In this article, we’ll see how you can add free animation for your PowerPoint 2007 presentations.

PowerPoint Animation Basics

It is useful to understand the four basic types of free animations for PowerPoint:

• Entry: used to introduce animated objects on a slide
• Emphasis: used for emphasizing elements already present on a slide
• Exit: how objects move off the slide
• Motion Path: move objects in a specified path on the slide

Now let us see some simple ways you can add animation to your presentation.

Use Preset Animation for Text or Objects

To animate any object (text, shape, etc.), do the following:

1. Select the object you wish to animate

2. On the ribbon, select the Animations tab.

3. Choose an animation effect from the Animation drop-down.

Use Custom Animation for Text or Objects

For fine-grained control, click the Custom Animation button to bring up a task pane on the right.

Clicking the Add Effect button brings up a menu with four types of animations from which you can select the one you like. You can also add multiple animation effects, and see them added to a numbered list in the task pane. To remove any of them, select the animation from the list and click Remove. As you add animation effects, you will see numbered tags added beside the object you have selected.

You can further customize each animation effect using the three drop-downs. Start specifies whether the effect starts upon a mouse-click, starts simultaneously with the previous one, or starts after the previous one. The second drop-down depends on the effect and is used for customizing direction or other properties specific to that effect. The Speed drop-down selects the speed with which the effect is applied.

For advanced customization, right-click an effect in the list to bring up the context menu. Select Effect Options from the context menu to bring up a dialog box with more options to customize the effect.

You can reorder effects within the list using the Re-Order arrows at the bottom, and click Play to preview your animation.

Add Transitions Between Slides

Animations between two slides are called Transitions. To add Transitions, do the following:

1. In the left pane where all slides are shown in a vertical row, select the Slides tab.
2. Select one or more slides in the pane for which you want the desired transition.
3. On the Animations tab in the ribbon, choose a transition effect from the Transition to This Slide group.

You can optionally add Sound and change the speed of the transition using the drop-downs in the ribbon to the right as shown above. If you want to remove the transitions you have added, just select the slides and choose No Transition (first one) from the list.

Add Motion Path Animation

To make a graphic object move in a certain path on the slide, use Motion Path animation. This works best for graphic images with transparent backgrounds, as the graphic moves across other elements on the slide. To add Motion Path animation to an object, do the following:

1. Drag the object you wish to animate to its starting position.
2. Click to select the object.
3. Open the Animation task pane, as described earlier.
4. Select Add Effect > Motion Paths > Draw Custom Path > Scribble. The mouse pointer becomes like a pen.
5. Draw the desired animation path, starting at the object, and click where it should stop moving.

You can also check out a gallery of preset motion paths by selecting the More Motion Paths… menu item.

Add Animated Clip Art

You can also check out free animated clip art graphics on the web. The Clip Art section on Office Online has a huge library of clip art, including animations. You can filter your search at the bottom to find only animations related to your search term. In this way, you can get some cool free animations that are ready to be added to your presentations. Another website to check out animation clip art is Animation Library.

Do your presentations come alive after adding animation? Tell us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Use PowerPoint Video Converter to Convert PowerPoint Presentations to a Video (15)
• Show and Make Presentations Online with 280 Slides (11)
• Make Your Speeches Shine with Acrobat Presentations (6)
• Make Beautiful Online Presentations With Sliderocket (13)
• 2 Safe Ways To Share Your Presentation Slides Online (3)

Now, sharing presentation slides is a very controversial topic for many different reasons. After all, you will provide all the work you’ve put into developing your presentation for free. But what exactly is it that you’re giving away? Your ideas? Your skill? Your time?

Presentations are a work of art. When you share them in an edible format, you are losing control over what you have created. If you don’t want to see your hard work watered down by edits, you should not share your original files. However, you can offer two alternatives. Either share only the figures and images you used in your slides. Or make your presentation slides available in a format that does not allow simple editing.

In other words, if someone wants to edit your ideas in a way you don’t approve of, they have to start from scratch and can only draw inspiration from your template.

Here are 2 ways and several tools to safely share your presentations online.

1. Share Presentation Slides as PDF

You can export your PowerPoint or Word presentations to PDF. The disadvantage of this method is that you will lose all animations. If that is not an issue, try the following tools.

KoolWIRE

The easiest and most universal way is to use an online tool such as KoolWIRE.

Using it is dead simple. Browse for the file on your computer, choose the output format, i.e. PDF, enter your eMail address, hit start and wait for the download link to be delivered to your inbox. When I tried it, it took less than a minute and in less than 5 minutes I had my PDF.

File Savr

Now you will want to share the file. Let’s say you don’t have a website or server of your own. Also, you probably don’t want to eMail a huge file every time someone asks for it. Fortunately, the web has a simple solution in store. There are many free online tools that let you share your files through the web and you don’t even have to sign up for the service.

File Savr is just one of many. You can upload files of up to 10GB, more than enough for a PDF file. Simply select the file you wish to upload. Once uploading has completed, File Savr will display the download page for the file. Save the URL and share it with people interested in your presentation. A CAPTCHA test must be passed before the file can actually be download.

I have previously reviewed 5 Easy Websites to Share Files Online Without Signing Up.

PDF Hammer

If someone would like to use parts of your work, they could prepare a PDF presentation and, using a PDF editor, merge individual presentation slides from different sources.

One free online tool to edit PDFs is PDF Hammer.

Along with KoolWIRE it was reviewed in Aibek’s post about Simplest PDF Apps Ever: Merge PDFs, PDF to DOC, Convert to PDF.

2. Share as Web Presentation

You can upload and share your presentation through an online service. While this preserves the original design of your slides, including animations, single slides can not be extracted and re-used in another medium. If this is what you desire, go ahead and give SlideBoom a try.

SlideBoom

You can use SlideBoom as a guest. However, presentations will only remain online for 7 days. To use SlideBoom to its full potential, you should register. There is a free version, which allows you to upload up to 100 presentations. It supports animations, add-ins, audio, video, groups, graphical annotations and blog or website embedding.

SlideBoom creates a summary page for your presentation, which includes the actual presentation, your notes, a transcript, and optional sharing options. Members can vote on you presentations and download them if the owner has unlocked this option. Below is a demonstration of an embedded presentation.

If you would like to improve your presentation skills, check out my post on 10 Powerpoint Tips for Preparing a Professional Presentation.

Do you feel comfortable with sharing your presentation slides?

Image credits: duchessa

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Use PowerPoint Video Converter to Convert PowerPoint Presentations to a Video (15)
• Show and Make Presentations Online with 280 Slides (11)
• Make Your Speeches Shine with Acrobat Presentations (6)
• Make Beautiful Online Presentations With Sliderocket (13)
• How To Add Cool Free Animation to PowerPoint Presentations (7)

Well that is about to change. I downloaded a little 15MB application called PhotoFilmStrip (actually they send you to Sourceforge to grab the installer.)

Install the application and allow it to associate PFS files with itself and you are on your way to creating your first picture slideshow filmstrip! This application does render the pictures and transitions into video (which you can choose the quality of) so it does take some time to render. My 15 picture set took about 7 minutes to work so you can figure around 45 seconds per picture in a environment like mine.

You can start by either dragging and dropping your pictures onto the top left portion of the screen which you can see in the screenshot below:

You can also hit Tools – Import Pictures

While the photos are loading into PhotoFilmStrip you will see a standard status bar letting you know where you stand (and how long you will wait!)

Then finally after all your images are in the program you will see them appear in chronological order on the time line at the bottom of the interface… Kind of like a film strip. (Hindsight: after ruining the first render I realized I need to resize that box to cover my subject. Simply manipulate it with your mouse for each one. This will get the focus and not the floor or ceiling! Hopefully this will save you some time!)

Now we can take a look at our options for creating them into a hot picture slideshow video. I did not go this far with my experiments but you can add an audio track or subtitles to your new piece de’resistance!

