PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Use a Mini Mini-Story to Tell Your Audience About Yourself

By Claudyne Wilder

You may be delivering a scientific paper, explaining to the salespeople how the new system will change the way they place orders, or reporting on a project that no one really understands. When you stand up in front of an audience with people who have no idea who you are, you need to let them in on you as a person. Tell them a secret about yourself so they feel connected to you. Decide whether to tell this mini mini-story as soon as you start talking, or perhaps after you present your executive summary.

Image: 123RF

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Filed Under: Guest Posts
Tagged as: Claudyne Wilder, Guest Post, Opinion, Presentation Skills, Stories

Show Hidden Files and Folders in Windows

To perform some tasks within Windows, you must be able to see all files and the folders — but there are chances that some of your files or folders may be hidden — this may not be so obvious and fortunately it’s easy to overcome this limitation. By default, all versions of Windows hide at least some files and folders — in this article, we’ll show you how you can unhide these files or folders within Windows 8, 7, Vista, and XP.

Learn how to make the hidden files and folders visible in Windows 8, 7, Vista, and XP.

Filed Under: PowerPoint All Versions
Tagged as: Microsoft Windows, Tutorials

Indezine News: March 26, 2013

In this issue, we explore the topic of picture copyrights again — this time we look at whether the person who provides permission is actually the original owner of the asset, or not! We also bring you Organic Rectangles, part of our hugely popular Organic Shapes series. Cindy Pearson talks about a free online PDF to PowerPoint converter — and you can look at our Eight Petals Circle shapes. Finally, you get to read and learn from our PowerPoint tutorials: PowerPoint 2011 for Mac users will learn about texture and picture fills for text. PowerPoint 2010 for Windows users can learn about compressing pictures and setting document resolutions — also how you can set text indentation using numerical values.

Read all this and more in Indezine News.

Filed Under: Ezine
Tagged as: Ezine, Indezine, News, PowerPoint

Learn PowerPoint 2010 for Windows: Reset Pictures

Once a picture is inserted within PowerPoint, any manipulations you make to that picture are strictly only on the surface. The appearance of the picture changes on the slide, but the unaltered picture is stored within your PowerPoint presentation. Essentially that’s good because if you make many changes to a picture — and then regret experimenting — then you can just reset your picture rather than starting all over again! There’s one caveat though — the option to reset any picture back to its original form works only if you have not run any compression options for your presentation.

Learn how to reset pictures in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2010
Tagged as: Pictures, PowerPoint 2010, Tutorials

SlideShark Broadcasting: Conversation with Andy Zimmerman

  Andy Zimmerman is chief marketing officer for Brainshark, Inc., a leading provider of sales enablement solutions. Thousands of companies use Brainshark to improve the reach and results of their business communications, while dramatically reducing costs.

In this conversation, Andy discusses “SlideShark Broadcasting” – a new capability the company is launching today in its SlideShark app.

Geetesh: SlideShark Broadcasting is a big feature – can you tell us more?

Andy: Thanks, Geetesh. It really is a big feature and an exciting addition to the app. SlideShark has had fantastic traction to date – with more than 1.4 million downloads – and Broadcasting significantly expands the app’s scope and utility.

As you know, today, individuals and businesses use SlideShark to show PowerPoints properly from an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch and manage, distribute and track their content in the cloud. Now, with SlideShark Broadcasting, mobile presenters can “broadcast” their presentations live over the Web, and invite others to view them.

Meeting attendees – whether they’re across the table or across the globe – simply click a link to view the presentation in real time, from any computer, tablet or smartphone. They’ll see the presentation in their Web browser – no downloads required – as the slides and animations are advanced, and even see annotations as made by the presenter. So for anyone who can’t attend a meeting in person, it’s very easy to get looped in. And it’s also a great way to focus the attention of the people in the room who can follow along on their own device!

This new feature is a boon to presenters too. They can broadcast their presentations securely, and maintain control over what content is delivered, when it’s delivered and the overall cadence of the meeting. Presenters receive visual alerts when someone enters or exits a broadcast, and at the meeting’s conclusion, receive reports via email that detail audience attendance and viewing activity. They also receive data on the broadcast meeting itself – including how long it lasted, which presentation(s) and slides were shown, how much time was spent on each slide and more. This is a great help for any follow-up activity.

If your readers would like more info and/or a visual explanation, here’s a quick (two-minute) demo of how SlideShark Broadcasting works:

Geetesh: This broadcast feature is limited to SlideShark PRO and Team Edition account holders – although free and PLUS users can try it out at no cost until May 31, 2013. What happens after that date? Also, can you tell us more about your new SlideShark PRO offering?

Andy: You’re right. So, with Broadcasting being a feature that is attractive to businesses, we’ve incorporated it into SlideShark Team Edition. Team Edition users can broadcast to up to 25 attendees per meeting. We’ve also introduced SlideShark PRO – a new plan that includes the broadcasting and reporting capabilities and provides an additional 1GB of storage to users. SlideShark PRO account holders are able to invite up to 10 attendees to join each broadcast meeting.

Users with free and SlideShark PLUS accounts, as you mentioned, will be able to try out the capabilities at no charge and can include up to three attendees per broadcast, through May 31, 2013. If free and PLUS users would like to continue using the Broadcast feature, they would simply need to upgrade to SlideShark PRO. You can see a comparison of all the SlideShark plans here.

Thanks very much for this opportunity, Geetesh. It was a pleasure to speak with you as always and share our SlideShark news with your readers.

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: Interviews
Tagged as: Brainshark, Interviews, Online Presentations, PowerPoint