One trick is to display your posts at the top of your main page, so they will be instantly accessible. One of the tools that you can use to do this is Wibbitz, a web service that will help you feature the latest contents of your blog as an interactive blog posts slideshow.

Building The Player

Basically, Wibbitz will help you collect your blog posts (either using RSS or direct links), and then compile them as a slideshow video. Similar to other web services, you should register before you can start building your slideshow player. After registering, you can build as many players as you need. Then you can continue customizing the player.

Start by naming your player with something that you can remember easily. If you want to create more than one player for your blog, it’s advisable to name the players similar to the blog name.

Other details that you need to fill in are the website’s URL, the text that you want to appear on the launcher, and also the theme.

There are several themes (color combinations) available on the list. Choose one that you like and click “OK” to save.

You can also set the language, upload a logo and item image, and choose the background music.

Click “Next” to move on to the “Content” addition process. You can use your blog’s RSS feed URL, or you can use the direct links of the articles. The advantage of using an RSS feed is that the content of your slideshow will always be updated with your latest posts. But static links can also be useful if you want to keep certain posts always visible.

In the next step, you’ll get a script that you can put in your website to embed the slideshow player. This script is intended for general websites.

If you want to install the script on a blog, Wibbitz provides users with a more customized setup. Go to the lower parts of the page and choose the type of blog that you use. For WordPress, the basic setup is downloading and installing the plugin, then putting the script’s URL path into the plugin’s settings.

After you save your settings, you will be brought to your Dashboard. There are three panes there: “My players“, “Analytics“, and “What’s New“.

The “My Players” pane is the place where all of your players are listed. You can edit the player’s settings, view the statistics, refresh the code, or share the players via Facebook. You can also add more players here.

Adding The Slideshow Player To A WordPress Blog

I’ll use WordPress as an example since I only have a WordPress blog. To add the slideshow player to a WordPress blog, you have to download the plugin from Wibbitz and upload it to your blog(s).

Since the downloaded plugin is a .rar file, you have to extract the contents and recompress it into a .zip file. You can use almost any compression utility. One recommended free compression application is 7Zip.

The next step is to upload the plugin to your blog. Go to the “Install Plugins” menu and choose the “Upload” tab. Choose the file and click “Install Now“.

After installation, you will find “Wibbitz Configuration” in the side menu.

Enable the plugin by checking the box, fill in the “Wibbitz Player Path” with the script’s URL, and click the “Update Wibbitz Player” button.

After that a small “Play” button will appear on the left side of your blog. When you hover your mouse over it, the button will slide out with your launcher text written on it.

Clicking on the play button will open the Slideshow Player. The player will show articles from your blog. The article’s title will be written at the bottom of the frame, while the article’s main image is moving in the background. If the article has no main image, the background will display Wibbitz’ image.

The plugin only allows one RSS feed per blog, but that doesn’t mean that it should be the feed from the same blog. You can put feeds from one of your blogs into another blog’s slideshow player to cross-promote the content.

If you want to give your visitors some exposure to the articles that they might’ve missed, Wibbitz’ slideshow player is a good way to do so. Moreover, the player will not disturb your visitors as it hides silently at the side until your visitors choose to open it. Try to build one for your blog and tell us what you think about it using the comments below. If you want more permanent-style exposure, you could try SlideDeck.

Its beautifully designed and easily accessible features enable you to create, publish, and share your presentations without the hassle of uploading and downloading them to the Internet for updates and online collaboration. In addition, if you’re using SlideRocket for business purposes it’s a perfect interactive tool for your clients.

Stunning Features

If you have experience with PowerPoint or Apple‘s Keynote, SlideRocket won’t be a stranger to you. Many of its features are similar to the former programs, but without the extra panels that sometime get in the way of creating presentations.

SlideRocket includes about a dozen well designed themed master slides that can be customized for your particular needs. What makes SlideRocket a more practical platform is that all of your presentations and resources can be stored in one place, making it easy for you to access them on any computer with Internet access.

As SlideRocket is an online program, you can easily share and collaborate with others to create slide projects. SlideRocket won’t automatically save your presentations, but if for some reason you lose your Wi-Fi connection it will attempt to recover unsaved changes to your presentation.

Multimedia Support

Some of the newer features of SlideRocket include the ability to pull media resources such as photos from sites like the photo sharing site, Flickr, the stock media site, Fotolia, Google Spreadsheets, as well as your own computer.

Audio files included in SlideRocket must be purchased, but you can also import royalty-free music from programs like Apple‘s GarageBand and these online music sites.

