IT professional

Feb 3 2009   9:49AM GMT

Besides Presentation Skills, More about Those PowerPoint Professionals…

Posted by: William Peterson
PowerPoint, presentation, MVP, Microsoft, IT professional

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

Dec 27 2008   9:49AM GMT

On the Meeting: Teleconferencing, Videoconferencing and Web conferencing

Posted by: William Peterson
Web, CIO, IT professional, Review, Business, Corporate, Web Presentation, Business presentations, Businss Training, Web conferencing

Sure, once mostly a face-to-face practice, now executives are increasingly offering their wisdom via teleconference. It’s really more efficient than old ways to facilitate with modern technologies. Certainly teleconferencing is just the live exchange of voice on the meeting, and the videoconferencing has been used widely in last decade. Then now, conducting a live meetings or presentations via the Internet could be easier for anyone. Web conference, or Webniar can be seen everywhere over the Internet.

Right, I’m a techie fan, and here I’d like to review these current technologies for teleconferencing, videoconferencing and Web conferencing.

1. Internet Teleconference, such as Skype
Internet telephony involves conducting a teleconference over the Internet or a Wide Area Network. One key technology in this area is Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP). A lot of commercial VoIP networks available over the world, and Skype is the most popular one for personal and SME uses. Actually Skype offers a series of solution for business to start off such tele-conferencing soon.

One thing left, video conferencing is supported on Skype. And it’s usually my first place alternative for international calls.

2. Videoconference Impact on Education, Medicine and Business
No doubt videoconferencing could be sort of essentials on distance education, and also helps most doctors diagnose any complicated illness. And especially on business, it enables individuals in faraway places to have meetings on short notice. Time and money that used to be spent in traveling can be used to have short meetings. The technology is also used for telecommuting, in which employees work from home.

I ever tried such video conferencing on e-learning, and it works well. And it’s also widely used for any international conference on UN, or most multi-national enterprises.

3. The Boom of Web Conferencing Services
Web conferencing is not just the Internet version of teleconferencing or video conferencing, there’re some other typical advanced features here: slide show presentations, live or streaming video, VoIP, Web tours, meeting recording, whiteboard, text chat, polls and surveys, and screen sharing/desktop sharing/application sharing.

A lot of IT vendors provide Web conferencing service, including Adobe, IBM and Microsoft. But I still prefer another two services: Cisco’s WebEx (http://www.webex.com/) and Citrix’s GoToMeeting (http://www.gotomeeting.com/).

We really have more and more meetings to go, and technologies just make them cost-efficient with our brilliant ideas.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Dec 20 2008   3:17AM GMT

Ideas about Showing PowerPoint Presentations on iPhone

Posted by: William Peterson
iPhone, Mobile, IT professional, Technology, PowerPoint, Keynote, Microsoft, Business, Tips, iPod Touch, presentation, Mobile Presentation

These days I was totally hooked with Apple iPhone from a friend. Certainly it’s not that fancy touch screen abuse, but those more and more interesting iPhone Applications from various innovative developers. Then I became wondering, how could I make my PowerPoint presentations displayed on iPhone, since it doesn’t like Windows Mobile to install such applications. After a little research, I got these ideas as below:

1. Export as a Series of Pictures to iPhoto on Mac
As Microsoft announced Microsoft PowerPoint 2008 for Mac last year, getting presentations from Mac to iPhone is relatively easy. PowerPoint exports your presentation as a series of pictures directly to iPhoto, or saves those same slide images as pictures to your Pictures folder. From there, sync pictures to your iPhone through iTunes as usual, then use the built-in Photos or slide show program on your iPhone to show your presentation.

It’s really easy to go and try this way. However, the presentation on iPhone becomes kinda picture slideshow, not with all animations along.

2. Convert as Supported MPEG-4 Video Formats
Since iPhone support MPEG-4 video in .mp4, .m4v, .mov formats, some software vendor offers the idea of presentation to video conversion. You can just convert your PowerPoint presentations to MPEG-4 video first, then import or sync the video to iPhone with iTunes.

This method sounds reasonable, and all animations are here. But please see, video presentation is not slideshow anymore, because you can’t control them easily slide by slide. Right?

3. Remote Control PowerPoint from Computers
So some iPhone application developers find this way to connect PowerPoint with computer via Wi-Fi network. Then you can remote control your PowerPoint presentations wirelessly from your iPhone, with a realtime view of your slides. Show your slides on your PC and use your iPhone or iPod Touch as a clicker.

I haven’t tried this app yet, but the idea seems not bad. If everything goes fine in presentation, that’s the best way so far, if you have a reliable Wi-Fi connection on your iPhone.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Dec 20 2008   3:15AM GMT

Online Holiday Boom with Stand-Out Sales Presentation

Posted by: William Peterson
Training, IT professional, Enterprise, Sales, Technology, PowerPoint, Business, Corporate, Business presentations, Holiday, presentation, Businss Training

Because of the weak economy, consumers seem to prefer more online shopping with discounts or free shipping on this holiday season. At least, this is good news for most long-waiting online retailers. Based upon sorta great prospect, Abhay Parekh, founder & CEO of an interactive multimedia platform company, is presenting a wiselike guidance for business communicators, on Sales & Marketing Management Magazine:

Five Tips for Creating a Stand-Out Sales Presentation

Looking to create that perfect eye-catching sales presentation to lock in some last-minute Q4 sales? The you had better rethink your strategy and take your presentation to the virtual scale.

1. Show, rather than tell.
2. Ditch your static slide presentations.
3. Go virtual.
4. Survey says?
5. Know when to stop.

Read full article at:
http://www.presentations.com/msg/content_display/presentations/e3i54e0d1d9416e8c7fbf73d212d777bd11

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Dec 18 2008   7:26AM GMT

No Death by PowerPoint: We Know Its Midlife Crisis

Posted by: William Peterson
Web, IT professional, PowerPoint, Review, Web Presentation, Business presentations, presentation

Recently Ms Laura Bergells showed us an interesting research on PowerPoint Death with data analysis. Clearly, more and more people is concerned about the health statistic of our PowerPoint, because we’re still using it well now and gonna use it more in the future.

I agree that PowerPoint is the best ever presentation tool for desktop authoring. And I guess everyone is considering the inevitable threats from so many Web apps for presentation. PowerPoint is experiencing a midlife crisis as everyone does, but we still like it, don’t we?

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Nov 22 2008   11:22AM GMT

IBM White Paper: The Value of Training and the High Cost of Doing Nothing

Posted by: William Peterson
IBM, Training, CIO, IT professional, Enterprise, Learning, Review, Business, community, Solutions, Business presentations, White Paper, Businss Training

Never doubt that IBM’s training is the best business training I’ve ever seen. Recently, IBM published an interesting white paper called “The Value of Training” by consultant David Leaser. It notes that, a company will lose 10 to 30% of its capabilities per year. By year three, an organization has retained only 41% of it original capabilities, dwindling to 24% by year six. Right, that’s the point: it costs more than a better training, if we still do nothing.

When most companies are facing the terrible financial crisis, they cut the budget. Less business trip, less internal expenses, but significantly the staff training should not be ignored.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Nov 22 2008   11:00AM GMT

Office’s Running Hour: Sketching Out Your PowerPoint Presentations in Ten Minutes

Posted by: William Peterson
IT professional, Office, Technology, PowerPoint, Keynote, Business, PowerPoint 2007, Tips, Solutions, Tutorials, Business presentations, presentation

Well, every Friday I’ll attend some weekly meetings in the company. I think most office people get the same as me. Have you ever found yourself decompressing in true leisure one minute and scrambling to meet any deadline the next? So I teach people to survive with making conference presentations effortlessly.

VideoJug’s “How to Write A PowerPoint Presentation In 5 Minutes” is a great tutorial for most staffs. However, there’s kinda funny elements in it. And I think an real enough briefing-like PowerPoint presentation could be made perfectly in 10 minutes. Besides these tips in that video, I have something else to recommend:

1. To make excellent presentation with professional-looking slides, you need some good PowerPoint template resources on your pocket. See one of my previous post about this here.

2. Getting used to these intuitive features in PowerPoint 2007 will make your creation better and faster. Just learn something like SmartArt, shortcuts, etc. Quick Tips for PowerPoint 2007 on my previous post | PowerPoint 2007 - Get up to speed from Microsoft

3. Attach more. When you’re too busy to summary something in the slides, why not just attach and show the original files within your presentation? Check out some previous posts from me about “attaching documents or objects“, “recording narrations“, “Adding YouTube video clips“, or “embedding real-time Web pages“.

Assuming you’ve got the 10-minute-presentation talent, you got enough breathing space in office, aren’t you?

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Nov 19 2008   3:52AM GMT

When Apple’s iPhone Becomes Rich: The Road to Flash or Silverlight on iPhone

Posted by: William Peterson
iPhone, Mobile, IT professional, RIA, Rich Media, Technology, Silverlight, Flash, Review, Business

Yesterday I read Brian Chen’s “Why Apple Won’t Allow Adobe Flash on iPhone“, and found that the “Flash on iPhone” topic is really everyone’s talking-about in the town. And most users would be disappointed with clause 3.3.2 of the iPhone SDK agreement.

“An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise … No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).”

I guess everyone is thinking, it’s not a jeopardous thing to allow Flash on iPhone platform, and Apple might be too arrogant. However, we have to wait Apple’s agreement - it would be in 9 months I think. Besides, we don’t refuse any tricks, such as the belgian interactive designer Thomas Joos made his tricks to port Flash Lite to the iPhone (http://vilebody.wordpress.com/2008/07/02/porting-flash-lite-to-the-iphone-btween/),

Other Riches: Can Microsoft Silverlight Catch It At First?