When you are all done hit F9 or the Tools menu option and then Render Filmstrip. This is the magic that makes your video out of the still images and anything else you imported.

After starting the process you will see your options for creating your video. Among them are the quality of the video profile. There is VCD all the way up to HD video. Obviously the better the quality the longer it will take to render and the larger the final output file will be.

You can set the length of the video and if you are going that route you can set up an audio file to play along with the video. This can be music or synced up video – either which way it is as simple as pointing it to the right file. You can play and test the audio file using the play and pause buttons.

On the bottom of the screen is the output settings. You can change the MPG2 video to be Xvid and you can choose your output directory. Hit start or batch job to run multiple projects. And you are off to waiting. Be prepared to wait a while depending on the amount of pictures and the size of them -you know go smoke em if you got em!

After outputting my video I realized that I needed to go back to the beginning and mark the center of the images where the subject is instead of just leaving them alone. Some of my shots then only focused on the top of the pictures.

We would love to see what you created – hit us with some youTube links in the comments!

Download: PhotoFilmStrip

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New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Create Photo Story and Timelines with Capzles (6)
• 5 Ways to Create Beautiful Slideshows of your Digital Pictures (15)
• 5 Cool Google Picasa Tips to Make Use Of your Photos (10)
• [Google Picasa 101] – Saving, Exporting & Uploading To Picasa Web Albums (6)
• [Google Picasa 101] – Master The Special Effects In Picasa (16)

There are things that Google does well and some things they do really well. Picasa is one of the ones they do really well and if you do a lot of image viewing and editing on your computer then you should use Picasa by default. It takes image viewing and editing to a completely new level and offers a lot of other features apart from letting you look at your photos.

Here’s five Google Picasa tricks and tips, the ones I found really good and ones which I am likely to use often.

Resize Images Properly For Frames

I am in the habit of framing a lot of my good pictures for the walls but other image editing programs can’t seem to get the photo resized properly. Even if you specify the exact size you want, the picture still seems to be too big or too small. Then you have to start cutting it down (if it’s too big) or having big gaps in the frame (if it’s too small).

But with Picasa, you don’t have this issue. When you resize an image, it gets the new measurements exactly right, straight away.

Just go to the photo then press the print button. It will then give you a variety of sizes available.

They give you the opportunity to add a border to the picture, under “Border and Text Options“. Choose how many copies of the picture you want and it tries to put them all on the same page (depending on the size). Then choose your desired size and off it goes to the printer. Very easy.

Turn Your Photos Into An Instant HTML Webpage

This one is extremely useful if you would like to upload your photos to a website but you are not too sure about your HTML skills. This is even easier than the Web Album Generator which I wrote about in December 2007.

Choose the pictures you would like on your page by clicking on the first one then using your left and right arrow keys to choose the rest. Then go to Folder–>Export As A HTML Page and you will then be asked some options:

Make your choices and then you will be asked what type of page you would like :

After making your choices, Picasa then very quickly makes the page and opens it in your browser. If you like what you see, save the page to your computer by going to File–>Save Page As in the browser menu :

Send The Photos Directly To Blogger

Now that I have started using Blogger again, this one will become especially useful for when I quickly want to send my snaps to my blog.

Just double-click on the photo you want to send to your blog and press the BlogThis! button at the bottom.

This opens up a window to log into Blogger (if you’re not already logged in).  Log in with your Google account and when you are in, you will get size options and then the opportunity to write some text next to your picture.

Then press “Publish Post” as you would do in any normal Blogger post.  The image will then instantly appear on your blog page. No waiting required.

Turn Your Images Into A Collage – Then Into A Desktop Wallpaper

This one is really cool. We have already covered how to make a collage on computer before but the Picasa method is really quite easy.

Again, highlight the photos with your mouse then go to Create–>Picture Collage. Your images will then appear as one of the collage styles and you will have options to try out other ones.

Once the collage has been made, there is an option to then make your creation into a desktop wallpaper.

This will make my girlfriend jump hen she comes home and finds me on the desktop!

Turn photos into movie slideshows with music then upload to YouTube

I was at a wedding on Saturday and the bride & groom’s friends wanted to show a slideshow of the bride and groom at various stages of their relationship. But the software program they were using to play the show from their laptop constantly stopped working. Looking at how Picasa easily makes movie slideshows with music, they could have used this instead.

Granted, this is not going to make anything Oscar-worthy but if you are just looking for a way to show photos along with a bit of music (or no music if you prefer) then this works perfectly well.

Put all the photos you want in the slideshow into its own folder. Then in Picasa, there are options at the top of every folder.  One of them is Create Movie Presentation. Make sure the pictures are in the correct order in the folder as you want them to appear in the slideshow (just name them picture1.jpg, picture2.jpg…..or something similar)

Clicking the “Create Movie Presentation” button puts the pictures in the folder into a straight line with a screen above it so you can view what you have created.

On the top left hand side, you also have the option to add music. Just navigate to the music file’s location in your computer and choose it. Then underneath, choose your “transition style” which is how you want the images to change on the screen. Do you want them to fade out? Or cut from one to the other? Pan and Zoom? There are quite a few choices there for you to choose from.

You can then press the green “play” button for your slideshow to start. Go full screen for maximum effect. At the end, if you are really pleased with your slideshow, Picasa even gives you the ability to upload your creation to YouTube so everyone else can see it.

So those are the five features that jumped out at me. I did want to do the geotagging of my photos from Picasa to Google Earth but for some reason it didn’t work for me. Picasa told me to download Google Earth first but I already had it! So perhaps when I finally get that feature to work, I may write about it in a separate article.

We have done quite a few Picasa articles on MakeUseOf in the past. Here are a few to get your Picasa fix :

• Jim’s Five Part Introductory Series To Picasa – Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five.
• Ten Tips To Manage Photos Better Using Google Picasa – Shankar
• Send Your Photos To Your Picasa Web Album With An Email – Saikat
• How To Use Facial Recognition In Picasa Web Albums – Tim

Which features of Picasa do you like the best? Let us know in the comments.

Picasa

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New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Superimpose Your Face into Other Photos with Photo505 (10)
• How to Make Items or People Stand out in Black & White Photos (25)
• 6 Quick Ways to JAZZ-UP your Photos (23)
• 5 Ways to Create Beautiful Slideshows of your Digital Pictures (15)
• 10 Tips to Manage Photos Better using Google Picasa (13)

“What’s the great benefit of patching together all these different media clips into one?” you might very well ask.

The obvious benefit is that it’s just a way of digitally expressing feelings, thoughts and emotions through graphics, words and sounds. Doesn’t a picture say a thousand words? A video should definitely say far more and it has special effects and music thrown in. Think of it as a very expressive messaging tool or your own free photo share site with special effects. The second benefit is that it sounds kind of cool. We can create a ‘mash’ and spread it around the web on social networks and blogs.

So let’s get cracking… umm, mashing and see if we can catch a few wows.

Mashing starts with a signing

Signing up is simple but requires an email link validation. The site is totally free without any hidden mouse traps. After the first log-in, you can go into your profile and edit your user details. After that, it’s straight to our first ‘mash’.

My Stuff – onto my first mash

A click on My Stuff takes me into my personal gallery page and the media upload area. The black flash-based uploader is the Masher tool to use for transferring video clips, pictures and music.

• For videos – you can upload videos up to 50MB in size and supported formats avi, mpeg, mpg, mp4, wmv, mov, 3gp and 3g2.
• For images – you can upload photos up to 6MB in size and supported formats jpeg, png and gif.
• For music – you can upload music up to 7MB in size and supported formats include mp3, wma and wav.

Enter the studio

Here’s where the slick online editor presents itself. The flash-based editor is simple and intuitive. It consists of the preview screen, the top menu which gives one touch access to all the media and effects, and the bottom placed timeline. The timeline is where you drag the selected media type after choosing it from the galleries provided. Nothing could be as simple as selecting and dragging.