Layout Features

SlideRocket includes a surprising number of layout and design tools that are comparable to what you would find in PowerPoint and say Photoshop Elements.

Beyond the ability to insert photos, movie files, charts, and audio files, SlideRocket enables you to do advance text formatting, layering and alignment of elements you add to slides. As you might expect, the program also includes a good variety of transition effects. They all may not be as dynamic as what you would find in PowerPoint and Keynote, but let’s be honest, how many presentations have you seen that were marred by the misuse of slide effects and animations?

The free version of SlideRocket includes 250MB of storage and 15MB file size; up to 5 multi-seat accounts, shared folders/items, shared libraries, public presentations, Google indexing of Presentations, PowerPoint import and printing and exporting to PDF format. The Pro version includes a lot more, but if you’re not creating presentations on a regular basis, the free version should suffice.

Presentation Formats

SlideRocket includes HTML 5 platform support, which means the presentations can be easily viewed in mobile applications like the iPhone and the iPad.

You can also download the SlideRocket Desktop Presenter which lets you synchronize presentations from your online account to your desktop. This is useful for occasions when don’t have a Wi-Fi connection. SlideRocket is also accessible as a Google Chrome application, providing a one-click process to your account.

Let us know what you think of SlideRocket. Do you find it easy to use? Also, check out these other alternatives to PowerPoint.

Zipcast is Slideshare’s newest feature, which essentially allows you to run a Ustream-style chat and meeting space. You are able to give a voice-over and video presence to the presentation and to control when the slides change. Meanwhile, your audience can chat about the presentation, meaning you’re able to monitor questions your audience might have in real time. It’s basically a very simple, free way to co-ordinate an online meeting.

If you like, you can learn a lot more about Zipcast by watching Robert Scoble’s video interview with the Slideshare Founder and CEO.

Start A Zipcast

The easiest way to start a Zipcast is to go to the presentation you wish to use and click on “Zipcast“. Yes, it’s possible to create a Zipcast on any public presentation on Slideshare.

Slideshare lets you choose whether to make your Zipcast public or private. Private Zipcasts are able to be password protected and ideal for company meetings, whereas public Zipcasts are perfect for teaching and sharing ideas on given subjects. Even if you choose not to have a password on a private Zipcast, your meeting will only be visible to those who have the URL. It won’t be listed in the Slideshare Zipcast listings.

Then all you need to do is set up your camera and microphone using Flash, then share details of your Zipcast meeting until you’ve got an audience.

Here’s what a Zipcast looks like in action. You can see the presenter video and the chat log on the right, the presentation on the left. Below this is a collection of pictures of the participants. Everything is all in one centralised location, so there’s no fuss.

Sharing On Social Media

When you start a Zipcast you are asked if you’d like to share the Zipcast on Facebook. It’s a great way to let your friends know you’ve started the meeting and tell them they can join in. Later, you can still easily invite people to join you. Also, if you’re chatting in a Zipcast you can share your messages on Facebook. I would have liked to see Twitter as an option there, too.

Limitations of Zipcasts

Things you can’t yet do with Slideshare’s Zipcast meetings:

• Scheduling.
• Recording.
• Allowing multiple users to lead the presentation.

However, all of these features are in the works (as shown in Robert Scoble’s video interview).Also, you can create your meeting URL ahead of time, then email people, create a Facebook event or use some other way of scheduling attendance for your Zipcast. You could also use a screencast creator to save your presentation along with the chat records.

Despite the limitations though, Slideshare’s Zipcasts are a lot easier to set up, use and manage than other online presentation systems I’ve seen, such as Vokle. I think it has a solid future ahead.

For Presentation Lovers

If you love Slideshare, you’ll enjoy these articles too:

• 4 Best Business Applications You Can Make Use Of On Facebook
• Create Your Own Virtual Learning Environment by Using Symbaloo
• How To Make A WordPress.com Blog Look Professional
• How To Make A visual Resumé With PowerPoint in 3 Steps and Stand Out From The Crowd
• 5 PowerPoint Search Engines to Seek Out Publicly Available Presentations
• 10 Places to Get Cool Media Clips for PowerPoint Presentations

If you’ve started a Zipcast or can think of a great way to use this service, let us know in the comments!

I recommend that the best way to explore the features of Keynote is not when you’re working on an actual project, but rather when you have the time to launch the program and explore its features when you”˜re not facing a deadline of completing an actual Keynote project. You’re more than likely to try advance techniques when you previously practiced using them.

