PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Office 2010 Beta

The Office 2010 Beta is now available for everyone! You can download the Office 2010 Beta applications and run it on your computer, or even try out the online Office Web Apps.

The Office 2010 Beta site has more info including video clips, lists of new features, etc.

Just in case you do download the Office 2010 Beta, do remember that this is beta software. Don’t run it on a system that’s your main work environment! You can however use the wonders of virtualization to run Office 2010 Beta on Virtual PC or VMware.

Virtual PC is a free virtualization software from Microsoft that runs on Microsoft Windows. VMware offers its Workstation and Fusion products that can run a separate, virtual instance of Windows on Windows or Mac.

Getting back to Microsoft Office 2010 Beta, here’s the official press release. And look out for PowerPoint 2010 related info here.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2010
Tagged as: Office 2010, PowerPoint 2010

Photographs and Copyrights: Conversation with Rikk Flohr

A refugee from 18 years in corporate management and marketing, Rikk Flohr turned his attention inward to his 20-year love affair with photography. He founded his design firm Fleeting Glimpse Images in January 2006 and divides his days between various print and screen design projects, presentation consulting and, of course, photography. He lives in Apple Valley, Minnesota.

In this conversation, Rikk talks about photographs and copyrights.

Geetesh: Many people use all sorts of photos in PowerPoint – and most of them assume that any visuals they find from image searches on Google can be used in their PowerPoint presentations. How are they wrong, and what are the easiest alternative options available to them.

Rikk: I think this leads back to an erroneous notion that items found on the internet are either public domain, due to the magnanimous intentions of the creator, or free for the grabbing due to their public posting. It is a little like the mentality of the proponents of unauthorized wireless internet access. If a person leaves their wireless access point unprotected, they are, by default, inviting people to use it. Only people who hide their SSID, for example, do not wish to share their connection. The same could be said of internet images. By posting them, there is an assumption that free use is implied by virtue of their being visible in the first place.

It seems there is a generational effect at work here. The expectation of intellectual property seems to be proportional to the age of the both the artist and the consumer of the artist’s fruits. Younger people, especially those growing up with the omnipresence of computers in their lives, have a lower expectation of their work being an item of intellectual value. The perception grows as the audience gets younger that work is not longer fine art, but a commodity, or at worst, a freebie. One only has to look at the recent trends in the music and movie industries to see how this applies. Even my own children do not always understand my rabid defense of my own intellectual property. After all, isn’t information supposed to be free? Is that not the modern battle cry?

“What’s the harm?” they say of someone who is using my image on their website, with or without attribution. The harm for me is that my livelihood, and by extension theirs, is directly related to the marketability of my intellectual properties-including the photographs I have taken. If I don’t defend every instance of improper use, I can’t, in the eyes of US law defend an egregious and financially substantial theft.

Unless there is express permission by the images’ creator and/or copyright holder, there is generally no acceptable use of that image. A few exceptions exist but for what we are talking about today, it is the rule. That having been said, there are places where public-domain images exist. There are also places where non-public-domain images are available for use. Creative Commons licensing became popular as a way to grant usage of images to people needing an economical source of quality images. Photo-sharing sites like Flickr offer the ability to couple images displayed to a license that grants usage under conditions for certain considerations such as attribution, linking, and other considerations.

In addition to a wealth of Creative Commons and similarly “no-cost” image licensing solutions, there is the world of the Stock Image House. Stock image prices have fallen through the floor in the past ten years. An image that cost $200.00 USD five scant years ago can be had for as little as $15.00 USD today. That puts a lot of quality photography and illustration work within the reach of many budgets. Images have become a commodity and the lower prices have put them in a place where people should seriously consider foregoing the risk of legal action by purchasing a low-cost stock image. As long as there are images that a ‘right-click’ can capture, people will consider them free for the taking. No matter how cheap they might become from legitimate sources, the lure of the free will entice some.

Geetesh: If people started clicking their own images with digital cameras, would everything be OK – or are there still some copyright infringement issues they should be concerned about?

Rikk: The ability to easily capture images via the Digital Camera and to process them via Image Editing Software should have improved the availability of quality, pertinent images. It doesn’t always.

