PowerPoint

iFilm PPT Contest Voting Ends Today – Cast Your Vote

A few weeks ago I mentioned the iFilm PowerPoint contest. The went through all the entries and came up with the finalists for everyone to see and vote on. Well, today is the final day to cast your vote – click here to see the finalists and cast your vote.

I cannot say any of these presentations really jump out and wow me… My personal favorite, primarily because it made good use of many of the PPT 2007 effects (like the opening text) and lots of good animation (always something I look for!) is the “My Best Life Achievement” entry (and it got my vote).

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T16:10:10-08:00June 29th, 2007|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc|

New Book – “Why Most PPT Presentations Suck”

I received an announcement about a new PowerPoint book recently that I felt was newsworthy. I have known the author, Rick Altman, and believe this will not only be informative but very fun read (much as the title implies).

“The problem exists, not because PowerPoint is hard,” Altman says, “but because it is easy. Most people learn PowerPoint in one day and then rarely seek further training. They know enough to get into trouble but not enough to get out of it, or avoid it in the first place.”

More info can be found at the books website, betterppt.com

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T16:03:31-08:00June 2nd, 2007|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc|

Informm Presentation Professional Survey

Infocomm is doing a follow-up to last years survey where they collected input from presentation professionals. I entered my info, which took about 6 minutes and the best part is this year they are making the results available to all that participate (must enter an email address at end of survey).

Click here to go to the survey.
Note: All submissions due by May 19th.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T15:57:04-08:00May 7th, 2007|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc|

PowerPoint Contest (with Guy Kawasaki)

Slideshare, a new PowerPoint website that looks to me like youtube for PowerPoint, has announced a competition. What makes it interesting is that Guy Kawasaki will be judging.

Here is the announcement I found at The Techsplodder. But interestingly, the press release they show is dated March 19, 2007 – but today is the 18th! Click here to go to the slideshare.net website.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T15:47:59-08:00March 18th, 2007|PowerPoint|

Knowledge Does Not Equal Design

I had a recent conversation while updating a series of presentations that I found very insightful. The conversation was along these lines:

Client – Thank you for updating all of our presentations, making them look consistent and just ‘better.’

Troy – Thank you for the opportunity to assist.

Client – I can see the ‘graphic designers touch’ over what our engineers do.

Troy – Well, after I actually figure out and interpret what the intended message of the slide is, my biggest goal is to bring focus to it.

Client (and this was the key to the whole conversation) – You know, our people have taken lots of classes on how to use PowerPoint, but there is a big difference between knowing how to add things to a slides, and knowing how to design a good layout.

Over the next few days I will pull some before-and-after examples that focus on redesigning the visual layout of the slide.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T15:41:49-08:00February 23rd, 2007|Personal, PowerPoint, Resource/Misc|

Software to Convert PowerPoint to Flash

Received this email after the Streaming Media series posted:
“Hi. I am looking for software to convert PowerPoint presentations to Flash. What do you recommend? I tried Articulate and Camtasia. Only Camtasia converted everything in the original ppt slides. But the file was very large. The other programs left out font characters, loused up the audio, had other problems (but made a smaller file). Any help appreciated. Thanks.”

Thought I would share my reply:
You have tried two of my choices for software, so you’re on the right track. The main thing is you have two different approaches and you need to determine which is what you need:
1. Convert to a movie (Camtasia).
2. Convert to vector based images (Articulate).
A movie file will be much larger than a vector based flash file. Creating a movie is a bit tricky, as you can literally have the same movie output at 700MB or 23MB depending on size, bit rate, format and many other variable (as I just did today using Camtasia for a client webcast).

Here are two additional software choices that I have in my arsenal, not to say any one is better than the other.
1. Wildform Presenter Pro – The most difficult of all these programs to master, but it can produce some of the most effective vector based conversions of any program, being able to truly convert all animation effects.
2. Presenter Pro – Very, very similar to Articulate.

The advantage of converting to a movie is that what you see on your computer is captured. This includes custom fonts, bullets, animations, etc. This is why Camtasia captured everything as designed. The downside is it plays straight through (it is a movie) and is a larger (sometimes extremely large) file.

The advantage of converting to a true vector based Flash format is that the file size is tiny, the file can be resized without much quality issues, and it can pause at each slide easily. Downside is fonts need to be outlined, or they will default, custom bullets will not work, etc.

There are at least 10-20 applications out there, but these 4 really are the cream-of-the-crop and will give you the best results. Depending on the project determines which one I use, so keep experimenting with the software and different formats.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T15:26:50-08:00December 27th, 2006|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc|

Christmas Themed Template

Merry Christmas!!!

This is a great time of year – first, I have opportunity to focus on design work from my office (eg. I’m not traveling to corporate shows every week) and I also get to enjoy my kids’ excitement for the holidays! As way of saying Merry Christmas to all, please download this custom PowerPoint template I designed specifically for all who visit ThePowerPointBlog.

This is one features an elegant Christmas theme. As with all PowerPoint templates I develop this one features:
– Theme specific backgrounds developed in Photoshop
– Text boxes have preset position, font style, font size, font color, line spacing and bullets
– Preset entrance animations for text boxes
– Preset slide transitions
– File properties and header/footer information preset
– Presentation color scheme, customized to coordinate with background artwork

Click here to download (approx. 800k)

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T15:26:27-08:00December 25th, 2006|PowerPoint|

Multiple Bandwidth (Streaming vs. Standard Server)

Not all streaming media is created equal. The most advanced streaming media formats are a two-part strategy; first the streaming media is created in multiple versions, second it uses a special streaming media server.

The advantage of multiple bandwidth media is that a viewer with a slow connection gets a lower-quality movie. A viewer with a high speed connection gets a higher quality, larger bandwidth movie. The simple explanation is the movie has several versions all contained in a single file. The streaming media server has the ability to determine the speed of the connection of the viewer and shows them the file that is optimum for their connection.

A Streaming Server is designed specifically for streaming media. It runs specialized software that allows it to “see” the viewer’s connection speed, work through most firewalls, handle large simultaneous connections, implement DRM (Digital Rights Management) and stream without downloading. The last point is the “magic”, it literally plays the streaming media directly from server not the (progressive) downloaded file.

A (standard) Web server is not designed for streaming media, but it is the most common server and tons of streaming media is hosted on it. It streams using a method called progressive downloading. The file is downloaded to the computer’s browser cache and can only play what has been downloaded. Seeking, or jumping, ahead does not work until the entire file is downloaded. Playback is also more likely to be interrupted by periods of buffering (when the player is not receiving the file fast enough) and playback can be affected by the number of people trying to view it at the same time.

Note: A multiple bandwidth file can be hosted on a web server, but because a web server cannot recognize the various speeds built into the file it simply plays the highest bandwidth option (which is most likley poor playback quality as most viewers will not be able to support the super high bandwidth version). It’s like putting a square peg in a round hole – a bad idea…

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T15:23:46-08:00December 19th, 2006|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc|
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