PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

PowerPoint 2007: Outlook Cuts Ribbon While Power Points

PowerPoint is fully ribbon-based, similar to the interfaces of the new Word and Excel as opposed to that of the half-breed Outlook and it certainly benefits. The application’s interface is now much less cluttered and far easier to use – a simple presentation with effective graphics created via the suites ‘SmartArt’ technology, can be had in minutes.

Read more on the Inquirer site.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2007
Tagged as: Office 2007, Opinion, PowerPoint 2007

NXPowerLite: Conversation with Michael Power

       Neuxpower creates NXPowerLite, a PowerPoint add-in that reduces the size of your presentations. In this exclusive conversation, Michael Power, the founder, and Managing Director of Neuxpower discusses the company, the product, and the new improvements.

Geetesh: Tell us more about yourself and NXPowerLite.

Michael: I set up the company Neuxpower in 1997, primarily to service clients such as Hilton International, helping them embrace the new digital technologies that were starting to emerge. In 2001, one of our clients complained to me that he was continually experiencing problems sending and receiving large PowerPoint files. This got me thinking…

We decided to create a piece of software that would enable PowerPoint users to quickly and easily reduce the size of their PowerPoint files, with no discernible loss of quality and no knowledge of image file formats and manipulation required.

NXPowerLite works by compressing the graphics and embedded objects contained within a PowerPoint file, intelligently selecting the most appropriate file format and compression level for each of them. It can reduce file sizes by as much as 95% while retaining the PPT format — so anybody with a copy of PowerPoint can view and edit a presentation in the usual way, with no special plugins or unzipping required.

Geetesh: What is the newest version of NXPowerLite, and what are the improvements?

Michael: We launched two new versions of NXPowerLite this week.

Version 2.3 of the Desktop Edition is a free upgrade for existing NXPowerLite users. It contains a number of new features, including the ability to batch-process presentations — a common request. Other improvements include the ability to optimize presentations embedded within presentations and an option to preserve the date and time of the original presentation in the optimized version.

The second new version is a Server Edition — an industry first for this type of product. It is a scriptable component that allows organizations to deploy NXPowerLite in a way that exactly matches their requirements and is seamless to end-users.

You can download a trial version of NXPowerLite from their site.

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: Add-in, Interviews, Mike Power, Neuxpower, NXPowerlite, PowerPoint

PowerPoint 2007: Office Delayed Again

Microsoft Office 2007 may be delayed again, and that might be a good move after all, because we’re quite happy with Office 2003 and would rather wait and use a better release of Office 2007.

Here’s some thoughts from different media outlets.

Microsoft delays Office 2007 again

Microsoft said Thursday that it is making another slight delay to the planned arrival time for Office 2007, citing performance concerns with recent test versions. The software maker now plans to finish the code for the revamped Office suite by the end of the year, rather than in October, the date it set in March. The company said in March that it would wait to start selling Office until January, to coincide with the launch of Windows Vista. Now, though, it says Office may not be ready for store shelves until early 2007.

Read more on the CNET News site.

More hitches at Microsoft delay launch of new Office software

Microsoft has delayed the launch of its next Office software package while it tackles “performance issues”, in the latest in a series of hold-ups affecting the company’s key products. The group last night announced it is aiming to make the new version, Office 2007, available to business customers by the end of the year, rather than its earlier target of October.

Read more on the Guardian site (link no longer exists).

Microsoft delays Office ’07

The Office delay comes three months after Microsoft again pushed back the release of its flagship Windows Vista operating system, now scheduled for broad availability in January, missing the holiday shopping season. “The bottom line is Microsoft gives guidance, which businesses are trying to make plans around, but consistently is unable to meet the dates in the guidance,” said Joe Wilcox, a senior analyst at Jupiter Research. “At some point, that’s got to impact somebody’s confidence in Microsoft.”

Read more on The Seattle Times site.

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

Neuxpower Launches New Version of NXPowerLite

Neuxpower Solutions announced new Server and Desktop versions of NXPowerLite, a presentation compression tool, at the C3 Expo in New York. NXPowerLite radically reduces the size of Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, as well as StarOffice and OpenOffice presentations saved in the PowerPoint format by compressing the graphics and embedded documents contained within them, making them easier to manage, distribute and use.

Read more on the PRWeb site.

Filed Under: Add-ins
Tagged as: Add-in, Neuxpower, PowerPoint

PowerPoint 2007: Microsoft Office has Online Preview

In a unique move, Microsoft has put up a trial of Office 2007 online on their site that uses a Citrix browser plug-in. It seems like a novel idea, because rather than download or get a CD of the beta, you can play with it through an online experience.

Several news sites have reported this development.

News24 com reported that the goal of the online preview is to let people play around with the software without going through the trouble of downloading the large beta versions, which are less reliable than final products. Still, to use the online demonstration, users may need to download a plug-in and must register with the company.

Ars Technica adds that once the test environment is set up, users can explore a limited Windows desktop running Office 2007. The preview can be described as a series of tutorials meant to highlight the new features of the Office 2007 System. For example, Outlook 2007 launches with a fully loaded inbox and a window devoted to telling you what you should try out.

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