February, 2009

Enrich Your Presentation: Yet Another Note about Video Sharing on PowerPoint

Rolling back to a year ago, right here I alleged that “Why Not Add YouTube Flash Video in Your Next PowerPoint Presentation“, as well as something more about rich media in presentation topics, such as “Best Practices for Playing and Controlling More in PowerPoint Presentations” or “Make Your Live Homepage in PowerPoint Slides. Maybe my old tips of YouTube video on PowerPoint is kinda obsolete now, and luckily Microsoft PowerPoint Team released its own illustrated tutorial on a blog post “How to insert that funny clip you found online“. Yeah, not late to learn more about this, as video sharing is still hot on the air.

Certainly the core technologies on this is simple, if you know Developer tab and Controls in PowerPoint. Something new I got, is now we can embed and play 720p HD (High Definition) YouTube video. It’s still easy to catch up: add “&ap=%2526fmt%3D22” at the end of the URL of the video file, making it look like “http://www.youtube.com/v/zlfKdbWwruY&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&ap=%2526fmt%3D22″. Enjoy our video sharing in every presentation!

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Keynote Remote: Easier iPhone Presentation via Wi-Fi

I talked about “Ideas about Showing PowerPoint Presentations on iPhone” days ago to make our PowerPoint slides over the iPhone. Sadly, as a Mac dummy, I totally forget Apple’s own presentation software, Keynote in iWork ‘09. And the latest Keynote already supports a feature to use iPhone to control the presentations remotely. Here’s the official description:

Keynote Remote lets you use your iPhone or iPod touch to control your presentation from anywhere in the room using Wi-Fi. See your slide with notes or both the current slide and the next slide in the palm of your hand. Just swipe to advance.

All we need is a tiny app for iPhone called Keynote Remote (¢99 on App Store). Now your iPhone can control your Keynote slides by going previous/next slide remotely via Wi-Fi network. It’s really simple to use, and its Note mode is greatly handy to help presenters recall any keynote points when presenting.

Such advanced feature is nice anyway, however, it could be better if the remote control is based on Bluetooth not Wi-Fi, as we know Wi-Fi is not easily available anywhere. Good luck!

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

[REFERRAL] Please, for Your Audience’s Sake, Use PowerPoint Animation Well

Please, for Your Audience’s Sake, Use PowerPoint Animation Well
http://www.managesmarter.com/msg/content_display/presentations/e3i0d287909ecf291eb71ef75c54e03a16b

How many times have you seen terrible PowerPoint presentations that use those horrible fly-in animations along with the unbearable screeching tires sound effect? That’s not a presentation—that’s a disaster….

Highly recommended for any PowerPoint users. The author Aaron Stannard is community outreach manager at SmartDraw, the world’s most popular business graphics software. But this article is not a product promotion for their smart PowerPoint integration with fantastic graphics. He indicated that, the systematic misuse of PowerPoint’s capabilities caused that well-known “Death by PowerPoint” syndrome around the world. And using PowerPoint animation wisely could make presenters out of trouble.

• Animation lets you present your ideas in a logical sequence, when done correctly.

• Animation helps your audience relate to an idea by focusing their attention on one point of order at a time.

• Animation builds up to your punch lines.

We’re making a public show for our business advancement, so we shouldn’t make business presentation boring anyway. That’s my idea.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

No News is Good News for Microsoft PowerPoint in Office 14

PowerPoint 2007 offers a lot of surprises to us when she made her debut with ribbon coat and SmartArt accessories years ago, however, those tremendous changes lead a lot of problems, such as incompatibility. Since Office 14 is going its way from alpha to beta at Microsoft labs, my only expectation on potential PowerPoint 14 is the full-featured Web presentation.

Among those leaked Office 14 “alpha” screenshots and new feature rumors, I can’t find too much information about our PowerPoint baby. So how will Microsoft treat the leading presentation software in the world? Frankly speaking, Microsoft’s PowerPoint has changed little over the years, while competitor Apple’s Keynote coming with more improvements like “cinematic transitions”.

Right, SmartArt in PowerPoint 2007 is just sort of luxury accessories for a presentation. Microsoft should focus more classic elements like transitions, animations, since the ribbon and SmartArt are already well done. Hopefully Microsoft is working on kinda this, so no news about PowerPoint 14 yet.

The selection of presentation software is important, because we can easily tell the difference between PowerPoint and Keynote presentations. Intriguingly Microsoft shows a little interest in Web apps recently, and we can see these Web PowerPoint fantasies from last PDC weeks ago. Get all elements done in online editing of Web PowerPoint, better than those free services online to reveal your power, okay? This is my another request on our estimated PowerPoint 14 to Microsoft.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Valentine’s Day Special: Your Personal Presentation about LOVE

I’m not asking you to prepare a LOVE related presentation as your Valentine’s gift, unless your he/she is a completely geeky baby. But just think over this, the celebration of Valentine’s Day between lovers is kind of showtime of one’s heart, which could be described as a personal presentation about the love, and the relationship. All premium presentation skills could be applied on this project for the specified audience.

