PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Opuzz: Conversation with Vivian MacPartland

Vivian MacPartland (no, that’s not her picture. She calls it her avatar) is part of Business Development at Opuzz, a source for royalty-free music. Opuzz customers include corporations and businesses, educators, producers, TV and radio networks, developers for web, games and multimedia, retailers and business owners and others. In this conversation, Vivian discusses Opuzz, their music, and the use of music tracks in PowerPoint presentations.

Geetesh: Vivian, tell us more about Opuzz and how it evolved?

Vivian: Let me start by telling you how Opuzz is different. One main feature of the Opuzz Royalty Free Music Library is our consistency in providing multiple edit versions option and music loops which gives our clients flexibility where needed. That way, they can mix and match, insert transitional stinger intros and outros, as well as clearly define segments of their presentation with appropriate music. Every track in our stock music library is available in edit versions of 10, 15, 30, 60 seconds, full mix, alternate mixes, stingers, and multiple loop versions.

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Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Interviews, PowerPoint, Sounds

Microsoft Office Makes Encouraging Strides

Common menus and toolbars have been replaced by the Ribbon, a strip of commands at the top of the screen that make sense only in the context of what you are doing. In Excel, for example, you’ll see commands for editing a chart only if a chart appears in your spreadsheet.

The revamp is worthwhile for anyone who got lost navigating to commands buried inside previous versions. And it’s nice to be able to preview editing changes before committing to them.

Edward Baig explains more on the USA Today site

Filed Under: Thoughts
Tagged as: Microsoft, Microsoft Office, PowerPoint, PowerPoint 2007

CounterPoint: Conversation with Kurt Dupont

   CounterPoint takes the omnipresent symbol of today’s retail driven world. The counter display and merges it with a PowerPoint presentation so that you can create more interactive counter displays that entertain and inform while you wait for your turn.

In this Indezine exclusive, we have Kurt Dupont who heads PresentationPoint, creators of CounterPoint, DataPoint, and another amazing PowerPoint add-ins.

Geetesh: Tell us more about CounterPoint.

Kurt: Well, CounterPoint is our latest addition to our product range of dynamic presentations. We all know that number display (Now serving 34) in a shop or takeaway restaurant.

Boring and simple as it can only display a number from 1 to 99 and has no additional features. No additional information can be displayed and it is only used in peak times.

CounterPoint now offers that same functionality by using Microsoft PowerPoint. The big advantage here is that you can format your counter as you which and add general-purpose or advertising slides to the slide show.

You can now run a normal PowerPoint slide show with company and product information, promotions, etc, all combined with your counter. As soon as an employee presses the button of a mouse — this could also be a PowerPoint presenter remote control — a counter slide is shown, the running counter is incremented and a sound is played. After an idle time that you can configure, the counter slide is made invisible and the normal slide show continues. You can even use multiple service desks by sharing the common number.

Geetesh: Give us some case studies about organizations using CounterPoint.

Kurt: A trendy Belgian takeaway restaurant was looking for a counter display system with more functionality. The normal counter display they already had (costs EUR 400) was simply replaced by a normal PC with a 20″ TFT monitor. This was even an old computer that was not used anymore. CounterPoint was installed and the owner started playing with the slide show. She created a presentation of some 20 slides with meals and promotional information. At the end, a CounterPoint slide was added. Just as easy as that. Now the system is running continuously and serves as a counter display system in peak times.

The advantage that she saw was that they can better control the waiting queue in the restaurant and animate the customers with promotional information, which also leads to more sales.

At the end the customers are entertained and informed, the waiting queue is managed correctly (first in, first out), promotions are displayed and finally, the employees are better organized and more effective. And all of this with CounterPoint and a spare computer.

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Add-in, Interviews, Kurt Dupont, PowerPoint, PresentationPoint

PowerPoint’s Role in the Classroom

In the classroom, new technology is finding more important roles when it comes to educating students. More professors are creating their lectures as PowerPoint presentations, which allows them to combine visual aids with their lecture, and are using computers in other ways to run their classes.

Read more on the Purdue Exponent site.

Filed Under: Thoughts
Tagged as: Education, Opinion, PowerPoint

Impatica Teams with Sprint Nextel

Impatica Inc. has announced that Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S) is the first wireless carrier to offer the Impatica ShowMate as a must-have accessory for its BlackBerry customers. The Impatica ShowMate is a tool that can help extend the workplace for customers, as it is the first and only device of its kind to project PowerPoint presentations from a BlackBerry. Impatica ShowMate is available online on the Sprint site.

“The Impatica ShowMate creates a compelling reason to carry a BlackBerry,” said Ujval Alva, Sprint National Product Manager, Accessories Division for Sprint Nextel. “ShowMate lets our customers do more with their BlackBerry handsets. By choosing to offer this unique product, we hope to send a message that we provide our clients a suite of value-added mobile productivity tools.”

Read more on the Impatica site.

Filed Under: Add-ins
Tagged as: Add-in, BlackBerry, Impatica, PowerPoint, Review