Creating a ‘mash’ starts with choosing from the media types available. We have the option of clicking on My Uploads and selecting the videos/photos/music we uploaded. If we don’t have our own clips to use, we can go with the BBC Motion Gallery clips provided for use or choose from those provided by Rip Curl or Urban Freestyler. Or if you want to stay neutral, stick to the color block screens.

For music, again the choice comes down to using your own uploaded track or that provided by Masher’s partners – Audio Networks and Slam. These are exclusively for creations in Masher. The collection is large spread over 13 categories. Choose your audio clip and drag it to the timeline.

The Text area is for writing your special line, choosing from the limited fonts and giving it a color. Text orientation features are limited; you can only drag it around with your mouse. After that you drag the purple text bar to the timeline below and position it over the specific picture slide.

Effects can be similarly picked up and dropped over the slides, the same for all or a different one for each.

As a last step you can go with a choice of skins to package the whole thing in.

Preview your little creation in the player. You can always edit any step of the mash by simply clicking the red crossed button on each media clip. If it’s done, click on Save, enter a title, description and tag to be done with your first mash. Since this can be your own free photo share site, when you save a mash you can choose to make available publicly (in the public Masher gallery) or limit it to your friends.

Click on View/Share for the curtain raiser and the buttons for sharing it with your friends across the social networks.

Gallery – the final resting place

All public mashes come here. View the most popular ones or the most recent ones. You will get a lot of inspiration from some of the better ones.

As a free photo share site in the form of doing a photo-story or sharing a small video, Masher is certainly not innovative. It is almost a sister application of two others we covered previously – Animoto and Capzles. What it is, is a hassle-free way to combine media with an idea within ten minutes for an eye-catching picture message.

If you liked creating photo-stories in a jiffy, you might like the ease of Masher. Let us know your story.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Top 5 Tools To Make A Home Movie Online For Free (14)
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Video tributes are also common in parties, or family reunions as icebreakers and for your relatives go “aaawww” with those sentimental pictures. If you are asked to make a video tribute on short notice, here is how to make a really good video tribute in less than ten minutes with Animoto.

Why Animoto?

Animoto’s backend for effects and transition rendering is the best among current web applications. Their patent-pending Cinematic Artificial Intelligence analyzes the pictures and the music that you input and decide on the proper effects and transitions.

I noticed that Animoto not only makes effects and transitions which go well with the beat of the music, but also makes timely transitions depending on how photos are arranged.  The end result is a compelling video that rivals what an experienced human video editor could come up with.

You can also check out MUO’s Top 5 Online Tools to Make a Movie Online For Free for more web apps that can also help you make a video tribute.

Add Your Content – Images and Video Clips

The most critical element in making a video tribute is not the software that creates the effects or syncs the audio to the clips, but the content that you put in it. Compile all images, scanned photos and video clips that you need for the project and upload them using Animoto’s simple upload tool. You can also select images and video clips from their collection to fill space if you lack pictures.

Animoto gives you access to accounts in Flickr, Facebook, and Picasa so that you can retrieve your photos for the video tribute. You can also get photos from Istockphoto, stock.xchng, and stockphoto to enhance your content. Also check out John’s Top 5 Free Websites for Quality Copyright Free Photographs.

When taking photos from Picasa or Flickr, I recommend creating a separate album or photoset and put all the images that you want to use there. This way, you can use Picasa and Flickr’s organization and reorder tools to arrange photos before you import them to Animoto. Although Animoto lets you rearrange images and clips, Picasa and Flickr’s reordering tools are easier to use especially when sifting through hundreds of photos.

You can also select some photos then click “spotlight” to highlight them in the video.

Animoto just recently allowed users to upload video clips. Just upload a clip from an old video, camera, phone, or retrieve video footage from Getty Images into Animoto.

Add Your Music

Upload your choice soundtrack from your computer or browse through their Music Lounge to select a song. Music categories include Top 40/Pop, Indie Rock, Hip Hop, Classical, Country, and Gospel to name a few.

The length of the video will depend on the length of the song that you chose. You can add only one song per video, although the ability to add more songs might be included in future versions. For now, you can use audio editing software such as Audacity to stitch multiple songs in one track before uploading to Animoto.

Final Touches

Customize your video by selecting the video length, image pacing, and video cover screen. The Animoto Short is a free version but only produces 30 second clips, while the full-length version is worth $3. Although the 30 second version might be good enough for your needs, the full-length version is a steal considering that you can edit and rehash the video to make an entirely new video.

Click ‘Continue’ and wait for the video to finish rendering. You can close the window and wait for an email with a link to the finished video.

Once the video is finished, you can edit the video with Animoto’s 1-click Remix, or go back to the drawing board to add, remove, and arrange images, text and video clips. Each remix will give you an entirely different set of transitions and effects so you can create an unlimited number of videos until you are satisfied.

You can improve your video tribute by adding interviews and messages from friends as video clips, or enhancing images in Photoshop or Picasa before uploading them. You can even make a video tribute with only text and music and it will still work nicely with Animoto.

As a “producer” of the video tribute, your real work is finding the key elements (picture, video clips, and text) that will capture what you want your video to be. Animoto just provides the timing and effects, so you are not really boxed in with what you can do with this app.

What do you use to produce your video tributes?   Let us know in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Top 5 Tools To Make A Home Movie Online For Free (14)
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Instead of opening each file with their own respective application, this feature is really a great time saver for those who just want to have – well – a quick look.

But defining this feature as merely ‘peeking’ is an understatement of its ability. Quick Look for Mac is able to display a wide range of file formats, from simple text to keynote presentations to movies; and is also accessible from within many native Mac OS X applications like Mail, Time Machine, and Trash(!).

Beyond the spacebar

There are a few ‘unused by most’ nifty things that you can do by utilizing Quick Look abilities, such as:

1. View Before Restore/Delete

As mentioned above, you can use Quick Look inside the Trash and Time Machine. I find this ability most useful when I about to bring some files back from the (near) dead. Without Quick Look on your Mac, there’s no way to know the content of the file that you want to restore (or in some case, to completely delete).

2. View Pictures As Slideshow

If you select several pictures in the finder instead of one and hit the spacebar, you’ll have the additional option at the Quick Look pane to view the items as a slideshow. But you can jump directly into the full-screen slideshow by using the key combination of Command + Option + Y.

3. Using Index Sheet To View Multiple Images

Still on the subject of selecting multiple images and using Quick Look to view them, you could also view all the images in one sheet by clicking the Index Sheet button.

4. Quick Zoom

You can zoom the image viewed by Quick Look by clicking the image while holding the Option key (to zoom in) or Option + Shift key (to zoom out).

5. Navigate Between Files

This one should be obvious but it’s possible that some of the users miss it – like I did. When you open a file with Quick Look in Finder, you can move between files by using the Up and Down arrow key.

6. Overcoming The Filetype Limitation

As powerful as it is, there are still many file formats unsupported to be looked quickly. For example, Quick Look cannot play flash movies or show you the content of a folder. User will only get an icon with some information about that file/folder.

But users can overcome some of these filetype limitations by adding Quick Look Mac plugins. There are lots of options that you can find in the QLPlugins page from plugins for viewing Mobipocket eBooks files to Adobe Illustrator files. The ones that I find most useful are: Zip File Viewer, Folder Viewer, Flash Video Viewer and QuickChm. Different users will find different plugins to fit their individual needs.

Here are the steps to activate the plugins:

• first, download and uncompress the plugin files.
• then put the “.qlgenerator” files inside the ~/Library/QuickLook folder
• restart the Finder by executing this command line using Terminal: killall Finder

Similarly, you can uninstall any Quick Look plugin by deleting the files inside the QuickLook folder and restarting the Finder.

Here’s the display of the Quick Look view of a folder after installing the Folder Viewer plugin:

Do you have other Quick Look Mac tips and tricks? Please share them using the comments below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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With that video file you can post it to YouTube, send it along  to another user via email or post it on your blog as a tutorial.

