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Accelerated PowerPoint?
darkjohnson writes "If you're looking for an
excuse to offer your manager to approve that high end graphics card so you can
play Doom 3 at full tilt (on your
'breaks' ;) you might want to check out the Instant
Effects' technology as it
has the first product
(OfficeFX) that justifies upgrading your display hardware so you can do a POWER
POINT presentation of all things. Especially true if you're
the one stuck with the duty of making them look good. I saw this at Siggraph
and was not only impressed with the look but the number of people packed into
the booth to see it demoed, competing side by side with real
time 3D game renders and high-end effects software."
BIG DEMO - 26MB
SMALL DEMO - 13MB
I totally agree. Just a little tip that someone mentioned a while ago that I'm using until slashdot stops their excessive crack smoking... change the first part of any slashot url to one that you like the colors of.
For example, this one is of the form it.slashdot.org. But if you change just the "it" part to, say "linux" (yielding something like linux.slashdot.org) the color scheme changes to that of the linux section, but keeps the same content of the article you're reading.
AFAIK, this works for all sub-sections.
True believers seek redemption from the sin of death.
"Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely."
Though I'm sure I won't be last to reference this, Yale's professor emeritus Edward Tufte has been writing about PowerPoint for a while. This piece in Wired helps explain how the cognative processes encouraged by PP presentations are subtly (and not-so-subtly) corrupting the way we perceive data. And you can purchase his whole essay here.
Whether or not you agree with all of Tufte's work, he is among the seminal thinkers about how we disseminate information. And having sat through too many years worth of PP presentations, I think he's dead right about this. I fact, I do my presentations from notes, using nothing more than dry-erase markers and a whiteboard. It never fails to impart an order of magnitude more information than a static bullet-point presentation ever could.
Yes, it takes some getting used to, but leave it there for a week and see if you don't like it better.
Yeah, right.
"I'd highly recommend anyone out there who is looking to improve their presentations to check out "Presenting to Win", by Jerry Weissman. Excellent book on giving presentations."
While we're on the essay reccomendations, Perl now has a page up on giving presentations, geared towards the shorter presentations
Did anyone try and download the demo on a system with XP SP2? It reports my DirectX is out of date and can't install... so I guess the installer doesn't detect 9.0c (from SP2) properly? Cool!
Joe
Perl now has a page up on giving presentations, geared towards the shorter presentations
The best piece of advice in the Perl page is:
A good approach is to create a Web site in concert with your presentation. The presentation itself would make a few points but its primary purpose is to direct the audience to the site to find more information.
The Web site will be a long-term repository for information that can be updated as required.
Given this approach, the Perl site's tips for making a short presentation are especially useful.
Office already has hardware accelerated PowerPoint, as of, I think it was, Office XP. This lead to silky smooth fades and transitions.
As for OfficeFX, ATI has been giving away free copies for bloody ages: http://ati.com/buy/promotions/officefx/index.html
In broad terms, I agree with you; I really hate to see text flying in and stuff like that. If you don't want it there when you load the slide, just make it appear or at least fade in quickly. Motion is distracting. (I did my last (and only major) PowerPoint presentation with white text on a black background.)
That said, saying they're never useful is almost as silly. For instance, I think the effect in the video demo they have up at 1:00 is pretty cool. Leaving that up on the screen as you wait for your presentation to start would, I think, be neat. And maybe do a really fancy, eyecandyish transition when you are making a change of subject. Sorta like how movie edits are made; most changes of angle are just cuts, but most changes of scene have a fade or dissolve or something. So they aren't without their use.
Not terribly related except on the matter of PowerPoint, but if you haven't already, be sure to download and run through the Gettysburg Address, PowerPoint style.
You are unclear on the basic concepts involved. A word processor is not a typesetting program, nor vice-versa.
While you're at it, please stop trying to open your mail with a screwdriver.
I write in my journal