It seems like Google Earth and Maps are playing a huge part in changing this perception. It’s now becoming pretty common for presenters and content producers to incorporate Google Earth ‘fly-throughs’ either as live demos, or as canned screen captures.

I’ve recently come across an Australian company called Pixelcase, which produces similar results using a Flash-based front end, which makes sense for compatibility.

And it turns out that QuickTime VR still exists, and there are a bunch of tools you can use to create VR shots, including software and hardware-based systems.

Pixelcase Photo from AMP Building

Apimac Timer Interface

Apimac makes a great presentation timer for Mac. It’s freeware, and supports displaying the current time, count-down, or a stop-watch. The timer has a great, simple full-screen mode which looks excellent for presenter fold-back or confidence monitors. Tip: press the space bar in full-screen mode to start or pause the timer.

Another interesting presentation service that uses Twitter to interact with your audience is Visible Tweets, which is a free web-based service that displays tweets from a specific user, or with a specific tag using stylish Flash transitions… would look very neat on LCD displays around a conference venue.

Visible Tweets using 'Rotation' effect

The pptPlex team has posted about experiments interacting with pptPlex using a 3D camera and a Wii controller – this really ‘haptic’ approach to presentations is so natural and surely represents the goal for a progression from the standard remote slide advance button and laser pointer.

They’ve most recently been testing pptPlex in combination with the touch-screen capabilities of Windows 7. If used in combination with a multitouch display or touch-sensitive projection screen sensors, this will be really exciting stuff for live presentations.

Touch screen demo (via pptPlex Website)

The idea of taking one ‘slide’ (or canvas), and inserting a whole load of content in different areas, linked together with visual elements, and then ‘zooming in’ to the content you’re talking about is a really cool way to give some visual meaning to your presentation.

pptPlex Demo Zoomed out

pptPlex zoomed into details

There are a few ways of achieving the effect – online presentation software ‘Prezi’ offers both free and paid services, which allow you to build presentations incorporating all the usual elements – text, graphics, and video.

There’s also a PowerPoint 2007 add-in called pptPlex which was originally designed with multitouch interfaces in mind – this idea is going to be big in a few years when multitouch becomes accessible for projection screens.

And finally, if you’re savvy with Flash or Director, or even something like Silverlight, you should easily be able to create a similar effect without the need for third-party software.

Links:
pptPlex Add-on for PowerPoint 2007

Prezi zooming presentation editor

A good Prezi demo video

This is especially useful for images with a white-background, which you want to insert into a presentation that uses a coloured, gradient, or image background.

In PowerPoint 2007, the same feature exists, but it’s a little difficult to find.

Click once on an image in your presentation to select it. A new toolbar will become available on the ribbon called ‘Format’. Select the ‘Format’ toolbar and click on ‘Recolor’. At the end of the ‘recolor’ menu, you will see the ‘Set transparent colour…’ option.

PowerPoint 2007: Set transparent color

Here’s a neat way to use these new image effects to create a glossy 3D look for objects in PowerPoint.

1. Create a gradient background with a solid dark colour at the top, and a lighter gradient below the centre – I have used a 4 step gradient to do this:

Gradient Background

2. Insert an image, and a text box, and align the base of each object on the same plane, just below the centre – it’s easiest to align the objects using a drawing guide:

Insert Objects

3. Select the image, and from the ‘Format’ tab in the ribbon bar, choose ‘Reflected Rounded Rectangle’, which should be the 5th preset look in the menu:

Image Effects: Reflected Rounded Rectangle

4. Select the text box, and choose ‘Half Reflection, touching’ from the ‘Text Effects’ menu in the ‘Format’ tab:

Text Effect: Half Reflection, touching

5. Your finished slide should look something like this:

Glossy 3D Slide Example

6. You can create ‘depth of field’ effects by making objects smaller, and moving them upwards, closer to the vertical centre – using a darker shade of colour for text objects also helps to add to the ‘depth of field’ effect:

PowerPoint 3D Depth of Field Text Effect

A popular commercial software package, Camtasia, also performs this function, however Windows Media Encoder does a good job, at no cost.

