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In The News Archives
September 2006
Microsoft PowerPoint is the most popular presentation software on the planet and and an estimated 30 million PowerPoint presentations are made every day. So no matter how frustrating it gets, you're not about to chuck the program in the Recycle Bin. If you're vexed and perplexed by PowerPoint, Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances by Echo Swinford presents a variety of all-too-familiar, real-world annoyances and smart solutions for every one of them.
With ActiveSlide you can create interactive components for presentations, websites and e- learning courses. Thanks to the integrated step-by- step wizards even novices can gain professional results in minutes. ActiveSlide components can be integrated into websites and any presentation program or authoring tool supporting Flash files. Example: PowerPoint file with interactive components.
PPTMinimizer 2006 optimizes your PowerPoint presentations in seconds and reduces the file size by up to 96%. It will relieve your e-mail accounts, servers and networks extremely. And beyond that it will also shorten the loading time of your presentations to a minimum. After the optimization the presentations can still be edited or presentated in PowerPoint as usual. All that and much more than that makes PPTminimizer essential for all PowerPoint users.
Do you want to grab students' attention with dynamic lessons? "Using PowerPoint in the Classroom" could leverage technology to create a learning-rich environment? Now you can, with this updated user-friendly manual that walks you through every aspect of effectively creating and delivering PowerPoint presentations.
Dazzling face-to-face and web communications are EASY in Freepath. Want to use PowerPoint® with all of today's new rich media? Now you can. Freepath gives you a heads-up look at every slide in your PowerPoint® presentation and will instantly play all those great files you've previously had to leave behind. QuickTime movies, PDF files, even Microsoft® Word® and Excel® documents are no problem. Freepath has simplified all that hard-to-use, Alt-Tab-like workflow. Drag your files in. Click ‘em. Done! Do you do web-based meetings and presentations like webinars and web-conferences? Freepath works with all the popular web-meeting services like GoToMeeting®, Microsoft Live Meeting®, and WebEx®.
InspireData applies the proven strategies of visual learning to data literacy, inspiring students to discover meaning as they collect and explore data in a dynamic inquiry process. Students formulate questions and make connections between data and its visual representations to interpret information, solve problems and draw conclusions. As a result, students develop deeper content knowledge and stronger critical thinking skills.
Add Interactivity to your Captures and Presentations SnagIt's Editor gives you the power of Flash interactivity in an easy-to-use tool. Add clickable links or pop-up text/graphics to a capture. Then, paste the capture into a PowerPoint slide to add an extra level of information. Or, capture a Web page with all of the embedded links intact. Then, click a link to go directly online from your presentation. Give Your Presentations More Visual Impact Add company logos and branding elements to your PowerPoint presentations to give them a custom, professional look. Effortlessly embed Flash (.swf) videos into slides, and bring your presentations to life.
PowerPak for PowerPoint: An Innovative Collection of Lesson and Game Templates. Unleash the “Power” in PowerPoint by utilizing interactive, theme-based lesson plan and game templates. Have you ever wanted to create an interactive Family Feud or Who Wants To Be A Millionaire style game, but just didn't have the time? PowerPak for PowerPoint provides all of the groundwork you need to create professionally designed lesson plan presentations and supporting games for your entire class.
Much more than just another drawing program, Timeline Maker Professional lets you create dynamic, presentation quality timeline charts in minutes. IT'S THAT EASY! And no other product allows you the flexibility to view events from numerous perspectives. Instantly. For graphically stunning timeline charts that get results and integrate seamlessly into Microsoft PowerPoint, choose the power of Timeline Maker Professional. The most complete time-based visual analysis and presentation tool on the market today.
PFCExpress is an add in that simplifies emailing you presentations containing media (Movies and Sounds) to other users. As all media files are linked instead of being embedded in PowerPoint sending your presentation to others often results in the media not playing properly. PFCExpress automatically creates links that won't be broken regardless of where you have the media files stored on your system, assembles the presentation and all media files into a single compressed file, (zip) and emails the complete file to your recipients all from within PowerPoint.
NXPowerLite radically reduces the size of your PowerPoint files. It's fast, effective and incredibly easy to use. There's no need to manually tweak your presentation content, allowing you to focus on creating a great presentation.
Create communicative and enjoyable charts with Rich Chart Builder! Rich Chart Builder transforms your data charts into enjoyable and captivating communication. Data charts don't have to be plain and austere, they can be interactive experiences with attractive visuals, animation and even voice explanations describing the important facts behind the numbers.
What is Swiff Point Player? Swiff Point Player is a Free Microsoft PowerPoint Add In that enables Web Designers and Flash Users to easily insert and play their Flash movies in their Microsoft PowerPoint presentations. No need for Visual Basic programming No more strange movie playback Swiff Point Player dramatically accelerate the production time. Flash Designers no more have to add Visual Basic code to control the playback of their inserted Flash movies in Microsoft PowerPoint. Swiff Point Player ensure perfect movie playback during slide browsing.
