AbsolutePPT

This blog has moved

2010-04-21T09:21:00.001-07:00

This blog is now located at http://blog.absoluteppt.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://blog.absoluteppt.com/feeds/posts/default.

Flypaper, a desktop program that creates online presentations

2008-04-01T04:14:00.000-07:00

Flypaper is a cool, new presentation creation program that lets you create Flash presentations that you can instantly upload to sites like YouTube, MySpace,a nd Facebook. In its present beta incarnation, it has some rough edges and any comparison with PowerPoint would be probably like comparing apples and oranges since Flypaper seems to provide a very different concept altogether.

Flypaper is a free application that runs on Windows XP and Windows Vista only (no Mac yet) -- it's a large download at 89 mb whereabouts, but it's fun to play with and may evolve into something very useful. The screenshot above shows the interface -- click on the screenshot to see a larger preview.

Flypaper does get into new terminology though: slide layouts/designs are called 'models'! Here's a quick one slide pres that I created in Flypaper, and then uploaded to Youtube.

Mix and Mash Online Video Clips with Omnisio

2008-03-30T23:11:00.000-07:00

Omnisio, a new startup allows you to mix and mash videos from several online video sites like YouTube, Google, and Blip.tv to create new videos. You can choose start and end points to trim the existing video clips, combine them in a sequence you want, and create a new online video clip that you can share.

These shared clips are entirely embeddable -- and you can have comments that actually hover over the video on these shared clips (see screenshot above). Many users find this distracting, so it's nice that you can turn them off.

More importantly Omnisio is about to introduce new features soon that will allow you to synchronize PowerPoint slides with video -- this will take Omnisio to the professional league.

Membership is free and very quick -- and you don't even need to be a member to view some sample clips. The clips are great -- and can allow you to get hours of fun.

Learn more at the Omnisio site...

Every Makeover is Different

2008-03-26T04:04:00.000-07:00

Doing makeovers of slides is such a satisfying task – maybe that is because removing the ugly and replacing it with near perfection is a reward in itself. Over the years, I have understood that the approach required to do any actual makeover is never the same – in the same way as the fingerprints of two humans don’t match, the approaches required to do various makeovers are dissimilar.

Suggesting makeover approaches is a large part of my work – that’s why I find it amusing to hear new schools of thought in the presentation sphere that promise to be a solution to all slide problems. These beliefs range from the no-bullet approach for slides to the total denouncement of slideware. Then there are opinions about keeping things simple and clean – and of providing more visual content. And there’s another school of thought that looks at creating diagrams, charts, and other info-graphic content in a way that’s more effective as is the debate between linear and linked presentations. Each of these approaches is unique and very useful in their own way – and properly applied, each of them may make a difference. But in the same way that a physician will not prescribe a drug for common cold to a patient suffering from body pain, the makeover artist will first examine the slides and then suggest an approach that may use, discard, or combine these approaches.

Read more of this post on the SlideShare blog...

authorSTREAM Provides YouTube Output

2008-03-26T03:57:00.000-07:00

authorSTREAM, a site that lets you upload and share your PowerPoint presentations upped the ante today by offering a slew of new options:

Download original presentations: You can now download the original PowerPoint presentation (or other file) if the author of the content enables the relevant option (see figure below).

For your existing presentations uploaded to authorSTREAM, this option is turned off by default. You can however edit your presentation properties and check the option (see figure below).

Share on YouTube: You can also share your presentations on YouTube. This option is now available for presentations that include narration or rehearsed timings -- these presentations would automatically be available in a video format (MP4) that you can upload and share on YouTube.

Share on iPods: Again this option is only available for presentations that include narration or rehearsed timings.

Improve Video Quality with a YouTube Hack!

2008-03-15T02:25:00.000-07:00

Laura Bergells who runs Maniactive linked to this tip on Lifehacker.

This quick hack allows you to quickly view a higher quality video on YouTube.

All you need to do is suffix "&fmt=18" witout the quotes at the end of your YouTube URL.

Laura has put up some samples in her post along with more details, thanks Laura.

Download YouTube Videos

2007-08-14T05:57:00.000-07:00

In this section we will look at ways in which you can download source FLV videos from the YouTube site. Remember, do respect copyright and do not download FLV source videos that do not belong to you. In these tutorials, we will only show the video clips we ourselves uploaded to YouTube as examples. You may be breaking copyright rules if you download content that belongs to someone else.

Download YouTube Videos with KissYouTube

Download YouTube Videos with YouTube Downloader

Related Links:

How does YouTube work? And should you download the videos?

Download YouTube Videos with YouTube Downloader

2007-08-14T05:42:00.001-07:00

YouTube Downloader is a program that lets you download FLV source videos for any of the movies you see on the YouTube site. It is a free program that you can download from here...

Once you install the program, follow these steps to download YouTube videos with YouTube Downloader:

Launch YouTube Downloader, and enter the URL of the YouTube page that contains the video you want to download (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Add the URL of the YouTube page that contains the video
Make sure that the Download video from YouTube radio button is selected, and then click OK.
YouTube Downloader will show you a File Download dialog box (see Figure 2), and ask you to choose a name and location for the downloaded FLV movie.

