For Adobe’s newborn Online Presentations on Acrobat.com Labs, a lot of details could be read thru Digital Inspiration’s first look: “Adobe Introduces Acrobat.com Presentations – Create Impressive Slides Online“. I’m definitely late for this big mashup from Adobe. But when I found out the truth on the experimental product, “oh my god”, it was not what I expect.

No connection to Microsoft PowerPoint slides just makes it a Flash-based slide designer toy. No sounds, no transitions, but Flash Video embedded? It’s immature. All the competitors from Google Docs, Zoho Show to ThinkFree have their right concept for users. I can’t believe that it’s our brother Adobe’s homework…

Last point, this toolkit just let you export slides as PDF? Oh, okay, it’s all about Acrobat. We know that now. More and more brilliant ideas are coming from our great Adobe Labs, but how about any serious evolution later?

Presentation Veteran
William Peterson

Ready to Christmas yet? So I guess you’ll send lots of Christmas cards as usual this year. But for our eco-friendly future we know, online Christmas card is so popular on recent years. Here PresentationHelper.co.uk introduces a simple Online Christmas Card Maker for everyone in Christmas.

With this card creator you can write your own personal message to a friend or loved one on your chosen card, without the need for any design software. You can then send the Christmas cards as an email, a web link or just print it off and send it.

Besides, there’s an old version Christmas Card Generator from PresentationHelper.co.uk, which is also awesome for the holidays.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

SlideShare Ribbon

As the good connection with desktop and Web apps, this SlideShare release is catching and pushing the industry leading of Web presentation. Microsoft finally joined the market days ago, but it seems not easy to be the king here.

To install the SlideShare Ribbon, you’ll need to PowerPoint 2007, Windows XP Service Pack 2 or later, and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Google Docs Make Office More Productive

I usually open those attached Word or Excel documents in my Gmail with Google Docs. That’s the best convenient and safe method I think to review these documents at the first impression. And then recently, more and more co-workers of mine like to share some documents via Google Docs to complete them with collaboration. It’s really save time and energy to do so. And the best part is, we can resume the work anytime anywhere if we get Internet to access Google Docs.

Google Docs Makes Classroom More Interesting

As not a teacher, I’m not sure more uses of Google Docs in classroom, but some teachers ever told me the Google Docs way to enrich the class is so friendly and it can be accepted by more students easily than the ways with LMS (Learning Management System). Certainly Google Docs cannot replace LMS, but for most documents, presentations sharing, it’s easy to get a class closer. There’s an good example presentation by Tom Barrett:

Eleven Interesting Ways to use Google Docs in the Classroom
http://docs.google.com/Present?docid=dhn2vcv5_8323t58h3ft

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Although Microsoft Office is still the dominant in the area of business applications for office, it can’t ignore what’s going in the current markets. It has been quite a few months after I introduced Microsoft’s project “Office Live Workspace Beta” (refer to Live Workshop Rivalry: Build Your Presentation Mind On the Road), and I cited that we really need better Web capabilities on the coming office suite (refer to On The Road: Microsoft Office Has To Bet Its Future On The Web). But why Microsoft decide not catch up the way until 2010?

Microsoft Wants to Make the Best Web Office

I have to thank for all the efforts on those gorgeous ribbons and SmartArts in Office 2007, which really help me a lot on presentations. However, online compatibility is the biggest weakness in the Internet times. The coming Office 14 would be really late for the online office market, but I guess Microsoft won’t make that launch another miss. Heard from Workspace Team Blog, the Sliverlight technology has been added into the new Office Live Workspace. Based on the great rich media technologies from Microsoft Silverlight, maybe the expected Office 14 could move all rich features in Office 2007 to the Web. Isn’t that the best idea to conquer the online land for Microsoft? We’re waiting.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

I can’t tell this new Web friendly Office will catch the future or not. We see, it’s really cool, with the immigration to online office trends like Google Docs. Definitely Microsoft wants to capture the newly Web market as Google does, and it’s not a bad idea to start up testing the future software as service. Does this work? We’ll see how Google makes and wait for the answer.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Yesterday Adobe at Flash on the Beach 08 Conference (FOTB) said the company is actively developing a port of its Flash animation plugin for the iPhone and iPod Touch, but Apple’s mobile operation system is a “closed platform” and so is out of Adobe’s control. Adobe indicated that it will not use Flash Lite but a better approach to faster iPhone processor and graphics chip.

Apple definitely will approve the great deal I think. And finally we get what we expect of familiar Flash-based interactive applications on mobile devices as exact two-win. I promise, the enhancement of Flash will extended iPhone as the mobile business center. Certainly Adobe Flash for iPhone/iPod Touch will optimize the experiences on Web.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

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

Above all, I admit that the video content enrich’d the plain slides as expantory, but some skills are necessary as the catchwords “Content is King”. To show the best presentation, we need exceptional ideas, and some practice knowledge about Instructional Design. That’s the real mashup in the better Social Web Presentation 2.0. We learn from others in social community, so the winner presentations from SlideShare’s recent The World’s Best Presentation Contest could be good examples.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

SlideShare – YouTube of Presentations
It’s the most mature community to share our PowerPoint slides from one-time use to slidecasts. As I ever criticized Web presentations, SlideShare community is really popular upon its well-done construction and promotion. Currently it is the standard de facto and the icon as Web presentation in our Web 2.0 world.

Scribd – YouTube of Documents
I introduced it before when it was just launched: Meet Scribd’s iPaper: Flash-based Viewer Platform Built for All Web Documents – PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel and More . Certainly we cannot refuse such a great offer to store and share your various documents, from text and image files to PDF and Microsoft Office 2007 files. That’s almost everything in our Web 2.0 world.

We shouldn’t ignore the other parts of Web 2.0, such as social bookmarks; however, YouTube has led us start Web 2.0 in a rich format, which is the everything in our Web world.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran