Make your presentation sizzle
COOL ADD-ONS There’s more to it than just Microsoft Power Point. Bells and whistles can be added to make your slide shows rock.
Three fun tools that make it happen..
FOR
MANY of us, making presentations has become an integral part of the
job profile — be it to clients, colleagues or managers. And just
as a book is often judged by its cover, we are, more often than not,
judged by how we say things. Presentations, these days, involve more
than simply running a series of PowerPoint slides. This week, we
look at three tools that can help you wow your audience
1SLIDES
[www.slides.com]
It
gives you a layout very similar to a graphic editor but lets you
build your own presentations. You can upload your own images and use
transition styles very similar to PowerPoint, and add slides in
multiple directions so you can show them depending on the preference
of your audiences. You can also add complex web code that will let
you access a database or a separate app.
It
is just what a techie would want, thanks to its open-ended
interface.
You
cannot search for web images or insert a video with a single click
but if your presentation relies on live data coming from another
database, the web page with a video can be embedded. The app is
available for free and makes all your presentations public. There
are also paid plans, starting at 4,320 per annum ($72). Slides can
be cur rently accessed via a browser and you can export a
presentation only in t he paid plan.
2HAIKU
DECK [www.haikudeck.com]
You
can download this iPad application absolutely free of cost or sign
up for a free account using your web browser. There are six
different presentation templates -- choose one, and you can add or
craft your slides. Adding pictures is even simpler. You can either
upload a picture of your choice or use a built-in search function to
get images from across the web that can be used in your
presentations. Lay out the text, make graphs, add your slide notes
and you are good to go. The app allows you to use large font sizes.
What you cannot do is add videos to your slides.
In
case you have the iPhone and want to control a presentation running
off your iPad, the app lets you do the same as well. Do not have the
iPad or don’t want to hook it up? You can share your presentation
on social media sites, email the link to your colleagues, or even
download it as a PPT or a PDF File, using the Haiku Deck.
The
presentations are stored on the cloud at the Haiku Deck server,
which enables you to build your presentation from various devices.
3PREZI
[www.prezi.com]
This
i s also available for iPhones, iPads and the Web and your
presentations are stored on the cloud. This does a little more than
Haiku Deck. Once you have set up your account, you have to choose
between the “free” account where all your presentations are
available for the public and a “basic” account that is free for
the first 30 days. It then costs 3,540 per annum ($59.40) for the
basic to 9,540 ($159) for the “pro” version. There are even more
versions for large teams, which also lets you make your
presentations private.
Once
the account is set-up you can choose from various templates or start
with a blank presentation.
Prezi
also works in a zoom in, zoom out way. Each of your slides is a
circle that is connected to the central point. When you share an
idea and start presenting, it comes up in a unique way on the
screen. You can search for images from the web or upload your own,
and add videos, sounds, music, as well as other symbols and arrows
to design your presentation.
In
fact, the video actually comes in as a link to a YouTube video, and
your presentation is always served from the cloud. Prezi files can
be downloaded as PDFs and you can also share the link of your
presentation on social media.
The
Microsoft PowerPoint on a Windows PC and the Apple Keynote on a Mac
and iPad are still the big daddies of presentation-making. There is
also Google Docs that one can use, but there’s no harm to add some
bit of colour to your presentation. So the next time you are looking
to do something unconventional, use one of these tools to liven up
your work.
HT141007
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