I enjoy much more creative freedom using Adobe InDesign than I have using PowerPoint. With features in InDesign such as Table and Object Styles, my creation steps are reduced to a fraction of the time I once spent assembling a presentation. Furthermore, with a little refinement of some tips offered by Dallas based designer Bryan Tamayo in his article Thinking Outside the Page and reported here on Acrobat Users, I can add a little more design freedom to my slide presentations.

Take Figure 1 as an example. I find that adding icons and page numbers off the document page provide me a little more real estate for adding bullet points on the document pages.

Figure 1

Let’s take a look at the circle on the lower right side of Figure 1. To create a similar design, I start on a Master Page in Adobe InDesign. The circle is off the page and the page number is reported inside the circle. When you place objects off the page, you need to have the center-point of the object within the page boundary. To get the circle to appear off the page, we need to finesse it a little.

Draw an object in InDesign or import an object from Adobe Illustrator on to a Master Page in Adobe InDesign. For the circle in Figure 1 I add a little stroke (just a 0-point stroke with about a 1-point length) offset to the left. All you need is a dot offset from the object. When I select the objects you something similar to the selection shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2

With both objects selected I choose Object > Group. When the objects are grouped the bounding box changes to what you see in Figure 3. You can see that the center-point has now changed for the circle object and when I place the graphic off the page, I can keep the center-point within the page boundary (this is essential) while the circle is completely moved off the page.

Figure 3

My next step is to add a page number to the center of the circle. I draw a text box and right align (Command/Ctrl + Shift + R) my text. I can choose my font colors and styles from the Type menu to format the font. After formatting the font, I choose Type > Insert Special Character > Markers > Current Page Number or press Option/Alt + Shift + Command/Ctrl+N to set the text to an auto page number.

Next, move the page number to the position you want to appear on the object. Select both objects as you see in Figure 4.

Figure 4

With the objects selected, again visit the Object menu and choose Group. The bounding box and page position are shown in Figure 5. Notice that the center-point falls well within the page boundary.

Figure 5

The last step to finish off this graphic is to convert the object (now grouped as a single object) to a button and set the button action. With the object selected, choose Object > Interactive > Convert to Button.

The Button Options dialog box opens. Click the Behaviors tab and choose a Behavior from the drop down menu. For my button I want to use the button action to open the next page in my slide presentation. Therefore I choose Go To Next Page.

As a last step, click the Add button so the behavior appears in the left pane as you see in Figure 6. Then click OK.

Figure 6

If you want to change the button action to an action type that doesn’t appear in InDesign, you can do so by double clicking the button with the Select Object tool in Acrobat and click the Actions tab when the Button Properties dialog box opens. In the Actions tab you can assign any action Acrobat provides you by making selections from the Select Action drop down menu.

When you convert to PDF from InDesign, make sure you check the box for Interactive Elements in the Options area of the Export Adobe PDF dialog box (shown in Figure 7) you get when you choose File > Export.

Figure 7

Some other advantages you have in using InDesign as your original authoring program for slide presentations include converting to Adobe PDF Layers, using Table and Object styles to facilitate your design creations, and using the marvelous style sheets that only InDesign provides. Once in Acrobat you can import video and sound, add page transitions, link to other PDFs and external application documents, and of course all the other functions and features Acrobat provides you.

In regard to Adobe PDF Layers, if you happen to create multi-lingual documents you can add all graphics to a background layer in InDesign and add layers for different language versions. When you convert to PDF with the Create Acrobat Layers checkbox enabled in the Export Adobe PDF dialog box, your InDesign layers are viewed as separate layers in Acrobat/Reader. When making presentations in a different language you can toggle the layer view to the language you’re addressing.

An argument many PowerPoint users may advocate is that it’s easier to modify a presentation in PowerPoint than InDesign and recreating a PDF. I don’t see using InDesign as a problem for modifying my presentations. At times I’ve had to revise an entire presentation after adding all my links in the Acrobat PDF. Assuming the links remain the same, all I had to do is convert a second document to PDF and use the Document > Replace Pages command to replace the background pages while retaining my button links in the new PDF.

What about handouts and speaker notes? Admittedly, creating handouts and speaker notes is much easier in PowerPoint than InDesign. However, you can create these items in InDesign such as you see in Figure 8.

Just create a frame and design elements on a master page and place your PDF slide presentation using the Show Import Options item in the Place dialog box when placing your slide show on the document pages. Unfortunately, you need to place each page individually making it a much more timely task than using PowerPoint —but placing PDF pages in InDesign is a matter of just loading the cursor and scrolling pages to place the PDF pages on new InDesign pages. I find the trade-off for taking a little more time with an InDesign authored presentation not to be a hassle when I need speaker notes or handouts.

Figure 8

If I’m speaking on Adobe Acrobat and PDF, then my PDF presentations provide me much more credibility with my audience.

Source: www.acrobatusers.com

In any professional association meetings, poster printing sessions have become very significant with its purpose of providing the presenters a way to connect with their audience and relay their research findings. This has become such a way of life in any organizational meetings in disciplines of the sciences that poster printing sessions are made more often than the presentation of any research paper. It seems that the science community has become more acceptable of making research studies more flexible and easier to understand.

However, a poster printing presentation is certainly neither a thesis nor a dissertation. As much as you want to put everything you have to say in your poster printing presentation, space is limited to such that it makes for a much better viewing than reading. Keep in mind that viewers of your poster printing presentation would be averse to lengthy reading, and would only be inspecting what you have done. Your lengthy explanation would be much better off in a journal or thesis that you can provide after.

Therefore, keeping it simple without sacrificing the information contained within would get you more viewers than any other kind of poster printing presentation. Here are a few suggestions that can help you come up with an effective poster printing presentation for your research:

1 - Your title should be brief and descriptive. With just one look, your viewers should be able to deduce what you have in store for them. Your title has a very solid role to play in your poster printing presentation. It’s either your title grab your viewers’ attention or they simply decide that they are not interested.

2 - A brief abstract should be able to orient the viewer to your whole poster printing presentation. Take note that it is brief. Always remember that your poster is not a journal or a thesis paper. It should be able to tell your viewers what to expect in not so many words.

3 - Provide content in a story-like fashion. Tell your research as if you have a story to convey. Just like a tale, plan your content to unfold in every information you impart such as your context, your results and analysis, and the importance of your research.

4 - As much as possible, use visual images and bulleted outlines to explain a point. Your viewers would appreciate a more visual presentation, rather than a wordy explanation. Hence, graphs and tables should be used to prove a point. But make sure that your viewers would be able to interpret them easily.

