Microsoft

Quick Tips to Enhance Your Presentation in PowerPoint 2007

After your meticulously constructed the contents of next-day presentation, enrichment is great for your confidence. Applying some quick enhancements to your presentation is really easy, because you’ll find PowerPoint 2007 has made them ready for you.

1. Themes offer you more thoughts

Access the Design tab of the Ribbon in PowerPoint 2007, the Themes gallery provides several themes here with thumbnail previews, and you can just hove your mouse cursor over and get live preview with new theme in current presentation.

Furthermore, the built-in theme colors are very friendly feature to help you make professional design. Fonts, Effects are also already selected by designers, and what you need is just a few clicks.

2. Quick Styles is what you want

In Drawing section of Home tab, you can decorate the selected contents with this fascinating idea: just live preview and apply preset style in mouse hover and clicks. That’s why it called “Quick”.

Like theme feature, the preset style or layout is well designed. Everyone can easily access it and make a professional-like presentation.

3. Use SmartArt in smart

SmartArt is so cool that everyone will like it. Actually it just provides the quick way to make designer-quality graphics from preset templates, as better graphics can essential promote your presentation.

You may create one from SmartArt icon of Insert tab, and simply all the boring listing, process, cycle, relationship contents into a smart and bright view. That’s SmartArt simply did for you.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Silverlight Technology on the Future Business Presentation

I caught some funny Silverlight applications from those passionate guys who work in Microsoft’s Silverlight Business Development Team, such as Silverlight Games, Silverlight Instant Messaging Client, Silverlight Clock.

I like those trial Web applications to improve our satisfaction of Internet lifestyle. Moreover, as its called “Flash Killer”, it’s really not a bad idea to advance the ease of future business presentation. Whatever, at least we get a nice alternative in current Flash-Flash world. I guess, Microsoft will embed Silverlight technology support in his next generation Internet Explorer in near future, and that is, no more compatibility hassles. We’ll do our businesses over Silverlight technology platform then, as we with Adobe Flash today. The focal point is, we may not know the advantages of Silverlight over Flash, so we stay here.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

PowerPoint 2008 for Mac Than iWork Keynote ‘08, You Think That?

As not a loyal Apple fan, I just ever tested PowerPoint 2008 for Mac and iWork Keynote ‘08 for gadgets when Microsoft made its campaign, and found no significance on their comparison. Yet months later I solemnly read the details of Macworld’s article of PowerPoint 2008 vs. Keynote ‘08: The Office Suite Smackdown by Franklin N. Tessler, I realized that this was really a good point. Because there’s no clear winner in the rivalry, and PowerPoint 2008 may have surpassed in several areas; however, Keynote ‘08 caught the favor from Mac users upon Apple’s reputation. Is this what you think so?

Read that interesting article on the Macworld’s site …

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Recommend Presentations as the Solution, and the PowerPoint Article

Today I carefully read the article “PowerPoint Prowess: Using Presentations as a Solution” by Randy Lipson and Tina Teodorescu, and found it really useful to explore the presentation mind in conceptual view. Here I just show some great points, and please read the full article on http://www.presentations.com/msg/content_display/presentations/e3iecf92c658a0285cfc6fe71dde1f0a08b

Presentations are a critical part of successful selling, but they have to communicate to the customer’s mindset.

In sales, there is a lot of emphasis put on a salesperson’s PowerPoint prowess. Sales managers and those departments and individuals who are responsible for helping sales reps to be as successful as possible, often voice the need to “improve presentation skills” as a top priority. But this emphasis leads to a lot of pressure put on salespeople to be expert presenters, and often gives a false impression that a knock ‘em dead presentation is a rep’s key to success.

What ’s Missing? The Solution Roadmap

The Keys to Building and Presenting Winning Presentations
• Base the presentation on the prospect’s needs and the best solution to meet those needs.
• Build trust to gain in-depth information.
• Confirm information with a letter of understanding before any presentations are made.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Presentation Skills in More Practices Not Technology

According to BusinessWeek’s columnist Carmine Gallo made “Rethinking the Presentation“, my “Business Presentation over your IT” is just one tactic to assist the presentation. Beyond any mechanics of PowerPoint or Keynote, some practial tips can really save you from a boring or confusing presentation in reality. I reviewed them to rethink my technology way.

An approach to presentation design that is simple, visual, and “ultimately more meaningful” should be significantly recommended. Prepare in analog, cut the noise, avoid bullet points, and picture superiority. Follow these keys, I have to agree that most professional designs are set on paper in hands, but slide software really helps in progress. if you need to complete the presentation sometimes. The proficiency of using slide software may not improve your creative ability, while it definitely improves the output if you’ve already had the inspiration.

We wouldn’t rip off the such “PowerPoint culture” as Garr Reynolds described, because making the visual approach still needs the technology. Similarly, should we give up computer as it influences the traditional computing way? The suggestion on the slide software manufacturer such as Microsoft is, connecting the cold-bloody software with designers’ mind, for example, SmartArt in Office 2007 is nice one.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Learn From Everyone: WikiHow’s PowerPoint Tutorials and Articles

Wiki is great, as everyone could be the contributor to share the unlimited knowledge. This wiki website WikiHow calls itself the ‘How-to Manual You Can Edit’ because it allows users to add and edit the tutorials it hosts.

Here I just introduce WikiHow’s Presentation Software category, which provides how-to steps for performing several tasks and using some important features in Microsoft PowerPoint. You know, usually I contribute some terms in those articles, where you may find my name on the author list.

