PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Multi-Screen World by Ric Bretschneider

Ric Bretschneider, Senior Program Manager for PowerPoint at Microsoft posts often on the PowerPoint Team Blog—one of his posts provides a quick and easy tip for those who have a dual monitor display so that they can use the larger screen area to edit two presentations at the same time.

This tip works great with PowerPoint 2007 and earlier versions. Check it out here.

Filed Under: Presentation Skills
Tagged as: PowerPoint, Ric Bretschneider, Techniques

First Look at 280 Slides

We have been playing with 280 Slides today morning and it looks like a great web application that can create PowerPoint PPTX files online.

First things first: 280 Slides is an online presentation creator and player that looks a lot like Apple Keynote. The similarity is well explained: we found out on the Washington Post site that the creators of this application are ex-Apple employees.

We really like this application. It loads quickly, works logically, and gives the feel of a real presentation program so that PowerPoint and Keynote users will be creating their presentations in no time. Figure 1, below, shows how the interface looks like.

Figure 1: The 280 Slides interface

Once you click the New button to create a new presentation, you need to choose a theme for the new presentation, as shown in Figure 2, below.

Figure 2: Choose a new theme

Thereafter, you can add slides, change slide layouts, insert pictures, and media (also from YouTube, Flickr, and other sites). The first time you save your presentation, you get to become a member so that you can come back again and find your presentations, as shown in Figures 3 and 4, below.

Figure 3: Login

Figure 4: Register

There are several other features in 280 Slides. While 280 Slides is not a PowerPoint replacement application feature-by-feature, it lets you download your 280 Slides presentations as PowerPoint 2007-2008 presentations with amazing fidelity. Figure 5, below, shows you how a downloaded PPTX from 280 Slides looks in PowerPoint 2007:

Figure 5: Exported PPTX opened in PowerPoint 2007

280 Slides also offers direct export to SlideShare from within the application. Strangely though, we found no Help option in the 280 Slides interface. Everything said, this is a great start for an application that’s right now in the public beta stage.

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

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

PowerPoint Heaven: Conversation with Shawn Toh

Shawn Toh started creating PowerPoint presentations since secondary school and his interest in PowerPoint animations kept growing. Shawn loves to do advanced animation tricks using PowerPoint.

In this conversation, Shawn discusses animation in PowerPoint and his PowerPoint Heaven site.

Geetesh: Shawn, tell us more about yourself and PowerPoint Heaven.

Shawn: I have graduated from the Singapore Polytechnic with a diploma in Business Information Technology with merit and have enrolled in the National University of Singapore. During my free time, I work as a freelance presentation consultant where I do project consultations, conduct workshops, training, and speaking engagements with companies and schools.

I have been actively participating in the Microsoft Office Discussion Group for PowerPoint (under the alias “tohlz”) and has been working closely with Korea’s PowerPoint Expert Club.

Geetesh: PowerPoint Heaven is distinctly different from other PowerPoint sites since it looks more at drawing and animation in PowerPoint. What made you choose this direction?

Shawn: PowerPoint Heaven is both an entertainment and educational site that offers you with advanced animations and PowerPoint works. You will be able to find works such as PowerPoint games, artworks, anime, and even webcomics. On this site, the goal is to show users that PowerPoint is not simply a presentation tool, but is also capable of leveraging into other areas such as creating games, artworks, and animations comparable to those created in Adobe Flash and Photoshop.

The aim of this site is to create the WOW factor and go beyond the capability of PowerPoint, where visitors entering PowerPoint Heaven will get amazed by the works featured on the site. And through this site, users can get to learn how these advanced works are done by accessing the tutorials section.

PowerPoint Heaven started off as a personal site, where I published my tutorials and works. Being more animation and entertainment-focused, PowerPoint Heaven started off by showing works that are unique from other PowerPoint sites and has greatly shown the differences. Thus, the site began receiving more exposure and has attracted people who are interested in contributing to PowerPoint Heaven.

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, Interviews, PowerPoint, Shawn Toh

ShowLogic wins Meeting TechOnline Top Technology Suppliers Award

ShowLogic, a presentation platform designed for sales and marketing professionals, was announced as a winner of the Meeting TechOnline Top Technology Suppliers 2008 Awards. The awards honor innovative technology suppliers in the meetings and events industry that have shown outstanding leadership and advancement in technology tools.

Indezine interviewed Christina Deatherage of ShowLogic earlier this year.

Filed Under: Events
Tagged as: Delivery, PowerPoint

Create Slides on a Whiteboard

Life moves on to a full circle, and so does technology. We stumbled on this blog post about 8 Ways to Use a Whiteboard in Your Home Office — and it struck us how often we like to use a whiteboard (or even a piece of white paper) to sketch out ideas for a slide.

We have a large whiteboard in the office here that’s always running out of white space! We add our list of things to do, our workflows, contact info that we may need very often, and then we need to find some white space to create a visual representation of a slide (or a set of slides). Maybe there’s something about whiteboards (or white paper) and a pen that no computer peripheral or software can match. Not even a Tablet PC! And as they say, when some things work so well, let them remain the way they are.

Image: Yay Images

Filed Under: Case Studies
Tagged as: Case Studies, Inspiration, Whiteboard