Finally, always provide a smooth and clear flow to your poster printing presentation. It won’t be any use to you if your viewers have a hard time following your poster’s sequence. In addition, you have to remember to create your poster printing pieces that even the common man can understand what you’re trying to say. You’re goal is to reach as many people as you can anyway, so try to make it as simple and as easy to understand as possible.

Source: www.goarticles.com

It has been designed from the ground up as a tool for presenters; slowly fine tuned with feedback from these professionals, people for whom presentations play an essential role in their job.

Whether an occasional PowerPoint user or, if indeed, presentations are a critical part of your job, PhonePoint will give you a competitive and polished edge when delivering PowerPoint presentations. With PhonePoint you can concentrate upon just the presentation and the audience, leaving the PC well alone.

Compatible Devices:

Nokia N93, Nokia N90, Nokia N92, Nokia N-Gage QD, Nokia N95, Nokia N76, Nokia N73, Nokia N72, Nokia N77, Nokia N75, Nokia N71, Nokia N91, Nokia N93i, Nokia N-Gage, Nokia N70, Nokia N80

Features:

• PhonePoint allows you, remotely from your phone, to move Forward, Backward and Restart your presentation.
• Seamless Bluetooth Integration (support for the Toshiba, Widcomm, BlueSoleil, Microsoft and other common bluetooth stacks).
• No user configuration - works right out of the box! Direct access to the bluetooth stack, no slow browsing-for bluetooth devices or time spent attempting to connect-to a Bluetooth device - it just works!
• Ideal for presentations using a projector - freeing you up to stand next to your presentation. No more sneaky change-slide hand signals to a colleague positioned next to the PC.
• Large and Clear display of the Current Slide’s Title and Position.
• Keep your presentation on track - counters display the time spent on the current slide and for the total presentation.
• Quickly (and Privately) access the Speaker Notes for the Current Slide on the phone’s screen.
• Supports all Series60 phones in their native screen resolutions.
• Remotely play (and stop) video and audio embedded within slides.
• Works wirelessly up to 10 meters - 30 foot from your PC.
• Fully compatible with Windows Vista and Office 2007.

Source: www.n95blog.com

In any professional association meetings, poster printing sessions have become very significant with its purpose of providing the presenters a way to connect with their audience and relay their research findings. This has become such a way of life in any organizational meetings in disciplines of the sciences that poster printing sessions are made more often than the presentation of any research paper. It seems that the science community has become more acceptable of making research studies more flexible and easier to understand.

However, a poster printing presentation is certainly neither a thesis nor a dissertation. As much as you want to put everything you have to say in your poster printing presentation, space is limited to such that it makes for a much better viewing than reading. Keep in mind that viewers of your poster printing presentation would be averse to lengthy reading, and would only be inspecting what you have done. Your lengthy explanation would be much better off in a journal or thesis that you can provide after.

Therefore, keeping it simple without sacrificing the information contained within would get you more viewers than any other kind of poster printing presentation. Here are a few suggestions that can help you come up with an effective poster printing presentation for your research:

1 - Your title should be brief and descriptive. With just one look, your viewers should be able to deduce what you have in store for them. Your title has a very solid role to play in your poster printing presentation. It’s either your title grab your viewers’ attention or they simply decide that they are not interested.

2 - A brief abstract should be able to orient the viewer to your whole poster printing presentation. Take note that it is brief. Always remember that your poster is not a journal or a thesis paper. It should be able to tell your viewers what to expect in not so many words.

3 - Provide content in a story-like fashion. Tell your research as if you have a story to convey. Just like a tale, plan your content to unfold in every information you impart such as your context, your results and analysis, and the importance of your research.

4 - As much as possible, use visual images and bulleted outlines to explain a point. Your viewers would appreciate a more visual presentation, rather than a wordy explanation. Hence, graphs and tables should be used to prove a point. But make sure that your viewers would be able to interpret them easily.

Finally, always provide a smooth and clear flow to your poster printing presentation. It won’t be any use to you if your viewers have a hard time following your poster’s sequence. In addition, you have to remember to create your poster printing pieces that even the common man can understand what you’re trying to say. You’re goal is to reach as many people as you can anyway, so try to make it as simple and as easy to understand as possible.

Source: www.goarticles.com

Padgaonkar says:

Remember, PowerPoint is simply a means to an end. It is only a visual aid. Don’t hide behind it and don’t let it overshadow the protagonist—the speaker.

Indeed. The article includes some good tips on using PowerPoint, but there’s just one overarching point I’d make: the PowerPoint presentation should be the last thing you do. You should have thought things through, written your supporting documents, and crunched your numbers before you use PowerPoint to create visual aids that will help you tell the story.

PowerPoint won’t tell the story itself, unless the story is so simplistic and dull that nobody should be wasting their time sitting in front of you to hear it. And this is why I think PowerPoint, the program, does deserve its bad reputation.

The idea of it is fine: a tool for creating slides and showing them to people. The problem is that Microsoft, in its usual fashion, then tarted it up with templates and formatting and tools that are supposed to help you create the content. And they are horrible, because they are designed to make you stupid about your content.

I once had a boss who did kick-ass presentations with PowerPoint. Of course, his slides usually consisted of a headline or a few words and images that illustrated his point. Without him speaking, they would be meaningless. With him speaking, they made you remember what he was saying and pick out the key points of his presentation.

To make PowerPoint a useful program, I recommend deleting every template that comes with it. When you are ready to work on your presentation, take out a piece of paper and pen and start sketching what you’d like it to be. Only when you have some ideas down should you fire up PowerPoint and get to work.

Otherwise, PowerPoint will be doing the thinking for you. And you know what? It’s not nearly as smart as you are.
Source: www.opinionatedmarketers.blogspot.com

The judges and top presentation gurus were Guy Kawasaki, Bert Decker, Garr Reynolds and Jerry Weissman.

Now I’ve created my share of presentations and I’ve been really proud of most of them… but these WAUW! I can’t wait to create the next presentation for a bunch of IT-executives or managers. Looking through the contributions you will quickly notice that they have a lot in common.

1. Most use very large font sizes
2. Lots of colour contrast - most have a dark background with light text
3. Each presentation tell a story
4. Graphic images are big and simple - generally just one per slide
5. Images help tell the story - often critical to understanding the text
6. Text is minimal - many of the presentations only have a few words per slide
7. Text isn’t in the same place on every slide
8. Headlines aren’t used very much - Regular sentences or “Down style” are more common
9. Text and images are static, they don’t scoot around on the page
10. Slides don’t need audio to be understood (I might have some difficulties at that, people need a reason to listen to you)

Some of my presentations are way too text-heavy and according to these 10 observations way too boring and I might not get the right message out. Now all I need to learn is how to create the beautiful and fancy graphic in Photoshop (and be creative *ahem*). You can check out the winning presentations on SlideShare’s page. Amazing what you can do with PowerPoint.
Source: www.shoutwire.com

Another Teacher Tech Article for you. This is for anyone who would like to edit a video clip from a video file or from a DVD and add that video clip to your PowerPoint presentation. There are several steps in this process - some of which you might not need if you already have a video clip on your hard drive.