19 PowerPoint 2003 Tutorials:

- Add Music to Powerpoint

- Add a Template to the Autocontent Wizard in PowerPoint

- Change the Background on Powerpoint Slides

- Convert PowerPoint to Flash Using Open Source Tools

- Convert PowerPoint to Flash Using Wondershare

- Convert a PowerPoint Presentation to Screensaver

- Create a Flowchart

- Embed Music in a PowerPoint Presentation

- Embed and Insert a Chart in a Powerpoint Presentation

- Fill out a PDF Form With PowerPoint

- Make Animations With Microsoft Powerpoint

- Make
a PowerPoint Presentation with Lots of Bitmap Images and Small File Size

- Make an Awesome Rpg on Powerpoint

- Publish a PowerPoint Presentation Online

- Put a Hyperlink in Microsoft PowerPoint

- Save a Powerpoint Presentation on a Thumbdrive

- Show the Slide Number and Total Number of Slides on Every Powerpoint Slide

- Use Microsoft Office PowerPoint

- Use WonderShare PP2DVD to Burn PowerPoint to DVD

2 PowerPoint 2007 Tutorials:

- Add a Sound to a Presentation in Microsoft PowerPoint 2007

- Insert Flash Into PowerPoint 2007

Certainly it’s recommended to add your words on some specified topics in WikiHow you’re really good at; learning is the process of sharing knowledges, that is, helping everyone is helping yourself in philosophy.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

AOL’s Rich Internet Mail in Microsoft’s Silverlight Experience

Beyond the common sense of popular AJAX Web mail, AOL plans on new gadget for old Web mail service, which offers industry-leading performance, unique skinning options and rich media content capabilities. Generally, the spotlight upon those boring slogans is the Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 technology in called convenience of the Web and the performance of a desktop application together.

AOL demonstrated the new RIA Mail at Microsoft’s MIX08 conference. The demo highlighted a version of RIA created specifically for fans of the video game Halo, featuring a Halo mail “skin” as well as Halo-specific content and advertising to create a dynamic online experience.

According to my ever experiences on Flash-based or AJAX-based Web mail services, Google’s Gmail’s still my favorite as its really Internet-friendly technology. However, AOL’s RIA Mail seems shinning and nice. If the high-appreciated future mail service can be launched to beat up Yahoo or Earthlink’s Web mail, I think Microsoft’s Silverlight should be the best weapon to arm to tooth. Also, I guess the new AOL mail may promote Silverlight as its engaging case study.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Recommend Some Silverlight Demos from Microsoft Development Community

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

Silverlight 2 On the Go: Microsoft’s YouTube With No Flash Video

Microsoft developer Ashish Thapliyal has published a roadmap for the Silverlight 2 Web platform, confirming a final launch scheduled for the summer, and noting that Silverlight won’t be able to play back .flv Flash video files.

Besides, Microsoft also beta lauched its Microsoft Video in Silverlight, which was considered as Silverlight’s YouTube community experiment. Definitely Microsoft Silverlight shouldn’t support Flash video files as Adobe Flash’s hot competitor, and the video streaming in Silverlight is really clearer and smoother than common Flash videos. But, Silvelight videos cannot load video in cumulative progress like Flash does, and the incompatibility with existing Flash video may scare away the best opportunity to promote with current popularity.

What Silverlight 2 will bring to us, new technology or just a dream? Don’t forget that, even Jobs won’t make Flash Player supported in iPhone officially, most users are still really need it. Therefore, Silverlight can generally support some Flash technologies, her tomorrow will be better, I think.

William Peterson
Presentation Verteran

Know Those PowerPoint MVPs to Help Yourself

Microsoft has an award called Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) for these independent experts around the world who are awarded for voluntarily sharing their high quality, real world expertise in offline and online technical communities. In the area of presentation skills, there’re PowerPoint MVPs for everyone. They’re just technology individuals, without paid by Microsoft. As PowerPoint MVP Sonia Coleman put it: “Our reward is the satisfaction of being able to help others with what we’ve learned here.”. So if we know more guys like them, we get better resources for our further presentations.

Austin Myers
Solutions to Multimedia in PowerPoint

Bill Foley
He was born and raised in Texas. PTT specializes in creating Word document management systems (Userforms and templates), lesson plans and graphics for the nuclear industry, doing Instructor Training for utilities and creating PowerPoint training presentations/PowerPoint CBTs (using VBA).
Professional Training Technologies, Inc.

Brian Reilly
Typical projects for Reillyand are the automatic creation of multi-hundred page proposals or presentations from custom databases.
Reillyand

Echo Swinford
Echo’s Voice

Geetesh Bajaj
Geetesh Bajaj
InDezine

Glenna Shaw
She grew up near Huntington, West Virginia, mixed those traits with a generous helping of twenty years technical experience and got herself the perfect blend for PowerPoint troubleshooting.
PowerPoint Magician

Kathy Jacobs
Right now, herl time is spent writing, supporting her site, and answering PowerPoint and other questions.
PowerPoint Answers

Shawn Toh (aka tohlz)
He lives on the sunny island of Singapore, and loves to do advanced animation tricks using PowerPoint.
PowerPoint Heaven
The Art of PowerPointing blog

Shyam Pillai
VB Guru
OfficeTips

Steve Rindsberg
Photographer; A/V & Multi-image producer; owner of RDP, a 35mm slide imaging service bureau; programmer; writer. Along came PowerPoint, and he ended up writing a monthly column for The Cobb Group’s Inside PowerPoint and some bits of books for Que.
PPTools
The PowerPoint FAQ
Steve Rindsberg/RDP - PowerPoint Add-ins, PowerPoint FAQ and more

TAJ Simmons
TAJ Simmons’ Awesome PowerPoint Backgrounds

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran