It’s always good to be different — and canned slides with Calibri or Arial text over those same template or Theme backgrounds can look so monotonous! Doodleslide is a PowerPoint add-in that enables you to add a human touch by inserting hand-drawn images and organic looking slide templates. The Doodleslide add-in consists a library of around 350 high-resolution doodle images with transparent backgrounds. These are divided into 25 categories. In addition, it also comprises over 50 slide templates that match the look of the doodles. Both these elements: the doodles and the slide templates can be accessed by two buttons that are integrated into the Insert tab of the Ribbon in PowerPoint.

Read the Indezine review of Doodleslide.

Categories: add-in, graphics, powerpoint, templates

PowerPoint and Presenting Blog

Connectors are lines that link different shapes or any other slide objects, and yet they are somewhat different from conventional lines because connectors, as the name implies stay connected to the shapes they are linked from. You have already learned about connectors and the types of connectors in previous tutorials — in this tutorial, you will learn how you can draw connectors that link shapes. Although we use shapes as examples in this tutorial, you can attach a connector to any other slide object using the same process.

Learn how to draw connectors in PowerPoint 2011.

Categories: office_mac, powerpoint_2011, shapes, tutorials

PowerPoint and Presenting Blog

These animated lines are essentially all shapes set to fit the space on the slide close enough to each other to form a geometrical pattern. The first slide contains these shapes filled with a single, gradient color while the next slide uses gradients created with the six accent colors that are part of the active, applied Theme. Change the Theme and all colors will miraculously change. We used PowerPoint 2010 to create this presentation, and it works best in either that version or in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

Download and use this slide for your own presentations.

Categories: animation, powerpoint, presentation_samples

PowerPoint and Presenting Blog

While it is easy to change proofing language for selected text containers, that happens to be a piece meal approach and can be a great time waster if you need the language changed across all content in 100 or more slides! There are two ways to set the proofing language for your entire presentation — and you can use one or both of these approaches. Make sure you have the proofing tools installed for all or any of the languages that you need to work within PowerPoint. Then follow these steps.

Learn how to set proofing language for an entire presentation in PowerPoint 2010.

Categories: powerpoint_2010, proofing, text, tutorials

PowerPoint and Presenting Blog

This heart-full slide has several heart shapes that come onto the slide area, one after the other and then gradually become smaller until they drift into a perspective oblivion. All heart shapes are of a different size, are rotated at a different angle, and also use Theme colors. In addition, each heart has a 3D style applied that has more than one animation added so that the shape diminishes in size as it moves to an imaginary perspective point located off the top right part of the slide. All animations are set to repeat indefinitely so that the hearts keep moving until you navigate to the next slide.

Download and use this slide in your presentation.

Categories: animation, powerpoint, presentation_samples

PowerPoint and Presenting Blog

Jay Wilder is director of product marketing at Brainshark, Inc. Brainshark’s cloud-based software lets users create online and mobile video presentations – using simple business tools like PowerPoint and the telephone – and then share and track their content. Thousands of companies use Brainshark to improve the reach and results of their business communications, while dramatically reducing costs.

In this conversation, Jay discusses SlideShark Team Edition, which Brainshark is launching today.

Geetesh: What is SlideShark Team Edition, and how does it build upon the SlideShark app for the iPad?

Jay: We’re excited to be launching SlideShark Team Edition today. It’s the first multi-user version we’re rolling out of the SlideShark app.

SlideShark, as your readers may recall, is a free app we announced last fall. It solved a major problem for iPad users around the world: that is, PowerPoint’s lack of compatibility on the device. With SlideShark, now you can view and show your PowerPoint presentations with animations, fonts, graphics and colors intact. We’ve been pleased to report rapid adoption too –- getting two downloads per minute, 24×7, since SlideShark’s launch.

While the initial SlideShark app was more geared toward individuals, SlideShark Team Edition now provides powerful functionality to support teams within organizations. This new edition comes, in large part, due to requests from our enthusiastic user base. With SlideShark Team Edition, these users can now benefit from centralized content administration, team-wide access to content and detailed usage analytics.