Presentations and word processing are my bread and butter. That is, I earn my living writing and presenting. I have been writing Power Point presentations for years. I’m actually very good at them and occasionally freelance for my geek challenged colleagues. It is with those years of experience in mind that I was initially skeptical about using Apple’s presentation software, Keynote. That was, at least, until the first time I saw a Keynote presentation.

I think Keynote (even before this recent update) is superior to PowerPoint in both ease of use and final product. With the release of Keynote ‘08, the gap has just grown larger. For the purpose of this review, I’m going to skip over a lot of the features that already existed in Keynote and focus on the new additions. If you are not familiar with Keynote, even before the upgrade it was full of stellar templates, transitions, and text effects that made producing convincing presentations a breeze. Indeed there are even more new transitions and effects but that is just the start of some fantastic changes and additional features.

Mr. Sparks’ post continues, and is quite detailed, for those who wish to explore Keynote ‘08 in more depth; just click Another Lawyer’s Review of Keynote ‘08.

Attorney Ben Stevens, writing at The Mac Lawyer, also apparently loves the product: Another Lawyer’s Review of Keynote ‘08

You can also catch this podcast Surfbits MacReview Cast Episode 121 for even more on the subject.
Source: blog.blawg.com

Zoho Show, SlideShare, Scribd, SlideAware and Splashcast are some of the most popular hosting services for uploading PowerPoint files on the web for others to watch the slideshows online or for you to embed the presentations inside web pages.

If you want to skip the details, watch the PowerPoint embeds from all the different services compared side-by-side.[The embed feature is unavailable with ThinkFree Docs and Google PowerPoint inside GMail.]

Though we compared SlideShare and Zoho Show in the past, it’s probably time to revisit the topic with the entry of some very good PowerPoint players like the one from SplashCast and Scribd.

Scribd [review] - This may surprise some but Scribd is an excellent place for uploading PowerPoint files. The big advantage of using Scribd is that visitors can search inside the content of your PPT files right inside the viewer. Another feature unique to Scribd is Zoom which is not available in any of the other PowerPoint players. And you can select the slide number that should load at the beginning.

SplashCast - This “one size fits all” web player allows you to embed PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, MP3 songs, videos and photographs right inside one player. And you know what - SplashCast gives a skinless PPT player - the navigation bar is visible only when the visitors wants to see else it remains neatly hidden. The transition effects between slides are again very impressive.

SlideShare [review] - The most popular PowerPoint hosting service is also the most convenient one. Upload, grab the Flash embed code and paste. Slideshare create a text transcript of your PowerPoint presentations making it easier for search engines to discover your content. Presenters can learn which websites are embedding their PPT presentations which is such a useful feature. The SlideShare player looks good but you cannot resize it and there’s no autoplay option. Supports multiple uploads in one go.

Zoho Show [review] - Zoho is the only service to provide an IFRAME based embed code though the player is done in Adobe Flash like other services. With Zoho Show, viewers can jump to any slide by selecting the slide name from the drop-down in the player bar. They can also select the slide transition duration and run the slideshow. Zoho Show lets you edit your existing presentations before sharing them.

SlideAware [review] - Unlike other PowerPoint hosting services, SlideAware is mostly paid but they do have a free plan which should work for lot of presenters. The PowerPoint player of SlideAware can be resized and you can decide what buttons to display on the player skin. SlideAware provides excellent viewership stats per PPT slide - you’ll know who viewed your Presentation, when they viewed it and how long they spent on each slide.

Live Example:
You can also compare all the different PowerPoint players. Here’s a quick recommendation:

Recommendations:
If you a have a long text-based PPT, use Scribd since visitors can quickly search for text phrases.

If you want to edit the PPT online before sharing, Zoho Show is the way to go.

If you want to integrate the PowerPoint presentation with pictures from Flickr, videos from YouTube and even MP3, SplashCast is the perfect service for you. Very clean interface.

If you want a quick and easy way for sharing (multiple) PPTs, go with Slideshare. Your presentation will gain maximum visibility here.

Source: www.labnol.blogspot.com

There are always two steps to giving a presentation, and because of that there are two steps in which poor choices are made. The first is always going to be the organizational phase. The organizational phase is when all the information for a presentation is gathered, sorted and processed into a presentation. The number one mistake here is that it is done too late. Procrastinating to the night before can be hard not to do, but even giving yourself an extra day can help improve the presentation drastically.

The next example of bad presentation skills is poor ordering. Simply throwing together all the information will create a hard to deliver and hard to understand presentation. Along with the technical aspects of the organization phase, it’s often viewed in bad light when you don’t write anything down at all. Some people can naturally organize things in their head, but all people will benefit from putting it down on paper, even if it takes a little more time. These are the bad presentation skills that you should avoid during the organizational phase.

The next phase, delivery, has just as many poor presentation skills. The first and most common is muttering or speaking softly. While many people are shy in front of crowds, muttering and speaking quietly will only draw more attention to you than if you were to speak in a reasonable manner in the first place; on top of that it makes your presentation impossible to understand. The next example of bad presentation skills is ignoring the audience. Without acknowledging they are there or making eye contact the audience usually loses interest in what you have to say fast, and that will make your entire presentation wasted. Finally, don’t acknowledge mistakes during the presentation. It’s fine to discuss and reflect on how you could have done better afterwards, but don’t interrupt the flow of the presentation to dwell on a mispronounced word or mistake, simply correct yourself and move on; often times an audience won’t even realize that you had made a mistake, so acknowledging it in this fashion only makes it more pronounced. These are the bad presentation skills related to delivery.

Sure, you could invest in a dedicated prototyping tool, but you can create surprisingly quick and effective prototypes with a software program that’s probably sitting on your hard drive right now. It’s PowerPoint—and no, I am not kidding.

I’ve met many designers who use PowerPoint for blocking out screens without ever discovering the interactive features for creating hyperlinks, buttons, and dynamic mouseover effects. Yes, PowerPoint can do all that. When I show people an interactive PowerPoint prototype, someone inevitably asks what I created it in. The reaction is always the same: “PowerPoint can do that?”