Perfect Medical Presentations...One reviewer wrote: “I wish I had read this book before I started presenting! It gives the how and why on every aspect of presenting, from slide design (with templates included on CD-ROM) to image capture and manipulation, down to presentation techniques and how to prepare yourself to present at your best. The CD-ROM also includes tutorials to make sure that even the novice has understood. Excellent!” Need we say more???
Cutting Edge PowerPoint... Looking for something that goes beyond the "ho- hum" basics of PowerPoint creation. This book goes a step beyond. I like it so much, I'm going to incorporate it into my curriculum for Presentation Skills for the 2006-2007 school year.
ESchoolMaps offers a large collection of clipart maps that can be customized and edited for education use. Our outline maps, which are available on CD- ROM, are an ideal teaching tool for any grade level. Available in PowerPoint and EPS Adobe Illustrator formats, our maps can be tailored for student worksheets, classroom lessons and group projects.
Learning Essentials for Microsoft Office is a desktop application that runs on top of Microsoft Office to give students and teachers a custom Office environment. Learning Essentials includes curriculum- based templates and toolbars for Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office PowerPoint presentation graphics program, and Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet software, plus academic tutorials from leading education publishers. Learning Essentials helps students get started, stay organized, and successfully complete high-quality assignments. And for teachers, Learning Essentials can help them easily create effective instructional resources, complete administrative tasks, and implement new teaching strategies.
Flashkit...Looking for some great sound or Flash resources to add to your next PowerPoint presentation. Flashkit provides you with sound loops that make your next narration sound like a dream. Download the MP3 files, use Audacity to convert them from MP3 to Wav (a free sound editor that you can download from PPT4Teachers) and embed the sound file in your next presentation.
Color Schemer Studio is a professional color-matching application that will help you build beautiful color schemes quickly and easily! Use Color Schemer Studio to explore color using a dynamic visual color wheel, actually see harmony relationships, mix colors, create gradient blends, and even analyze contrast and readability.
ELI Journals...Inside Microsoft PowerPoint gives you the unique "how-to" information that user manuals and books don't by focusing on real-life presentation issues. You can easily and instantly apply the tips and techniques you'll learn from Inside Microsoft PowerPoint to your day-to-day presentation needs. Thanks to the well-thought-out illustrations and step- by-step instructions included in every issue, you'll be more productive with Microsoft PowerPoint than you ever thought possible.
JustZIPit is a tiny freeware ZIP program which simplifies ZIP compression to the bare bone! Discarding all clunky gadgets and wizards, JustZIPit ZIPs and Unzips with just one click from your context menu. No more interface nonsense -- JustZIPit and go! WinZip is a great program - with over 100 pages of in the user manual, it provides both function and entertainment. But if you just want to ZIP and Unzip, you'll love this freeware alternative "JustZIPit"!
PowerPak for PowerPoint: An Innovative Collection of Lesson and Game Templates for PowerPoint. Unleash the “Power” in PowerPoint by utilizing interactive, theme-based lesson plan and game templates. Have you ever wanted to create an interactive Family Feud or Who Wants To Be A Millionaire style game, but just didn't have the time? PowerPak for PowerPoint provides all of the groundwork you need to create professionally designed lesson plan presentations and supporting games for your entire class..
Presentations in a Hurry gives you a series of professionally designed PowerPoint “shells” covering 26 of the most common presentation scenarios, from problem analysis to fund raising. Each shell lets you quickly organize your ideas and insert appropriate content for your specific topic. Simply follow the content recommendations and, once you drop in the text, your presentation will be complete. Every Presentations in a Hurry shell also includes a template design that's carefully chosen for the topic, plus custom graphics and appropriate imagery.
PlanPoint is a free Microsoft PowerPoint add-on that enables you to show or hide slides in a presentation at specified dates and times. Open your normal Microsoft PowerPoint presentation and specify per slide when to display it. You can specify a period, a time frame and on which days of the week it should be displayed. When running your slide show PlanPoint will display your slide automatically when the specific time has come. After the time specified this slide is set to hidden again and will no longer be shown.
Beyond Bullet Points... What if you could structure your stories even faster directly in PowerPoint? With the Sociable Media PowerPoint® Add-In, you can write out all of the key elements of your story directly into an innovative Story Editor interface. When you're finished with your 3-act structure, click a button and you have an instant storyboard! .
