PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Set Office 2004 Zoom Levels

Saturday, January 27, 2007, posted by Geetesh Bajaj at 5:48 am

Move the wheel up, and you’ll zoom in; move it down, and you’ll zoom out. The amount the zoom changes with each tick of the scroll wheel varies between the applications. Word seems to go in 10-percent steps; Excel uses 15-percent increments; and PowerPoint steps through the fixed zoom levels.

Rob Griffiths explains more on the MacWorld site.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2004
Tagged as: Office for Mac, PowerPoint, Zoom

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Focus on PowerFrameworks

Tuesday, January 23, 2007, posted by Geetesh Bajaj at 5:24 am

PowerFrameworks is a subscription-based website that provides a library of ready-to-customize frameworks, metaphors, and analogies that you can use within your PowerPoint presentations and elsewhere. New frameworks are added frequently.

Once you subscribe, you can access a larger range of frameworks, tutorials, and animated sample presentations.

Read the Indezine review of PowerFrameworks.

Filed Under: Templates
Tagged as: Graphics, PowerFrameworks, PowerPoint, Presentation Samples, Review

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Liquid Cabaret: Conversation with Colin Adams

Thursday, January 18, 2007, posted by Geetesh Bajaj at 5:08 am

Colin Adams is the president and founder of Indigo Rose Software Design Corporation, that creates the Liquid Cabaret collection of music tracks.

Privately held, Indigo Rose develops innovative software products and multimedia authoring tools that are used by thousands of customers around the world. Indigo Rose is headquartered in Winnipeg, Canada.

Geetesh: Tell us more about your Liquid Cabaret collection.

Colin: Liquid Cabaret is a 20-volume collection of unique, royalty-free, background music tracks ideal for use in PowerPoint presentations. Each volume centers on a musical style or theme such as “Instrumental Pop”, “World Journey,” and “70’s Movie Soundtrack.” There’s a really wide variety of styles represented, so you’re sure to find the perfect tracks to accompany your presentation.

Since presentations vary in length and format, so does the music in the Liquid Cabaret collection. Each of the 300 tunes comes in four different lengths, ranging from about 30 seconds to two and half minutes — plus, you have the option to play a track on a continuous loop. Also, all the tracks are available in high-quality MP3 (256k) and OGG (Ogg Vorbis) formats.

All 300 tunes in the Liquid Cabaret collection were written and performed by Montreal-based professional composer, Paul Shrofel. You can purchase any of the volumes in the collection individually or you can get all 20 CDs on a single DVD-ROM at a greatly reduced package price.

Samples of each track are available online at our site and orders may be placed online or through our office at +1 (204) 946-0263.

Geetesh: How well does Liquid Cabaret complement PowerPoint? Also, what’s your favourite track selection for use in a corporate presentation scenario?

Colin: What’s the line? “Say it with music.” We think that a great presentation is enhanced by a great soundtrack. Whether you want to set a mood, match a “theme” or key concept in your presentation, or just add interest and make things more dynamic, music is the way to go.

The Liquid Cabaret collection is the perfect complement to a PowerPoint presentation. First of all, it’s easy to incorporate. You just drag and drop your audio files into your PowerPoint software, and you’re good to go. Second, you have a ton of choices in terms of style and format. There are 300 songs to choose from, so you’re sure to find the tune that matches the tone of your presentation. Plus, each of the songs comes in different lengths and formats so it can be further tailored to your needs. Third, Liquid Cabaret is royalty-free, so you don’t need to go through the hassle of securing permissions or dealing with copyright issues. You just purchase your music, add it to PowerPoint, and then show your presentation to an audience of two or two hundred.

As far as my favorite track selection goes, I think that the tunes in Volume 12 “Instrumental Pop” and Volume 17 “Thinking Positive” are ideal for corporate presentations. The tracks on both volumes have a fresh, upbeat sound that works well as interesting, energizing background music. Having said that, you would probably get a lot of attention in the boardroom by adding tracks from the “70’s Movie Soundtrack” or “Liquid Metal” to your presentation!