Figure 2: Save the YouTube movie
Once the download is done, you'll find a FLV file in the location you saved it to. If you find that the downloaded movie has no file extension, rename it to add a dot and the extension "flv" -- so that get_movie reads as get_movie.flv

Remember: YouTube Downloader is a constantly updated product -- sometimes YouTube might change a few things on their site, and YouTube Downloader may no longer work. If that happens, check the YouTube Downloader site for a newer version.

Related Links:

Download YouTube Videos

Download YouTube Videos with KissYouTube

2007-08-14T05:20:00.000-07:00

KissYouTube.com is a site that makes it super simple for you to download the FLV videos on the YouTube site.

Using KissYouTube.com is easy -- just change the URL of the page on which you are watching the YouTube video, so that you add the alphabets "kiss" before the domain name youtube.com.

For example, if you wanted to download the FLV movie for this page:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF0yCZ8PWco

You would go to the address bar at the top of your browser, and add the alphabets "kiss" without the quote marks before the youtube.com domain, so that it now reads like this:

http://www.kissyoutube.com/watch?v=dF0yCZ8PWco

Scroll down the page and click the download link provided to save the FLV video to your computer.

Related Links:

Download YouTube Videos

What is FLV?

2007-08-12T00:40:00.000-07:00

FLV stands for FLash Video, and is a proprietary streaming video format from Adobe. This format is used to store and share the video clips on sites like YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo! Video, and many other sites.

Normally you cannot download the actual FLVs, but there are applications and hacks that let you do so. There are also several FLV players and converters (that convert FLVs to other movie/video formats) available.

How does YouTube work? And should you download the videos?

2007-08-11T20:42:00.000-07:00

Although the title says YouTube videos, this post discusses any other similar video sharing sites. The technology that YouTube and other sites use may be something like this:

You upload your videos in any of the formats that YouTube accepts.
YouTube then converts your video to the FLV format -- this Flash based format is more suitable for viewing the content online.
You are provided a URL where this FLV content is embedded.
You can then share this URL with anyone, or use some embedding code to place the video on your site. The code that you embed sources the FLV from the YouTube site. At any point of time, you are not provided a direct download URL for the FLV file itself.

Although it is possible to do so, sites like YouTube don't really want visitors to be able to download the actual FLVs. However many programs and hacks have been developed that get over this limitation.

There's also another aspect to this download issue: plainly, you may be breaking copyright rules if you download content that belongs to someone else.

And there's yet another thought, that of the video quality. Most of the content on YouTube is compressed so that the videos can play well over all types of Internet connections. Sometimes, you can request the original owner of the video for a higher quality copy. This approach also allows you to request their permission to use the video clip.

PowerPoint to DVD Software

2007-08-08T09:37:00.000-07:00

I discussed whether and why you should create a DVD from your PowerPoint presentation a while ago...

And now let's take this to the next logical level: do you need a separate PowerPoint to DVD conversion software? The answer is not yes or no, it depends on your expertise level.

For starters, I haven't found a foolproof program that does it very well. And if you search for a PowerPoint to DVD program, it looks like the results are engineered by people who just want to sell their products! (they seem to be outsmarting Google for now). So I'm not going to recommend any of those programs. But to be fair -- most of them have trial versions, do check them out for yourself, and they might even work for you.

Essentially, creating a DVD from PowerPoint is a two step process:

Creating a movie from your PowerPoint
Creating a DVD from that movie

There are many good programs for the second process, and one of them may have been bundled with your DVD writer. As for converting your PowerPoint to a movie is concerned, you can follow my PowerPoint to YouTube tutorial (just skip the step where I ask you to upload the movie to YouTube).

This is not my last post on this subject -- expect to hear much more!

Why Should You Create a DVD from PowerPoint?

2007-08-02T09:19:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's the next big thing, and hordes of people want to do this. And since we live in a world with the mentality of a herd, everyone else wants to do this. But why? Ask them and many are confused. They might answer that there must be advantages using this approach since so many others want to do it!

So am I asking you to abandon the very idea of creating a shining DVD disc from your PowerPoint presentation that you can play on your TV via the DVD player? Not really. So why I am putting up such a layer of skepticism right at the beginning of this article? Well, actually this is not skepticism for the idea, it's more related to not being aware of how to do it, and of learning if better solutions exist for you.

I'll certainly go into the finer details of this issue, but for now let us look at the advantages and disadvantages of this approach:

Advantages:

Since I don't want you feeling gloomy, let's first list the advantages of creating these DVDs:

DVDs are easily played by anyone -- even by great grandmothers who don't know how they can use a computer. Did you notice I did not say grandmothers? That's because today's grandmothers are smarter!
DVDs containing PowerPoint presentations don't contain the actual presentation, just a movie of the presentation -- that means no one can copy your slides and pass them as their own, or even edit them to change a spelling (even if you made a typo).
Creating your own DVD sounds much more impressive than creating a mere PowerPoint presentation.

Disadvantages:

It's not too easy an task -- and you need the right software and hardware (and that's not always cheap).
It's not easy to email a DVD! It's so much simpler to send a PowerPoint presentation by email.
Editing DVDs can be time-consuming and expensive.

That's for now -- I'll discuss more PowerPoint-DVD nuances sometime soon.