What ever you are going to do with the finished product this free 6.6mb application will make your life MUCH MUCH easier!

To start you need to download and install this application from here.

Once you complete the usual ritual of next, next and finish you will see a screen that looks like this:

From this screen it is super easy to convert your file. Simply click the New Task Button to get started. Let’s give it a shot.

After clicking the New Task button you choose between a single file or a whole folder. Next you will need to choose what you want to convert your PowerPoint File into. The only options you will have are: WMV, AVI, MPG, BMPs and MP3 audio.This should fit 90% of you and if you want to convert to another format either convert to a supported format and then convert that. But again for posting to YouTube or your blog this will do just fine.

I selected AVI and continued on. Next up you will see this screen:

From the above screen you can adjust transition time, compression, output folder and more. When you are ready to convert simply hit the convert button. you will get a warning screen telling you to make sure your PPT file is saved and not opened. Hit ok and continue.

It took about 25-40 seconds per slide but when I was done I had a smooth AVI video of my PowerPoint file. Awesome! Do you have another way to convert a powerpoint file to video? We would love to hear about it in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Show and Make Presentations Online with 280 Slides (11)
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One way to download Bing wallpaper images is by using Bing Downloader. You can also check out how to switch wallpapers automatically on all Windows platforms, or with our collection of wallpaper changer apps for Linux. But if you are using Windows 7, you don’t need a separate third-party application.

Long Zheng of I Started Something started the Bing Image Archive, where images shown by Bing to worldwide users are archived for your viewing (and downloading) pleasure. I asked him to get its RSS feed to work with Windows 7 desktop slideshows, and he was happy to oblige. So thanks to Long, we can now get a Bing powered desktop slideshow in Windows 7 in 4 easy steps.

Step 1: Create Theme File

Copy this text in Notepad or any text editor:

[[Theme]
DisplayName=Bing

[Slideshow]
Interval=1800000
Shuffle=1
RssFeed=http://feeds.feedburner.com/bingimages

[Control Panel\Desktop]
TileWallpaper=0
WallpaperStyle=0
Pattern=

[Control Panel\Cursors]
AppStarting=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_working.ani
Arrow=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_arrow.cur
Crosshair=
Hand=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_link.cur
Help=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_helpsel.cur
IBeam=
No=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_unavail.cur
NWPen=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_pen.cur
SizeAll=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_move.cur
SizeNESW=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_nesw.cur
SizeNS=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_ns.cur
SizeNWSE=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_nwse.cur
SizeWE=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_ew.cur
UpArrow=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_up.cur
Wait=%SystemRoot%\cursors\aero_busy.ani
DefaultValue=Windows Aero
Link=

[VisualStyles]
Path=%SystemRoot%\resources\themes\Aero\Aero.msstyles
ColorStyle=NormalColor
Size=NormalSize
ColorizationColor=0X6B74B8FC
Transparency=1

[MasterThemeSelector]
MTSM=DABJDKT

Step 2: Save Theme File

Save the file as “Bing.theme” on your desktop. Make sure you do not name it Bing.theme.txt accidentally.

Step 3: Activate Bing Theme

Double-click the file to set it as your visual theme. In the Subscribe to RSS Feed? prompt, click Download Attachments.

That’s it! You should now see the Bing theme selected in the My Themes section.

Step 4: Customize Slideshow Settings

You can customize the slideshow settings in the Desktop Background link at the bottom.

You can choose these settings as you like. In resolutions higher than 800×600, the images look better if they are centered. Since the feed contains multiple images from around the world every day, set the slideshow to change pictures every few hours to see all the images.

Make Sure It Works

Depending upon the speed of your internet connection and other variables, it might take time for Windows to download the images. You might need to do these steps if you’ve not used Internet Explorer in Windows 7 too much. In any case, it is a good idea to double-check that the feed is set up correctly.

Start Internet Explorer, go to Tools->Explorer Bars->Feeds or press Ctrl-Shift-J. If you have activated the Bing theme, you should see the Feed URL already added. Click on the feed, so that Internet Explorer loads the feed page on the right.

If you see the following message:

Click Turn on automatic feed updates. Click Yes in the prompt dialog, so that you don’t need to run Internet Explorer to get your Bing wallpapers.

Now you should see images downloaded from the feed. If you wish, you can view the feed properties by clicking the link on the right.

Remember that the Automatically download attached files box should be checked. You can click View Files to see the downloaded images.

Finally, sometimes the theme does not change images even though they are downloaded. Simply right-click on the desktop, select Next desktop background. A logout/login also forces a refresh of the theme.

More Cool Wallpaper Feeds

For the RSS powered desktop slideshow to work in Windows 7, the RSS feed needs to have images in an enclosure item. Thus, for example, Deviant Art feeds did not work at the time of this writing. But you can enjoy Flickr feeds! Simply replace RSSFeed= with the URL of your choice and set DisplayName= with whatever you like in the theme file you created in Notepad. You can set your own favorite feed in Flickr, or here are a few you might want to check out:

• Flickr Wallpapers 1024×768: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/groups_pool.gne?id=40961104@N00&lang=en-us&format=rss_200
• Flickr Wallpapers 1200×800: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/groups_pool.gne?id=78305319@N00&lang=en-us&format=rss_200
• Flickr Wallpapers 1680×1050: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/groups_pool.gne?id=594506@N20&lang=en-us&format=rss_200

Do you enjoy your new wallpapers? Let us know in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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However, renting an editing room or buying propriety software might be just out of your price range. Free desktop software might not do because it might seem a little “too technical” for some of us or simply doesn’t have the feature you’re looking for. Thankfully, there are a lot of simple online tools to help you make a movie online for free.

Here are 5 of the best I’ve found so far.

One True Media

One True media is a popular online application for creating videos, montages, and slideshows. Users can upload their own clips or use the One True Media’s video resource library and compile them while adding audio effects and video transitions. One True Media has a seamless tabbed interface so that you can easily complete your video editing tasks such as adding transitions and captions, rearranging clips, and cutting unnecessary scenes.

One True Media has a wide selection of video transitions and themes that users can use with great effect. You can instantly share your completed videos on YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and other video sharing sites – you can even place the videos in your own TiVo channel. One True Media also has a nifty feature that allows you to choose your own DVD cover for your video.

Jaycut

Jaycut is not just an ordinary flash-based “upload-edit-share” tool since it has the core features that you will find in simple video editing software like Windows Movie Maker. You can upload clips from your camera, mobile phone or webcam then compile them into a nice video by adding captions and music. Jaycut has a two-track timeline interface called “Mix It” where users can drag and rearrange their uploaded clips and time the transition between clips. Jaycut’s editing interface is fairly powerful for casual users who want to stitch-up clips while experimenting with its growing library of transition effects.

When you are done with the mix, you can embed the videos or you can download them to your PC/PMP.

Animoto

Animoto is a straightforward application for creating what we call “glorified slideshows” using your photos in just minutes – thanks to its “Cinematic Artificial Intelligence” that analyzes the nuances of a song to create the right effect and transitions for your photos. Upload your own pictures or get your images from image sharing sites like Picasa and Flickr, then choose or upload your own music for your video.

After choosing your pictures and music, Animoto’s One-Click Remix will analyze the images and the music to render the completed video. The result? A compelling photo montage that almost rivals the work of a professional video editor.  My quick take from compiling the pictures to completing the video only took me 3-4 minutes for a 30-second clip.

MotionBox

Motionbox is primarily a video sharing site that has a more personal touch than the big names out there. Its hidden gem is the video mixer that allows you to make new videos from existing videos. The mixer function can combine videos or break them in short-sweet bunches.

You can also trim unwanted clips, and set the start and end points to create your own highlight reel of your best moments. Motionbox supports a wide range of formats like AVI, MOV, and MPG, and MP4. Once completed, you can share your video or reedit them through the mixer.

