, PowerPoint, Sounds

Self-Promotion for Introverts: An Interview with Nancy Ancowitz

  Nancy Ancowitz is the author of Self-Promotion for Introverts^®, which was picked as one of the best books of 2009 by Publishers Weekly. She is a business communication coach specializing in career advancement and presentation skills. Her clients range from CEOs to emerging leaders in the business and creative worlds.

In this conversation, Nancy Ancowitz discusses about her book Self-Promotion for Introverts.

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Books, Delivery, Interviews, Introverts, Nancy Ancowitz, Opinion