Overview

To see what PowerPoint can do, here’s a sample interactive prototype created in Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 for Windows. (Important: View the document in slideshow mode to see the interactivity. Links and orange buttons are clickable.)

Though there are other prototyping tools out there, here are the main reasons I lean toward PowerPoint:

• It’s fast. You can try something, hate it, and try something else—all in a matter of minutes.

• It’s low-fidelity. A PowerPoint mockup doesn’t try to look exactly like the final product, so it’s easy to work on high-level design issues and not get bogged down in details like colors or exact text. I also like being able to jot down notes in the margins of an early design, which I’ve never found a good way of doing in HTML or Flash.

• Everyone has it. One of the great things about PowerPoint is that the people on your team usually have it. You can easily email a PowerPoint prototype to people for review and feedback.

Basic Interactivity

To begin, create a simple PowerPoint mockup, each slide depicting a separate screen in your site or application. You can use shapes, text, and clipart to populate the screens. I like to leave a little space in the margins for notes and half-baked ideas.

Once your basic mockup is in place, you can add hyperlinks to text, shapes, or images. The links won’t be active in regular working mode; in slide show view, clicking on a linked object will go to a specific target screen.

Ready to give it a try? Let’s take a look at how to do it.

Note about versions: The detailed steps and screenshots in this article apply to PowerPoint 2003 for Windows. It’s possible to achieve similar results using other Windows versions of PowerPoint, but please be aware that the exact steps will vary.

Hyperlinking Text

Voila! The text is now hyperlinked. View the PowerPoint as a slideshow to see it in action.
Hint: PowerPoint automatically applies a style to text links, but only if you apply the hyperlink to the text itself, not the box around the text. You’ll probably want to change the default sea-foam green color. Here’s how:

1. Open the “Slide Design” panel from the Format menu
2. Click on “Color Schemes”
3. Click on the “Edit Color Schemes” option, which appears at the bottom of the screen.

Two settings control the color of links: The “Accent and hyperlink” color (for active links) and the “Accented and followed hyperlink” color (for visited links).

Creating Buttons and Hyperlinked Images

Follow the same basic process to create buttons and images that link to other screens.

Right-click on the image or button. (I use a simple rectangle to represent a button.)

Hint: Try giving hyperlinked buttons a different color so you (and reviewers) can tell which ones are active in the prototype.

Simulating the Back Button

PowerPoint has a “back” control, but it steps back to the previous slide in the presentation. With hyperlinks, this may not be the slide the user just viewed.
If you want a back button that lets the user get back to the screen he came from, you’ll need to build it yourself. Here’s how:

That’s it! Now, when viewed in slideshow mode, this link will take the user back to the screen he just viewed.
Hint: Even without a back button, you can go back in slideshow mode by right-clicking anywhere on a slide and selecting “Last Viewed.” However, keep in mind that other people who click through your prototype might not know this.

Advanced Interactivity

PowerPoint can go beyond basic hyperlinks and simulate dynamic behavior, such as mouseover effects for a Rich Internet Application.

Creating Mouseover Effects

Start with two slides: one “before” the mouseover effect and one “after.”

On the “before” slide, right-click on the item that will trigger the mouseover effect, and select “Action Settings…”

second dialog box will let you select the “After” slide.

Now, in slide show view, mousing over the item you selected will switch to the target slide: the one that shows the “after” mouseover effect.

Hint: There’s no “mouse out” effect in PowerPoint. The best way I’ve found to simulate it is a bit clunky, but it gets the job done:

1. On the “After” slide, draw some boxes around the item you want to apply the mouse-out effect to.
2. Apply a mouseover action to the boxes around the object. (For example, if you want to return to the previous slide when you mouse off an item, give the boxes around the item a mouseover effect that returns to the previous slide.)
3. Make the surrounding boxes transparent.

Mouseover behaviors can get out of control quickly in PowerPoint. This is partly because creating the mouse-out behavior is awkward, and partly because you need to create “after” screens for each individual mouseover effect. PowerPoint can help you try out a mouseover behavior (e.g., wire up a single example), but for prototypes with lots of dynamic effects—or many instances of the same effect—you’re probably better off with another tool.

Other Tips & Tricks

Use slide masters for persistent navigation

If your mockup uses a persistent navigation framework (tabs, left navigation items, etc.), create the navigation elements in a slide master, and apply hyperlinks that lead from the master to individual screens. This way, each slide you create will already have the navigation built in. If you need to make changes, edit the master and the changes will automatically apply throughout the prototype.

Disable standard slideshow controls

Even with interactive elements in place, PowerPoint continues to work like a slideshow: clicking a slide advances to the next one. This can be disorienting for people using your prototype. When they click on something you didn’t make interactive (which—trust me—they will), the slideshow will advance to something that doesn’t make sense.

To avoid this confusion, I suggest turning off the slideshow behavior. Your hyperlinks will still work, but clicking outside them won’t advance the slideshow.

Note: In PowerPoint 2007 for Windows Vista, this feature is under the “Action” item on the Insert ribbon.

Conclusion

It’s possible to take the interactivity a step further with the Control Toolbox and ActiveX controls in PowerPoint, but I find that the techniques outlined here are all I need for early-stage prototypes. They help me test-drive an interactive design, get feedback, and make improvements early in the process.

Of course, PowerPoint isn’t right for every project. Here are some trade-offs to keep in mind if you’re deciding whether PowerPoint is a good fit for what you’re doing:

• Sample interactions vs. all interactions. PowerPoint works well for creating a skeleton of a site or application and for testing individual interactions. But since it’s not especially object-oriented, it can be awkward to apply the same basic interaction to multiple things. For example, imagine a list where each item leads to a separate details screen. You can do this in PowerPoint, but each individual page and each individual link need to be created manually. It’s a lot of work, you wind up with a huge file, and God help you if you need to modify anything. Keep PowerPoint in mind for sample interactions, but if you’re looking to build a complete prototype where everything is truly functional, keep looking.
• Low-fidelity vs. high-fidelity. PowerPoint is great for testing interactivity, but it won’t give you a realistic sense of what any one screen will really look like. You’re not going to get a sense of exact layout from PowerPoint. Also, remember that PowerPoint screens don’t scroll, so if you’re designing for the Web, your mockups won’t necessarily get a full-size picture of any one screen.

Overall, PowerPoint can be a blessing for interaction designers who want to create interactive prototypes quickly and easily. Interactive PowerPoint mockups can give a flavor for how a site or application will feel when you move through it—which is what interaction design is all about.

Source: www.boxesandarrows.com

This slideshow feature of GMail will be useful since you no longer have to download the full PPT attachment in order to view that 16th slide of the presentation.