Shwup

Shwup rolled out with a new and improved layout, cleaner design and third-party integration with various photo sharing sites. But Shwup shines with its simple video editor taken from the popular Muvee video editing software. Shwup captures the essence of Muvee with simple drag and drop storyboard interface, preset themes, and music.

Most of these tools are designed for casual snapshot editing so that you can share your videos seamlessly. Although it might take a few more years before we see a free online video editor that packs the power of offline video editing software, most of these online editors are good enough for quick outtakes of your favorite clips.

What do you think? Would you use an online video editor for quick and easy video editing and sharing? What is your favorite? Show off in the comments!

Image Credits: Travis Hornung

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Masher– Mix Photos, Videos and Effects into Video Slideshows (2)
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Slideshare is a good place to see some really cool works of PowerPoint ‘art’. Check under your favorite category and you will feel genuinely inspired to do things with the graphics, fonts, bullets, sounds and audio/video clips on the canvas of a PowerPoint slide.

Whether you are on your first presentation or on your umpteenth, it’s always better to be prepared with the right resources to back up your ideas for the PowerPoint slides. So here’s looking at 10 websites for free supplies of media clips for PowerPoint.

Sound Clips

Wave Central

I wanted to end one of my presentations with a ‘Beam me Up, Scotty’ sound clip from Star Trek. I got the 11KB file from here. The site is not much to look at but it is a rich dump of sound clips from movies, TV, commercials and some special effects types too. The site has a search page, so it is easy to get to your sound clip if you know exactly what you are searching for. If you are searching for a ‘something like this’ kind of a sound, then it’s a chore as all files are listed by name only.

CCMixter

This is a community music site featuring remixes and samples licensed under Creative Commons licenses. It includes many tracks with non-commercial sharing licenses and some under sampling licenses. Users can of course submit their own music and remixes. The site has very good organization with a bunch of categories and filters. Also, the “Download this page” feature allows you to download your preferred collection all at once. Overall, this website has a very selective bunch of MP3s. It’s not for the run-of-the-mill presenter but more for the guy who knows what he is doing with his music.

Sound Bible

From prankish sounds (give the farts a miss in your PPTs) to cool sound effects, this site has a good collection. With the tiny sound clips you can add sound effects to your buttons or transitions. Sound clips fall under royalty-free and free sounds. A ‘pleasing to the eye’ look makes browsing complain-free. If you are looking for a specific sound and can’t find it here, there’s a simple request form for help.

The Open Directory Project

The DMOZ page on music and audio loops is worth a look. Though some of the websites mentioned there might not be free.

Movie Clips

YouTube

The ultimate reservoir of videos will hopefully not be short of the perfect clip you are looking for. With a large user base YouTube is the perfect place to find a video corresponding to the idea you want to project. For instance, a visual demo can help make your “How To” presentations to be more effective.

Also read – 18 Free Ways To Download Any Video off the Internet

Internet Archive

The Internet Archive’s Moving Images library contains thousands of digital movies uploaded by Archive users which ranges from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts. Many of these videos are available for free download. The videos are grouped under sub-collections like computers, sports, youth media, independent news, spirituality etc. If the video falls under Creative Commons, the logo will appear on the left hand side of the movie’s detail page.

Channel Federator

Nothing breaks monotony like humor; and cartoons are the best agents for it. Channel Federator is like the Cartoon Network for the web. It is a community-driven website of independent animators. From hand drawn sketches to slick Flash based ones; the uniqueness is that none of the cartoon podcasts are longer than 5 minutes. The short clips are perfect for presentations.

Atom

This is the human equivalent of the above animated one. From spoofs to extreme humor, the independent bunch of video creators takes a saucy look at everything. Right now, I am looking at a video on teamwork… Could be useful for the next HR meeting. The clips are brief and embeddable.

One Web Resource for Comics Strips

- Fresher Image

This is not a top to bottom PowerPoint website, simply because clip arts and other graphics such as banners, bullets and buttons find other uses. But undoubtedly, this is a treasure trove. I find this website an invaluable source of free single panel comic strips.

One Web Resource for Animations

- Animation Library

The site features about 13,748 free animations grouped in 18 categories for use in presentations or other web media. The site also has a little one-page section on animation tutorials. The one negative was the non-functioning search bar.

The internet is chock a bloc with freebies. The human problem is laying our hands on the right one at the right time. And with the boss breathing down your neck for the Monday morning presentation, speed becomes a vital though an inhibiting factor towards creating a great presentation. Let’s hope these ready at hand resources give that bit of breathing space to let your inspired mind flow… and kickass.

Which free websites do you use to extend your PowerPoint presentation’s capabilities? Present us with your options.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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There is. Well, sort of. There’s going to be. It’s called Presentations, and is the latest offering from the folks at Adobe’s Acrobat.com, the makers of (among other things) Buzzword, a fantastic online word processor.

To get to Presentations, go to the Acrobat.com site, and look at the bottom. There’s a link for Presentations near the bottom – this is Adobe’s way of making sure you know it’s not a full-featured release yet. But it’s still darn good.

I was able to have a brief discussion with the folks at Acrobat.com before Presentations was launched, and they mentioned something that’s critical to Web-based apps being successful. There are three basic principles and points on which Presentations was founded: ubiquity, collaboration, and user experience. In all three realms, Presentations scores high.

The basic product is the same as any other presentation software – it lets you create slides, and then show them to other people. Adobe’s offering, though, offers a bunch of stuff that’s different and better. The best thing, in my opinion, is how much better the collaboration features are – better than PowerPoint, and better than any other online presentations tool.

A huge number of people can be working on the same presentation, or the same slide, or even the same word or image. You’ll see avatars for each person working on the presentation, listed next to the slide they’re currently editing. Conflicting changes are presented to the users, just in case your work overlaps with another collaborator.

There are a bunch of other great features to Presentations – the little things are what really shine. There are a number of themes available, which are easily customized to your liking (great for corporate use, where they tend to mandate a template). Diagrams can be created separately, and then moved around and edited together.

The navigation system is also a major upgrade from other applications. Even when you’re in presentation mode, you can bring up a small dock-like list of all your slides, letting you easily choose the one you want – avoiding that terrible “scrolling-through-everything-to-find-the-right-slide” moment. You drag the window to change the view of the slides, depending on how you want to edit them.

But it’s not all candy and rainbows, unfortunately. Acrobat.com notes frequently that Presentations is very much an early, unstable release, and it has some major notable features missing. There’s no spell-check, no support for importing movies other than .FLV files, and no import and export with PowerPoint – you can only save a Presentation to PDF.

There’s also no sharing of themes, no way to invite someone to view the presentation as anything other than a co-editor, and no way to make comments or notes on slides and presentations.

For now, Presentations is a slick, usable application. But as bugs get fixed and features get quickly rolled out, Presentations is going to bring ubiquity, collaboration, and user experience to a new level within the world of presentations. They’re easier to create, easier to navigate, and Presentations is a gorgeous app.

Worried about your next presentation? Tina shows you have to blow your audiences minds away with 10 Powerpoint tips.

What tool do you use for giving presentations? Present them to us in the comments.

Photo: garethjmsaunders

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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However, a bad presentation can achieve the opposite. Badly designed slides with too much text or bad graphics can distract or worse, irritate the audience.

Here’s is a short guide that will help you create presentations with a professional look and concise content, avoiding the most common mistakes.

Design

The first thing that gives a professional touch to any presentation is the design.

Presentation Helper has a large selection of free Powerpoint templates for a variety of topics. However, whether you download a free template or create your own, keep the following in mind:

1. Compose Slides

• Don’t copy & paste slides from different sources.
• Keep the design very basic and simple. It shall not distract.
• Pick an easy to read font face.
• Carefully select font sizes for headers and text.
• Leave room for highlights, such as images or take home messages.
• Decorate scarcely but well.
• Restrict the room your design takes up and don’t ever let the design restrict your message.

