Sunday, November 29, 2009

SlideShare "Holiday Spirit Contest 2009"

PowerPoint and Document sharing website, Slideshare has announced "Holiday Spirit Contest 2009". Contest has started from November 27th and will last till 2nd January, 2010.

The Prize:

The Gift album coverImage via Wikipedia


1. 1st Prize: Amazon Gift Certificate worth $250
2. 2nd Prize: Amazon Gift Certificate worth $150
3. 3rd Prize: Amazon Gift Certificate worth $100



How to Enter the Contest?

* To participate in the The Holiday Spirit Contest 2009, your presentation should have been uploaded to SlideShare after Friday, 27th November 2009, 00:01 AM PST and entered into the contest by Saturday, January 2nd 2010, 11:59 PM PST. (The decision of SlideShare regarding eligibility of contest presentations will be final and binding for all)

* To enter, create a SlideShare account (or login if you already have an account) and add your presentation to the contest. You can enter your presentation in two ways:

1. Upload your presentation to SlideShare (single or bulk upload). Check
the "Enter Contest" checkbox and select "The Holiday Spirit Contest 2009".

2. Alternatively, upload the presentation as usual. Later, you can enter
the contest by going to the presentation's "Edit" page.

Read more at contest Page here.


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Monday, November 23, 2009

Motion Path Animations

Motion paths offer such a wonderful PowerPoint animation effect that in slide show mode, for a moment you might mistake the presentation to be a video. Don't believe it? See it for yourself:



A motion path is a custom path that an object(text/image) follows. Either you can pick from preset paths like line, up, down or may create your own custom paths. Motion Paths let you create your own animation effects which are otherwise not available in PowerPoint.

Just follow steps below to add awesome Motion Path animations to your PowerPoint presentation:


  1. Select the object(text or image).
  2. Click on the animation tab.
  3. Click on Add Effect>Motion Paths.
  4. Select motion path you want to use and click OK.
  5. Run slide show to verify and save.


Microsoft has good training material with voice over for Motion paths. You can have this free training here.

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Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Online PowerPoint meeting tools

PowerPoint cloud meeting or presentation meeting is not a new concept; SlideLive, authorSTREAM and Google presentations have been doing this since long.

These PowerPoint meeting web applications allow presenters to deliver presentations, live over the Internet where slide navigation is being controlled by presenter. In today’s world, many a times we need to communicate with people at different Geo locations who can’t get together at same place. That is where these presentation meeting applications come in handy.

Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2010Image via Wikipedia

Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 has also come up with a similar feature called broadcasting where presenter can click through the slides and everyone attending will be on the same slide. Animations also work the same way as in PowerPoint file. Only thing seems missing is chat which Microsoft must have planned with Microsoft communication server.

Here is a video demo of broadcast feature from Microsoft.

Monday, November 16, 2009

Insert videos in PowerPoint using authorSTREAM desktop

Sharing PowerPoint presentations having videos has always been a big issue with normal PowerPoint users. People always wonder why and how video or movie file inserted in PowerPoint which plays well on their computer disappears when they run slide show on their office system or any other computer.

Most of the PowerPoint users are unaware of the fact that videos are always linked in PowerPoint slides and will not play on the system other than where the linked file resides. Few technical users keep PowerPoint file and video in same folder and share the zip file so that video plays irrespective of where you run Slide show.

For those who don't want to share bulky zip files or who don't know technical details related to video insertion in PowerPoint, authorSTREAM has come up with a promising solution. authorSTREAM desktop (a free PowerPoint plug-in from authorSTREAM) which lets you insert YouTube videos, can now take care of videos inserted in PowerPoint slides. You just need to upload PowerPoint presentation having linked audio or video using authorSTREAM Desktop and its inbuilt mechanism will take care of rest.

authorstream logo



Presentation output on authorSTREAM will play inserted videos as they play in PowerPoint slide show on your machine and you only need to share authorSTREAM presentation link with your friends and family. So now besides inserting YouTube videos, you can insert videos from your desktop in your PowerPoint slides.




More details at authorSTREAM blog.



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Friday, November 6, 2009

PowerPoint to Silverlight

Microsoft SilverlightImage via Wikipedia

Do you know that more than 250 million people around the world use PowerPoint and not less than 30 million presentations are created daily? There is huge list of resources and tools related to PowerPoint. Lately more and more companies have come up with software's like PowerPoint to Flash SDK, PowerPoint Add-ins/ Plug-ins, PowerPoint to video conversion tools and websites for online sharing of PowerPoint presentations. Most of the products out of these deal with PowerPoint to flash conversion.

Today, PowerPoint to flash conversion is the most popular way of sharing PowerPoint presentations on the web. But, now trend seems to be changing with more products coming in for PowerPoint to Silverlight, a web application framework from Microsoft that provides functionalists similar to those in Adobe Flash. Initially released as a video streaming plugin, later versions brought additional interactivity features and support for .NET languages and development tools. The current version, 3.0, was released on July 9, 2009. It is compatible with multiple web browser products used on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems

There has been buzz around Microsoft Silverlight since Microsoft came up with the technology. Silverlight's awesome web capabilities and brand association of Microsoft has encouraged more and more people to use Silverlight as a designing tool for creating rich media content.


Electric Rain, 3D and multimedia solutions company has announced a new product called Convexion, a PowerPoint to Silverlight converter. Convexion converts PowerPoint 2007 slideshows to Microsoft Silverlight based presentations while retaining the animation scheme and accurate slide layout. The Add-in enables users to publish their PowerPoint slideshows to the Microsoft Silverlight and WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) formats for sharing and viewing on the web, in blogs, and as a live desktop presentation player.

Will PowerPoint to Silverlight conversion be a popular technology for sharing presentations on the web in near future?
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