Here are two additional situations where it may help:

1. If you have to view a presentation on some computer that has no copy of PowerPoint, gmail yourself the PPT file and watch the slides inside the web browser. [similar to converting PDF to text using GMail]

2. GMail converts every slide of your Powerpoint presentation to a Flash (swf) file - if you manually advance the entire PPT slideshow using the arrows, all the slides will become available as Flash files in your browser’s temp folder.

Just a quick way of transforming Powerpoint slides into SWF documents without using any desktop conversion software. The swf files may then be embedded in your blog for sharing with readers. Nothing great since Scribd can also convert your PPT to Flash paper.

Do you know if GMail Powerpoint viewer can read PPS (Powerpoint Show) formats.

Source: www.labnol.blogspot.com

The problem with PowerPoint is that you need to become a multi-media guru to use it effectively! From flashing text to animated images, it’s great if you have hours to indulge your creative passion, but on the most part, if you don’t’ know what you are doing, it can turn into a dot point disaster. To take the stress out of your learning process, let me illustrate seven key ideas to ensure your PowerPoint presentation is not an invitation to switch off!

1. TRY NOT TO USE ALL THE BELLS AND WHISTLES IN THE ONE PRESENTATION.

Use the KISS principle - Keep it Simple Sweetheart. A master of anything knows that less is always best. You need action BUT you also need inaction.

2. TRY TO BE CONSISTENT IN YOUR STYLING AND CHOICE OF IMAGES.

A sloppy presentation will give the impression that you don’t really know what you are doing. Different background colours on each page, different sized headers, different size text and inconsistency in the colour of texts and style of images all point to a lack of skill. A PowerPoint presentation is like creating a book or a magazine. People are conditioned to expect that each page will have the relevant information located in the same places. They also want to be visually stimulated by interesting imagery. You can get some great free images online at places like http://www.sxc.hu, so don’t just rely on Microsoft for your images.

3. TRY TO AVOID USING THE PRESET SOUNDS

Its lovely that PowerPoint has some preset sounds like applause, bells and typewriter but for most these are just plain annoying noise. If you want to add some sounds, find professional sound library and select sounds that add rather than take away from your presentation. Also, avoid the trap of sending people off to sleep with the beautiful piano or peace themed background music.

4. BE CAREFUL WITH YOUR CHOICE OF COLORS.

Remember that some colors are hard to read on different colored backgrounds, especially if you are presenting to older people who find text on the dark shades difficult to interpret.

5. PRACTICE THE PRESENTATION USING THE TIMING FEATURE

If you practice first, you will know that you are going to be able to get through the presentation in the set time frame. Don’t forget to allow time for interruptions and questions. Real people use up time. Unlike using notes and winging it, you can’t easily jump ahead a slide or two if you are running out of time, so bear this in mind when creating your presentation.

6. INTERSPERSE YOUR PRESENTATION WITH ACTIVITIES.

Get people actively engaged in discussions and in activities as at the end of the session you will find they are far more satisfied if they have been able to participate. With modern media containing flashing images and fast changing visual stimulus, people are conditioned to a flashy visual feast. If you put them in front of a dot pointed PowerPoint for hours on end, they are going to switch off. Mix it up for their sake.

7. VIEW THE POWERPOINT AS A SUPPORT, NOT THE MAIN SHOW

Try not to just read each slide out aloud as you don’t have to be a subject specialist to read dot points. You may as well give them a print out of the slide show and send them away. While we are on the dot points, PowerPoint exists for summarised information. If you type big blocks of text you will have to use a number of successive pages to fit it all in, so try to avoid long blocks of text. A simple handout can help you to overcome the need for more detailed information. Use dot points to effect by choosing your words carefully

I remember how joyful I was when I first started using PowerPoint back in the early 1990’s. Unfortunately, since then I have sat through too many boring PowerPoint presentations where the presenter had limited imagination and no creativity. I still believe that PowerPoint can be a powerful tool for creating animated presentations if you but it requires the user to take the time to investigate what the program can do.

As a Business Trainer that often gets rated at the top end of the scale, my advice is: be creative if you want, but remember that at the end of the day, artwork is subjective and people’s tastes often differ! You don’t need to be a multi-media guru to put on a great presentation, however, following the seven rules presented will start you on the process and ensure your presentation does become a dot point disaster!
Source: www.helium.com

SlideShare is a great online application that lets you upload and share PowerPoint presentations (or Keystone for Mac users and OpenOffice presentations for those of you who are open source minded). Back when the company launched in October 2006, Techcrunch hailed them as Powerpoint and YouTube combined. PowerPoint presentations showcased in a YouTube interface, a perfect solution to sharing with or showing to a group.

Presentations are hosted online and you can provide a unique URL for each of your slide shows. You can tag your presentation for others to find it online, and choose favourites or get inspired by other members. SlideShare also allows you to imbed your uploaded presentation into another website or blog, so that you can host your presentation on their site, but make it available anywhere.

One possible drawback is that all files have to be made public and are searchable by the SlideShare network. Not a huge deal by and large, but it may make you think twice before you add any slides with financials or confidential company data.

SlideShare recently added a new feature to make their application even more powerful. Slidecasting allows users to sync a PowerPoint presentation with an mp3 file.

Slidecasting is a new multimedia format for viewing slide decks synchronized with an audio file. It is for conference talks, musical slideshows, audio picture books or whatever else you can imagine.

Slidecasting is like a PowerPoint presentation crossed with a podcast, and it provides an excellent free option for online demos - without large scale, expensive (and often clunky) applications. Best of all it’s free, and doesn’t require plugins or players like Java and Flash. Slidecasting takes Slideshare even further down the PowerPoint + YouTube path, and offering a versatile tool for sharing ideas.
Source: www,webnamesblog.ca

Yesterday Laurence talked about the challenges that a multitude of interfaces can present a solution builder, specifically in the context of ECM, and today Billy added his thoughts.
While both posts seem to be focused more on visual interfaces (UI) than
non-visual interfaces, the concerns raised apply to interfaces in
general.