Shyam Pillai has two, free PowerPoint add-ons that need to be in any educators PPT Toolbox. Music Span...With this add-in you can play and loop a custom audio track across slides. You can play a single clip across slides or play different clips for each slide. The supported audio formats are WAV/MP3/WMA/MIDI. LiveWeb... Use LiveWeb to insert web pages into a PowerPoint slide and refresh the pages real-time during slide show. Display web pages without ever leaving the confines of your PowerPoint slide show. No coding required. LiveWeb works with documents off your local drive too. You can specify relative paths. LiveWeb will also look for files in the presentation folder if the files have local drive information and cannot be located at the location specified by the user during slideshow.
Powerful PowerPoint for Educators... Most educators have created simple presentations with PowerPoint. PowerPoint is a fine tool for adding media to a lecture, but it falls flat when creating interactive lessons for students to use while sitting in front of the computer. That is, it falls flat unless you use the built-in scripting features of PowerPoint.
Free CD-DA Extractor from rips audio CDs and converts audio files. The application supports the following formats: MP3 (MP1, MP2, MP3), MPEG-4/AAC (M4A), OGG Vorbis (OGG), WAV, Monkey's Audio (APE), and FLAC formats. The application supports buffer underrun prevention technologies. The program offers multithreaded buffered CD-ripping and encoding, copies "copy-protected" CDs, offers error recovery, reads audio from badly scratched CDs, has the ability to download and upload disc information from/to the freedb, the Internet Compact Disc Database. The Free CD-DA Extractor features volume normalizer and compressor, fade in/out, silence deletion from the start and end of a song, and reads and writes CD-Text.
Ulead® COOL 3D 3.5 allows designers to create high-impact 3D images. Output these 3D images as still graphics, animations, video or Macromedia® Flash . Ulead COOL 3D delivers stunning 3D graphics, without the complexities found in other software packages. It's easy to give your Web pages, video projects and PowerPoint® presentation projects a professional edge with COOL 3D. Create great, optimized 3D buttons and images for Web sites. Generate 32-bit overlay output for video work. Add the power of 3D to your presentations
The Instant Effects product line allows Microsoft ® PowerPoint ® users to make visually compelling, interactive rich media presentations from their most basic PowerPoint® files in just a few clicks. A powerful rich media PowerPoint® add on that any PowerPoint® user can operate. Use PowerPoint® like you always do, then enter OfficeFX and select FXThemes that give your presentation compelling new looks and behaviors. Change your PowerPoint® content at any time.
November 2005
The Parade of Games web site site was created to provide educators and trainers with easy-to- assemble educational games in a technology- enhanced environment to support key learning points. The site demonstrates the creative use of popular game shows and other familiar games to reinforce learning.
Pixie is an easy-to-use, fast and tiny utility designed especially to fit the needs of PowerPoint presentations, Webmasters and Designers. Its a color picker that includes a mouse tracker. Run it, simply point to a color and it will tell you the hex, RGB, HTML, CMYK and HSV values of that color. You can then use these values to reproduce the selected color in your favorite programs. Pixie will also show the current x y position of your mouse pointer. Its the only tool you'll need for working with colors. Best of all... it's free.
Ovation turns lifeless PowerPoint® slides into a stunning visual experience in seconds. Select from over 100 sensational themes called PowerLooks to add subtle motion, high-resolution text, and dynamic TV-style transitions to plain PowerPoint slides. Ovation also includes a suite of invaluable presentation tools that help you deliver your message better.
PFCMedia converts the media to a format all versions of PowerPoint and the PowerPoint viewer can play, lets you set the animations with a single mouse click, inserts it into your presentation, and then saves the media along with your presentation to insure better linking and transportability. Send the presentation to another Windows PC and you can be assured it will "Play For Certain". (They do not need PFCMedia or any other additional software.) The other major benefit? PFCMedia will SIGNIFICANTLY reduce the actual file size of almost all video files. And we do mean SIGNIFICANTLY.
October 2005
Relational Presentations will become the new catch phrase for creating educational PowerPoint® presentations. Relational Presentation is where a speaker navigates within a vast network of PowerPoint® slides called a Presentation Network. Such navigation allows quick and dynamic selection of individual slides, even if thousands are available. In other words, a speaker or teacher literally creates or customizes a visual presentation on-the-fly. For more in depth information, visit Aspire Communications.
Announcing the release of AutoShape Magic , a free add-in for PowerPoint®. AutoShape Magic for PowerPoint® software allows you center your objects on a slide. You can also increase and decrease the size of your shape in fixed increments and use some preset gradients as fills.
Color Wheel Pro is a software tool that helps you create harmonious color schemes based on color theory . Unlike other color utilities, Color Wheel Pro lets you preview your color schemes on real-world examples — websites, logos, product packages — not just on a row of ordinary color boxes. Visit the site for more information. Color Wheel Pro will help with establishing PowerPoint® presentation color schemes as well.