PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Do I Already Have Apple Keynote?

If you bought a new Mac, chances are you already have a trial version of Apple iWork that includes Apple Keynote. Even otherwise, you can download a trial version of iWork from the Apple site. However, before you download the trial, just check if you already have iWork. To do that, follow these steps:

1. On your Mac Dock, click the Finder option (normally the first option from the left) to launch the Finder window.
2. In the left pane of the Finder, click Applications to see a list of installed applications in your Mac, as shown in Figure 1, below.

What is Apple Keynote?

Apple Keynote is a popular presentation program that helps you create slides with all sorts of textual, visual, and multimedia content.

Keynote was launched as a standalone program, but Apple subsequently launched word processing and spreadsheet programs called Pages and Numbers. Now, all these three programs are sold as a combined suite of applications called iWork. Presently, iWork is a Mac-only suite of programs that has no compatible option on the Windows platform.

Being the oldest of all programs in iWork, Keynote is the most evolved and capable program of the lot. On this set of pages, we’ll jot down my experiences of working with Keynote. Please feel free to add your thoughts, opinions, and ideas through your comments.

Have a great day.

Filed Under: Keynote
Tagged as: Apple Mac OS X, Keynote

Producer 2007 for PowerPoint Now in Public Beta

If you belong to the group of users who often used Microsoft Producer to create online content with their PowerPoint presentations, then you must have been not too happy to know that Producer no longer worked with PowerPoint 2007 content.

Now that issue is being addressed—and Microsoft has announced a public beta of Microsoft Producer for Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007. Yes, that’s a long name, and Ric Bretschneider, Senior Program Manager for PowerPoint at Microsoft tells you why he needs to use that long name—and he also explains how you can join the beta and get a copy of this cool, free product.

Everything is explained on the PowerPoint Team Blog.

Filed Under: Microsoft Office
Tagged as: Microsoft Office, Online Presentations, PowerPoint

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