PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

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

Calculate: Conversation with Austin Myers

Austin Myers is a PowerPoint MVP (Most Valuable Professional). He is an expert in issues related to the use of multimedia in PowerPoint. Austin creates the PFCMedia and PFCPro add-ins for PowerPoint that have made life simple for many users. He also maintains a detailed FAQ on multimedia issues within PowerPoint. In this conversation, Austin discusses Calculate, a small free utility that he created for PowerPoint users who face a dilemma trying to figure out what their slide size should be to take up the entire screen.

Geetesh: How did Calculate evolve – and what is its purpose of existence?

Austin: As monitors, flat screens, and projectors have changed from the NTSC standard 4:3 ratio for display, users needed a simple way to determine PowerPoint’s slide size in order to fill the display completely without distorting their slides. Calculate is a small utility where the user simply provides the resolution (width and height) of their targeted screen in pixels, and the utility will determine the correct slide size to meet the required screen ratio.

The user is presented with 3 different options for the slide size, all of which will produce the correct ratio for the targeted screen. I decided to provide 3 options, as some users must also meet printing requirements. With Calculate, all they need do is select one of the 3 options that best fits their printer.

Figure 1: The Calculate interface

Geetesh: What type of scenarios can benefit from Calculate?

Austin: Anyone that uses a standard (4:3 ratio) display to develop PowerPoint resolutions but must display the finished presentation on a display with a different ratio will benefit from Calculate. Laptop users that have a non-standard display resolution also can see a real benefit in determining the exact slide size for their display (no black bars along the sides or top & bottom of the screen).

I have many clients that prepare PowerPoint presentations on their PCs but must then display it in a conference room with large displays. This has been a real issue for them in the past, as they were unable to use the entire display, or their slides became badly distorted when “stretched” to fit the display. With Calculate, all they need to know is the display’s resolution, and they can easily set up the correct slide size in advance and avoid the issue completely.

You May Also Like: Calculate: The Indezine Review

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Add-in, Austin Myers, Delivery, Interviews, PowerPoint

Looking Back at Menus: Coping with the Ribbon

It’s been close to two years since we encountered the Ribbon in Office 2007, and that’s probably not counting the beta period. And there must be many of you who moved up to PowerPoint 2007 since then. Most of you love the Ribbon and the tabs—and the Quick Access Toolbar—but many of you still want to use menus. So, you might be using one of the free add-ins that bring back the menus as a new tab in the Ribbon! These include RibbonCustomizer from Patrick Schmid, and Classic Menu from Addintools.

If you are still struggling with the Ribbon, but don’t want the menus back yet, Microsoft has created this cool interactive demo that lets you locate your favorite PowerPoint 2003 commands within the new PowerPoint 2007 interface, as shown in Figure 1, below.

Figure 1: PowerPoint 2003 to PowerPoint 2007 command reference guide

Now, only if they could provide this as a downloadable file; that would be cool. Even more cool: make this part of the PowerPoint help interface that can work offline as well. And we’re not complaining even if we may sound so! Kudos to the Office Online team for creating something so helpful. There are similar interactive demos for other Office 2007 products, including Word and Excel.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2007
Tagged as: Office 2007, Office Online, PowerPoint 2007, Training

Sharing Your SlideBoom Presentations

You already learned how you can join SlideBoom and upload your presentations as part of this SlideBoom series. In this post, we’ll go beyond the basics and show you how you can share your uploaded presentations with others:

1. First, make sure that you sign into your SlideBoom account.
2. Click the My Account button to load up your account page. On this page, you can see all your presentations, as shown in Figure 1, below.

Next, we’ll show you how you can make changes to your SlideBoom profile.

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

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