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If, like me, you’ve have always admired the slideshows created by our Mac-wielding brethren at presentations and conferences, take note: Amit Agarwal reckons there’s a sort-of ‘Keynote’ upcoming for we Windows lovers.
Says Amit,
Apple recently demonstrated a new version of Keynote software as part of the iWorks ‘09 office productivity suite. Among other enhancements, Keynote ‘09 includes an array of new animations and transitions effects that you can add between slides.
Now Keynote ‘09 is available for Mac only but if you are on Windows or use another program like Microsoft PowerPoint to create presentations, SlideRocket is coming up with something that may interest you.
SlideRocket has taken some of the new transition effects that were introduced in Keynote ‘09 and added them to their own web presentation software. That means you can upload your existing PowerPoint slides on to SlideRocket and apply transitions that were otherwise only available in Keynote.
You can view the new Keynote transitions in SlideRocket via the presentation on Amit’s post, but bear in mind that these are probably not fully live yet. A demo will give you some more idea about SlideRocket’s capabilities and features.
I love PowerPoint in the latest iteration of Office, where it has finally ‘come of age’ and developed into eye candy rather than tear inducer; it’s one of the ‘must-have’ tools in my armoury. But I will seriously be considering SlideRocket if it can deliver some of the glorious transitions and animations of Keynote…
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Disclaimer: I am an affiliate of Proposal Kit and make 15% from each sale I refer, BUT don’t let that stop you reading this article — in over five years of use this kit has won me more new business, and more compliments on my proposals, than any other template proposal and contract system I’ve tried.
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Product Review: Proposal Kit
http://www.proposalkit.com
by Lee Hopkins and Tom Granger
Writing business proposals is a requirement for any business, especially to stay competitive and stay in business.
If you are launching yourself out as an independent consultant and you’ve never used a formal proposal or contract for your business, then this product will get you started doing it fast and easy. It pretty much includes every possible proposal and contract template and estimate document you could need for your business. Whether you are a business consultant (HR, PR, Marketing, etc.,), web site developer, independent service provider, cd-rom/dvd producer, graphic designer, computer programmer or any other type of business, Proposal Kit has something for everyone.
What it is:
Proposal Kit Pro is a suite of business proposal and contract management products that help consultants, designers and developers focus on the business end of what they do. It was created by and for consultant developers and designers and has a huge following. Just check out the testimonials and industry endorsements on their web site.
[click here to continue reading…]
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Virgin Airline's 25th anniversary advert. Reminds me of that classic scene in 'Catch Me If You Can' where Leonardo di Caprio avoids the Feds by bedazzling them with teenage beauties
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Virgin's 50Mb/s advert, with Samuel L. Jackson - but that we could get such speeds here in Australia… [sigh]. Hat tip to Neville Hobson for this and the Virgin Airlines 25th anniversary ad
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An interesting read; good to see that the author agrees with me that all the 'loose sheep' (twitter, facebook, brightkite, friendfeed, et al) will begin to coalesce and come home to the blog, which will return to being the main point of contact and web presence. Tip of the dusty Akubra to Darren Rowse for his tweet to this (@problogger)
A brilliant video courtesy of Shel Holtz on what happens when a simple communication project for a client gets additional ‘suggestions’ from others in the client corporation.
Superb!
As Shel says, watch it and try not to laugh! Such painful memories 
My good friend and ace thinker Trevor Cook recently highlighted how the ‘blogging is dead’ meme is… well… dead.
Quoting Duncan Riley in a great thought-piece for the Inquisitr: “The Economist’s piece is the better of the two, arguing that the top of the blogosphere is today indistinguishable from the mainstream media.”
Says Trevor,
One truth that has been re-inforced by the last few years of blogging is that it is not easy. Technically, of course, it is no harder than sending an email. But content, dear chap, that is the hard part. Many people can’t write, or don’t feel the need to do it every day, and many people, it turns out, don’t have much to say, or much they want to say to the world at large.
But before you dust off your typing skills, be mindful of a statistic that has never come out before in Technorati’s ‘State of the Blogosphere’ reports; that 94% of blogs have suffered from what is called ‘blogfade’ — no longer updated. That leaves around 1.5 million blogs active over the last seven days, and 7.4 million active over the last four months. A frighteningly low figure, compared to the triumphant hoopla that many (this author included) boasted was around the 133 million mark.
However, whilst blogging may not be as popular an activity as many of us thought it was, it DOES continue to support my feeling (based on decades of evidence) that those who ARE at the forefront of new communication technologies — blogging, podcasting, Twitter, 3D virtual worlds, et al. — are early adopters who have a widely-read/listened to platform on which to evangelise if they believe the product or service will be of benefit to their community. That all of the mainstream media sites now resemble blogs is further evidence that the communication technology called ‘blogging’ has gained a FAR greater audience and associated reach than a mere 133/7.4/1.5 million.
And as Trevor says,
Long-term this is not bad for companies, governments, associations and NGOs which do have a lot to say and important, continuing, reasons for communicating. After all, that’s why they spend a lot of money, sometimes huge amounts, on communications each year.
No longer can they be contained behind the firewall of Second Life. Penny Cazalet and Isabella Scheflo, my two fabulous assistants at the BetterComms Second Life office, have breached the very porous membrane that we like to call ‘reality’, and have slinked into the light of day.
This is the documentation of their first big adventure, with more to come each month, we promise.
Download NOW the entire first edition of this new monthly initiative [pdf, 831k] and revel in their mastery of social media. Your comments and suggestions as to other exciting adventures they can get up to are most welcome!
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Brilliant tutorial if, like me, you like taking landscapes but don't have a digital slr and cannot slap a polarising filter onto your digital 'point-n-shoot'.
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A fabulous list - let's hope it doesn't get out of date too quickly. But then again, cream always rises to the top, doesn't it?
UPDATE: Trisha from Customer Service in the Philippines just rang me and we confirmed that the mic input problem was resolved, and then proceeded to attempt to fix the ‘missing horizontal sound bar’ issue.
It isn’t a Dell issue, more a Vista one, and we found a website that offered a third-party plugin – but loading it didn’t seem to make any difference; certainly the sound bar didn’t appear. I’ll remove the app later, once I’ve finished configuring/training the speech recognition engine in Vista.
But thanks, again, to Trisha and Dell for doing what they said they would – follow up with me.
Further to my plaintive cry for help of last Friday, I received a call from Yvonne Patze, a Senior Sales Operations Manager at Dell here in Australia.
It seems that the US team had picked up my calls of frustration and for help on the web over the weekend and had forwarded my details to her for further investigation.
As Yvonne says,
[click here to continue reading…]
