Tweet Is Bunkr going to be a PowerPoint killer?

Since the launch of PowerPoint, a lot has been done around PowerPoint and presentations. Be it online presentation creation, online presentation sharing or desktop plug-ins, there is lot of stuff going on to help people create high quality stunning presentations without the help of professionals.

TechCrunch recently projected Bunkr- an online presentation creation tool as a PowerPoint killer. Like any other presentation creation tools, Bunkr lets you create presentations online which can be exported as PPT.



Largely online presentation creation tools are nowhere near to what desktop presentation software's and plugins offer and same is the case with Bunkr. It offers nothing which is not being offered by Microsoft PowerPoint 2013, Office 365, PowToons and Google presentations. Bunkr's USP is in-built image, video and content search, but then again this feature is already in-built in MS PowerPoint 2013 and authorSTREAM Desktop plugin which also takes care of copyright attribution.

Now at a time when SlideRocket failed to tap the online presentation creation market and Microsoft too offering online presentation creation, it would be interesting to see how long Bunkr goes. Do you also think that Bunkr is going to be a PowerPoint killer?
 

Tweet PowerPoint 2010 and 2013: What's added and what got removed?

Microsoft has added some new features to PowerPoint 2013 and has discontinued some of the existing features or functionality.

What new features, functionality has been added in PowerPoint 2013?

Eye dropper: Eyedropper the color picker tool helps you copy the shape color and apply to any other shape.


PowerPoint to MP4: PowerPoint 2013 allows you to convert PowerPoint presentations in MP4 video format.

Search and insert images and videos from within PowerPoint: PowerPoint 2013 has inbuilt image and video search engine which lets you search images from Bing, Flickr and videos from Bing and YouTube.

Theme family and variants: PowerPoint 2013 has more themes and flexibility to choose and edit variants.

Presenter View: Changes to presenter view like automatic selection of monitor, jump to slides and zoom in.

Share and publish online

Head here for more details on these and other features added to PowerPoint 2013.

What has been removed or changed in PowerPoint 2013 from earlier versions?

PowerPoint viewer: PowerPoint viewer is a small free exe that lets you view presentations created in PowerPoint 97 and later versions without the need of licensed version of PowerPoint. This has been in use to view PowerPoint presentations on machines that doesn't have purchased versions of MS PowerPoint software.

Now question arises how to view PowerPoint presentations created in 2013 without PowerPoint viewer if you don't have licensed copy of PowerPoint 2013? If you are not worried about animations and media, use Google docs or Slideshare, Scribd. If you are worried about animations and media too, try authorSTREAM or Microsoft web apps.

Save PPT as HTML:  This feature existed so that people can save a PPT as HTML and use that HTML on web to show case the presentation. This feature became obsolete with online presentation sharing websites like Slideshare and authorSTREAM providing embeds that could play your presentations on blogs, website and even on Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.

Media formats: Video (WMV) and Audio (WMA) formats have been default video and audio formats for PowerPoint till 2010. Now default media formats are H.264 for video and AAC for audio.

Equation Editor: Equation Editor the formula editor that that allows you to insert math and science equations in a slide is no longer available in 2013.

Microsoft Clip Organizer:  The Clip Organizer feature has been replaced by the Insert Media dialog box.  Insert Media feature lets you search and insert content from the Office.com Clip Art collection and other online sources, such as Bing Image/Video search, Flickr, and your SkyDrive or Facebook page.

Tweet 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

Tweet Video support in PowerPoint 2010

Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 offers great support for videos. Besides letting you insert video files, PowerPoint 2010 has in built facility to let you insert embeds of video sharing websites. Also, with PowerPoint 2010 you will be able convert PowerPoint files in WMV format video files.

Embed videos in PowerPoint 2010

You need not to go go through complex steps of adding shockwave flash object. Just copy video embed from some video sharing website(say YouTube) and click video option provided under insert tab in PowerPoint 2010. Select " Insert video from online video site", paste embed and click insert.



Besides video embeds you can also use some other flash embeds; just try embeds of PowerPoint sharing websites and those embeds will play just like they play on some blog or website.

Convert PowerPoint to video

Video has become one of the most powerful content formats lately. Video content provides you wide range of audience. In today's scenario, if you have to convert your PowerPoint to video, either you have to purchase some PowerPoint to video software or use some online PowerPoint to video website. This all is going to change to some extent with PowerPoint 2010.


PowerPoint 2010 will let you convert your PowerPoint presentations with timings(rehearsed or narrated) in WMV video format. PowerPoint 2010 even converts PowerPoint presentations without timing. You just need to select "Time to spend on each slide". If some slides are having animation effects then total duration of those slides in video will be sum total of animation timings.