In this tutorial, we’ll explore three techniques.

Magic Move

Probably the easiest but most powerful Keynote technique to learn is Magic Move. This effect is used when you want to accentuate one or more graphics or objects between two slides. Here’s how to set it up:

1. Launch Keynote software and select a basic template. Delete all the default graphics and text frames.
2. Locate three graphic files to practice with. If you click the Media Library in Keynote, you no doubt have three photos in your Photo library that you can use.

   

3. Add those three files to the first slide and reduce the size so they fit well on the slide. Don’t worry about styling at this point. We’re just focusing the feature technique itself.
4. Duplicate the slide (Edit > Duplicate, or select the slide — hold down the Option button and pull the slide down.)
5. In the duplicated slide, delete two of the graphics, and enlarge the third one by a little. Re-select the first slide.
6. Now open the Inspector (View > New Inspector) and select the “Slide inspector”. This button is for transition effects between slides, where’s the “Build selector” to its right is for effects within a slide.

   

7. Click on the Effect drop-down menu and select “Magic Move”. Next select “Automatically” under the “Start Transition” drop-down menu. Click inside the preview box above and you will see the effect. The graphic you selected for the second slide should have a zoom-in effect. You can of course, click the play button to see the effect in a larger size. If you’re not sure how it works, click here for a video demonstration.

You can also play around with the duration of the effect and time delays between the slide transition.

Custom Move

The next technique is a little trickier. This one involves moving a graphic inside of a slide, instead of between. It enables you to customize the movement.

Create a new slide and add a single graphic to it. This time, select the Build inspector (the little yellow diamond icon) in the Inspector. Click on the “Action” button. Next, select “Move” under Effect. Click the “More Options” button to open the Build Order drawer. At the bottom of that drawer, select “Automatically after transition” from the drop-down menu.

1. Select the graphic on the slide. You will notice a red line and ghost image appear, indicating the path that the graphic will move after the transition. Click inside the Preview window of the Builder to see how it moves.

   

2. You can change the path by which image moves by selecting one end of the line and moving it to your desired direction. Play around with moving the lines to see how it works.

   

3. To make additional paths, select the tiny red plus (+) button and move the end of the path in the direction you want it to go.

   

4. Notice in the Build Order drawer, each path direction you set is listed. You can rearrange the order of those paths or delete them. At the button drawer, you can select how you want to activate the build — either when you click the mouse or trackpad of your computer or “Automatically after” the previous build.

Smart Build

For this last technique, we’re going to explore how to use the Smart Build. This involves showing two or more objects in one slide. Instead of having to build a slide for each object, you can use Smart Build to make a sort of mini slideshow within one slide.

1. Create a new slide and select Insert > Smart Build > Dissolve in the Keynote menu bar.

   

2. A graphic frame will appear. Where it says, “Drop image here” do just that with your first image. Do the same with the other two graphics. It appears you can add as many objects as you like.

   

3. Notice in the Build Inspector and Build Order drawer, you have options for the transition effect you want to use between object, the order and duration of the transition, and how you want to the build to be activated.

Like PowerPoint, Keynote can be an awesome presentation tool if you spend time learning how to use its features effectively. While Apple provides many templates and simple drag-and-drop features to make the program fairly easy to use, many of its not-so-obvious features are under the hood of the program, so to speak.

If haven’t had much experience using the Keynote software, let us know how these techniques worked out for you. If you use Keynote techniques our readers should know about, please share them in the comment section.

In this article, I’m going to show you the 4 best, free alternatives to PowerPoint. If you’re looking for a new way to present your material without getting too far away from PowerPoint’s concept, you’ll find these apps useful. If you want to escape PowerPoint’s grasp once and for all, we can help you with that as well.

1. Google Docs Presentation

My favorite alternative when it comes to replacing Microsoft applications is usually Google. You may already be familiar with Google Docs, but did you know you can create presentations with the web-based app? Just click on the Create new drop down menu and select Presentation to get started.

As you might imagine, this online application is very simple to use. You can change the theme and background of your presentation, insert text boxes, images, and videos, import slides, and all that good stuff. And since you’re using Google Docs, you can share your presentation with others and work on it collaboratively.

2. SlideRocket

SlideRocket is a higher end model of a collaborative, web-based presentation application. While this is a premium app, they do offer a nice free option, which gives you 250 MB of storage (15 MB file size), up to 5 multi-seat accounts, shared folders, items, and libraries, and the ability to import from Powerpoint and export to PDF.

