PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Brainshark App for the iPhone and iPad: Conversation with Joe Gustafson

Joe Gustafson is the CEO and founder of Brainshark, Inc., whose cloud based software enables users to create, share and track online and mobile video presentations. Joe has been instrumental in bringing Brainshark’s content to a mobile audience, so anyone can access and deliver important content on-the-go.

In this conversation, Joe discusses Brainshark’s new app for the iPhone and iPad, which the company announced today.

Geetesh: Brainshark presentations can already be viewed on the iPhone and the iPad – what extra functionality does the Brainshark App for the iPhone and iPad add?

Joe: Great question, and you’re right – through our Brainshark Mobile offering, which we announced last year, smartphone and tablet users can view Brainshark and myBrainshark.com presentations on their mobile devices. Among the mobile platforms we support are the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, BlackBerry, Palm Pre and Android-based phones. We’re committed to enabling our users to create content that can be easily viewed at any time and on any device.

Our iPhone and iPad App, downloadable for free in Apple’s App Store, provides an enhanced user experience for the mobile viewer. We’ve included advanced capabilities that let iOS users more easily view, share, and access Brainshark and myBrainshark presentations from their mobile devices. These new features enable:

• Enhanced presentation viewing, via the table of contents. This shows thumbnails, titles and the duration of each slide, and lets users click to better navigate through presentations. Viewers can also see presentation attributes (including description, length and author information) and download attachments associated with the presentation they’re watching.

• Easy sharing, with the ability to click to post a presentation link on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Delicious. Users can also click to share a presentation via e-mail.

• On-the-go learning, with free access to a searchable, growing library of eLearning content, created by Brainshark’s community of subject matter experts.

• Instant content accessibility, with the ability to see a history of all recently viewed presentations. Brainshark enterprise customers and myBrainshark users who download the app can also access their company’s/their own content.

Geetesh: Existing Brainshark users can log into their accounts straight from the Brainshark App for the iPhone and iPad – what options does this open up for these users?

Joe: Right – while you don’t have to be an existing Brainshark customer or myBrainshark.com user to use the app (anyone can use it to view our online video presentations), our customers can take advantage of additional benefits to help them do their jobs better. As you mentioned, they can log into their Brainshark and myBrainshark accounts directly through the app. This lets them instantly access their company’s and their own content – enabling salespeople to view and deliver sales presentations, employees to consume “just in time” training content and HR communications, and people in the field in general to access the information they need when they need it.

We’re pleased to make these benefits available to our users and to continue to support their mobile needs.

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: Brainshark, Interviews, iPad, iPhone, Online Presentations, PowerPoint

Learn PowerPoint 2010: Add Texture Fills to Shapes in PowerPoint

I have already shown you how to add solid, picture, and gradient fills to shapes within your PowerPoint 2010 slides. In this tutorial I’ll show you how you can use texture fills, which incidentally are not too different from picture fills that can be tiled.

Learn how to add a texture fill to a selected shape in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2010
Tagged as: Fills, PowerPoint 2010, Shapes, Tutorials

Learn PowerPoint 2010 for Windows: Tiling Options in PowerPoint

Tiling options come to use when you have added texture fills to shapes or used a picture as a fill to a shape and want to provide a tile effect to it. In this tutorial you will learn about the tiling options available for filled shapes in PowerPoint 2010. Before you start, I am assuming you already have a shape filled with a texture. Then right-click the shape, and choose the Format Picture option.

Learn how to use different tiling options for texture fills in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2010
Tagged as: Fills, PowerPoint 2010, Shapes, Tutorials

Missing Picture Fills In Your PowerPoint Shapes: Conversation with Steve Rindsberg

    Steve Rindsberg has been associated with PowerPoint since the product originated — his PowerPoint FAQ site is a treasure trove of PowerPoint information. When he’s not updating his site, he’s creating new PowerPoint add-ins that expand possibilities. Steve’s also into a lot of print technology-related stuff.

In this conversation, Steve answers my questions about finding links to missing picture fills in PowerPoint slides.

Geetesh: Let’s say I have a shape on my PowerPoint 2010 slide that I filled with a picture. Now I opted to override the default option to insert it as embedded, and went ahead and linked that picture. Six months thereafter, after some spring cleaning on my computer resulted in the deletion of the linked picture, I find a small red X icon with no info about the name or path of the linked picture! What are my options?

Steve: There’s no way to learn the name or path of the original picture either by normal means or using VBA, but you can find them in the XML files contained within the PPTX container that PowerPoint 2007 and 2010 use.

Unzip the container, and you’ll find a slidexx.xml for each slide in the presentation, where xx is the slide number. Similarly, there’ll also be a slidexx.xml.rels for each slide in a sub-folder. Open this file, and in the XML for the picture-filled shape, you’ll find:

Type=”http://long/string/of/stuff/we/don” t=”” care=”” about=””>
Target=”file:///c:blahpathtolinkedfile.jpg”

To avoid problems you can use the Insert and Link option that is available in PowerPoint 2007 and 2010. This option puts a copy of the image into the PPTX file but also remembers the path to the source image. When you open the file it checks to see if the source image has changed; if so, it updates it in the PPTX. If the source image isn’t available, PowerPoint just uses the last-updated embedded version of the image.

This gives you the ability to do image swaps by changing filenames of linked images, just as linked images would, but without the fragility of the links. The only downside is that the images are embedded; the PPTX files will be bigger because of it.

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: Fills, Interviews, PowerPoint 2007, PowerPoint 2010, Shapes, Steve Rindsberg

Learn PowerPoint 2010 for Windows: More Gradients in PowerPoint

I have already explained how you can add gradient fills to shapes in PowerPoint 2010. In this tutorial you will learn about More Gradients option, which leads to a detailed gradient editor that’s very capable — and there’s a lot to learn!

Learn about the different options within More Gradients in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2010
Tagged as: Fills, PowerPoint 2010, Shapes, Tutorials