2. Use Consistency

• Consistently use the same font face and sizes on all slides.
• Match colors.

You may use your company logo, highlight headers, create a special frame for figures/images or the whole slide but don’t overload your slides with these elements.

Colors

A poor choice of colors can shatter a presentation.

If you’re unsure which colors match best, use ColorBlender to get a set of up to six matching colors, simply by moving a set of RGB sliders back and forth.

3. Use Contrast

• Black text on a white background will always be the best but also the most boring choice.
• If you want to play with colors, keep it easy on the eyes and always keep good contrast in mind so that your readers do not have to strain to guess what you’ve typed on your slide.

4. Apply Brilliance

• Carefully use color to highlight your message!
• Don’t weaken the color effect by using too many colors at an instance.
• Make a brilliant choice: match colors for design and good contrast to highlight your message.

Text

5. KISS

• Keep It Straight and Simple.
• Keywords only.
• No sentences!
• Never read your slides, talk freely.

Remember that your slides are only there to support, not to replace your talk! You’ll want to tell a story, describe your data or explain circumstances, and only provide keywords through your slides. If you read your slides and if you do it slow and badly, the audience will get bored and stop listening.

6. Take Home Message

• Always express a Take Home Message.
• It’s your message, a summary of your data or story.
• Make it a highlight that stands out.

Images

Images are key elements of every presentation. Your audience has ears and eyes – they’ll want to see what you’re talking about, and a good visual cue will help them to understand your message much better.

7. Add Images

• Have more images in your slides than text.
• But do not use images to decorate!
• Images can reinforce or complement your message.
• Use images to visualize and explain.
• A picture can say more than a thousand words.

If you don’t have your own images, you can browse Flickr or Google’s image search for material. If this is a very public and official presentation however, you need to keep copyrights in mind.

Animations & Media

In animations, there is a fine line between a comic or professional impression. However, animations can be rather powerful tools to visualize and explain complicated matters. A good animation can not only improve understanding, but can also make the message stick with your audience.

8. Don’t Be Silly

• Use animations and media sparingly.
• Use animations to draw attention, for example to your Take Home Message.
• Use animations to clarify a model or emphasize an effect.

Target & Content

Your target i.e. your audience, defines the content of your presentation. For example, you won’t be able to teach school kids about the complicated matters of economy. However, you may be able to explain what economy is in the first place and why it is important.

9. Keep Your Audience In Mind

• What do they know?
• What do you need to tell them?
• What do they expect?
• What will be interesting to them?
• What can you teach them?
• What will keep them focused?
• Answer these questions and boil your slides down to the very essentials.
• In your talk, describe the essentials colorfully and choose your weapons i.e. text, images and animations wisely (see above).

If you lose the attention of your audience, everything will be lost — it won’t matter how ingenious your design шас or how brilliantly you picked colors and keywords.

10. Practice

A well-prepared and enthusiastic talk will help you convince your audience and maintain their attention. There are some key points that define a good talk.

• Know your slides inside out.
• Speak freely.
• Speak with confidence – loud and clear.
• Don’t speak too fast.
• Maintain eye contact with the audience.

If you’re unsure whether or not you’re doing it right, read this article on How NOT to Give a Presentation.

Finally, in order to prepare a stunning presentation, you may also be interested in the following articles:

Build & Show Presentations Online With 280 Slides by Stefan

Create Awesome Excel & PowerPoint Charts with ChartChooser by Matt

Liven Up Your PowerPoint Presentations With LiveWeb by Jerry

Make Beautiful Online Presentations With Sliderocket by Varun

Give Your Presentations A Boost With ZoomIt by Saikat

What are your tips for a killer presentation? Present them to us in the comments.

Image credits: JadeGordon, eqphotolog, ba1969, danzo08, svilen001, hisks

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Show and Make Presentations Online with 280 Slides (11)
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For a while now, my solution has been Google Docs. It’s a great service, and one that has served me well over the months and years I’ve been using it. Google Docs, though, is not without its issues and downsides, some of which have left me in constant search for the best and brightest of the online document managing application.

Well, I haven’t found it yet, but I’ve found five pretty great alternatives to Google Docs that you might want to check out. All of these, and Google Docs, offer the same basic editing features; instead of rehashing them over and over, I’ll point out the one or few great features that put the application on this list.

Buzzword

My current online editor of choice, Buzzword, is Adobe’s offering in the online word-processing department. It’s attractive, flash-based, and incredibly simple to use. In addition to all the standard features, Buzzword offers a few key uses for users of all levels. Buzzword lets you share documents with people, giving individuals varying levels of access, from comments to editing to just reading the document.

Also useful is the Version History tracker, which tracks your changes and lets you revert to an earlier version of the document in only one click.

Buzzword is the prettiest of the bunch, and while it’s not terribly feature-rich when it comes to document editing, its collaboration and tracking tools more than make up for it.

Zoho

The number of applications Zoho offers, from an email service to a personal wiki and a “centralized public repository” (whatever that is) is ridiculous. I’ve become a big Zoho fan recently, and it has a huge number of useful tools at your disposal.

The writer itself is excellent, with a ton of editing options organized in a way that looks much like Office 2007’s Ribbon interface. Almost anything you can do in Word can be done in Zoho, from adding a header and footer to directly posting a document to your blog.

Zoho is the most feature-complete of the Web-based applications, including Google Docs, and is incredibly easy to use. Zoho doesn’t get nearly the press Google Docs does, but I can’t see a reason not to switch to Zoho.

Etherpad

If collaboration is what you’re into, give Etherpad a good look. There’s no need to sign up for Etherpad – just click “Start New Pad” and get going. Then, either share a link to the pad or send invitations to your contacts by email.

As users come in, you can edit the text on the pad in real-time, and changes automatically appear. You can chat in the sidebar, highlight which user made a given change, and save revisions in order to revert if a mistake is made.

Etherpad is perfect for coding and programming, but is also great for writing and editing documents. There aren’t as many features to Etherpad, and all your editing is in plain text, but it’s so collaborative and useful that it deserves a mention anyway.

Peepel

Peepel is basically a whole suite of desktop applications, stored within your browser. You can run multiple Peepel windows in the same browser window, letting you manage more pieces of your workflow all at once.

Peepel offers services like the WebWriter word processor, WebSheet for spreadsheets, a contact manager, great file-sharing and collaboration tools, and the Workspace Manager that lets you save your layout and return to it later.

Peepel isn’t the flashiest of the applications, but I love the ability to run more than one document or application in the same window.

OpenGoo

OpenGoo is similar in appearance to both Google Docs and the Zoho suite, with a well-integrated interface available to you. You can access calendars, tasks, documents, sticky notes, email, contacts, and time-tracking tools all from within the OpenGoo interface.

For document editing, OpenGoo is much like Google Docs. You can create documents or slideshows, and the interface is much like Google’s. You can edit documents, and then tag them or add them to folders for easier organization.

One thing I liked was that a new document is opened in the same window, with the document browser in the sidebar, whereas Google Docs always opens a new window.

If all you want is documents, there’s not a lot unique about OpenGoo; if you’re looking for a more complete interface and application, it’s a great choice.

What do you use for document editing, either online or off? Which one of the above mentioned online office apps in your opinon is the best alternative to Google Docs?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Looking at 280 Slides a very interesting thought popped into my mind; Microsoft, and every other desktop software maker is in very deep trouble. Why would I want to buy the Office suite when I’ve got a perfectly capable web application available on any of my computers for free?

Even Windows is in trouble; One of the big downsides to switching from Windows at the moment is the lack of portability for applications: you have to learn how to use apps which are compatible with Debian for example. But when the apps run in your browser, and the browser is the same, Firefox, there’s nothing to stop users from switching platforms. As these web applications evolve this will become a very pressing problem. I’ll leave this discussion for another time, so let’s get to know 280 Slides.