We covered SlideRocket in an article 2 years ago and it has only got better since then. It has a beautiful user interface and a lot of great features, including the ability to add themes, layouts, shapes, charts, tables, pictures, audio, video, and Flash animations. You can also integrate content from sites like Flickr and YouTube, as well as utilize plug-ins.

To get a glimpse of SlideRocket, check out this short video:

3. 280 Slides

280 Slides is another very easy to use presentation creation app. Last covered back in March of ’09, 280 Slides offers a host of great features, like the ability to upload your existing PowerPoint presentations and import them into 280 Slides, preventing you from having to start over.

Other great features include autosave and recovery, storing presentations online, downloading them in the PowerPoint 2007 format, adding photos and movies from Flickr and YouTube, posting to SlideShare and embedding, and running them straight from your browser.

4. Prezi

Prezi, if you haven’t heard of it by now, is one of those really cool presentation applications that is very different from how PowerPoint and the rest function. What makes it significantly different is the fact that it doesn’t invoke the traditional slide-by-slide rules of a normal presentation. Rather, each presentation you create is a flowing, motion-based depiction filled with your creativity.

I’m not going to spend much time going over Prezi’s features because Simon did a fantastic job of that already in his article on Prezi back in February of this year. If you would like to view the official Prezi introduction video, however, have at it:

Conclusion

Are you over PowerPoint yet? I wasn’t lying when I said there were some good alternative apps out there. Explore these and you will find a bunch of great features and ways of presenting your material to others. The sharing abilities and integration with other services and file types give you a diverse set of options when deciding which tool would be best for the job.

Another cool app that might be worth investigating from our directory is Spresent.

What do you think of these presentation apps? What apps are you using?

Image Credit: archerix

Microsoft Powerpoint is an immensely powerful suite, and can be used for much more than straightforward presentations. It can be used to create website mockups, and even interactive learning tools.

We’ll explore one example of this last category below; interactive quizzes. De facto applications that employ a functional, if simple, interface.

Masters

A slide master is the DNA that is used to create new slides. A slide stamp, so to speak, which determines how newly created slides will look. By default, the slide master is pretty boring, but we can change this to pretty much anything we want. We can even create multiple master slides with sub-layouts and change between them on the fly while we’re creating our presentation.

To open the Slide Master menu, go to View and select Slide Master. This changes the Powerpoint mode, so you’ll have to switch this back to normal before you’re able to actually create the presentation.

A Slide Master menu will be added to the top ribbon which you can use to add new master profiles and layouts. These will appear in the sidebar, as shown in the screenshot below. Slide Masters will appear independently and branch off into different layouts.

Layering

So how exactly are we planning to use the Slide Masters in our little quiz? We can use them to design different, recurring levels of the application, e.g. a main menu and different quiz categories.

Using Slide Masters, we have to create the layout once, and can retain the category buttons in all subsequent slides. This will save us a lot of work now, and whenever we want to create an interactive presentation in the future.

Important! To make sure our quizzers won’t be able to advance by simply clicking elsewhere on the slide, you’ll have to disable the ‘Advance Slide on Mouse Click‘ option for every single Slide Master.

Button Actions

Buttons, much like in real applications and websites, allow us to navigate between different slides more freely than in the default linear matter. We can jump to and fro different slides, and even create clickable categories in our Slide Master.

Interlinking

It’s rather easy to link to a different slide. Select a piece of text or a shape with your right mouse, and click Hyperlink.

By default, this option allows you to link to a webpage. Select ‘Place in This Document’ in the left sidebar. This will allow for inter-presentation linking.

Hyperlinks allow you to create relative (e.g. next, previous slide) and absolute hyperlinks (i.e. pointing to a specific slide). We’ll be using both.

Creating The Quiz

We’re using the above two tools to create an interactive quiz.

First, create as many actual slides as you have categories. These don’t need to contain much, except maybe a text element for easy reference.

Masters & Categories

We’ll lay out the foundation, second. Select the first layout and design it to incorporate the major elements of your interface. These need to be consistent over the entire Powerpoint. I added the quiz title and links to every category. Point the category buttons to those slides you created before using a hyperlink.

If you want a custom design for each quiz category, copy and paste the layout as many times as you have categories. You can now adjust each layout as you see fit; the buttons will remain in working order. I created a colored text-box, matching the colors of my category buttons. Renaming them, also possible via right-click, will improve the overview.

Landing Pages & Sub-pages

Go back to normal mode, and put a new slide at the very start of your presentation. This will be your main landing page, which you can use to give advance information, point to the different categories, or initiate the quiz. Adjust it as you deem appropriate.

