Category Archives: PDF

Speaker Deck – Another Competitor to Slideshare

There’s another website setting out to compete with Slideshare, and I think it’s really, really good. Speaker Deck is, as far as I can tell, only a few weeks old, but they’ve clearly been thinking for a long time about functionality, design and user interface.

Similar to Slideshare, Speaker Deck is a platform for uploading and sharing presentations. What sets it apart though is the clean interface and “scanability” of each deck. Just by moving your mouse, you can get previews of an entire deck just from a presentation’s thumbnail. I’ve never seen anything like it. Just go to the site and see what I mean.

Also, Speaker Deck understands, just as Present.me does, that users want to navigate and skim presentations as quickly as possible.

Categories: PDF, PowerPoint, Simplicity.

Keep Your Presentations from Ending up on WikiLeaks

This past week brought news of another leaked PowerPoint presentation. The US Chamber of Commerce and Bank of America (the latter under threat of an embarrassing WikiLeak revelation about the company) hired private security firms to launch a counteroffensive against WikiLeaks and its supporters including sabotage, disinformation and general discredit the messenger type stuff.

And, of course, with PowerPoint being the way businesses communicate, the group of security firms created a PowerPoint proposal to pitch their services.

There’s way more to the story including the fact that both the PowerPoint and thousands of emails from the security firms were hacked by Anonymous (doesn’t say much for the security firms’ security…), but the moral is that in the age of WikiLeaks and rapidly diminishing digital privacy, you probably want to think about securing your presentations.

Here’s how:

#1 – Password Protect your PPT File

When you’re in the editing phase and need to keep your sensitive presentation in PowerPoint, add a password to the file—and, of course, do not distribute the password by email.

In PPT 2010, go to File: Info: Protect Presentation: Encrypt with Password… and enter a password that will be needed for anyone to open and edit the presentation.
In PPT 2007, go to Windows Button: Prepare: Encrypt Document…
On the Mac: Historically, Mac versions have provided no support for password security. PowerPoint 2011 allows you to open previously password-protected presentations, but currently the only way to implement security is the Microsoft Rights Management and restricting permissions.

#2 – Convert to PDF and Password Protect File

I always recommend converting PowerPoint files to PDFs before sending to clients or outside of their offices even if security is not an concern. But if the document is sensitive, Acrobat can also apply various levels of security requiring passwords for everything from opening to editing and printing. Unfortunately, adding this kind of security requires Acrobat Pro (not just Acrobat Reader). But if you’re working with sensitive files, you might want to drop a few bucks on Acrobat Pro…

#3 – Encrypt via Zipped Folder

If you’re still on Windows XP, you can apply password protection after you have zipped a presentation, but sadly, this functionality is gone in Windows 7.
Turn to third party software such as SecureZip.

Of course, it goes without saying that any hacker group that can infiltrate governmental websites can probably also crack a Microsoft password, but if you’re not quite engaged in James Bond international intrigue, password protecting files is probably a smart thing to do to deal with the laptop left at a Starbucks…

Further PowerPoint Security Issues & Solutions

There are a few more ways that a PowerPoint file can get you into trouble. Here’s how to avoid them:

Remove Speaker Notes, Comments, Off-Slide Data: You might want to distribute your slides to others, but not your speaker notes or comments. You know, the ones that say “Client is being an idiot about this number. Just make them happy.” PowerPoint can wipe all of these (and a few other things) away for you with a few clicks. In PPT 2010, go to File: Info: Prepare For Sharing: Inspect Document… In PPT 2007, go to Windows Button: Prepare: Inspect Document…
Avoid the Excel Data Surprise: When you copy and paste an excel chart into PowerPoint, you have options as to whether embed or link the data sheet or to paste as picture. In either of the first two cases, you might be surprised to learn that PowerPoint now has a connection not just to the chart data, but to the ENTIRE EXCEL FILE. What this means is that if you have a company salary data Excel file on your desktop (which you think is secure), but embed in PPT just a cumulative chart from that file, then anyone with access to the PPT file now has access to the entire salary data for your company. This has actually happened more than once, and it can be devastating. Imagine sending a client an embedded file with all of your markup information. The workaround is to paste as a picture (which I generally don’t like doing) or create a separate Excel file from which to link or embed.

Categories: PDF, PowerPoint.

The iPad & Presentation

It’s been 10 days since the iPad release and opinions are still split as to whether Apple’s latest device will change the world or just result in a pricey shrug. After furiously playing and experimenting with it for a week, I have to agree with my friend Jeff Solomon when he says that we will just have to wait for the iPad to teach us how best to use it.