Here are my thoughts:

• I very much agree that it’s more a matter of should than can.
  Is the new UI or user experience relevant to my business? Does a new
  experience enable the retirement of any other experiences? Does a new
  experience lower training costs (e.g. is it more intuitive to my users)?
• At some level, all user experiences from a vendor should be
  consistent. However, one must also consider where ultimate experience
  control resides. For example, I see at least two major categories of
  users where ECM applications are concerned: (1) those who prefer a
  standalone experience, typically within their web browser of choice,
  and (2) those who prefer that the vendor provide an integrated
  experience within the primary applications serving the business’s
  knowledge work (e.g. Office applications, a third party portal, etc.).
• I agree with Laurence: UI should serve the task at hand; not the
  other way around. You have a job to accomplish and the provided
  experience should clarify and simplify that job–even anticipate next
  steps, etc.
• How a business is run and wants to be run will determine whether or
  not a solution has one or more graphical/visual aspects. Knowledge work
  is becoming more specialized; so, each user experience should be
  tailored specifically to the particular link in the value chain it
  serves. Some have called this approach “purpose-built applications” or
  “task-centric experiences.” At the same time, there are horizontal
  (cross-cutting) concerns with visual needs, too (e.g. CIO dashboards,
  BAM, management consoles for admins, etc.).

When you provide presentation tier code as part of your
solution–”whole cloth UI’s” as Billy calls them, you should acknowledge
that users can be a fickle bunch (read: today’s Lexus experience will
become a Yugo eventually–it’s a matter of when, not if).

So you should have a well-factored architecture that separates
business logic and services, which serve all your UI’s, from
application logic and services, which serve a particular UI (e.g.
web-based, Office-based, etc.). Doing so, should produce a “thin
veneer” for a presentation layer, which is easier to evolve or replace.
Again, the UI serves the task at hand; over time, a new UI may serve the task better.
Source: www.craigrandall.net

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We have found ourselves in the business world so concerned about being politically correct, well practiced and prepared for anything that we have forgotten that all presentations to be effective must be heard, they must be engaging, and they must be interesting enough to listen to when the speaker is delivering the information.

Middleton doesn’t use power point presentations (3P).

He has convinced me that I will not use them much any more either, except when I am faced with the CEO who will have it no other way.

When making a presentation to our audience, even if it is an informational and educational piece, the objective should be to get the audience to understand and appreciate our point of view.

We are faced with the challenge of getting the listener to, at the least, understand our position and be sympathetic to it.

Power point presentation, no matter how well done they are, simply won’t accomplish that for you.

Middleton points out that this is what you must do to persuade the audience to your viewpoint.  

Have a Purpose

The presentation must be an organized set of points. It is best told as a story, and certainly here in West Kentucky we understand the importance of good story telling. The story must have a theme (a reason) for being told and it must lead to a logical conclusion.  

Start with a Problem

Your audience will listen to you, if you explain to them the problem at hand. What is at risk if the problem is not solved? Make it clear how the problem is not only your problem but their problem as well. What happens to them if they don’t fix the problem?  

Direct Them Towards a Payoff

Remember our audience is interested only in the WIIFM - “What’s in it for them (me)?” If you can clearly explain what they can get out of doing, whatever it is you want them to do, and how it benefits them if they do it, then you have them hooked and will have their “buy-in.” Paint their future for them and explain the “payoff” clearly and how it will look, feel, sound and be different when they have completed the tasks.  

Explain What They Need to Do

The main focus of the presentation should be this. Outline your approach in detail and how to take each step forward. This is where most people feel compelled to do the dreaded 3P. However, you don’t need fancy slides, or even any slides to get this done. Simply, think clearly, outline the points, use good logic and lots of engaging stories to make your points.  

Ask for Action

Make your case and then ask them to take the next step forward with you. Ask the audience to adopt your position, take your stand, and take the next step as you have clearly outlined it.  

Be Spontaneous

If you have a good story to tell, that makes your case and a good presentation to give, you can stop being worried about being careful. When we are authentic with ourselves, and our audience, both parties know it, understand it, feel it, hear it in our language and see it in our actions.
Source: www.darrylarmstrong.wordpress.com

Setting up Powerpoint for graphics editing

Under the view menu select grids and guides. Select snap objects to grid and select 1/16th as the grid size. Make sure the display grid on screen checkbox is checked. On the right side menu click the “blank” layout box (this gets the annoying text boxes out of your way)

Under the view menu select toolbars and make sure the drawing toolbar has a check mark next to it.

The drawing toolbar is where you will import your graphics, select AutoShapes, and select WordArt.

Importing Your Pictures

Once you have your screen setup you can import your first picture. To do this click on the insert picture icon from the drawing toolbar, select the picture file you want to import, and click OK. This will put your picture on the screen.

Click and drag the corner handles of the picture to resize it. Don’t use the center handles as this will distort the picture. Resize the picture to the size you want it. In the case of this tutorial I resized the picture to 2 grid blocks high by three grid blocks wide. In my version of Powerpoint, each grid box represents approximately 150 pixels, so my resized picture will be 300 pixels high by 450 pixels wide.

This is a good size for e-mail and the resulting file size will be much smaller than the original picture.

To Save The Resized Picture: Right click on your resized picture and click Save As Picture from the menu. For a finished picture that you want to e-mail or use on your website, chose the JPG format. This will result in the smallest file size. If you are going to bring your picture back into Powerpoint for use with AutoShapes, use the PNG or TIF format.

File Size Reduction: Resizing our picture from almost full screen to a 2×3 grid size resulted in a much reduced file size when saved as a JPG.

Original size: 600H x 900W = 256K 

Reduced size: 300H x 450W = 14K

When you send pictures by e-mail, a small file size is a must for people who have dial up internet connections. Using Powerpoint is a quick way to modify your large digital camera pics for sending by e-mail.

Adding a Border To Our Picture: To add a quick border to our picture, right click on your resized picture and click Format Picture. In the box that opens select the Colors & Lines tab. In the Line section, set the color, line type, and size in the boxes. Click OK.

You can create some interesting borders easily with this tool. Experiment with different colors and line sizes until you get the look you want. By clicking on the color box and selecting patterned lines, you can create all sorts of creative borders. Experiment and have fun with this tool.

Importing Pictures Into AutoShapes: You can easily import your pictures into different AutoShapes as a background for a lot of creative effects. Using the grid decide how big you want your final picture to be.

In the example above I resized my original picture to two grid blocks high by three grid blocks wide. I saved the reduced size picture as a PNG file to my computer.

I then created an AutoShape from the AutoShape menu (On the Drawing Toolbar) that was the same size. I dragged the AutoShape to two grid blocks high by three grid blocks wide. Now I had a picture and a shape that were both the same size.

To import my saved picture as a background, I right clicked on my AutoShape and clicked Format Auto Shape from the menu. In the box that comes up, click on the color box under the fill section . Then click on the Fill Effects selection. In the resulting box, click on the Picture tab. In the picture dialog box click the Select Picture box and select the reduced picture you saved to your computer above. Make sure to click a checkmark into the Lock Picture Aspect Ratio checkbox. Click OK.