Jobs says Flash just doesn’t cut the mustard and won’t show up on the iPhone. Does that mean we can expect Silverlight running on the iPhone first? The 2.0 version of Silverlight features enhanced video support, and initial mobile support for Nokia S60 or Windows Mobile (http://silverlight.net/learn/mobile.aspx). According to Scott Guthrie, VP of Microsoft’s .Net developer division, the company has been working on Silverlight for the iPhone. But, like with Flash, Apple is reluctant to allow third-party Web plug-ins on its handset. If I’m Microsoft, I’ll try my best to persuade Apple, to capture the leading role in the mobile rich market.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Sep 14 2008   11:26AM GMT

Look upon the Never Rivalry: Pushing Silverlight to Flash Presentation

Posted by: William Peterson
Web, YouTube, IT professional, RIA, Rich Media, Enterprise, Web 2.0, Technology, Learning, Adobe, Silverlight, Microsoft, Flash, Review, Business, community, Corporate, Online Apps, Flash Video, Webcam, Web Presentation, Business presentations

The NBC’s Olympic Games in Silverlight boomed Microsoft’s rich media technologies a lot, but it still stands outside the stage where Adobe Flash dances. Microsoft is not the god, neither is Adobe. Actually Silverlight did well in many specifications as newly developed kit for the Web, while Flash seemed old and out of some emerging developments. To fight the mainstream, let’s look around what Silverlight.

In the developer Niraj Swaminarayan’s Silverligh vs. Flash - An Analysis Report, we can see that some parts are not that crucial for most Web developers. So I take my hands to the opinion that, the so-called rivalry is really not that important like lots of observers said. YouTube can be a Silverlight based video sharing community as well as Flash offers.

I’m concerning about the impact on my favorite Webcasting industry where the Silverlight platform could not step in currently. If Silverlight lives better and better as expected, what’s the critical issues we’ll face when replacing with Silverlight? The IT infrastractures for a business do not require the value of emerging technologies. That’s why Windows Vista could not become the mainstream with its 2 years’ experiences. Certainly it’s not a bad idea to take Silverlight presentation in the future.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Sep 9 2008   7:06AM GMT

Build Web Presentations with Presenter’s Video

Posted by: William Peterson
Web, IT professional, Rich Media, PowerPoint, Flash, Review, Business, Webcam, Solutions, Web Presentation, Business presentations

Are you suffering the high cost and continual repetition of live presentations?
“As a president, I always join many meetings and trade shows to present our products or corporation. There is no problem with the live presentation. But I’m stuck when I want to sharing the meeting with others after it. Because I need present the same presentation again and again even spend additional high costs on driving or flying. The boring continual repetition makes me crazy. Is there any way to take my live presentation to the web? – Mr. Cooper”

PowerPoint is still the most popular tool for presentations now. It could integrate images, movies, narrations, animations to make the presentation animated and interactive. But the PowerPoint file is big and hard to share on the web, hard to integrate with the presenter’s video and narration to live up the presentation.

How to distribute the live presentations to web to reduce the cost?
As everybody knows that, web presentation is a big cost and time saving solution. If we could run the presentation with the presenter’s video and narration online, it will be perfect. The difficulty of the web presentation is hard to integrate the presenter’s video and narration along with the PowerPoint presentation content. Is there any way to fix this problem?

A brand new service gives you an easy-to-use way to integrate the presenter’s video with PowerPoint slideshows, sharing the results online. This simple tool makes it a piece of cake to run the presenter’s video content side-by-side with PowerPoint presentations. So the audience could get the presentation running alongside with presenter’s video and narration in action, likes that the presenter stands by them. This really has the power to bring online presentations to life.

There are many tools such as Wondershare PPT2Flash Professional and services like Omnisio, Zentation to integrate the video along with the PowerPoint slideshows. Here is the comparability of the two ways.

PPT2Flash Professional converts the PowerPoint presentations to Flash with presenter’s video and narration in one click. It works as a PowerPoint add-in. Presenter could easily distribute the Flash presentations to their website or training center for sharing. The Flash format is safer and smaller for web distribution.

Omnisio and Zentation are simple online applications for the synchronization and sharing of the Slideshare-hosted PowerPoint decks and Google Video-hosted content. You could upload your video to Youtube and then upload the PowerPoint presentation to Slideshare, use Omnisio and Zentation to synchronization them together. They will generate one webpage for you. You could share the content with others on this webpage.

In a nutshell, for inner continual presentations, PPT2Flash Professional seems a better solution; for external one time presentation, Omnisio and Zentation are better solutions.

 

 

By William Peterson, Partnered with Sabrina F.