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: Audio, Colin Adams, Interviews, Music, PowerPoint, Sound

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KsanLab: Conversation with Stanislav Kravets

Tuesday, January 16, 2007, posted by Geetesh Bajaj at 9:30 am

Stas Kravets is COO of worldwide markets at KsanLab, a multimedia design company. Stas has worked in IT since 1997, acting as a product engineer, project manager, and marketer. He has an MA in Applied Mathematics and writes for online marketing media and for KsanLab’s E-xperiential blog.

Geetesh: Tell us more about yourself and your work.

Stas: I am COO of worldwide markets at KsanLab and responsible for defining and implementation of worldwide marketing and sales strategy of KsanLab’s products and services. KsanLab is an international interactive agency with a specialization in multimedia tools for marketing, PR, IR, and HR communication. At the moment we work on US, German, and Russian markets and have many world-famous clients. As a COO, I participate in planning, business development, negotiations with clients and partners, and project management.

Geetesh: How do you decide if PowerPoint is not suitable for a particular job – and then, which program do you normally use?

Stas: Well, the first time I understood that I need something different was on my previous job when we needed an introduction movie and a document shell for a corporate CD business card. The introduction had to be a movie — not a video, but rather cartoon with music, animation, and finally with an update-able guide of PowerPoint presentations written on the disc. PowerPoint’s animation capabilities are well geared for slide presentations with schemes and diagrams, but not for movies or cartoons, so we made a request for a Flash reel with support of an external XML file that contained links and descriptions of files stored on the CD.

KsanLab started as a small web design studio and later, reacting to market demands switched from static design to interactive multimedia products. Macromedia Flash is a de facto standard for multimedia information tools — it possesses all necessary capabilities for rich graphic design, animation, integration of various kinds of info (video, sound), and interactivity. Now it is used all around the world for the development of product demos, internet games, banners, training, and so on. I want to highlight that it is not comparable with PowerPoint — it is always a question of selecting the right tool for your task. In some cases, Flash is a pure excess that will eat the time and money and in some cases, a PowerPoint presentation will be just boring and give you a back eye.

My article for MarketingProfs contains several criteria when you should switch to Flash (or other technology such as Apple QuickTime, Java, etc) from PowerPoint. I’ve chosen them based on our expertise from the projects we’ve done for our clients in the past. Those projects are mature ones — so we were able to analyze their impact and potential. In short, the cases when you need to consider multimedia are:

When you need to impress. Flash gives you a great deal of opportunity to make your message look great and different from others.
When you need to catch and keep the attention of your audience. Sometimes information is too complicated, or the audience is too passive to read and understand every single word. With multimedia you can show this information using images and animations — of course, this becomes much more comprehensible and interesting to see.
Sometimes you have a lot to say. 80 slides — are you sure that everyone will get all of them? Instead, you can have something absolutely different, the series of dynamic reels with professional voice over. Note, that such presentations can be used even without your personal attendance.
Multimedia presentations can put together pieces of information of different nature — video, audio, music, 3D, interactivity, and animation, without loss of control of them.
Very important topic is that with multimedia you can transfer not only information, but you can also transfer emotions. Multimedia product is capable to express your feelings, express the spirit of your company or product. This feature is used by virtual tours — the best way to present the beauty of resort or atmosphere of restaurant.
When you need interactivity. Think about quizzes, trainings and games (educational or advertising).

In all cases, a multimedia product delivers on several goals simultaneously. For example, a virtual tour not only conveys lots of information but also creates a great impression and attracts the attention of customers.

You May Also Like: When PowerPoint Is Not Enough

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Case Studies, Interviews, PowerPoint, Stanislav Kravets

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Microsoft Confirms Office 2008 for Mac

Wednesday, January 10, 2007, posted by Geetesh Bajaj at 5:12 am

Microsoft will update its Office productivity suite for Apple users later this year with a new version that for the first time takes advantage of the Intel processors in new Macs. The update, Microsoft’s first in three years to the Macintosh version of Office, will help speed graphics processing in PowerPoint and other apps.