PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

DesignScience Releases MathType 6 for Macintosh

DesignScience announced that the new MathType version 6 for the Macintosh is now shipping. This is a major upgrade that adds support for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and Intel Macs, and Microsoft Office 2008. New features include TeX/LaTeX input, the ability to copy equations to and from Wikipedia, and more. MathType is the full-featured, professional version of the Equation Editor in Microsoft Office and many other products, and is used by math and science educators, engineers, research scientists, students, and publishing professionals to include mathematical notation in printed documents, presentations, and web pages.

Read the full press release on the DesignScience site.

Filed Under: Companion Programs
Tagged as: Companion Programs, Mac, MathType, Office for Mac

slide:ology: The Nancy Duarte Interview

   Nancy Duarte has been a Principal of Duarte Design since 1990. Her firm is in the heart of Silicon Valley, and the client list is loaded with Fortune 500 companies. Her passion for business communications that are clear, meaningful, and attractive has opened doors for her in a business world full of cluttered and complex visual communications. Nancy’s much awaited book slide:ology was released this month. Nancy discusses herself and the importance of stories in slides. And then talks about a scraped book cover!

In this interview, Nancy discusses how the book evolved, how she decided what makes it to the book, and more.

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Books, Design, Duarte Design, Interviews, Nancy Duarte, PowerPoint, Slideology

Edit Word and PowerPoint files on the BlackBerry

Most BlackBerry users rant about the fact that it’s not possible to edit Microsoft Office files on the BlackBerry out of the box, and of course, that’s because you can’t even view them most of the time! However, that could change soon as RIM’s new beta version of the BlackBerry handheld operating system (OS) v4.5 looms on the horizon. Now, they include the Standard Edition of Documents to Go.

Documents to Go is a viewer for Microsoft Office applications on the BlackBerry and other smartphone platforms, but the Standard edition only lets you view and edit the files, not create them. To create new files, you need the Premium version. But this is one limitation that’s easily rectified using the process outlined by Al Sacco on his CIO Blog site.

And there’s also a link to the CrackBerry site, where you can learn how to upgrade to a new RIM BlackBerry operating system (OS).

Filed Under: Microsoft Office
Tagged as: BlackBerry, Microsoft Office, PowerPoint

Emergency Preparedness Systems: Conversation with Greg Friese

Greg Friese, MS, NREMT-P is president of Emergency Preparedness Systems LLC and a paramedic, educator, author, and outdoor enthusiast. To learn more and to receive rapid e-learning design and production tips, subscribe to the EPS blog at their site.

Geetesh: Tell us more about yourself, Emergency Preparedness Systems LLC, and the training programs you create.

Greg: I am the founder and president of Emergency Preparedness Systems LLC. EPS does four things:

• We create narrated multimedia Flash movies for emergency responders.
• We convert existing classroom training for online delivery.
• We design and deliver new lessons and curriculum for online delivery that honor students’ knowledge, experience, and time.
• We teach our proven rapid e-learning for emergency responders production process to educators and training officers.

Our training programs for EMTs and paramedics, generally 25-30 minutes long, are used for continuing or refresher education. Since emergency responders work rotating shifts, it is very difficult for all employees to be in the training room together. Online lessons allow asynchronous delivery of the exact same content across multiple shifts and multiple stations. If users are called out for an emergency, they can resume the training program when they return. Each lesson is approved by the Continuing Education Coordinating Board for EMS, so students know that it will be accepted for local, state, or national recertification requirements. Most EPS content is distributed through CentreLearn and RapidCE.

Geetesh: Why do you use PowerPoint as the starting point for the creation of these programs? And what else do you use to enhance and distribute these programs?

Greg: We use PowerPoint for several reasons. First of all, it is an excellent tool for us to storyboard a lesson. During initial production, each slide is given a working title, and the script for the audio narration is written in the notes view. As production and editing progress, notes for images, objects, and animations are added to the notes view. Once the script is finalized, slide production begins which includes a descriptive slide title and sub-title, insertion of images and objects, and animation formatting.

The final step is to convert the PowerPoint slides to Flash using Articulate Presenter. The audio is inserted and synchronized with the PowerPoint slide animations. The end-user watches a narrated Flash movie inside the Articulate Presenter player. They may not even be aware that they are watching a movie that was created with PowerPoint.

We also use another Articulate product called Engage to create and insert custom Flash learning objects into the PowerPoint. The Articulate Engage Interactions published inside the Articulate Presenter movie.

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: Articulate, Interviews, Medicine, Online Presentations, PowerPoint, Training

SlideBoom: Conversation with Yury Uskov

      Yury Uskov is the founder and CEO of iSpring Solutions Inc., an innovative software company with their development center in Russia. Yury has a Masters degree in Software Engineering and since 2001 have been working in the rich media industry inspired with the idea of making the best solution for online presentation sharing. iSpring Solutions has already launched several Flash technology projects, including iSpring, a PowerPoint to Flash converter, and SlideBoom, an online service for presentations sharing.

Geetesh: Tell us more about SlideBoom. Did you look at this as a natural evolution process after iSpring?

Yury: I’d rather mention two aspects. First is that iSpring users needed such a site to share their great presentations converted by desktop products. From this point of view, SlideBoom is just a great companion to iSpring.

Secondly, it is not a secret that people use online services more and more each day. This growing tendency inspired us to build SlideBoom as an online alternative to iSpring. From this point of view, SlideBoom looks like a result of the iSpring evolution process.

Geetesh: What sets SlideBoom apart from similar slide-sharing sites?

Yury: Thanks for the good question. Other similar sites are usually good for sharing static presentations only, and this kills some advantages of PowerPoint presentations. SlideBoom is designed for sharing rich video-like presentations with animations, embedded Flash movies, audio narrations, and video clips. The unique feature of SlideBoom is graphical annotations over presentation content, which could be saved with a presentation on the portal.

I can say that SlideBoom leads the second generation of PowerPoint sharing facilities (PowerPoint to Web 2.0), and I know that our competitors also work on similar solutions. We have developed iSpring technology since 2004, and have an advantage over competitors at least for 2-3 years.

We get feedback from people who use SlideBoom and most of them tell that SlideBoom is the service that they were looking for a long time. And I am sure there is room for SlideBoom in the market, and it will have a great future.

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Interviews, iSpring, Online Presentations, PowerPoint, PowerPoint Flash, SlideBoom, Yury Uskov