• All the basic features are there: text boxes, pictures, video, shapes, notes. If you’re using PowerPoint or Keynote to create presentations but never heard of manually assigning animation paths, you’re never going to know the difference.
• Import and Export PowerPoint 97-2007, ODF or PDF. Create slides online and then save them on your computer or import an existing slideshow for editing. Simply click Import and select your document. To download – just select the format you prefer.
• You can store documents directly on the 280 Slides server if you create an account. The only information you have to provide is an email address and a password.
• The full screen presentation mode works very well and supports the standard key combinations for going forward and exiting.
• Recognizes and uses existing fonts from your presentation.
• 12 integrated themes, simple and elegant, inspired from similar themes in Keynote.
• Uses Amazon S3 storage facilities – which have a consistent uptime and are reliable.
• The application is written in Objective-J and Cappuccino. Objective J is JavaScript with the addition of classes.

280 Slides is in beta but so far works very well; There are a few kinks and bugs, but no ‘showstoppers’:

• It had trouble recognizing non-ASCII characters, which limits its use to the English-speaking market. For example it replaced Romanian specific characters with a question mark:

• It doesn’t recognize cropped areas created with PowerPoint 2007. For example, I had a cropped signature from a screenshot. Instead of the signature – the whole screenshot appeared.

• It is still a bit slower than the offline versions; be prepared to wait 2-3 seconds to switch from one slide to another. Sometimes, when opening a new dialog box, the application was unresponsive for a short period. That proved to be a little frustrating.

An alternative to 280 Slides is SlideRocket – in my opinion a better choice when it comes to creating presentations online. It has more advanced features such as transitions, charts, diagrams, tables and assets managing. Unfortunately, SlideRocket isn’t free.

I invite you to take a look at 280 Slides and tell us in the comments what you think about the app; How would you compare it to SlideRocket?

Other MakeUseOf writers have reviewed similar web applications. Check out articles by Tina and Jeffry. You can read Varun’s review of SlideRocket here.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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The site has been running for about a year, and went public a few months back. Since then they’ve been adding capability to the product. It’s looking good. They even have a scanning service to convert all those old prints into a digital stream.

I like the layout of the site. I’m not so sure about some of the things that happen on the page. For instance, in Firefox 3, Ctrl-Tab doesn’t work any more, and neither does the scroll wheel on my mouse, at least in the main part of the page.  I’m running on Vista if that make any difference to you.

Membership of the site is free, but requires the usual collection of personal information to get in. After you’ve got through that, click the blue Create button and then New Capzle to get started.

You can add an impressive stack of stuff to your Capzle. But it’s easier to do than to describe, so let’s get started.

First, the content. Click the button, and choose the directly option. You can try out the stacked and blogging settings later. The idea here is that you are creating a timeline, and putting items in place on the line.

Capzle wants you to have the files with you, so if they are on Flickr, for instance, you’ll need to download them first. Browse to the files, select them all, and upload them to the site.

The most common use of Capzles is to capture a sequence of events, so you’re going to be forced to put up with my trip to Melbourne for Christmas. No one ever said it was easy.

Now you’re in edit mode with an untitled Capzle in place. Let’s set a few things. Top left in the menus is the Add Title & Description option. Go ahead and click that.

Set the title and description as you please. You can choose from what must be the wackiest font list I’ve seen in a while, and colour it as you please. You can see that the title in the main area changes as you tinker. Eventually… hey, pay attention… eventually you’ll get sick of fiddling with that.

We’ll go through and set some more things, but first we should have a look at how the result is going. Click the I’m Finished button, top right, and you can preview the result. You can click Edit Capzle to return to this design view any time. Go on, you deserve it. This is the view other folk will see of your work, but with more controls in place.

In preview mode you have a control panel in the centre of the page, and you can also use your mouse to move around. Try holding the mouse over an image, and clicking on it.

The control panel consists of six buttons. The magnifying glass controls the size of the images, as you might expect. The four centre buttons are used by holding the mouse button down over them, causing the stream of images to scroll to the left or right. The final button is for the soundtrack volume. More on that later.

Back to design mode now… We need to change some more settings.

Just quickly… the Tags and Categories section in the menu will let you set some metadata for your show, and make it easier for other folk to find your work.

We’re now heading for the Design Your Capzle option.

That’s where we make some sweeping changes to the look of the production. You can choose from a substantial list of themes in the list. As a photographer I don’t want anything too overpowering back there, but if you’re the day-glow-pink-bling type you can find something in here too, I think.

You can also click the design it myself tab at the top and make more controlled changes if you like, including the choice of a single colour background or some sort of gradient. You can also upload a background image if you are possessed so inclined. Fiddle with this until you are happy with the result.

The playlist option lets you choose a background track for your visitors to enjoy while they look at your shots.

Click the upload button, choose one or more tracks, and upload them.

It’s worth noting that the dialogue that displays states I certify that I have the right to upload this content and that it does not violate the terms of use of the Capzles website. I’m pretty sure that, at least where I live, that statement precludes the uploading of the latest hit by your favourite artist, but obviously your mileage may vary.

Two to go…

Set the privacy level of the Capzle in the next section. Be a grown-up, and consider whether anyone will be offended by what you’re doing. Good.

Now the best part. Share the Capzle. There are essentially two ways to do this.

First off you can click the Send to Friends button, and get Capzles to do the heavy lifting for you. I’m not fond of that option, purely because my paranoia kicks in. I don’t want to send the Capzles folk a list of my friends’ email addresses. it’s not them. It’s me.

The other option is to grab the URL for your Capzle, and send it to them yourself. I’d do that.

So in the end, we’ve fairly easily constructed a complex timeline. You might have noticed though that what we finished with isn’t a slideshow in the traditional sense. Navigation is the responsibility of the user. That’s great for your friends at school or work, but it’s not going to work for Granny. She’s just not a Web 2.0 girl, and you know it. So think about what works best for you audience.

Visitors have all the main controls at their hands, but they can’t edit any of the info. That’s just as well, because they missed out on the trip, right? So they’ll be jealous.

The Capzles folk tell me that both an automated play option and a Flickr import are in the wind. I look forward to both options.

I’m curious. Do you prefer this approach to a standard slideshow? Who would your audience consist of? What other options have you tried?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Enter the slideshow. I’m old enough to remember when it was common for folk who had been on an overseas trip (and everywhere is overseas from New Zealand) to return, get their slides printed, and bore their friends and neighbours to death with hours of images projected on a sheet in a dark room. I know. My father was a member of the inner circle.

Thankfully those days are largely over, and most of you don’t have, or want, access to a slide projector, to say nothing of the slides themselves.

The Internet can provide you with a way to release your slideshow tension, without the sheet, without annoying the neighbours, and with a whole lot more multimedia capability than Dad could ever manage.

Flickr is the most likely place to have your images, so let’s start there. and see how to create Flickr slideshows. It’s best to bear in mind that flickr’s focus is the images themselves, so they don’t manage some of the things that slideshow specialist sites can handle, but the capability was upgraded last year and it’s quite thorough now. And hey, you’re here already, right?

You can, if you wish, create a slideshow of your entire photostream. Unless you have a severely limited stream of images though, this isn’t the best of plans. Instead, create a set, order the images in the set as you wish, and then create a slideshow for the set. Share the slideshow, and invite folk to watch it.

Easy, right?

A short note on flickr jargon. A set is an array of images of your own, collected together on whatever basis you like. A collection is an array of sets. For instance, I have a set for each of the suburbs of Wellington that I’ve taken photos in, and a Wellington collection that pulls them all together. A group is like a set, but contains images from a number of different flickr members. We’ll stick with a set for this.

The easiest way to create a set is in the Organizer. I hesitate to spell it that way, but never mind… You’ll find it in the main menu in flickr. This thing is a little difficult to screenshot, but you should be able to see your images, in reverse chronological order, along the bottom of the page.

If you have tagged the images, then you will be able to enter appropriate terms in the search box to filter the choices shown. Otherwise you’re going to need to scroll to the right with the arrows. In either case, once you see the images you want to put into the set, drag them into the main area of the screen.