First, there is the problem of competency. The reason photographers and illustrators exist is that they have a skill set which allows them to create an end product superior to the layman’s. The advances in technology in digital cameras have gone a long way toward helping a novice produce a better image. The elaborate concepts of lighting, composition and attention to detail mean that a professional photograph is, at best, a hit-and-miss proposition for a novice armed with the latest extraordinary technology. Give the pro-photographer and the novice the same camera and ask them to photograph the identical subject and the difference is obvious.

Quality aside, there are a few issues of which the digital camera user must be aware. Property and people are protected somewhat by current privacy laws. In general, you are safe to shoot images just about anywhere on public property. This doesn’t mean you are free from hassle-but rather that you are within your constitutional rights. That also doesn’t mean that you won’t be accosted by police, corporate security, and angry individuals. In a world containing the threat of terrorism, you can be viewed as suspicious anywhere you photograph. You must be prepared to be detained by authorities, explain yourself, and understand your rights.

In the corporate world, things are different. Once you leave the domain of public property, you are at the mercy, more-or-less, of the persons responsible for order and security. Many companies have policies (written and unofficial) regarding people photographing buildings, technologies or employees. On the recent PowerPoint Live 2009 Digital Photography Field Trip, I, as the tour organizer spent a significant portion of the trip running interference. Four times during the two hour expedition, I was forced to explain what we were doing to hotel security, bank security guards, Atlanta’s MARTA police and people who asked what we were up to. Content which might appear in a digital photograph may be sensitive or even protected.

As a photographer, I carry model and property releases for items which I may decide to photograph with the intent of using at a later date. Without those releases, I open myself to liability should I click a digital image of a person or a property. If recognizable people appear in your image, you will need a release to use the photo. If a trademarked or copyrighted item appears in your photograph, you need a release to use the photo. Think about a Coke™ bottle. The logo is trademarked. The shape of the bottle is even protected. You can get out of paying usage fees to a photographer or a stock house by taking your own image but you still don’t have the rights to use that image containing the trademarked bottle and logo without Coke’s permission-in most cases.

The same holds true for works of art. Consider the Eiffel Tower. How many millions of photographs exist of the iconic Paris landmark? Did you know that, according to the trade publications I read, that you can use any image taken of the tower for any purpose-but only in daylight! After dark, the company which lights the tower holds the rights to usage of any image captured. In the daylight anyone can see the tower. At night, only the company lighting the tower, can provide you with an image by virtue of their ‘creative’ act of lighting. It doesn’t mean you can’t take an image of the tower at night. Use that image in a work for profit item and you may be subject to legal action however.

You can photograph people and places and in certain instances use the resulting images. There are many exceptions to image use including, educational use, public-good, editorial and many others. The answer to just about every copyright question is ‘It depends.’ Anyone sitting in Alvin Trusty’s PowerPoint Live Copyright session would have heard those two words repeatedly. It Depends!

Bottom line: you are going to have a generally less-expensive path to an image by taking it yourself. Realize that you must have some sort of clearing process for what appears in your image. It may require a model release or a property release to completely clear your image for use. You may be in a situation where usage is considered fair without a release but make certain you are before using that image.

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: Copyrights, Interviews, Photography, PowerPoint, Rikk Flohr

Adobe Captivate’s Edit View

In an earlier post last week, we discussed Adobe Captivate’s views and compared them to PowerPoint’s default views. We also explored Storyboard View. In this post, we’ll look at Captivate’s Edit view, which in many ways is similar to PowerPoint’s Normal view.

If you are not already in Edit view within Captivate, choose the View drop-down in the toolbar, and select Edit View as shown in Figure 1, below.

Figure 1: Choose Edit View in Adobe Captivate

Edit View has a tri-pane view that’s similar to PowerPoint’s three panes. These are how they compare:

• Captivate’s Filmstrip is similar to PowerPoint’s Slides Pane.
• Captivate’s Slide area is similar to PowerPoint’s Slide area.
• Captivate’s Slide Notes area is similar to PowerPoint’s Notes Pane.

Figure 2 shows you Captivate’s Edit View. At the top of the Slide area, you’ll notice an option called Edit PPT.

Figure 2: Edit View in Adobe Captivate

If you don’t see an Edit PPT option, it means that the Adobe Captivate project you are working on did not originate from a PowerPoint presentation.

