WOW – 76 MB Per Second!
Last week I posted about SpeedTest.net (Dec. 12 Post). I was just on a project in Las Vegas at the Mirage (coordinating presentations for 50 physicians) and checked my internet connection. First test was 76 megabytes per second! I ran the test again later in the day (eg. not 6am when no one was on the network) and still came up with an impressive 62 MB connection. Even more impressive (but less used) was the 30+ MB upload connection.
Needless to say, pushing 8 GB files across the network to various ballrooms, listening to Pandora and IM’ing was no problem!
– Troy @ TLC
20,000 Online Games at Y8.com
This week I have been enjoying a fantastic time skiing with my wife and kids in Colorado (snow is a novelty for us being from San Diego). Each evening as the hot cocoa is ready, all the laptops come out (it’s a vacation, but still lots of projects) and my kids have been playing games on Y8.com.
Pretty impressive website with literally thousands of free Flash games. Enough to entertain for a full week of snowy nights.
– Troy @ TLC
Says Here Steve Jobs Uses PowerPoint…
This is a good (news) article from this week on The Wall Street Journal Blogs entitled “Should Start-Up Founders Forget About Business Plans?” Check out item #1 in the to do list.
1) A PowerPoint presentation – “Ten slides long, that’s it, really simple,” Halligan said. “If you want to learn how to build a great PowerPoint, watch Steve Jobs’ PowerPoint presentations. He builds very simple, elegant PowerPoint slides.”
The concept is great – strive for a simple and elegant presentation.
The hard part is the 10 slides rule, which I do not believe in. Actually I do not prescribe to a presentation being a set number of slides, but rather a set amount of time. Following this rule, someone is going to cram 5 slides of content onto 1 slide to maintain the magical 10 slide allotment.
And the funny part is saying Mr. Jobs uses PowerPoint, where I am sure he uses his companies presentation software ‘Keynote’. Maybe I could fact check their presentation related stories….
– Troy @ TLC
GenNext Media Video
Although I mostly highlight PowerPoint related projects, I do a number of video projects each month. Here is one that was fun and an interesting topic (Social Media). Plus it is easy to highlight as the video is posted online (vs. being used at a meeting or distributed on DVD).
Here is the GenNext Media homepage, which highlights the introduction video I storyboarded from website content and eBooks (used PPT for storyboard phase) and then developed in a video editor (I use Vegas Pro).
– Troy @ TLC
Check Your Internet Connection with SpeedTest.net
This is a newly discovered website for me that is pretty nifty – speedtest.net
Here is the full webpage:
The first thing it does is check your IP address and pin point you on the U.S. map. Then it locates a close server in its network to run a speed test. Here it shows me in San Diego (my office):
Click the ‘Begin Test’ button at the top and see what your connection speed is – both download and upload. Here I am pretty close to what my service is (20/5):
– Troy @ TLC
More Options in Format Shape Dialog (for PPT 2010)
I had a few emails from the Nov. 30 post “#13 Gradients” about the additional items now in the Format Shape dialog. Yep, the options available in this dialog has increased! There are literally dozens of improvements that I did not cover in my top 15 and I look forward to spending the 2nd half of 2010 (after Office 2010 is released to retail) with in-depth posts.
Here is the dialog from the previous post:
When you open the Format Shape dialog some of the currently available features get a full details pane like Reflection and Glow & Soft Edges.
Some features have more options available. “Picture” from PPT 2007 gets expanded to Picture Corrections and Picture Color.
And there are new dialogs such as Crop (see Nov. ## post), Artistic Effects (very cool stuff that probably should have been in my Top 15 list) and more with Size, Position, etc.
– Troy @ TLC
My Home-Away-From-Home, Backstage
Here is a quick photo of my backstage graphics setup from a recent meeting. Always great to head to Florida during the Winter months for a week!
It’s even better when your wife is working with you!
– Troy @ TLC