resource

Unlimited Clip Art for $30/yr.

If you use clip art in presentations, or any design application, then this may be a good deal for you. The venerable ClipArt collection from IMSI (who remembers purchasing the 30+ CDROM sets….) is entirely online – and searchable! Of note this is just the vector clipart, not any of the photos, fonts, sounds, etc. and is at a clip-art only site iCLIPART.com.

Special pricing drops the year subscription from $99 to $29. Although I do not make use of much clip art these days, I do have need of it (in vector format) when developing custom graphics or template backgrounds.

Thought some people could make use of this.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:37:39-07:00January 25th, 2008|Resource/Misc, Software/Add-Ins|

Awesome has Great Examples of PPT 2007

Why reinvent something that already exists… I am coming to the party later than many, so I thought my first stop would be to point out some already great examples of what can be accomplished with PPT 2007.

Taj at Awesome Backgrounds has a page that showcases many of the great effects that can be achieved with the graphics engine in PPT 2007.

Click here to go to Awesome Backgrounds.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T14:52:15-07:00November 12th, 2007|PowerPoint|

ClickArt online royalty free art

Many years ago for images in our projects we relied on $300-500 per disk photo CDs and for vector art things like the 20 CD ClickArt 1 Million collection. Well, ClickArt is back – and now online.

Although it features lots of photo images, they are relatively small at 800px wide and 72 dpi. The offering is wide, with many having those same 80/90’s fashions I remember from use years ago. But many are ultra new and even the same images I have pulled from sources like Photos.com (of course much smaller file size here).

And if you need vector art (aka: clip art or line art), having a searchable database and unlimited downloads for a year is worth the price!

As for price, they are currently offering a 1 year, unlimited download for only $40.00!!

Click here to check out all the details.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T16:33:02-07:00October 24th, 2007|Software/Add-Ins|

FareCast – A Must for Purchasing Airline Tickets!

So I recently discovered this new site and its airfare prediction services – very amazing! If you are familiar with the Xcelcius software (adds real-time interactive charts to PowerPoint) that is what this site reminds me of.

Select the airports and needed dates and it provides not only flight information, but a history of prices for the flight and suggestions on if you should buy now or wait for ticket prices to go down!


Check it out at www.farecast.com.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T15:28:51-07:00January 4th, 2007|Resource/Misc|

Software to Convert PowerPoint to Flash

Received this email after the Streaming Media series posted:
“Hi. I am looking for software to convert PowerPoint presentations to Flash. What do you recommend? I tried Articulate and Camtasia. Only Camtasia converted everything in the original ppt slides. But the file was very large. The other programs left out font characters, loused up the audio, had other problems (but made a smaller file). Any help appreciated. Thanks.”

Thought I would share my reply:
You have tried two of my choices for software, so you’re on the right track. The main thing is you have two different approaches and you need to determine which is what you need:
1. Convert to a movie (Camtasia).
2. Convert to vector based images (Articulate).
A movie file will be much larger than a vector based flash file. Creating a movie is a bit tricky, as you can literally have the same movie output at 700MB or 23MB depending on size, bit rate, format and many other variable (as I just did today using Camtasia for a client webcast).

Here are two additional software choices that I have in my arsenal, not to say any one is better than the other.
1. Wildform Presenter Pro – The most difficult of all these programs to master, but it can produce some of the most effective vector based conversions of any program, being able to truly convert all animation effects.
2. Presenter Pro – Very, very similar to Articulate.

The advantage of converting to a movie is that what you see on your computer is captured. This includes custom fonts, bullets, animations, etc. This is why Camtasia captured everything as designed. The downside is it plays straight through (it is a movie) and is a larger (sometimes extremely large) file.

The advantage of converting to a true vector based Flash format is that the file size is tiny, the file can be resized without much quality issues, and it can pause at each slide easily. Downside is fonts need to be outlined, or they will default, custom bullets will not work, etc.

There are at least 10-20 applications out there, but these 4 really are the cream-of-the-crop and will give you the best results. Depending on the project determines which one I use, so keep experimenting with the software and different formats.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T15:26:50-07:00December 27th, 2006|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc|

Media Players for Streaming Media

There are four common media players for streaming media to play with.
1. Windows Media Player
2. Flash
3. Quicktime
4. Real Player

See the September 1, 2006 post for an overview of the pro’s and con’s of each player.

All four have browser plug-ins that give a browser the ability to play the streaming media directly in the browser. Note: having the media player application installed does not necessarily mean its browser plug-in is installed. To further complicate things, not all plug-ins work the same in the various browsers. For example, a Windows Media file may not play the same in FireFox as it does in Internet Explorer, or it may playback in Quicktime on a Mac (using the Flip add-in). I personally find Flash to be the most universal format and usually my format of choice.

There are no fix-all solutions. Once you have developed the streaming media it is critical to test on multiple platforms and browser applications. Most important is to be aware of the potential issues – and at least inform viewers of them.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T15:12:19-07:00December 9th, 2006|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc|

NXPowerlite 2.3 Released


The NXPowerLite guys over in the UK have been hard at work. There is a new update this excellent (and recommended) PowerPoint compression application. For me the install went smooth and in expirimenting with the new features I am even more impressed.
– Batch processing is great. Select 2,3,50 presentations and it will optimize them all in one step!
– The explanation for .jpg compression has been improved and it should eliminate a lot of questions.
– But the feature I like most is that you can keep the original file date/time.

Download the latest from the NXPowerlite website here (a full function trial is offered as well).

-Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T14:06:18-07:00July 16th, 2006|Software/Add-Ins|

Selling Power Magazine Article

A few weeks ago an interview I had with Selling Power Magazine was posted. It is based on the Pre-Show Checklist I posted back in March. The article goes into a bit more detail, giving samples of why each item is important to address and is overall a great write-up.

Click here to visit Selling Power Magazine and read the article (requires free registration). Or search for “Prevention” from the home page.
Click here to see the original post and link to PDF on the TLC website.

-Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:59:44-07:00June 15th, 2006|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc|

Bitmap and Vector Graphics

My friend, and fellow PowerPoint MVP, Geetesh over at Indezine just added a very good article on his website on what bitmap and vector graphics are. It is a very quick read and provides a good understanding of how these two formats vary, which is important when resizing images in a presentation. Click here to read it.

-Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:54:22-07:00May 18th, 2006|Resource/Misc, Tutorial|
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