The Edit PPT option is actually more than one option. Click it to the menu that you can see in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Edit PPT Option in Adobe Captivate

So what do these different options mean? We’ll look at them soon.

Filed Under: Companion Programs
Tagged as: Adobe, Captivate, eLearning, PowerPoint

Effective Animation: Conversation with Glen Millar

    Glen Millar is a MVP (Most Valuable Professional) for Microsoft PowerPoint. Based near Brisbane, Australia, Glen is a regular on the Microsoft support newsgroups, and a featured speaker at PowerPoint Live. Visit Glen’s site, PowerPoint Workbench for tutorials on cool animation effects in PowerPoint.

Geetesh: You experiment a lot with animation in PowerPoint – in your opinion, where is the thin line that divides animation that is sufficient and enhancing from one that is too much and distracting. Is there a rule of the thumb that can act as a guideline, and what are your opinions?

Glen: Geetesh, that’s a really good question! There is a thin line between what is effective and what is gratuitous, or distracting. When I animate a presentation, I ask myself 3 questions:

1. What kind of presentation am I building?
2. If it is a kiosk presentation, I give myself more license to be more “animated”- that is, a kiosk presentation is the animated interface between the story and the audience. So, I have more scope to be a bit exciting.
3. If it is a live presentation (which is the majority of what I do) I will subdue the animations somewhat so they don’t compete with the presenter. The live speaker is the animated interface between the presentation and the audience. The animations must not distract from the presenter.
2. What is the practical level of animating? I first work out my storyboard and what elements demand being animated. For example, a complex concept can be broken into sub-parts and each sub-part animated in. My audience can then discover each component, without being distracted by all of the elements at once.
3. What is the artistic level of animation? Once my presentation is fully animated, I then look for artistic opportunities. For example, I have a bunch of cogs spinning on the slide. I use an Emphasis animation, Spin to show motion or effort. When I want to remove them, if the story does not dictate how to do it, I go for an artistic effect. An example would be a slow fade out. I could choose a different type, but not a new animation. That would not be supported by my story.

Geetesh: Tell us about animation builds when successive animations play one after the other. How effective are such builds – please give examples and share your thoughts.

Glen: Successive builds are critically important! I’ve recently been quite concerned about the lack of continuity in our presentations and our graphics. Let me demonstrate with an example. The following two graphics are available as download-able clip art within PowerPoint.

Individually, they are great photos and display very good concepts. However, when I put them side-by-side I realized they contain the same people, but in different clothes. Now, professional movie makers employ continuity folks- people who check every feature of a shot to make sure it is consistent. You don’t want an actor walking down a road to suddenly appear in with a new shirt. Now, while this example is dramatic, it illustrates how important consistency is across a movie.

So, how do you get real consistency? Well, I love breaking stories into logical components, and a classic example is some experimental work I have done recently on time-lapse.

The following is some work to encourage people to read a book. I’ve added just three frames from the 43-frame sequence.

If you look carefully, you will see someone (in this case, my son Chris) turning a book. What a powerful way to tell a story! Every second, a new image fades in over the previous one. You can see him turn the pages! While the output image has been modified in a graphic program, it is so powerful!

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: Animation, Glen Millar, Interviews, PowerPoint

PowerPoint Training Sessions: Two Day PowerPoint 2007 Course

I often do PowerPoint training sessions in India for corporates — and yes, that information is nowhere on this site! To make amends for that omission, I am going to speak about my training sessions in this and some future posts.

First, let me talk about my two-day training session on PowerPoint 2007. This is my most successful course and it is geared towards an audience that creates PowerPoint presentations in a typical office environment. On each of the days, I do 4 sessions that talk about PowerPoint usage and creation. The entire course comprises of interactive exercises — and the goal is to help you create better presentations in less time. Along the way, you learn PowerPoint best practices and options that are buried within the PowerPoint interface. For those of you who have just moved to PowerPoint 2007, it’s a great way to learn all the new options available in this version of the program.

If you would like to learn more and want details regarding the curriculum and pricing, please feel free to get in touch through the feedback form on this site.

Picture Courtesy: Rikk Flohr — taken during PowerPoint Live in Atlanta, October 2009

Filed Under: Microsoft Office
Tagged as: PowerPoint, Training