I’ll wait politely while you do that. Done? Great.

Now click the Add to set button at the top of the page.

Change the name of the set from the default new set, tell us all about the details of the set, below, and click on Save. Try to think of a better subject, and much better title, and fundamentally superior details than I have managed here. Good. Your friends will thank you.

Click the flickr icon, top right, to return to your normal view of the flickr site. Click the arrow to the right of You, and click on Your Sets.

Click on the set you just created.

Nearly there. Click the Slideshow button, top right.

That’s it. The slideshow is created, and up and running. There are various options on the slideshow screen for setting options such as fullscreen, enlarging images (called embiggening!), showing titles, and playing in reverse. Just slide the mouse over the top right of the page to see them.

You can share the slideshow from here, or share the set itself from back at the set view. From here, click Share. You’ll see a URL you can copy, a piece of HTML you can imbed in your web page or email, and an option to email a link to the slideshow to your friends, assuming that you still have some after all of this.

It’s a good idea to construct, by whatever means are the easiest, a start and end slide. These days, scrawling the details somewhere and photographing it is pretty painless. Otherwise there is plenty of software that will add titles for you. Please don’t apply them to all the slides though. That gets old very quickly.

Now it just might be that while flickr slideshows are the simplest option, they might not meet your requirements, so here are a few alternatives that offer a little more pizzazz. There are a huge number of slideshow sites out there now. I’m not pretending to know all of them…

flickrSLiDR – allows you to embed your Flickr photo slideshows easily in another webpage.

Flickrin – lets you embed a rectangular block of images in your blog or website, based on your user name or some tags on the photos. Here are some based on ‘Wellington”.

Capzles – I’ve discovered this site only recently. This site lets you compose a timeline (like a slideshow) and then add a soundtrack to it. More on that one soon.

So do you how to create flickr slideshows? using what? Do you look at slideshows?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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SlideRocket is packed with features. Depending on personal preferences, it may or may not replace Powerpoint or Keynote on your desktop. However it’s surely going to amaze you with what it has to offer.

Creating Presentations Online using SlideRocket

For starters, you can either import a Powerpoint presentation (it supports Powerpoint 2007 also) or start from scratch. If you indeed decide to start from scratch, SlideRocket has some excellent tools to offer:

Choose from a variety of stunning themes, add charts, images, videos, put in some transitions (some pretty cool ones) and effects and you are already on your way to a fabulous jaw-dropping presentation. What’s best is that the themes, transitions and effects do not resemble the usual ones you would find in Powerpoint.

On top of that SlideRocket has an excellent plug in architecture so you can be sure that there will be no shortage of creativity, to tickle the creative guy/gal in you.

Managing Presentations and Assets

SlideRocket offers excellent management of your assets. The assets are stored in a library with the ability to tag and search your uploads so that you can get to that brand logo you uploaded few months back quickly and easily. You can also share assets with others if you want to.

Apart from these, SlideRocket also offers you version control on your presentations so that you have a revision of the changes you made to the presentation and you can revert back to a previous version in case you mess things up.

You also get to decide who can view, edit or share your slides. Cool eh?

Put your ideas across – delivering the presentation

You can invite people who you want to be able to view the presentation and prevent them from redistributing your work.

Send the URL to the presentation or embed it on your site. You can also download the Adobe AIR-based offline viewer in case you want to present your ideas offline. Or you can view the presentation from a mobile device or perhaps go with the no fuss print option!

Metrics and Analysis

If you thought that was all, just wait till you hear about this: “SlideRocket allows you to track your presentations and gives you access to some extensive metrics. These metrics allow you to see who is viewing your presentation, where they viewed it, who they’ve shared it with, which slides they looked at and for how long”.

Here is a sample presentation to let you know about some of the capabilities of Sliderocket:

So how do you think SlideRocket compares with similar offerings from Google and Zoho? Or do you know of some other better ones? Let’s hear about them in the comments :

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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However, I noticed that not too many of my friends nor my family really care to wade through hundreds of pictures, usually the same scene, just a different angle, because it’s boring. That’s where photo slideshows come in handy. You can make yourself look pretty suave by creating fancy slideshows with customized music, titles, and more using some very easy-to-use and free tools.

Here’s a list and a short feature run-down on some of my favorite photo slideshow apps:

(1) Microsoft Photo Story 3

Even though lots of Microsoft software is buggy, they do occasionally come out with some really good software. Microsoft Photo Story is a free way to create video "stories" from your digital pictures by having the ability to add effects, record your own voice/add music tracks, and add titles. You can basically create a small movie that conveys a story in pictures, words and sounds. The program is very intuitive and doesn’t crash, at least on my PC!

Photo Story has lots of built in transitions that you can apply to your pictures, such as panning, zooming, flipping, wiping, etc. It also has the usual set of special effects such as black and white, sepia, or watercolor. The best part of the software, however, is the fact that it makes it super easy to share your super slideshow with anyone. Photo Story automatically compresses your photos and creates a single file that you can then take anywhere. You can have it emailed, saved onto your Smartphone or PocketPC, and lots more.

(2) Google Picasa

Picasa is another free program, from Google this time, that you can use to create slideshows of your digital pictures. With Picasa, however, you cannot export a slideshow out to a single file and share that with others. You can only create and play slideshows of your pictures in Picasa itself. You can use it, however, to create photo screensavers and photo movies on your PC. Photo movies are basically slideshows that you can save out to a video file and email or burn to CD/DVD.

Picasa does not have nearly as many options for configuring your photo video or slideshow as Photo Story does, but it has another cool feature called Templates. Using these templates, you can create beautiful HTML and Flash photo galleries without having to know anything about either! Check out some cool templates here and read this guide on how to install and use Picasa templates.

(3) SmileBox Slideshows

Don’t feel like installing software onto your computer for making slideshows? Check out Smilebox slideshows, a free way to create slideshows online directly in your web browser. You can choose from hundreds of themes for your slideshow, and you can import music, videos, photos, and add text to your slideshow (more like Photo Story in that respect).

Once you’ve created a slideshow, Smilebox makes it a piece of cake to share with others either via email, via your blog, or via regular printed paper. The other nice feature about Smilebox is that you can use it to create Facebook and MySpace slideshows, which can be automatically uploaded without you having to do anything.

(4) PictureTrail

PictureTrail.com probably has the largest collection of cool looking designs and styles for creating a slideshow. I was impressed with the number of different slideshow variations they have on their site. The only problem that I have with PictureTrail is their annoying sign up process. You have to enter in useless information like your birthdate (why do they need it) and you have to click through several ads (you can just click Skip at the bottom) before you get into the main part of the site.

However, once you’re in, the site is fine and does not bombard you with ads or anything like that. They have a good number of options you can configure for your slideshows, including skins, borders, effects like glitter, backgrounds, and captions. Overall, it’s a pretty nice service if you want to create a jazzed up slideshow. Definitely geared more towards the younger crowd.

(5) Slide

I actually like Slide better than PictureTrail because it’s cleaner, has more options, and doesn’t even require you to create an account. Slide allows you to choose files from your computer, lets you search online for pictures, or let’s you import from a whole host of sites like Friendster, Bebo, MySpace, Photobucket, Facebook, Flickr, and more. You can also select multiple files at once to upload from your computer.

On the right hand side, you can change the style, modify the theme, add music and video, change the background, add special effects, change the size of the slideshow window, and even control privacy settings on who can and cannot see your slideshow. You have, of course, several options for sharing your slideshow easily.

Hope this helps put more people’s pictures to use! If you have taken great pictures, why are you the only one to have seen them! Download a slideshow app, create something special, and make someone happy! Enjoy!

(By) This is a guest post by Aseem Kishore, an occasional MakeUseOf contributor and the person behind Online-Tech-Tips.com – a blog that provides useful computer tips in an easy to understand format.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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