You can change the layout of the existing category pages by using right-mouse -> Layout and selecting one of the designs you made earlier on.

Subsequent slides can be added using the right layout by selecting them from the dropdown box below the New Slide button.

We’ve now got almost everything set to create our quiz. Simply add one additional slide to the end of your document. This will be the slide people get to see when they select the wrong answer. Make it universal, so do not relate to any one question. Add a button below that the user can click to return to the question(e.g. Try Again, or Go Back), but instead of creating a hyperlink, select Insert -> Action -> Hyperlink to: -> Last Slide Viewed.

A Quizzical Questionnaire

Make sure the questions appear per category and in running order. This allows us to use relative links.

Now, to add a question, create a page using the right categoric lay-out. Add as many additional media as you deem appropriate and as many possible questions as you feel like. All but one of these answers need to point to your wrong answer-slide with a hyperlink. The correct answer links to the next slide in sequence.

Do you know any other great uses for Powerpoint? Let us know in the comments!

One of the ways to beautify the way you present information on your blog is to create slideshows. And if you want to build a quick and easy, but beautiful and functional slideshow for your blog, you should check out SlideDeck

It’s Just A Plugin Away

SlideDeck is available as a jQuery for any websites, and a plugin for self-hosted WordPress blogs. Both are available in free Lite and paid Pro versions. In this article, we are going to discuss the free WP plugin.

We’ll start at the search and install routine. I just love how the latest version of WordPress has eliminated all the fuss of installing new plugins and integrated the whole process inside the admin area. Click “Add New” sidebar menu under Plugins.

Perform a search for “SlideDeck” and click on the “Install Now” link from the result.

After the installation process is done, click the “Activate Plugin” link.

And now you are ready for the fun part.

Let Them Slide, Baby

To create a slideshow, scroll down to the lower part of the sidebar menu and expand the “SlideDeck” section. Then click on “Add New“.

The “Add New SlideDeck” page will open. The first thing that you have to do is to give the new SlideDeck a name.

Then you can start creating slides – one slide at a time. The process is similar to writing a blog post: add a title, write the post and insert image(s) and other multimedia objects. When you are finished with one slide, move on to the next one.

During my experiment with the plugin, I found that inserting images does not work as well as it should be. I could upload the images, but they wouldn’t show up at the post. So, my trick is to use the image code from one of the regular blog posts in the HTML mode and change the image URL with the image that I want.

On the right side, you will find the SlideDeck Options. There are few tweaks here, but the most important one would be choosing a skin. From all of the available skins, my personal favorite is the default one.

You can easily re-order the slides by dragging and dropping them. You could also add more slides if you wanted to.

Slides can be inserted into posts or pages easily, but if you want to insert it as part of your theme, copy the code snippet and insert it using theme editor.

After clicking the “Save” button, a notification bar will appear. If you want to directly insert the code into your post, use the shortcut link on the bar.

Inserting The Slide

To insert the slide into a post or a page, create a new post (or page) and write the content. Next, point the cursor to the place where you want the slide to appear and click the “Insert SlideDeck” button from the “SlideDeck“menu in the right sidebar.

Alternatively, you could also use the “SlideDeck” button in the toolbar. But please note that this button only appears when you are editing in the “Visual” mode.

You will be asked to choose which slide that you want to insert and the dimensions of the slide.

When you are done with your editing, click the “Publish” button.

And this is what the slide looks like with the standard skin. Visitors can click on the numbers and the content will “slide” open. It’s also possible to navigate using the left and right arrows on the keyboard.

A Smart Way To Slide

There’s another type of slides that you can build. This slide will be dynamic in terms of the content and will always be updated according to the categories that you choose.

After naming the new SlideDeck and choosing how many slides in the sites, choose what kind of post you want to show. The available options are: “Recent Posts“, “Featured Post” and “Popular Posts.”

The last step would be to choose the “Navigation Type“.

After saving the SlideDeck, you can apply it to your theme using the “Theme Code Snippet“.

To see how the SlideDeck would look like, use the “Preview” button.

By far, SlideDeck is one of the coolest WordPress plugins that I’ve ever encountered. You can use it for almost any purpose, ranging from a simple photo slideshow, tutorial, to a multi-dimensional slideshows for product presentation.

And since it’s difficult to really “get” the concept unless you’ve tried it first hand, I suggest you to do just that. Then after that, share your thoughts about the SlideDeck applications using the comment section below.