With regard to presentation, however, I am confident in saying that the iPad has opened up a new and exciting frontier. For me, it has revealed the true potential for what I like to call “3-D Information” and “3-D Presentation” where presentations are no longer linear and where the audience and speaker interact and control information on a level that PowerPoint (and Keynote) just can’t currently conceive of. If you think of your average old linear “PowerPoint” as a textual description of a house for sale, then “3-D Presentation” is an actual tour of the house where you can open up cabinets and rummage through closets. I have written a white paper on what the iPad might mean for the future of presentation which you can download here.

But for those interested in the immediate here and now (and who might be considering an iPad purchase), here are the 5 ways (as of this writing) that you can convert and show your current presentations on the iPad:

1. iPad Keynote Application – Apple created a version of their excellent PowerPoint-like desktop software specially for the iPad. The good news is that you can import (via iTunes) existing Keynote presentations as well as PowerPoint files into the iPad Keynote application, edit and then play them off the device. You can even hook up the iPad to an external monitor with an extra adaptor. The bad news is that the Keynote version of the iPad is much more limited in functionality than the desktop version. Depending on the complexity of your presentation, you are liable to lose certain animations, object groupings, unsupported custom fonts and hyperlinks among other things. If your Keynote has embedded video, this should still play on the iPad. PowerPoint files can also be imported into and run out of iPad Keynote, but you’re still liable to lose some functionality. Some problems can be fixed as iPad Keynote is capable of editing and even creating new presentations from scratch. If you get into its groove, you might even enjoy creating and editing on the iPad. But personally it’s still more than a little frustrating for me at this point.

2. PDF – Turn your presentation into a PDF and the iPad will be happy to display it. However, there is no easy way to get a PDF onto the device. You can email it to yourself, or post it online and view it in the Safari browser. Or you can use a 3rd party PDF viewer app such as GoodReader or PDF Reader Pro which will allow you load PDFs via iTunes. PDF apps are currently a little clunky, but should rapidly improve.

3. Movie – Turn your presentation into a Quicktime movie file. PowerPoint for the Mac and Keynote will do this for you, although neither creates clickable Quicktime movies anymore, resulting in a self-playing movie with timed transitions and little control.

4. iBook – The iPad is an incredible book reader and fortunately, it can import any book saved in the universal ePub format. Unfortunately, it’s not the easiest thing to create or convert to ePub. Adobe InDesign can do it as can a number of other apps such as the free Calibre. An ePub document is more complicated than a PDF and, obviously, it’s more suited to text-heavy documents. User-created ePub book creation is still in its infancy and it will get better as people learn the tricks to getting best results.

5. Photos – Surprisingly, the iPad’s simple, but fast and elegant Photos application impressed me the most as a presentation tool. Save your entire presentation as a series of JPEGs, drop them into an album in iPhoto and sync photos to your iPad. Each album appears as a stack of photos which you easily open and navigate with your fingers. You can even pull a mini filmstrip navigator at the bottom of the screen to rapidly scroll forwards and backwards through your series of photos (slides) or jump to a particular one. If you put different sections of your presentation into different photo albums, you can use the Photos home screen as a type of visual table of contents to move to different parts of your deck. You can also drop Quicktime movies into an iPhoto album and they appear on the iPad in between sequenced photos–no ned to switch to the iPad Video app.

* * *

In importing and running many different presentations to the iPad, the thing that became clear to me was the iPad cries out for non-linear presentation. Just putting a PowerPoint or PDF on the device results largely in a presentation on just a smaller screen. This is why I’m currently drawn to the Photos app. Of the above currently available solutions, Photos is the one presentation method that feels the most interactive and user-guided. And that’s what “3-D Presentation” for me is about: Allowing for a custom and intimate interaction with the content.

Hopefully, either Apple or another developer will step up and create a new type of presentation software that will not only make use of the iPad, but all the other technologies and hardware that are sure to follow and that are already quietly on the scene: large touch screens, touchscreen laptops, competing tablets, etc.

Again, if you want to read more, take a look at the white paper.

Categories: iPad, Keynote, PDF.

Start your slideshow automatically

A presentation, even in the most informal settings, should be seamless.

Like a good magician, “hide your wires” by saving your PowerPoint “Presentation” (.ppt) as a PowerPoint “Show” (.pps). This will open your presentation in slideshow mode.

A quicker way is to just manually change the extension on the file from .ppt to .pps. (Ignore PowerPoint’s warning about altering the file when you do this.)

In Keynote, select “Automatically play upon opening” in the Inspector: Document panel.

Presenting a PDF? Set the document properties to “Open in full screen mode.”

Categories: Keynote, PDF, PowerPoint.