Your picture will now be the background of your AutoShape. In our picture above you can see some of the great graphics you can create using this technique. Make sure you save the resulting pictures as PNG files so they will have transparent edges. You can use these great graphics on web pages, word documents, and objects in your next Powerpoint presentation.

Here is a full size example showing the transparent edges and great quality of the PNG file. Have fun with this and experiment with different AutoShapes, colors, and border effects.
Source: www.successbeginstoday.org

The PowerPoint viewer is pretty simple. When you click on “View as a slideshow” a new browser tab opens up with the first slide. You can click back and forth, but you can’t organize the slides or edit them in any way.

Google does plan to add presentations to its online office suite this summer. In April the company purchased Tonic Systems, a company with experience in document conversion and presentation applications. The email preview option is probably just a sneak peak of things to come.

It’s still pretty useful. Most computer users can go their whole lives without ever needing to create a slideshow presentation. But it’s pretty handy to have an application that can read them without shelling out the big bucks on Office. Of course, there’s always Open Office, but if all you need is a presentation viewer, installing Open Office is sort of like swatting at a fly with a shotgun.
Source: www.fanpotai.wordpress.com

Tip #1 Get on the same version
If at all possible, everyone should work on the same version of PowerPoint that will be used to present with. I had a situation earlier this year with a client where their older version of PowerPoint did not support some of the animation and transparency features that I had used in designing the slides. In this case I had to design down to the version they were using.

Tip #2 Use viewer if necessary
One solution to different versions of PowerPoint being used is to use the PowerPoint Viewer to be able to see the presentation as it has been designed. The Viewer is available for download from Microsoft and will allow you to show the latest features even if you have an older version of the full PowerPoint program.

Tip #3 Keep Updated
Make sure that everyone on the team has updated their version of PowerPoint with the latest service packs from Microsoft. I recently had a client that kept seeing a black box around some graphics I had created. It turned out that it was because I was using a transparent background in the graphic and without the service pack, it would not appear properly. Once they updated their PowerPoint, everything looked fine.

Tip #4 Meet via the Web
One of the best investments I made last year was signing up for a web meeting tool. It allows me to schedule a web meeting to review slides or to spontaneously show examples to a client who has just called me. Last year I completed a project that had people in the U.S. and the U.K. and myself in Canada where we never met each other in person. It was all done via web meetings and they were thrilled at the way it worked at the time and cost savings. You can check out the service I use at snipurl.com/webinarhost

Don’t be concerned the next time you have to collaborate with colleagues on a presentation. Follow good presentation practices, like setting goals and preparing an outline before you start, and use the above tips to make the creation run smoothly.

Featured in the Members Site this week is a video on how to download and use the PowerPoint Viewer mentioned in tip #2 above. I carry it with me on a USB drive just in case the computer I am presenting from has an old version of PowerPoint. Not a member? Join at members.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.
Source: www.pptideas.blogspot.com

You can also add comments to slides in a PowerPoint presentation. The comments are sort of like side notes.

To add a comment in PowerPoint 2007:

1. Click the appropriate slide within a presentation.
2. On the Review tab, in the Comments group, click New Comment.
3. Type in the information you want to appear in the comment and click outside the comment box.

Source: www.lockergnome.com

PowerPoint 2000 and 2002 contain two features to do this:

The Speaker Notes feature lets you add notes during a presentation. From slide show view, right-click and choose Speaker Notes. A dialog box opens, where you can type notes for each slide. These notes are automatically added to the Notes pane and you can see them afterwards in normal view.

The Meeting Minder feature (from slide show view, right-click and choose Meeting Minder) lets you take minutes and assign action items to individuals with a due date. You can view them later in PowerPoint from slide show view by opening the Meeting Minder again, or export them to Microsoft Word, where you need to save the document. Content on the Action Items tab becomes a separate slide, called Action Items.

I think these features are very useful, but Microsoft apparently doesn’t. I assume that their research showed that people didn’t use them. PowerPoint 2003 didn’t include the Meeting Minder. Then PowerPoint 2007 removed Speaker Notes! You now need to return to pen and paper — or do you?

The following technique comes from Sonia Coleman’s site; the credit for this tip goes to her.

1. Create your presentation.
2. Insert a new slide at the beginning of the presentation; you can give it a title of “Notes” or “Minutes.” This slide is now slide 1.
3. Add a blank action button; the Action Settings dialog box automatically opens. Choose the Hyperlink To option and choose Last Slide Viewed from the drop-down list. Click OK. This will return you to your current slide when you’re done entering notes. Type Return to label the button. (If typing doesn’t work, right-click the button, and choose Add Text. )

4. Choose Slide Show > Set Up (Slide) Show. In the Show Slides section of the dialog box, choose the From option and change the first number to 2. This starts your presentation at slide 2, so that the Notes slide never appears until you hyperlink to it. Click OK.

5. Choose View > Toolbars > Control Toolbox. (In PowerPoint 2007, click the Developer tab. If you don’t have a Developer tab, click the Office button at the upper-left corner, and choose PowerPoint Options. On the Popular pane, check the Show Developer Tab in the Ribton check box. Click OK.)
6. Click the Text Box button  and drag a rectangle on your slide with enough width to comfortably enter notes.

7. With the text box selected, right-click and choose Properties to display the Properties sheet. Click the Categorized tab. Change the settings marked with arrows as shown here:

• Value: Provides pre-entered text if you want it. The Data item automatically changes to match the Value item.
• EnterKeyBehavior: Set to True so that pressing Enter starts a new line.
• MultilLine: Set to True so that the text box can have multiple lines of text.
• WordWrap: Set to True so that the text wraps if you enter a long line of text.
• Font: Choose a font that you’re sure will exist on the computer you’re presenting on.
• ScrollBars: Set to 2-fmScrollBarsVertical to display a vertical scrollbar when you add enough text.

Feel free to play with the other settings to see if they’re useful to you.

8. Close the Properties window by clicking its Close button.
9. To make the Notes slide available from all other slides, open the slide master (View > Master > Master Slide; View > Slide Master in 2007) and insert the blank action button. From the Hyperlink drop-down list, choose Slide. In the Hyperlink to Slide dialog box, choose 1.Notes. Click OK. (You can’t choose First Slide, because that’s slide 2!) As you did earlier, add a lable such as Add Notes, or similar text. Close the Slide Master. If you want access to the Notes slide from only certain slides, add individual action buttons on those slides instead of on the slide master.

10. If you want to use this presentation as a template for future presentations, save it and then save it again under a new name. Use the new presentation for now. You can go back to the first presentation and delete all the content from slides 2 on, so that it really works as a template.
11. Test the presentation. When you open it in slide show view, it should start with slide 2. On any slide that has a button (all of them if you put the button on the slide master), click the Return Add Notes button to go to the Notes slide. You can enter text in the text box. When you’re done, click Return to return to the previous slide you were on.