Geetesh: Can you share some info on what you consider are compelling features within the Team Edition of SlideShark?

Jay: Absolutely. New functionality, as I mentioned, provides valuable support to teams within organizations. Not only can they properly and easily view PowerPoints from their iPads – something unprecedented only a few months back – but they can also take advantage of features such as:

• Shared team content. Users can securely access, view and present “shared team content” -– that is, PowerPoints that authorized administrators and team members have uploaded and designated for shared use.

• Personal user content. Individual team members also have the ability to upload their own PowerPoint decks to SlideShark and convert them to an iPad-ready format for their own personal access and viewing.
• Central management. Team account administrators can add or remove users, change user permissions, manage billing centrally and assign administrative controls.
• Usage analytics. Account administrators can also view and download reports that show which users are accessing and viewing content, and which presentations are most and least popular.
• Team storage. Teams have plenty of space for both shared content and personal user content – with 5GB of total storage, plus more as required.
• Reliability and security. As with SlideShark, SlideShark Team Edition users benefit from Brainshark’s highly secure, reliable and scalable enterprise-class cloud computing infrastructure.

We’ve priced SlideShark Team Edition at $ 149 per user on a team per year. Anyone can go to the SlideShark site and sign up for a 60-day free and full-featured trial. We’re looking forward to continuing to meet our users’ needs with this new edition of SlideShark –- helping them access content wherever they are, play it properly from their iPads and benefit from a host of powerful, multi-user features.

See Also: SlideShark: Conversation with Jay Wilder

Categories: brainshark, interviews, ipad, powerpoint

PowerPoint and Presenting Blog

These Valentine mobiles are suspended from a rope, and are freely moving pendulum-like in the air with random speeds and directions. All the heart mobiles you see are Theme aware so that their fills change when you apply a new Theme. In addition, we used animation sparingly, yet effectively to create this effect – the entire slide uses just the Spin animation and nothing else! And while this entire animated slide was created in PowerPoint 2010, it should work just fine in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows and PowerPoint 2008/2011 for Mac. All animations are set to repeat indefinitely so that the stars and the hearts keep twinkling and moving until you navigate to the next slide.

Download and use this slide in your presentation.

Categories: animation, powerpoint, presentation_samples

PowerPoint and Presenting Blog

Podium is a PowerPoint add-in which enables you to do quite a bit with your slide content. You can manage your PowerPoint presentations, and you can use provided tools to enhance your presentations. You can also create a new presentation from scratch. Podium provides a huge library of media elements such as images, vector drawings, ready-to-use backgrounds, 3D clip art and shapes, embellishments, etc. All these elements are royalty free, and most of these can also be individually customized to match the look of your slides. Once installed, Podium creates a new tab on PowerPoint’s Ribbon.

Learn about Podium, a PowerPoint add-in that lets you customize and enhance your slides.

Categories: add-in, powerpoint

PowerPoint and Presenting Blog

Hundreds of stars twinkle, some more stars revolve and the hearts move along, in all their splendor! Amazing that everything can be animated to such precision using nothing other than shapes found within PowerPoint. Of course, we made sure that all shapes were filled with the perfect gradients that were color coordinated to the Theme of the presentation. And while this entire animated slide was created in PowerPoint 2010, it should work just fine in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows and PowerPoint 2008/2011 for Mac. All animations are set to repeat indefinitely so that the stars and the hearts keep twinkling and moving until you navigate to the next slide.

Download and use this slide in your presentation.

Categories: animation, powerpoint, presentation_samples

PowerPoint and Presenting Blog

The power of simplicity pervades everywhere — and is the key to conceptualizing, creating, and delivering any type of presentation. The need to weed out the unrequired, the aim to keep things as uncomplicated as we can, and to clearly understand what the audience wants — these are all objectives that any presenter will associate with. And the best way to attain these objectives is with simplicity.

Read more in this week’s newsletter.

Categories: ezine, powerpoint

PowerPoint and Presenting Blog