PowerPoint and Presentation News - Issue 057

I just got back from vacation and as promised, here are the pictures.

Winners and Giveaways

Indezine Photos (link no longer exists) is giving away a new photo for you to use in your presentations.

And now for more goodies. Ppted.com is giving away five copies of their Kaleidoscope collection of PowerPoint templates. So now if you want to add a splash of color to your presentations, all you need to do is fill in this form. Mention "Kaleidoscope" in the Comments field. The sweepstakes ends on June 30th, 2005.

About the winners of the last ezine's combo giveaway of MessagePoint and the Urban Textures collection, here are the names. Congratulations to Fred Barbee, Patrizio Ercole, Myron Horn, Sabrina Marie and Ron Waters.

Here are some new articles and happenings:

Ppted.com just released their Americana collection of PowerPoint templates, right in time for July 4th. Take a look here.

Microsoft announced a public beta of a graphic product called Acrylic. The download is around 70 mb and you need a Microsoft Passport to download the beta. For those who don't know, Acrylic is the code name of the next version of Expression, a product that Microsoft bought 18 months ago. More Expression resources acn be found here.

PointeCast released their PowerPoint based online rich media solution. Take a look here.

Cartoons from Ron Leishman

Ron Leishman is the owner of Toonaday.com, a web site dedicated to providing original clip and stock cartoon images as as well as custom images in a variety of formats. Toonaday has been on the web since 1996 and so is well established. Besides being a subscription service, existing images can be purchased and downloaded either individually or on CD.

Ron is the principal cartoonist and has years of experience in editorial cartooning, greeting card and logo design. Here's a small interview with Ron:

Geetesh: How relevant is the idea of inserting cartoons in PowerPoint slides. How can a cartoon add value in such a scenario.

Ron: Cartoons can be extremely relevant when used in presentations. Several of my subscribers and custom clients report that my cartoons have been effective in getting the attention of participants. Humor sells and can often make boring material come alive. They often tell me that a relevant image grabs the attention of the audience and loosens up the audience. Nothing like a little laughter to get things off on the right foot.

Geetesh: What are the copyright implications of distributing presentations that contain a cartoon from a collection like yours?

Ron: Most of the presentations that my images have been used in, have been for internal use and so copyright has not been an issue. I generally request that a copyright notice accompany my images unless there are only one or two used and then I leave it to the good graces of the user.

If they are distributing the presentation and the images are a significant part of the presentation then licensing might be something that would need to be discussed. A little vague perhaps but it would need to be looked at on a case by case basis.

PowerPoint Help

Austin Myers tells you about Windows Media Player, DRM and PowerPoint.

Echo Swinford helps you change number alignments within PowerPoint charts.

Learn how you can save sound clips from the Clip Art Gallery and task pane.

Animate multiple text boxes and fake them up so that they look like one!

End Note

More PowerPoint related info on the PowerPoint Blog and PowerPoint Notes. And PowerPoint templates for all of you.

Until next time, have a nice day. And, keep the feedback coming.