Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Google adds animations and transitions to presentations

Google today released an upgraded version of Google presentations. Google presentations now support most of the basic animation effects like fly, appear, zoom, spin  in addition to slide transitions. With this release Google has narrowed down the feature gap between Google presentations and other online or desktop presentation applications.

What's new in Google presentations?
Google has added more than 50 new features including real-time collaboration:
  • Transitions to move between slides with simple fades or spicier 3D effects
  • Animations to add emphasis or to make your slides more playful
  • New themes to create beautiful presentations with distinct visual styles
  • Drawings to build new designs, layouts, and flowcharts within a presentation
  • Rich tables with merged cells and more options for adding style to your data
Google presentations are now as good as Microsoft PowerPoint 
Since most of the people use just the basic animation effects like fly,appear, disappear this release will certainly eat the market share of other online presentation creation tools and my be PowerPoint too. Google presentations now has a option to download the presentations as PPTX. A presentation created with Google presentation work just fine in Microsoft PowerPoint along with animation effects.

The day, Google adds option to add audio and record narrations, the competition for Microsoft PowerPoint will really be tough considering the free versus paid scenario.

How to enable new presentation features?
Most probably you will see an alert to enable new presentation on Google docs home page but if you don't see that, you can enable it from Documents and settings.
  • Click the setting icon(Gear icon on top right). 
  • Select "Documents and Settings".
  • Click Editing tab.
  • Tic the check-box "Create new presentations using the latest version of the presentation editor" and save.
Newly added features will only work for new presentations you create.

A presentation created with Google presentations

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

PowerPoint presentations with animations on iPad with SlideShark app

Online presentation company Brainshark, Inc., today announced SlideShark app (www.slideshark.com), available for free in Apple’s App Store. Probably this is the first app available from any presentation sharing platform that can replicate all animations, fonts, graphics (etc.) used in your PowerPoint slides on iPad. Recently presentation and document  sharing platform SlideShare too released HTML5 version of their website along with a new mobile website targeted for iPad and other tablet users but that's mere a slide by slide drag of static images. 


Since most of you know that Apple iPad doesn't support flash and the only way to get the flash content is via AIR app, SlideShark will go a long way. Now, with Brainshark’s free SlideShark app, users can:

  • Preserve animations, fonts, graphics and colors in their presentations
  • Swipe or tap to advance animations and slides
  • Project their slides from an iPad 2 by connecting to a TV or VGA projector
  • Download presentations and play them locally – no Internet connection required


Some of the features which are not supported by this app are  hyperlinks on slides, embedded videos or animated gifs, slide transitions, triggers, and 3rd party components. There are also some advanced animations that may not be supported.

Here is how you can convert and view presentations on iPad with animations and other effects:

  1. Upload your PowerPoint files to your account at www.slideshark.com
  2. The files will automatically get converted to an iPad-optimized viewing format
  3. Using the SlideShark app, download and view your presentations on your iPad or project them on TV or projector.


Monday, October 17, 2011

Add special effects to your videos in PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 offers great deal of features related to images and videos which were otherwise available only in adobe Photoshop or Adobe premium. You can edit the videos and define the start and end of the video file, recolor the video, add special effects, give a shape to video and can set triggers on video timeline.

Recolor a Video inserted in slide
Just like an image, videos inserted in PowerPoint slides can have different shapes, color and effects. By using these advance effects you can show the video in oval shape or can apply a transparent green layer, set the video border to be grey and much more. See video below to learn more about recoloring a video:


A recolored video:


Add special effects to videos inserted
Effects like shadow, relection, glow can also be applied to videos inserted. Just double click the video and select the desired effect from the video tools under video effects drop down.


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