PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

StarOffice 9 for Mac Beta: Comparing to Microsoft Office 2008

Plenty is being spoken and written about Sun’s StarOffice 9 for Mac Beta. The office applications suite market on the Mac is dominated by Microsoft Office—and their newest Office 2008, while powerful enough, still lags behind Microsoft Office for Windows. The removal of VBA from Office 2008 has also not been received too well. And while Microsoft has confirmed that VBA support will be back in the next release of Office for Mac, that reality might still take a year or more ahead to materialize.

So how does StarOffice 9 for Mac fare in its beta?

Peter Cohen at MacWorld reports that “the beta release is free; the release version of the application is currently priced at $69.95”.

MacNN adds that “price isn’t the only criteria for evaluating software. Since so many people rely on and share Microsoft Office files, file compatibility can be crucial. Fortunately, Sun’s office suite shines in this area by supporting a variety of file formats ranging from ancient files such as WordPerfect and Quattro Pro files to the latest Microsoft Office 97/2000/XP/2007 file formats”.

Filed Under: Microsoft Office
Tagged as: Mac, Microsoft Office, Office for Mac, PowerPoint, StarOffice

Joining SlideBoom

In the last post in the SlideBoom series, we provided a brief introduction to this slide-sharing site. In today’s post, you’ll learn how you can become a member of the SlideBoom site. Remember, SlideBoom in its present form is a free service.

Follow these steps to join SlideBoom:

1. Visit the SlideBoom site, and click the prominent Join Now button, as shown in Figure 1, below.

In the next post in this series, we’ll show you how you can sign in, and upload your presentations to the SlideBoom site.

Filed Under: Companion Programs
Tagged as: Online Presentations, PowerPoint, PowerPoint Flash, SlideBoom

Freepath 2.0 Beta Available for Free Download

Freepath, Inc., today launched the public beta of its Freepath 2.0 playlist application, and its companion myFreepath content sharing community site—both are free services, and allow you to combine your PowerPoint presentations in a playlist that seamlessly integrates many other media and document file formats apart from websites and web services.

Figure 1, below, shows the Freepath site announcing the beta.

Figure 1: The Freepath site

Indezine has been promoting version 1 of Freepath as a free download for more than a year now, and we’ll soon provide you with more coverage on Freepath 2. Figure 2, below, shows you the interface for Freepath 2 Beta.

Figure 2: Freepath 2 Beta Interface

Users can package and share Freepath playlists through the myFreepath community site. All beta users get up to 100 MB of free storage space to enable a viral exchange of playlists and content. Figure 3, below, shows you the myFreepath site.

Figure 3: myFreepath homepage

Filed Under: Companion Programs
Tagged as: Companion Programs, Freepath, Online Presentations, Playlists, PowerPoint

About SlideBoom

SlideBoom is a website where you can upload your PowerPoint presentations. At the back-end, a PowerPoint to Flash converting engines makes Flash movies of all your PowerPoint slides. Each uploaded presentation is provided with a page URL that you can share with others who want to see your presentation.

That was an easy introduction to SlideBoom. In a series of subsequent posts, we will look at several options that SlideBoom provides, including how you can join SlideBoom, upload your presentations, share your uploaded presentations, etc. You can keep track of all these posts here.

Figure 1, below, shows you the SlideBoom homepage. To get to this page, you need to visit the SlideBoom link in your web browser.

Figure 1: The SlideBoom homepage

SlideBoom is from iSpring Solutions, Inc., the same folks who create the iSpring range of PowerPoint to Flash conversion software. Read our review on iSpring Pro 3.5.

In our next post on SlideBoom, we’ll show you how you can join as a member. Membership is free and allows you to upload your own PowerPoint presentations to the SlideBoom site.

Filed Under: Companion Programs
Tagged as: iSpring, Online Presentations, PowerPoint, PowerPoint Flash, SlideBoom

STORYbored: Conversation with Scott Schwertly

    Scott Schwertly is an epic storyteller. Today, he owns and operates Ethos3 Communications, an internationally renowned and award-winning presentation design and training company located in Nashville, TN. Scott works with a wide spectrum of clients that includes Fortune 100 companies, Silicon Valley start-ups, and various other organizations throughout the world. Scott has a B.A. in Communications and an M.B.A. from Harding University.

In this conversation, Scott talks about his new book, STORYbored.

Geetesh: What’s STORYbored? Is it a blog? Or an e-book, or both? Also, what is the raison d’être for STORYbored?

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Design, Interviews, PowerPoint, Scott Schwertly, Storyboarding