presentation

Timeline Maker Professional creates clear, impressive scheduling charts in minutes.

The program's interface is professional and welcoming, starting with some helpful tutorials and moving on to an intuitive layout at every turn. The program feels like operating a calendar system, like the one found on Microsoft Outlook, but its results look very different. After entering in event information like start and stop times, you see a clear timeline of your event. Each step is shown in a highly readable text bubble along a timeline. It is easy to see when each step was happening thanks to the color-coded system. … Read more

Carmine Gallo joins the show to unveil some of the Steve Jobs secrets from his book "The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs"

I recently talked to execs from two companies that do exactly the same thing but in completely different ways. In one corner, Yammer, the 2008 TechCrunch50 darling. It's a Twitter-for-the-enterprise service that's hosted by Yammer. Any company can get its employees on to the service, but all the data is run through, and hosted by, Yammer itself.

In the other corner, Presently (found at Present.ly), another Twitter-for-the-enterprise product. Customers can use Presently in the cloud, just like Yammer, but the company makes its money from, and has most of its users on, its software that customers can … Read more

FILEminimizer Office - Compact Edition offers to take large files and shrink them into a smaller package, while maintaining the original's integrity. With simple navigation and fast results, this program more than lives up to its promise.

We were slightly challenged by the program's interface, but luckily most of the commands are intuitively labeled. The online Help file didn't walk us through anything and should have been skipped. However a little experimenting was all that was necessary to fully understand adjustments that could be made. We were impressed at the clever utilization of a search engine to … Read more

PicturePlayer is a basic program that allows users to create slideshows of their digital photos. The program is easy to use and allows some customizations without becoming overwhelming.

The program's interface is fairly intuitive, although some things could be a little clearer. When the program asks users if they want to create a new show in the current folder or in a new folder, is it asking where to save the show or where to find the images to use in the show? It turns out that it's the latter. Some other menus contain similarly unclear options. Although … Read more

PokatReader is a basic PDF reader with a few extra features. Although the program works well, the interface could be better, and a lot of the features it seems to have are actually only available by upgrading.

The program's interface is a little too basic for our tastes. The first screen is cluttered with an ad for the Executive version of the software and several other options, making it not entirely obvious how a user should get started. Beyond that the interface isn't bad, and we definitely like being able to flip through the pages of PDF files. … Read more

Is it a presentation tool? Or a visual storytelling tool? Visualization software? Or a zooming editor? Budapest-based Adam Somlei-Fischer, founder and lead designer of Prezi, and Peter Halacsy, founder and CTO of Prezi, were interested in soliciting feedback on their product’s category when they visited frog design’s San Francisco studio last week and demoed their tool. Having marketed mind-mapping software previously in my career, I felt sympathetic: At the time, we went through a similar exercise, and after endless discussions and focus groups we ended up with a label only a committee could come up with: “enterprise productivity … Read more

CaptureXT Screen Capture allows users to take standard screenshots, but also provides tools to customize them. With a large collection of options and high usability, this program really excels.

The program's interface was incredibly simple thanks to a nice layout and excellently labeled commands. In addition, the program's initial screen is a three-step instruction on operation, and there is a nice Help file for bigger questions. The program begins offering users a little something extra right from the get-go. By clicking on the Capture button, users are given options for standard items like full-screen, windows, or a rectangular … Read more

Expanding its push from software toward online services, Adobe Systems on Wednesday introduced a technology for collaboratively producing and sharing online presentations.

Acrobat.com Presentations, hosted at Adobe Labs in its current, somewhat experimental state, joins Adobe's Buzzword online word processor with its ConnectNow service for screen sharing and other online meeting activities. Adobe also offers a basic online version of its Photoshop image-editing technology called Photoshop.com.

"The application includes built-in tools and layouts for adding visually appealing elements, such as pre-defined color sets, intelligent image placement and graphic tools for creating diagrams and adding effects," … Read more