Byte of the Week

Say what you will about PowerPoint presentations – lots of people use them and they can be a good way to transmit information. The hard thing about PPT is that it doesn’t generally transfer to the web very well – unless you have the right tool.

The Free Answer
It is actually very easy to upload a PPT – even to include sound. You simply save a web page and upload. They problem is that it’s not very dynamic. It doesn’t flow or look like it does in PPT. The users has to click through pages themselves and doing that isn’t necessarily intuitive to the visitor. Microsoft has support to upload PPTs to the web (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HP052667841033.aspx). On a positive note – it’s free and it’s easy.

Articulate $499

“Articulate Presenter lets non-technical users create e-learning courses by adding narration and interactivity to a standard PowerPoint file. At the press of the button, your presentation is transformed into a compelling Flash-based course.” OK, I tried this and it was easy. One down side is that you have to record the sound using this tool. Here is a sample of a presentation posted with Articulate: http://www.articulate.com/demos.html#

Impatica $499

“Impatica for PowerPoint makes it easy to add narrated business presentations to your web site or e-mail marketing programs.” I tried this one too. It was less easy to use – but the support people were really helpful. One benefit is that you don’t need to record audio with the tool; it will convert audio recorded with PPT. Here is a sample of a presentation created with Impatica: http://www.impatica.com/imp4ppt

Camtasia – $299
”Camtasia Studio gives you the power to easily record your screen, PowerPoint presentations, voice, and Web camera video to create compelling video tutorials, training presentations, and rich sales demonstrations for Web and CD-ROM delivery.” I didn’t try this one because it seemed much more like video – and therefore didn’t meet the purpose I had last week. Here is a sample created with Camtasia.

I mentioned You Tube earlier this summer. It’s a web site where you can post video clips for free. Well, I finally had a chance to use it and I wanted to report back on how easy it is.

I recently posted a fun video on broadband technology for a group from International Falls, Minnesota. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op4cb8u3hTQ)  

All I needed to do was set up a free account and upload the video – by walking through their series of questions. They have some limitations: video time limit is 10 minutes and size is 100MB.

Rick in Minneapolis recently sent me a great use of You Tube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrAjAIZhktM). These guys have posted brief snippets of videos from a recent conference. I think that’s a great way to share a conference with folks who can’t attend; or to help promote your conference for next year.

You Tube recently implemented a bunch of new improvements; none are worth going into – but I think it indicates that You Tube is gearing up to be bigger and better. It could be a good way to share family videos or just about any kind of video online.

OK, this isn’t my usual Byte fodder – but I use a Dell and since I had to look up the details I thought I’d share.

If you haven’t heard Dell is recalling certain batteries sold with laptops because people have had their laptops blow up. You can see why this caught my eye. Potentially affected batteries were sold with the following models of Dell notebook computers or separately as secondary batteries:

Latitude: D410, D500, D505, D510, D520, D600, D610, D620, D800, D810
Inspiron: 500M, 510M, 600M, 700M, 710M, 6000, 6400, 8500, 8600, 9100, 9200, 9300, 9400, E1505, E1705
Precision: M20, M60, M70, M90
XPS: XPS, XPS Gen2, XPS M170, XPS M1710
In addition, these batteries may have also been provided in response to service calls. The batteries were shipped to customers between April 1, 2004 and July 18, 2006. The words “DELL” and “Made in Japan” or “Made in China” or “Battery cell made in Japan, Assembled in China” are printed on the back of the batteries.

Sadly, I have an Inspiron 700M. So I needed to check to se whether my computer was one of the lucky few, which meant checking the battery. I found directions for removing the battery.

Luckily, my battery part number was not included in the recall. But if it had been I could have gone further on the site presumably to double check to make sure my battery was part of the recall and then to place on order for a battery switch. I will plug Dell here because I had to order a replacement piece earlier this summer. They never really asked how I broke the computer, they sent a free replacement, and (this is the best part) it was hand delivered by a technician who handled the replacement.

To learn more about the battery recall, visit the Dell battery recall site: https://www.dellbatteryprogram.com/Default.aspx

While I was looking into this I noticed another page of interest that lists other Dell Recalls, visit the Dell web site.

Last week someone asked me about how to plan or design a web site. Here are some of the resources that I think are helpful to think about the layout and look of your site – whether you are hoping to create your own web site or talk to someone about creating one for you.

Open Source Web Design: http://www.oswd.org  - this is a great list of free web site templates. Use it to find a model that you like. Then you just need to download it and make modifications to make the site yours. Or use it to find what you like and show your web developer. Then can download it and make the changes for you.

Don’t trust your opinion? Check out Web Sites that Suck http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com. It a fun place to learn what not to do – by example. While some of it is subjective, it does hit upon what are considered standards of good site deign tactics.

What to make sure that your site is easy to use? Jakob Nielsen is another I like (http://www.useit.com) – admittedly he might sacrifices usability for aesthetically appealing but his rules for design will make site easier to use and often will help with your search engine ranking.

If you’re in the Twin Cities, I have to tell you about a fun event this weekend – The Irish Fair (http://www.irishfair.com). My husband is running the Summer School that is happening on Thursday – it should be fun and there’s always room for more if you’re looking for something to do.

I’ve talked about blogs before – they are web logs where the author posts regular articles, generally on a given topic. People use them to show off a hobby, keep their audience updated on a project or event, demonstrate their expertise, or many other reasons.

Blogger (www.blogger.com) is a free blog creation tool and hosting service. I like it. It’s easy to use even if you haven’t built a web site. It’s easy to update. There are several nice templates to choose for your layout. It archives old blog articles. There is one hitch. Many blog tools will allow you to easily organize article by category as well as chronology. It’s a nice way to help your readers follow articles in a given vein or thread. Blogger does not have this feature.

Well this week I found a tool that helps you organize Blogger articles by category. First you use the tool to create code that you need to paste into your blog to show your categories: http://www.mobibo.com/gencat.htm

Next you have to add this code into the template of your blog, which you can do fairly easily from the Blogger admin tool.

Finally you have to make sure that the terms you use in your categories are used in the titles or text of the article you want to put into each category.

For more details instructs visit the following: http://shorl.com/dunudryralany