PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Learn PowerPoint 2010 for Windows: Trim Video Clips

PowerPoint 2010 enables you to insert video clips in your presentations, but many times the video clip inserted may be too long. Or maybe you just need to show part of the video clip, rather than wasting your audience’s time showing them the entire clip. Of course, PowerPoint 2010 has the Player Controls bar that allows you to scrub and play the clip from exactly where you want it to begin — but scrubbing a clip in front of an audience can appear unprofessional. Another alternative is to trim the video clip outside PowerPoint in a dedicated video program, and that would probably be the approach we would suggest if PowerPoint 2010 did not introduce a whole, new Trim Video option.

Learn how to Trim a video clip in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

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

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Emphasis Effects for Animations

Emphasis Effects are PowerPoint animations that determine how the slide object calls attention to itself while it is on-the-slide. Unlike Entrance and Exit animation effects that allow a slide object to enter or exit the slide area, slide objects with Emphasis animation effects are already within the slide area before they start animating, and continue remaining there even after they have finished animating. Typical Emphasis animation effects are Spin, in which an object spins 360 degrees (and more or less) on its own axis or Grow and Shrink, in which a slide object may increase or decrease its size. You can also apply Emphasis animation effects to text objects so that the fonts or the text colors change. In all, there are 50 or more Emphasis animation effects that PowerPoint provides — however, make sure you use animation only if it adds value to your presentation and helps you explain something better to your audience.

Explore Emphasis Effects for animations in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2011
Tagged as: Animation, Office for Mac, PowerPoint 2011, Tutorials

SlideShark and iPad 1 (First Generation)

The iPad has been a runaway success, what with Apple releasing three generations of this amazing device in rapid succession. Yet, all these improvements in successive releases do not appeal to owners of older generation iPads.

When newer iPads get launched with newer capabilities that will not work on the iPad bought just a month or two ago, then let’s just say that users of older iPads do not feel too happy or enthusiastic, nor do they want to abandon their perfectly nice iPad for a newer one. Guess that’s the price we all have to pay for Apple’s quick releases with distinctive improvements.

It is in times like these that the folks at SlideShark (a presentation app for the iPad) have released a new, free update that adds capabilities to the program for iPad 1 users! When we read out this improvement for iPad 1 users, I wasn’t too sure that I read right because something of this sort happens once in a blue moon these days. Yes, this certainly is not the norm, and most app developers will either ignore users of older devices, or provide a paid upgrade — so it’s nice to see that the folks at SlideShark are changing the rules of the game.

Before we explore the new iPad 1 capabilities of SlideShark, let us look at what SlideShark actually does. SlideShark is a web site, an iPad program, and a presentation storage platform from Brainshark, a company based in Massachusetts, USA. Brainshark has since long been a favored platform to create and share online presentations. In recent times, Brainshark found that there was no real, proper way to view and share PowerPoint presentations on the iPad. Rather than add extra capabilities to Brainshark’s online presentation platform, they built a new initiative from the ground up — and yes, they called this initiative SlideShark. We have been fortunate to be involved with SlideShark right from its inception, and it has been a great journey so far because SlideShark has evolved so well. This is primarily because the folks at SlideShark listen to user feedback — at times, our feedback has resulted in almost immediate improvements to the program.

The new iPad 1 feature that SlideShark introduced in their v1.6 release allows iPad 1 users complete projector and TV output support. iPad 1 users can now plug in to their projectors and TVs using Apple’s adapters and present to audiences from the SlideShark app on their iPads in full-screen mode. As far as we know, this option is only available on the iPad 1 to native Apple apps like Photos, Videos, and Keynote — so kudos to the folks at Brainshark for achieving this breakthrough!

We asked Andy Zimmerman, Brainshark’s CMO, why they decided to add these iPad 1 capabilities, and he said, We continue to make improvements to SlideShark that benefit our users, and iPad 1 users are no exception! Although the iPad 1 wasn’t designed to work with projectors as well as later versions of the device, we figured out how to make it possible with SlideShark v1.6.

SlideShark by itself is a free program — you upload your PowerPoint files to the SlideShark web site. You can do the upload from your regular computer running Windows or Mac OS X, or just upload any PowerPoint attached to your email on the iPad. Just select the PowerPoint attachment within iPad’s mail program by holding over it, and in the resultant menu that pops up, choose the Open In option (or alternatively the Open In SlideShark option). If you choose the former option, this brings up another menu that lists all apps on your iPad that can work with PowerPoint files. Choose the SlideShark option, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 1, below.

Figure 1: An email attachment can be sent to SlideShark

You will next see the SlideShark interface, and a message window that asks your permission to upload the presentation to your SlideShark account, as shown in Figure 2, below. Choose the Upload option.

Figure 2: Upload PowerPoint to SlideShark

Launch SlideShark if it is not already open, and your presentations will be visible. Download them if they are not already downloaded, and play them off your iPad 1 (or a newer generation iPad).

And here’s a picture of an iPad 1 with SlideShark running, connected to a TV!

Figure 3: iPad 1 with SlideShark running

See Also: Brainshark SlideShark v1.6: Conversation with Jay Wilder

You May Also Like: New Features in SlideShark Team Edition: Conversation with David Klein | iSpring Converter: The Indezine Review

Filed Under: iPad Presenting
Tagged as: Brainshark, iPad, PowerPoint

PowerPoint Text Effects – 05

The sample presentation that you download contains 12 different text effects that can be applied to any text in PowerPoint 2007, 2010 or higher on Windows (and also PowerPoint 2008, 2011 or higher on Mac). These text effects are in various styles, and will make your text look hand drawn and organic. Most of these text effects may work better with larger text – apply them to your text and see which one works best for you. Note that none of these effects are suitable for body text. You can use them for slide titles, headings, sub-headings etc. To use these effects, first copy the text attributes of the sample text using Format Painter button, and then, paste them on to your text.

Download and copy these text effects to use them in your own presentations.

Filed Under: Presentation Bank
Tagged as: PowerPoint, Presentation Samples, Text

Learn PowerPoint 2010 for Windows: Remove Bookmarks from Video Clips

Now that you know how you can add Bookmarks to video clips in PowerPoint 2010, you may want to know how you can edit and remove those Bookmarks. At this point of time, let’s state some facts — we have bad news and good news. The bad news is that PowerPoint does not let you edit the inserted Bookmarks — for instance, you cannot change the time of the Bookmark from 25 seconds to 28 seconds. You will have to remove the Bookmark you wanted to edit, and add a new Bookmark all over again! On the other hand, removing a Bookmark is easy — and that is the good news!

Learn how to remove Bookmarks from a video clip in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

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