You can download Windows Media Encoder from Microsoft’s website at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/encoder/default.mspx.

Once installed, start Windows Media Encoder and choose ‘Capture Screen’. This will launch a wizard which will guide you through the process of choosing your capture settings, including the quality of the file you want to create, and the source to capture – the entire desktop, or a specific application window.

Windows Media Encoder, New Session

If you want more control over the quality and file format settings, you can select not to start the capture at the end of the wizard, which will allow you to customise the configuration further before capturing.

Note that Windows Media Encoder will only capture the screen to Windows Media Video format – which is fine if you want to upload it to the Internet, but you may need to convert it to another format if you need to later edit the capture, or incorporate with another video.

However, the TV out feature provides a fairly low quality option for display of a PowerPoint presentation, and it may be difficult to view a presentation clearly. Here are a few tips for ensuring that your presentation will show up as well as possible on a television monitor:

1. Use a TV-safe template
Designers of graphics content for television and broadcast use the term ‘TV safe’ to describe an area that’s about 10% inside the edge of the ‘screen’ (slide) in which content should be placed. Some television displays will ‘overscan’ and crop the edges off the image, so it’s worth staying inside this boundary. Here’s a TV safe PowerPoint template to download: TV Safe PowerPoint Example.

2. Use large fonts
Small fonts and fine detail simply won’t show up on a TV monitor. Text should be 16 point and above, and you should avoid using any fine lines for content like shapes, graphs and charts

3. Bold colours and high contrast
A TV monitor won’t interpret the colours you use on your slides as accurately as a computer monitor will, so try and use bold, clearly unique colours – for instance, if you have a bar graph, using different primary colours is better than using shades of the same colour for each bar.

Graph - Poor Contrast

Graph - High Contrast

4. Avoid light backgrounds (especially white)
You might notice that very few TV ads use a white background – this is because ‘white’ requires the TV to fire all colours on screen at once, and can create a visible ‘flicker’, as well as being bright and hard to look at for long periods of time – dark backgrounds like dark shades of blue are a good idea.

5. Keep it simple
Where possible, avoid any fine detail – use simple icons rather than detailed photos; use 1 or 2 words rather than sentences; and avoid tables or spreadsheets. If you do need to show photographs, use one slide for each photo, and ensure the photo fills the slide.

Complex Slide

Simple Slide

On a technical note, where possible, find a progressive scan television like a plasma or LCD screen. Many plasma and LCD displays have a VGA, DVI, or HDMI input which should be capable of accepting at least a low resolution computer signal. If they do not have a computer input, they are still a better option than traditional CRT TV’s, as they are higher resolution and not interlaced – a process that significantly reduces the clarity and ability to read static text.

If you do use the TV out function rather than a normal computer signal, where you have the choice, use component video (YUV) if your computer supports it, otherwise use S-Video. If you have no other option, composite signal will give you the lowest quality results.

Another important consideration is placement of content on your slides. You can create ‘drawing guides’ which allow you to consistently line up your content in the same position on each slide.

1. Right-click on the background of a slide in your presentation, and choose ‘Grid and Guides…’

Right-click slide background

2. From the ‘Grid and Guides’ dialog box, tick ‘Display drawing guides on screen’ and click ‘OK’

PowerPoint Grid and Guides dialog box

3. You will now see that your slide has two default guide lines – one in the horizontal center and one in the vertical. You can click on either of these lines and drag it with your mouse pointer to position it anywhere.

To return a line to the center, right-click on the slide background again and select ‘Ruler’ to view a ruler, then line up the guide line with ‘0’ on the ruler (zero represents the horizontal and vertical centers of the slide).

4. If you want to create another guide line, hold down the ‘Ctrl’ key, and then click and drag a guide line – this will leave the existing line where it is, but create a new one.

PowerPoint Slide with guide lines

In this example, I have created 2 extra guide lines and repositioned the center lines in order to position my text boxes in the same position. The guide lines will be displayed on all slides in this presentation.

5. To remove a guide line, click on it and drag it past the edge of the slide.