PowerPoint.Advanced.Presentation.Techniques [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

What's on the CD

The following sections provide a summary of the software and other materials you'll find on the CD.

Samples

The following sample PowerPoint materials are on the CD:

Digital Juice 2.0. Digital Juice, Inc. www.digitaljuice.com. Over 100 gorgeous full-color images with three remixes for each, representing a sampler of their complete collection. This is quality stuff!

PowerPointed. Geetesh Bajaj. www.powerpointed.com. A sampler pack including two templates, 10 background music scores, several seamless textures and backgrounds, and some special upgrade offers. Geetesh Bajaj is one of the PowerPoint MVPs.

Screen Beans Clipart. A Bit Better. www.bitbetter.com. You may remember seeing Screen Beans clip art in earlier versions of Microsoft Office; Microsoft licensed it from them. Well, there's a lot more where that came from! This sampler includes many samples in WMF format, which are free for your use; you can buy the entire pack at their Web site. Screen Bean clip art images are a registered trademark of A Bit Better Corporation.

Awesome PowerPoint Backgrounds. By Default. www.powerpointbackgrounds.com. Just what the name says. Here are a half-dozen backgrounds you can use freely. If you like them, look for more at their Web site. You will be amazed at the number of collections and the breadth of subject.

PowerFinish Samples. Studio F Productions, Inc. www.powerfinish.com. These beautiful free templates/backgrounds come from The Works for PowerPoint collection and are provided in both .pot and .jpg format. If you like them, check out the full collection.

Applications

The following applications are on the CD:

Paint Shop Pro 8.0. JASC Software, Inc. www.jasc.com. This is my all-time favorite image-editing program. I use it for almost everything-photo touch-up, graphics file conversion, cropping, and so on. This is an evaluation version, but I'm thinking you will probably fall in love with it and want to buy it, just like I did.

Impatica for PowerPoint. Impatica, Inc. www.impatica.com. This utility is the fastest, easiest and most effective way to publish PowerPoint presentations to the Web or deliver them through e-mail. Viewers do not require PowerPoint or any other special software to receive online presentations. The CD-ROM contains more information about Impatica for PowerPoint and Impatica OnCue, with links to download free, fully functional evaluation copies from www.impatica.com/evaluation/. Just double-click the HTML page provided to find out more, then click the "Download" button. Select the product in which you are interested and then fill in the form. As soon as you have completed and submitted the form, you will be provided with your evaluation Registration Code and a link to download the software.

RnR PPTools Starter Kit, Version 2. RDP. www.rdpslides.com. This is a suite of add-ins accessible from toolbars that perform a host of useful functions in PowerPoint, ranging from image positioning to VBA integration. These goodies are also courtesy of one of the PowerPoint MVPs, Brian Reilly.

Scan Calculator. Freebyte! http://freebyte.com/scancalculator. This handy utility helps you calculate the appropriate resolution at which to scan a photo in order to get a certain result. Sure you could do it in your head, but this is much easier.

Camtasia Studio. TechSmith Corporation. www.techsmith.com. Here's a trial version of a very powerful program for capturing the action on a computer screen and saving it as a video. There are many uses, including training and product demos, and the resulting files integrate nicely with PowerPoint.

SnagIT 7.x. TechSmith Corporation. www.techsmith.com. This is a trial version of a screen capture program that many of us professional authors use to get screen shots for our books. When you need still images of a computer screen, this is one of the best and most popular programs to capture them.

PANTONE®OfficeColor Assistant. Pantone, Inc. www.pantone.com. If you are preparing Microsoft Office files for professional printing using the PANTONE color system, you will appreciate this utility. It lets you select PANTONE colors from within Office applications, according to the PANTONE number.

PowerLink Pro Plus. Sonia Coleman. www.soniacoleman.com. This handy utility prepares your presentations for distribution by creating a "project" that contains your presentation file and all linked files. It also makes all the links in your presentation file relative so that the paths to them still work no matter where you run it from. While this ability is most useful in earlier versions of PowerPoint because they lacked the Package for CD feature, you may still find it helpful for PowerPoint 2003. This is a trial version that enables you to create two test projects. Sonia is one of the PowerPoint MVPs.

Autorun CD Project Creator Pro. Sonia Coleman. www.soniacoleman.com. This also creates an auto-running CD, like PowerLink Pro Plus, but it enables you to include other types of content as well, such as Adobe Acrobat, Word, and Excel. This is a trial version that enables you to create three test projects.

PowerWorship 3.0. Mysak Information Systems. www.mysak.com. This free utility is for churches that have sing-alongs where they show the song lyrics on PowerPoint slides to the congregation. You can maintain a library of songs and dynamically build slide shows and reusable song groups.

PowerSearch Plug-In. Accent Technologies. http://www.accent-technologies.com Powerpoint® PowerSearch Plug-In is easy to use and makes finding slides a snap. It saves hours in sorting through PowerPoint presentations looking for the slides you need.

Shareware programs are fully functional, trial versions of copyrighted programs. If you like particular programs, register with their authors for a nominal fee and receive licenses, enhanced versions, and technical support. Freeware programs are copyrighted games, applications, and utilities that are free for personal use. Unlike shareware, these programs do not require a fee or provide technical support. GNU software is governed by its own license, which is included inside the folder of the GNU product. See the GNU license for more details.

Trial, demo, or evaluation versions are usually limited either by time or functionality (such as being unable to save projects). Some trial versions are very sensitive to system date changes. If you alter your computer's date, the programs will "time out" and will no longer be functional.