Because all the notes go on the same Notes slide, you may want to start each note with a notation about the slide you’re working on, perhaps by entering its title.

If you add text to test the text box, you can always delete it in normal view.

After the presentation, when you return to normal view, you’ll be prompted to save the file when you close it. Saving the file will save the notes.

Later, you can open the file in normal view. To copy and paste the notes, select the text box, right-click, and choose TextBox Object > Edit. You’ll now be able to select the text, copy it, and paste it.
Source: www.ellenfinkelstein.com

PowerPoint 2003 has enhanced the slide sorter feature to make it a little simpler to reorganize and reorder your slides. Once your presentation is open, click View and select Normal. Your slides will appear as thumbnails in a list on the left side of the window. You can display any slide in a larger view by clicking on the appropriate thumbnail. If you want to quickly change the order of the slides, simply click a thumbnail, drag it, and drop it where you want the slide located in the list of thumbnails.
Source: www.lockergnome.com

Getting started

• Plan what you want to put on the slides (which will be different to, and much less than, what you want to say!)
• Start, end and middle etc. Find the images you might need and save them somewhere. If you intend to use links to web sites, store them as Favourites or Bookmarks
• Use the defaults. Leave the fonts alone. Type where suggested. Ignore all the designs and groovy backgrounds (at least until the content is finished)
• Use supplied slide layouts. Don’t add your own text areas to a blank slide unless all your doing is a picture show
• Use a Master slide for anything that needs to appear on every slide (like a corporate logo, name, date etc.

Source: www.studyzone.pbwiki.com

“It takes one hour of preparation for each minute of presentation time.”

- Wayne Burgraff

Note: This guest post was written by personal development blogger Scott Young. You can check out his website here.

Communication is a skill. That means if you want to blow the interviewer away, knock them out with your slide show or have them cheering after your speech you need to practice. Unfortunately since formal presentations, interviews and speeches are often an infrequent occurrence, you can’t become a master overnight.

But even in my own limited speaking I’ve discovered a couple hacks that can be used to improve your communication right away. They can work immediately to give you an edge in an upcoming event.

Hack #1: Rephrase Questions

When you get asked a question, spend a few seconds to rephrase the question. If you are giving a speech to an audience this has the first benefit of clearly stating the audience members question for everyone to hear. But the hidden benefit of doing this is that it gives you a few extra seconds to prepare a response.

Polished professional speakers and interview veterans can prepare for common questions in advance with a great reply. But if you don’t have the experience or a question throws you off balance, you can maintain composure by rephrasing the question. To everyone it looks as if you immediately knew an eloquent response, but in reality you were given a few seconds to process a response.

Hack #2: Pause, Don’t Trip

When you are nervous, everything get’s magnified. During an interview, speech or presentation forgetting what you intended to say or losing your flow of speech can be terrifying. When this happens remember to stop and take a deep breath. This pause feels incredibly unnatural for the speaker, but it is usually barely noticed by the audience.

Pausing is far better than tripping over your words and making incoherent sentences. Most people end up speaking too fast when they feel nervous, so intentionally slowing down and taking time to pause can prevent tripping over your words which is a lot more noticeable.

Hack #3: Write Out the Tricky Parts

If you have to talk for over five or ten minutes, it can be difficult and incredibly time-consuming to prepare every single word of your speech and memorize it. Many professional speakers instead choose to just write major topic headings so they understand the structure but can deliver the speech naturally.

When you get a chance to practice your presentation, notice points where you trip up. These are usually the same points you will have trouble with when presenting. Write out those few sentences word for word before presenting. The easy parts of your speech will continue to flow and you can be thoroughly prepared to handle the harder parts.

Hack #4: Watch Your Apologies

Never apologize when the goal of that apology is to soften the criticism of the audience. Some speakers apologize for appearing nervous when giving a speech. The truth is most the people in the audience wouldn’t have realized the speaker was nervous until he apologized for it. Apologizing from where you lack confidence only draws more attention to your weaknesses and detracts from your performance.

Apologies for legitimate errors are acceptable, but apologies designed to elicit sympathy won’t help your performance.

Hack #5: Don’t Distract With Powerpoint

Powerpoint presentations are very popular among presenters. But remember that as a speaker you want the focus to be on you. Slides should enhance your presentation, not form a backup. If I can get all the information I need out of your slides, why should I pay attention to you?

If you watch any presentations done by hugely successful speaker and marketer Seth Godin, you quickly notice how many of his slides are nothing more than a single image or word. These slides enhance the message he is trying to convey but they don’t steal the spotlight since they don’t contain enough information to distract.

If you are going to be doing a lot of presentations, interviews or formal communications in your work or life, I’d suggest joining Toastmasters. A non-profit organization dedicated to improving communication skills they can give you practice. But if you are concerned about an approaching presentation you’ll just have to hack it.
Source: www.ririanproject.com

- Click the Add Effect button on the task pane
- Select Entrance
- Select More Effects What appears is every animation effect available to you.

They are grouped into four categories: Basic, Subtle, Moderate and Obnoxious (actually, the fourth category is Exciting, but they can be considered obnoxious if you’re not careful in choosing them). When you click on one, you’ll see the bulleted list come in using that animation. (Don’t worry that all bullets come in one after another at this point. Once you’ve actually selected it, you can control when they arrive). By clicking OK, you select that animation for that list. You’ll notice that the bulleted list will have small numbers in a square box next to their position on the slide. This will tell you the order in which they will appear. (Hmmm, does this mean I can modify that to bring them in the order I choose - you bet it does!). You’ll see a reference to the animation which you chose in a box beneath the Add Effect button. Some options you can easily control include: - Start - By default, the animations appear when you click your mouse. Do you want them to appear simultaneously? Select “With Previous”. How about timed? Try “After Previous” (with the little clock next to it, it’s a dead giveaway)

- Direction - Need I describe what this does? (try it…you’ll like it).
- Speed - See above comment. Now, if you’re really adventurous, click the drop down arrow next to the animation listing in box below Direction and Speed. A world of customization options appear. One choice you may want to play with is “Effect Options”. This leads you further down the road of customizing your animation to your liking. So remember, Slide Transition applies a transition effect from one slide to another (and is best used with a single transition per presentation). Animation focuses on movement within a single slide. So, Death to PowerPoint? I think not.  Death to speakers who don’t know how to use PowerPoint properly? Now you’re on to something.
Source: www.schoollibraryjournal.com