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Can Google Kill PowerPoint?
theodp writes "Far from a PowerPoint killer, Slate's Paul Boutin finds Google's online presentation tool Preso more like a PowerPoint commercial — a half-baked app that shows how powerful Microsoft's program really is. But if you have your druthers, Boutin suggests ditching both and opting for Apple's Keynote, which helped snag an Oscar for Al Gore and inspired this Dear-PPT-Letter. 'The first hurdle ... You can't use it on a plane. Google Preso only works if you've got a live, high-bandwidth Internet connection. You can save the finished product to an HTML presentation on your laptop, but you can't edit the saved version or upload it back. The Splunkers would need to finalize their presos early in the morning in a rented conference room, where both Wi-Fi and Verizon wireless cards have been known to fail. That would kill the presentation.'"
I have to say, and this is after using Powerpoint many times over, Keynote blows PP out of the water. It has to be one of the best applications for the Mac when it comes to real-world usefulness.
Google's online apps are crap (except Gmail.) I don't want to have to be tethered to an internet-enabled computer all the time, much less use everything inside of a web browser. Word & Excel are great applications (well, the 'ribbon' thing kinda pisses me off) and have really set the bar for office applications. I've tried OpenOffice, NeoOffice, Pages, Omni, etc, etc, etc and I keep going back to Word and Excel. And I don't want to consider myself a Microsoft (or Apple) fanboy at all.
-nick
I've been using keynote since I had to present my masters thesis and I've never looked at powerpoint again. Powerpoint is no where near keynote when it comes to ease of making slides, features, less cluttered look that lets you do your work. powerpoint does have it's advantage at being pretty much ubiquitous. But, I've fund keynotes import-export feature quite adequate. Oh and you can export slides to pdf, flash or quicktime as well.
Does anyone else think all presentation software should be banned, on the basis of services to humanity?
I do not think so. I am doing a PhD in Multi Agent systems and usually make my presentations in Powerpoint with the Texpoint extension to add LaTex code. In my last two presentations I have used OpenOffice.org Impress with tex2png because I now use Linux for everything in my "work".
However, some of the best presentations I have seen have been done in LaTex using the Beamer class. However when I tried to use it (some time ago) I found it quite complex (even though I write all my papers and am writing my thesis in Latex...).
Presentations are a tool, as any other tool it can be used wisely or stupidly. That does not make the tool more or less useful.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Does OO.org print the slide as it appears?
.jpeg and drop into another program and print lowres versions of the slides (last known incident was with 2000, so PP apologists need not be rude, just tell me it was fixed). Otherwise I would get lame or no background.
I know with PP I need to save as
if OO.org prints the final slide as it appears I could actually have a major use for it even though we pay for Office. If I still had some of the troublesome presentations I would jsut test.
Typos == drunk, forgive me.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
It's not just stupid to rely on an internet connection, but also to use BETA versions for anything serious - I can attest to that. After forgetting my DVI converter for my MBP, and borrowing my professor's windows laptop to do a presentation, IE barfed on it, and I had egg on my face during the presentation. Words were cut off, text boxes jumbled, some slides didn't even show. He didn't have FF.
A fellow colleague offered me her (earlier version) MacBook, but it didn't work in Safari at all. All I got was a blank screen. She didn't have FF either.
It is a stupid idea to use BETA versions for something even remotely serious. I've learned my lessons: never rely on an internet conncetion, never use BETA software, and never assume that just because it works in Firefox, it works elsewhere.
Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine -- Robert C. Gallagher
I wouldn't even trust the local connection at my office (and this is a campus of 5,000 people). Too many times in the past the proxy server array has come to a halt or even - get this - some jacknut on a backhoe cuts all of the fiber into the complex. Yep - multiple providers giving us access to "the cloud", but the bundles of fiber still come in through one entry point and it has been cut in the past.
If I was going to do a presentation at all, the whole thing would be local and have absolutely no dependency on a network. I actually DO presentations frequently in front of small audiences (so far up to 300 people) and you always want to have the thing work no matter what. This means multiple notebooks, a couple of memory keys, maybe a copy on CD, and anything that is going to be demo that requires the network should have slides that have a canned copy (or a movie) of the demo. Otherwise you risk leaving the audience not only underwhelmed with your lack of foresight, but also not getting the full benefit of the materials you intended to show them.
Online only presentation? Not gonna do it; wouldn't be prudent...
I wouldn't say that, but, when people need to be able to collaborate on and share a presentation, this is a fairly cheap way.
Wish is was available around a year ago. Had to do a group presentation for a class, divided it, and got all of the project members on Gmail so we could work on it as a Google document.
The real challenge was American laziness. Punks wouldn't work on it until their backs were against the wall, at which time the old MS Office reflexes kicked in, and we used PowerPuke.
You can lead the horse to the water, but it had better be a fire-hydrant-delivered enema if it's hydration you're after.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
This is where you file an ADA complaint. Find the vice provost, and complain. If you've got to squint, then I can't read it. Therefore, they have to copy it. If they have to copy it, and there are large blocks copied right out of the text, then there's cause for a copyright complaint.
I couldn't weaken the RESNET firewall at OSU with logic, legitimate uses for XDMCP or PPTP, or that I couldn't use any of the VAXen. However, the ADA complaint (I'm on crutches and I can't do my homework) got it fixed fast.
This is the very reason why I've got a couple of books from Edward Tufte on my shelf in my office. Beautiful Evidence, for example, is not only a very good book (sometimes a smidge dry), but is also quite pretty to flip through as a coffee table book.
I do a lot of presentations (and enjoy it actually!), and really try to tailor the presentation of my material to the material itself, rather than fitting into PowerPoint's bullet style. You can do some rather neat things given a little creativity, and an eye for colors...
Michael C. Hollinger
It's even worse since everyone seems to be copying a second rate product in the first place.
Powerpoint is the wrong way to do presentations that are in any way more complex than a slide show. Want to skip back? Hit the back arrow twice or remember the slide number and punch it into the keyboard. Even with dual monitors you don't get much more than the ability to see what's ahead of behind.
Proper presentation software would give you a proper click able control screen where you can click back and forth.
I find it somewhat sad that the best way to view power point presentations is actually via Software designed to run a church service
First of all, you can already download presentations so that you can show them off-line. With Google Gears, I expect you will be able to work on them off-line ("on a plane") as well in the future. And it's just the first version; give it 6-12 months, and you'll probably be able to draw and animate as well.
Bingo. Its collaborative, cost effective, and a back to basics. If you want to make something slick for TV/film or a crowd that appreciate unnecessary fluff, fine use PowerPuke. If you want to collaborate on, make and deliver an effective presentation to others (I'm sure 99% of presentations are not made on a plane but back at the office) then it is fast and easy and no nonsense. I love it. I hate the completely pointless features in PowerPoint and similar, enticing you to spend hours on a shaded backgrounds, faded transitions and border combinations. Like I say, unless it needs to be visually slick for a TV audience, that time is wasted time.
Because you can - or because you should?
PowerPoint 2007 is much better than 2003, but the equation support is still crap, so I still use LaTeX (like many others in the economics department at my university). If the new equation support in Word 2007 is added to PowerPoint in the next version, it might be enough to convince me to switch to PowerPoint for good (I sometimes use it for presentations without equations). If Microsoft's new equation editor was 100% compatible with LaTeX syntax, instead of 90% or so (Leslie Lamport has been at Microsoft for years now, so there's no excuse for not going to 100% if they want to), it would be even more compelling. Even so, the differences are small enough to be only a minor annoyance to those of us accustomed to LaTeX.