This is not a lesson to teach how to improve your skills in love, but your presentations for Valentine’s Day would be one good impression anyway. Here are some ways on presentations for kinda love, although usually I don’t think E-Cards are one great way to express our ardor.

Valentine Card Maker by PresentationHelper
http://www.presentationhelper.co.uk/valentine-card-maker-503.htm

Create and Send Greeting Cards with authorSTREAM!
http://www.authorstream.com/greeting-cards

Valentine’s eCards: Live, Laugh, Love by American Greetings
http://www.americangreetings.com/ecards/valentines-day?Ne=374980

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Know the Audience, No Other Rules on My Presentation

As the golden rule for preparing a presentation, “practice, practice, and practice” is an essential skill to everybody. And I agree that the more I practice, the better I get, because it’s never an easy job to demonstrate and explain something in front of different audience. Making a presentation involves public speaking, which can be seriously scary. Famously, speaking in public has been voted scarier than dying (which says something about its lack of popularity). So if we make enough practices before, the confidence and courage is fearless.

Since we know the importance of practice, we should know more about our audience. I usually ask myself some questions in hehearsing, such as what’s the instant reaction from audience to my words. It’s easy to do a piece of research of those potential audience. Once I know some information about them, like genders, ages, or interests, I may add the considerations into my practice.

Practice is an essential, not a rule on presentation skills. Knowing a little about audience is the tip of such a game in which audience and me are players. Then no scary anymore. Like what’s quoted in the book The Art of War on 6 century BC: “If you know others and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles“.

William Peterson

Why I am Interested in Flash on Mobile Devices Like iPhone or BlackBerry

My previous posts about Adobe Flash support on Apple iPhone:
When Apple’s iPhone Becomes Rich: The Road to Flash or Silverlight on iPhone
Adobe Flash on iPhone/iPod Touch, Another Advancement for Mobile Business

Maybe it’s somewhat off-topic to discuss this old problem at the 3rd time, as Flash is just an old-fashioned tool for Web development. However, most multimedia animations in current Web sites are built on Flash technology, so what I’m talking about is Web enhancement on mobile devices.

Nowadays those smartphones such as iPhone or BlackBerry provide us the better Web-based usabilities. If Java and Flash are perfectly supported on those devices, the mobile business could be boosted as an alternative to our desktops over Internet.

Days ago, in an interview with Bloomberg at the Davos, Adobe chief Shantanu Narayen mentioned this issue.

“It’s a hard technical challenge, and that’s part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating,” he says. “The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver.”

Since Flash Lite is too feature-limited, and standard Flash is kind of crash-maker, the balanced solution is not easy to implement. As an end user, I just want to surf the Internet on mobile as normal as I can do on any computer.

William Peterson

Let’s Talk about Presentation Skills from Our President Obama

President Obama’s “HOT” is the result of our economy’s “COLD”. For me, his charisma is more than those inspired stimulus plan. I watched Obama’s first presidential show on CNN days ago, and considered the inaugural speech an excellent public presentation model for everyone, who wants to be another president or not.

Dr. Rich Kirschner mentioned about Obama’s presentation skill was kind of “Powerful Use of Persuasive Speech for Positive Change“, and I agreed with that.

All in all, Obama uses persuasive speech to take a potentially damaging set of revelations, and turn it to his advantage. Such talk actually has the potential to play an important role in bringing about positive change in this fundamental area of our civic discourse.

Such skills could be useful in most business negotiations, although many techies don’t like this way as I know. Actually not everyone can create its own presentation style like Steve Jobs, and sometimes it’s better to do business with old technologies.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Besides Presentation Skills, More about Those PowerPoint Professionals…

As I introduced before about Microsoft Certified PowerPoint Most Valuable Professionals (refer to my previous post Know Those PowerPoint MVPs to Help Yourself), who are really great PowerPoint professors and active contributors on presentation skills, the official Microsoft PowerPoint Team finally wrote something more (more than I knew at least) about those PowerPoint MVPs on its PowerPoint Team Blog.

PowerPoint’s Most Valued Professionals…

So how about PowerPoint’s MVPs?

PowerPoint’s MVPs are a great group, excellent folks who represent a diverse set of specialties and talents with the PowerPoint product. We have world-class designers, design consultants, writers, programmers, and some amazing feature hackers. A terrific, talented, and generous group of folks you really should get to know better.

Where Do Most Valuable Professionals Hang Out?

Sadly I’m not a PowerPoint MVP like them, because I’m not an active community member, and am totally a businessman. However, I appreciate Microsoft’s MVP program to reward these real helpers, for everyone.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran