Enterprise

Jul 20 2008   9:02AM GMT

Do We Really Need Microsoft Office? No in the Past and Future

Posted by: William Peterson
Business, Enterprise, Google Docs, Corporate, Online Apps, OpenOffice, Microsoft, Office, Learning, Presentation, professional, Review, Solutions, Technology

Yesterday I read the an article “Do I Need to Buy Microsoft Office?” at Ask a Geek of latest Popular Science. As the its result of “Our geek weighs the options and finds Office might not be the best bet”, I agree that Microsoft Office’s rivals are really powerful and nice, such as Google Docs, OpenOffice or Corel’s WordPerfect Office suite. On my personal side, I would rather choose Google Docs, whether Google would charge me some fees or not in the future. But most businesses nowadays must have the Microsoft Office suite installed, while IBM extremely loves his Lotus Notes software as exception.

In the future, desktop software will be completely replaced with Web applications without doubts. So Microsoft Office is certainly the product for current days. But we can not rush to the future without it because of its popularity in the past. Because a lot of people are working with it now, and will work with it in the future for a long time. In order to avoid any bad incompatibility, our business must have and manage it. Just think about, you partner sent you a document in DOCX format, but you cannot read the contents properly with your OpenOffice, and you will ask for another PDF copy? That’s also why a huge enterprise IBM can not abandon its ever popurlar used Lotus Notes easily.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Jul 20 2008   8:46AM GMT

Make Shows in Trends: Business Presentations in YouTube Way

Posted by: William Peterson
Business, Enterprise, Flash Video, Corporate, YouTube, Flash, Microsoft, PowerPoint, Presentation, professional, Review, Technology

Let us think of more useful ways to wake up the popularity to make and judge the old business presentations. Nobody can ignore the incredible power from the best-ever online community YouTube, even Obama wants his final presidential victory. Not in your business style for YouTube? Just remember, every firm is a potential IT-based organization in this Internet era.

It’s not any “YouTube+PowerPoint” ways like SlideShare, which can not beat up any points with the real YouTube community. “Hi buddy, you cannot upload your presentations to YouTube, whatever they’re PowerPoint files or Flash animations!” This verdict is like saying that all presentations must be in PowerPoint or Flash formats. Actually, video presentations have been favored by millions of peoples before the PowerPoint and Flash were born. Just put all your old presentations to the front stage. Some tools might be practical this time. TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio (you must know the great one tool) can completely recording and publishing PowerPoint presentations, or some handy manual enables you to create YouTube contents with nothing other than PowerPoint and Windows Movie Maker. Besides, any trends-hunter has made the exact kit for this requirement: PPT2YouTube.

You may say “it’s totally not business way”, but it would never be bad to do so whatever the people in YouTube watch and comment your presentations. Business should not waste such great online resources to make up the gap or create more new opportunities.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Jul 14 2008   4:31AM GMT

Rich Media Presentation: An Convenient Truth for the Business Environments

Posted by: William Peterson
Rich Media, Business, Enterprise, Learning, Presentation, professional, Review, RIA, Solutions, Technology, Web

I never conducted any experiments to compare the effectiveness and cost savings of integrating rich media presentations into the business of any organizations, but I dare to assure that it’s all evolution of traditional presentations. Because of the introducing of rich media technology in current business presentations, the communication of business environment becomes really better ever.

Whatever the administrative level or marketing frontline at any businesses, those presentations with rich media enhanced lead to the reduction of energy and paper consumption on more business trips. I can not count the exact issues that rich media presentations help on businesses, however, at least you can make good expressions with enrichments.

Just think about, adding related video clips, narrations, and other interactive elements to your prepared business presentation; aren’t those all of what you want to present? Regardless of your explanation as the key usages on any presentations, content is the king. Let content speck louder than words! I drafted this rule in the evolution of future business presentations.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Jul 7 2008   3:16AM GMT

Be with Acrobat.com: Do Business in the Online Office as Usual, Why Not

Posted by: William Peterson
AIR, Business, Enterprise, Google Docs, CIO, Adobe, AJAX, Flash, Online Apps, professional, Review, RIA, Solutions, Technology, Tips, Web

Like Photoshop Express’s photo sharing and photo editing, Adobe can’t help unveiling its complete online office solution to gear up file sharing and documents collaborating using Acrobat.com. From Adobe’s official description, it’s a set of online services - file sharing and storage, PDF converter, online word processor, and web conferencing.

Already one month after its rocket launch to enhance online documentation office upon the mastered Flash technology, Adobe pushed Acrobat all the ways to the de facto international standard. The final release of Acrobat 9 comes that, Adobe actually desires the online service as better component for its desktop apps. Even if the online solution not caught up as Acrobat Professional, but the support of source formats arranged from Word to PowerPoint is really inspired, and better than Google Docs.

That goes here, Google Docs versus Acrobat.com. By contrast, Google Docs has less enhanced editing, and less powerful conversion - not sophisticated in document contents/web conferencing as Adobe’s strength. But popped with Google’s account, the document collaborating, and file sharing is easy and flexible. More than these, Google’s AJAX structure is a little better than complete Flash core in browsers if we don’t get a faster connection.

Anyway, I encourage people to try more business in the online office, Google or Adobe, whatever you like. But it’s really great influences to improve efficiency, avoid complexity, and help environment. Finally, I recommend this AIR “Acrobat.com for My Desktop” to launch acrobat.com as AIR app from desktop.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Apr 13 2008   6:46AM GMT

Make PowerPoint Presentation as Digital Signage Solution to Empower Your Business

Posted by: William Peterson
Business, Enterprise, Corporate, Flash, PowerPoint, Live, Presentation, professional, Review, Solutions

Digital signage is the system that is used to convey your message, information or advertisements to your customers, students or colleagues. In simplistic terms, digital signage can be a PowerPoint presentation or you may wish to use a professional digital signage software package. Your message can then be displayed on large format LCD monitors, large plasma screens, multiple monitors, video walls, or through a projector onto a projection screen, a suspended acrylic rear projection screen or onto glass window film which may be touchscreen.

To reduce the time and effort needed to develop high-end presentations and graphics from any type of digital signage application, existing clip art galleries, imported images in any format, and link slide elements to real-time data sources to create stunning visual displays with continuously updated content could be combined with live video inputs, a real-time crawling ticker, video clip playback, and multiple animated logos and clocks, and you have everything you need to produce a full digital signage production just within Microsoft PowerPoint.

You may never know your PowerPoint application could be so powerful. Actually it is, and the unprecedented ease of use coupled with the highest quality output means users can create professional
and compeling digital signage in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost.

You may find more about this solution by yourself on Google:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=powerpoint+digital+signage

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Apr 12 2008   6:56AM GMT

Recommend Some Silverlight Demos from Microsoft Development Community

Posted by: William Peterson
Enterprise, Development, Online Apps, Silverlight, Web, Microsoft Windows, Live, Microsoft, professional

As Silverlight is really hot other than just Microsoft, I’m digging on it recent days, and now recommend some demos for everyone to know the further technology better, and plan it in your own business. The resources are just from Microsoft develper Nigel Parker’s presentation in his blog. Thanks for the effort.

Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Surface Demonstration (Video Support)
http://weblogs.asp.net/mschwarz/archive/2007/06/04/silverlight-surface-demonstration-video-support.aspx

French Silverlight 1.0 Application (Script#)
http://galilee.microsoft.fr/TechDays2008/SL/techdays-2008-silverlight.aspx
Script#

Silverlight 1.0 Inking Search Sample
http://www.tabletpcpost.com/search/

Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Invaders
http://www.andybeaulieu.com/silverlight/DestroyAll/Default.html
Code

Glenn Conner Interview
http://gobeyond.net.nz/glennria.html
Amazon Demo Silverlight 1.1 Alpha

Building a Video Player in 8 mins with Silverlight 1.0
http://gobeyond.net.nz/wotp/ReflectJam.html

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Apr 3 2008   9:13AM GMT

Tech Up Your Sales Presentation With New Blood

Posted by: William Peterson
Enterprise, Development, Flash, Web, PowerPoint, Presentation, professional, Review, Solutions

A successful presentation never makes anyone sleepy, and the ending applause isn’t the ringing to wake up. Maybe every presenter knows the rule, but not eveyone knows the solution.

Certainly the goal of a sales presentation is to deliver a clear, concise and consistent message to your prospects about your products and your brand, as well as why you’re better than the competition. Doing that and keeping your audience’s attention for longer than 30 minutes is the real chanllenge. Today’s spoiled, information-overloaded prospects demand a richer presentation experience.

The problem with traditional presentation tools is that they use a lot of static text that makes them too long, too common and just plain boring. PowerPoint changed that for a while, but with technology changing so quickly, some claim that even this beloved presentation tool is too old to adapt to the new world. But sales professionals and executives must weigh the benefits of a new presentation tool against the potential for more sales, and it might not be worth taking on the added effort and expense.

Presentation Tools in New Blood

Nevertheless, there are a lot of new tools that can enhance your presentation. Hitachi StarBoard Software, for example, now offers a line of interactive whiteboards, panels and portable tablets that offers dynamic and engaging ways to grab and hold the attention of even the most technology-savvy meeting attendee.

Not exactly multimedia, some Java-enabled technologies can be used within a number of platforms, from PDFs to Web sites to PowerPoint presentations. Actually, Flash is the most powerful software tool today to leverage technology in sales presentations, and Flash interactive sales tools can serve multiple purposes. You can send them in advance of a meeting to prime your prospects and pique their interest, or you can leave them behind after the meeting to help your contact sell your product and service internally. Interactive tools that involve your viewers make them want to talk about you and show your presentation to key decision-makers in their organization.

Presentations developed in Flash now have better integration of video, back-end systems and other Web-based technologies. One benefit of this greater integration is the ability to incorporate dynamic information and develop modular presentations with a focus on user experience and usability. These changes allow for more interactivity, flexibility in customization and a richer experience for the prospect.

The Value of Business Presentations

Although creating these presentations can be costly and complex, these presentations can be substantial enough to deliver a better message for your business, and attract prospects around the globe through WEbinars, for example.

By effectively utilizing new Web and software technologies in every aspect of your sales presentation, you will not only overcome the challenges presented by modern demands, but also reap other advantages, such as being able to track your prospects’ habits and make up successful sales initiatives based on the data collected online.

Beyond the rising expectations, more good presentations come on these greatest tools. Actually, presenters gain more from the use of tools, and making good use of tools: for instant, SmartArt in Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 is already a nice development to enrich your sales reps.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Mar 19 2008   11:54AM GMT

Gonna Catch Up: OpenOffice.org 2.4 Release Candidate

Posted by: William Peterson
Office, OpenOffice, Enterprise, Channel, PowerPoint, Microsoft, Presentation, Review

The open-source office application suite, a free alternative to Microsoft’s ubiquitous Office, is nearing final release on version 2.4. With OpenOffice.org on track to launch version 3.0 later this year. OpenOffice.org continues to evolve. As practice makes perfect, in the coming version, its interface continues to develop into almost a twin of MS-Office’s pre-ribbon interface.

About the Office PowerPoint’s competitor Impress, there’s no problems opening a presentation created in Power Point 2007; and slide transitions applied in PowerPoint also carried over in Impress. The slideshow was editable in Impress as well. It seems that OpenOffice has added more animations options as slide transitions.

It’s great that OpenOffice is compatible with MS Office, but Microsoft Office file formats are not native to it. Everyone thinks that OpenOffice has to be an exact MS Office clone. That’s not the case, and OpenOffice has a lot of features that Microsoft Office doesn’t, like the way it integrates with Mysql to perform advanced variable stream data features for printing.

Whether corporates want to direct clients towards OpenOffice as a software solution depends on a variety of factors: budget, client’s dependence on complex spreadsheet processes and macros and the interoperability of OpenOffice with UC platforms and email and messaging systems. Certainly, OpenOffice could be a good choice, and it’s always good for further development by yourself, not just under the Microsoft’s construction.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Feb 28 2008   4:45PM GMT

Right, We Need A Powerful Engine for Corporate Presentations

Posted by: William Peterson
Presentation, Review, Online Apps, Enterprise, Corporate, PowerPoint

When I reviewed some tools in that article Forget PowerPoint: 13 Online Presentation Apps as many other gadget reviews, certainly most of these Internet applications are based on Flash or Ajax like what I said before, I found a description “Focused more on larger corporate customers with a monthly budget for little bit higher-end needs. Provides templates for speedy creation” and Presentation Engine. Enterprise high-end needs? Wasn’t this what we always thought of? So I viewed samples and made its free test drive. Its step-by-step creation with templates was really easy, and the output was exquisite. But I finally got its so-called “Presentation Engine” idea: just stunning multimedia presentation in Flash for rich-media advertising.

Despite rich presentations are used for kind of promotion, they aren’t just ads. More than general slideshows, corporate presentations have such function of e-learning, with efficient knowledge management. So we really need interactive and intuitive features in online presentation applications for better support of corporate learning and training. That’s the powerful engine for corporate presentations. The best solution I think could be integration of corporate LMS development and stable online presentation platform.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Feb 24 2008   1:25PM GMT

How Do You Pick the Right Internet Technology for Management of Enterprise Presentations?

Posted by: William Peterson
Review, Corporate, Enterprise, Google, Google Apps, Flash, Silverlight, Online Apps, Presentation

To know some technologies for further activities on Internet as it’s worth the effort.

We are entering an era of online business, and many enterprise managers are facing the dilemma - which way to go - remain with tried and true applications or experiment with such newcomers as Google Apps. While the Internet brings a lot of noise where “it’s cool” is the most popular definition for Ajax or Flash widgets, we need to make an overview of what’s out there on the rich Internet applications for enterprises. Various techniques and technologies are used for the development of the front end for complex distributed systems in enterprise. Regarding tons of business presentation to share and manage, managers need integrated Internet applications built on existing system.

From the development end, Web application industry is still in the early stages with benefits and shortcomings. However, those titans have started building the framework and market up. Adobe constructs the base using its cross-platform Flash technology, with the advanced support from Adobe Flex and AIR. This solution is really powerful on the root of Flash popularity. Google, the leading Internet competitor, makes the JavaScript way from open source Ajax Frameworks. This combination of JavaScript and DHTML techniques and has recently been used most prominently by Google for its successful projects such as Gmail and Google Maps. But creating a large application in this framework is very difficult to work in developing. Google released the Google Web Toolkit to capture the industry. Recently, Microsoft Silverlight by Microsoft, which can be considered a subset of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), likes to attract the developers with previous development experiences in the field of .NET Framework 3.0 and XAML. Besides, there’re other weaker technologies such as Java applets, ActiveX controls, etc. in the RIA market.

Maybe you’ve heard of these technologies, but for presentations management. Flash development still is the king currently as it could be optimized for general Internet access without too many hassles. As a Flash developer, I clearly know the defects such as loss of visibility to search engines, or Internet connection failure. I cannot tell who will win finally; however, Flash technology seems more friendly for most Internet users.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran