Slideshare Announced The World’s Best Presentation 2010

Slideshare announced the result of the world’s best presentation contest 2010. What is Slideshare? Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, called it the YouTube of PowerPoint. People would like to view, upload and share PowerPoint and PDF there, just like they do on YouTube.

This contest is the 7th so far, it started from Oct 8 to Nov 15, and the panel of judges includes Guy Kawasaki, David Armano, Carmin Gallo, Beth Kanter and Jan Hart. Authoritative, isn’t it?

Let’s take a look at those top 3 winning slides:

1st Place: Smoke – The Convenient Truth
It has got 41,463 total views. Do you know there are 1.1 billion smokers in the world today? Do you know half of all long term smokers will die a tobacco related death? This slide show you lots of shocking statistics to deliver a hard hitting against smoking, a social issue that we should pay attention to.

SMOKE – The Convenient Truthhttp://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=smoke-theconvenienttruth-ep-101028211434-phpapp01&stripped_title=smoke-the-convenient-truth-5602255&userName=mrcoryjim

View more presentations from Empowered Presentations, Honolulu, HI.

2nd Place: YOU SUCK AT POWERPOINT!
Many of us often need to make PowerPoint for Presentation, this slide shows you 5 shocking design mistakes that you need to avoid. You don’t want to suck at PowerPoint? Then you should not miss this.

YOU SUCK AT POWERPOINT!http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=you-suck-at-power-point-jesse-dee-101103032057-phpapp02&stripped_title=you-suck-at-powerpoint&userName=GlobalGossip

View more presentations from @JESSEDEE.

3rd Place: Social Media for Business
It’s a great getting started tutorial for social media dummies. It provides useful links and great business examples for using social media for business.

Social Media for Businesshttp://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=sm-business-slideshare-101015214611-phpapp01&stripped_title=social-media-for-business-5456817&userName=PresentationAdvisors

View more presentations from Presentation Advisors.

You can find the common elements of all the winning entries.
1. They use one background photo per page that is beautiful and fit the title best,
2. Use little text and large fonts
3. Views are fully set forth in less than 100 pages.

PowerPoint is a good way to explain your ideas, you can visualize the concept easily slides by slides. You can easily share your wisdom worldwide on Slideshare, and you can also find some fabulous stories on slideshare.net.

There are many categories across finance, design, business and many templates. Besides Powerpoint format, many files are saved as PDF, PDF to PPT Converter can help you recover from PDF to PPT.

Full list of contest, hope you like them.

Original source: Northbeez.com

10 x AnyBizSoft PDF Converter for Mac [MakeUseOf Giveaway]

Makeuseof.com is giving away 10 copies of AnyBizSoft PDF Converter for Mac worth $699.50 this week. Makeuseof.com is a famous tech blog about everything around technology, for example,  tips and tricks about software on Windows, Mac and mobile system, and review lots of interesting and useful websites.  And they will cooperate with software suppliers to hold giveaway promotion from time to time.

We know that converting PDFs to editable documents is no easy feat. You’ll be hard pressed to find an application that does it, and does it well. Especially on Mac OS X. AnyBizSoft PDF Converter for Mac can convert PDF into Word, PowerPoint, Excel, EPUB, HTML and Text, a real 6-in-1 PDF Converter. If you want it for free, just click Like on Makeuseof’s fan page on Facebook, fill a form and share it on Facebook or Twitter.

For more details please visit: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-anybizsoft-pdf-converter-mac-makeuseof-giveaway/

This giveaway begins now and ends Friday, December 17th at 2100hrs PST. Please don’t miss it. 🙂

PDF-XChange now available for free for creating PDFs

“Tracker Software Products Ltd., a developer of PDF software, announced it is offering PDF-XChange Lite 4.0, its lightweight software for creating and editing PDFs, as a freeware for non-commercial and academic use. PDF-XChange Lite 4.0 is derived from the company’s flagship PDF-XChange line of commercial products.”

The press release appeared at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/11/prweb4724614.htm

I have to say, PDF-XChange Viewer is quite a great PDF reader alternative to Adobe PDF Reader. It allows users to get some basic editing done easily, such as markup, annotation etc. However, I was misunderstood by this PR. It said PDF-XChange Lite 4.0 is now free, when I installed the app, it asked me the Registration Code which I don’t know how to get.

Finally I found a statement at the corner of their official website. “**For a limited time, by purchasing a PRO Viewer license customers receive a FREE copy of PDF-XChange 4.0 Lite.” WTF, I need to purchased the PRO to get a free license? That must be joking.

Sometimes bad marketing strategy will cost your customers. 😦 What’s worse, I counldn’t cancle the installation, neither click back nor Close windows worked.  I have to press Ctrl+Alt+Del to close the windows and click Shift+Del to delete the program permanently.

The Real PRO – Adobe Acrobat X PRO

Adobe announced both a Standard and Pro version of the barnd new Acrobat X, together with a free version of its Reader X software. The new Acrobat helps you create gorgeous PDF portfolios, lock down electronic documents, collaborate more easily. But the Acrobat X is still expensive and out of many people’s budget, upgrade from the latest version cost US $199.00. Maybe Adobe also realises that, so they use a slogan: Exceed Expectations. Even Your Own to tell you it worths that much. -_-#

But it’s hard to deny that Adobe Acrobat X is a real pro. PDF portfolios is the highlight of the Acrobat X, it makes Acrobat special since the release of the previous Acrobat version. It is able to assemble files of many different types into one PDF portfolio. For example, you can import a photo, PowerPoint presentation, Word documents, flash and even audio and video files together. What does that mean? Different types of files need different application to open in the past, now only a free PDF reader can read anything in PDF. You may use Microsoft PowerPoint to support your speech, but now maybe you will consider put all the stuff into a PDF portfolios with Acrobat X.  Meanwhile, users can also customize the portfolios using new layouts, visual themes, and color palettes. I think the ads on Adobe’s official homepage wanna illuminate the feature of PDF portfolios.

Put asides the PDF portfolios features, Adobe says that Acrobat X’s scanning feature creates smaller files, and that the optical character recognition engine is more accurate than before. OCR is one of the most important technology to make static paper into editable electronic documents. Of course, without Adobe Acrobat, we also can use some online OCR Converter to convert scanned PDF into editable formats.

There are more features about Acrobat X, click here to learn more.

Free Giveaway: AnyBizSoft PDF to PPT for Mac

AnyBizSoft, a studio focused on PDF conversion solutions, launched their a large-scale of  Giveaway on AnyBizSoft’s fan page on Facebook.

This time AnyBizSoft is giving away licenses for their hot-selling PDF to PowerPoint for Mac for free. This exclusive and time-limited giveaway for AnyBizSoft’s fans runs from Oct 11 to Oct 31, 2010. Anyone who is already a fan or clicks the Like button to become a fan can get a PDF to PowerPoint for Mac, which is worth $49.95, for free.

Here is the how-to steps:

1. Go to fan page, if you are not a fan of AnyBizSoft, the area of giveaway will be blocked. The giveaway is exclusive for fans.

2. Click Like button to unlock, then you can type in your name and the email address.

3. Click Send me Keycode then you will get the licensed email address and registration code in your mailbox immediately. Click Download to get the app.

4. Launch the app, the interface is pretty clean, just drag the PDF files into the panel, click Convert, job will be done in seconds.

5.  Compare the original PDF in Preview and the converted PowerPoint file in Keynote, 90% of the layouts and contents are well preserved, only the font changes into default,  never mind, right?! Seems that the preservation is better in Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 or 2010.

Here is the Northbee’s review:

Interface: (9/10) Easy and clear, sometimes we just need an easy app, not the most gorgeous one. Every one can easily becomes experts without the help document.

Size: (8/10) 7.5 MB, small but strong.

Conversion Speed: (10/10) To be frank, the conversion speed suprised me, it took less than a minute to convert a 170 pages PDF into pptx. I don’t even have the time to take a cup of coffee.

Function: (8/10) Supports batch processing, partial processing, even protected PDF can be converted.

Conversion Accuracy: (7/10) It works like a charm dealing with easy PDF. If the layouts are complicated,  it can’t preserve the elements perfectly. I tested about 10 PDF files, the quality of the target files look better in Microsoft than in iWork. Hope they can improve the compatibility in the future.

In conclusion, AnyBizSoft doesn’t fool me,  “PDF to PowerPoint for Mac is a download worth its bytes”, they said on their wall.  I recommend it. By the way, if you are a Windows users, they also giveaway PDF to Word for Windows on fan page, just go get one. Will review that later. 🙂

Office for Mac 2011 Coming October 26

Microsoft announced that Office for Mac 2011 will officially be released on October 26.

Versions include: Office for Mac Home and Student 2011, Office for Mac Home and Business 2011 and Office for Mac Academic 2011. Home and Student 2011, which includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Messenger, will retail for $119 for a single install or $149 for a three-install Family Pack. Meanwhile, Office for Mac Home and Business 2011 will retail for $199 for one install and $279 for two installs.

It will be available in English, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Spanish, Polish, Swedish and Russian.

The Office for Mac Blog said that one of the most visually impactful features in the new suite also is called Dynamic Reorder, it gives you the ability to interactively re-order all of the layers in a document or presentation – one of the ways that we are solving a very real customer need with a fun experience. The new suite also introduces a new view in Word 2011, Full Screen view which has two views: one optimized for writing and the other for reading.  Allowing you to block out the distractions and focus on putting your idea on paper.

Here is a video about the Dynamic Reorder, seems really cool.

Can’t wait to try it out.

Internet Explorer 9 Beta Is Out Now

Today Microsoft is unveiling the full public beta of the new version of Internet Explorer 9. Just gonna download and try it out here. http://www.beautyoftheweb.com

IE9 has better speed, supports latest HTML5 and other modern Web technologies, and has a beautiful and simple UI. And it integrated nicely with Windows 7 (Only support Windows Vista and 7). Internet Explorer 9 Beta (IE9) includes a featured called “Site Pinning” which is a effectively Site Specific Browsers. Hanselman explained this in his blog: IE9, Site Specific Browsers, and adding your own Jump List Items to Pinned Tabs.

I really like how Internet Explorer is evolving.

New Twitter Is Upon Us

Only 140 characters are not enough for you to express your feelings or share stuff with your followers? Are you tired of clicking the short link to jump to another website for watching a video or picture? All of these are gonna be changed.

Twitter today starts to roll out the new version of Twitter, and this will last over the next several weeks. So if you haven’t got the preview of the new Twitter like me, just be patient and wait.

Let’s take a glance at the new features listed on Twitter.com/newtwitter

New design

You will now find @mentions, retweets, searches, and lists just above your timeline – creating a single, streamlined view on the left of the screen. On the right, you can see the features you’re familiar with, including whom you recently followed and who recently followed you, favorites, and Trending Topics.

View photos, videos, and other media content

Now, it’s easy to see embedded photos and videos directly on Twitter, thanks to partnerships with Dailybooth, DeviantArt, Etsy, Flickr, Justin.TV, Kickstarter, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi, Twitgoo, TwitPic, Twitvid, USTREAM, Vimeo, Yfrog, and YouTube.

Discover related content

When you click a Tweet, the details pane shows additional information related to the author or subject. Depending on the Tweet’s content, you may see: @replies, other Tweets by that same user, a map of where a geotagged Tweet was sent from, and more.

Mini profiles

You can click a @username to see a mini profile without navigating from the page, which provides quick access to account information, including bio and recent Tweets.

I’m still waiting for the new Twitter. Will review that later. 🙂

Convert Scanned Images or PDFs into Editable Formats

The stupid scanner only produces PDF or images. How do I edit or search the content of a scanned PDF without the expensive Adobe Acrobat?  In this case, you need OCR (Optical character recognition) technology, which can extract text from images.

Today, Northbee wanna introduce an online OCR converter to help you convert scanned PDF into editable formats.

Here is it: OCR Terminal

Follow some simple steps:

Step 1:  Sign up an account, so that you can convert 20 pages for free per month.

Step 2: Click DASHBOARD on the top menu

Step 3: Browse the image (TIFF, PNG, BMP and more) or PDF files you want to convert, click UPLOAD.

Take a break, wait a few seconds…

After uploading finished, choose the recognition language,  this is important, if your original file is in English, please choose English. There are over 20 recognition languages on OCRterminal. Click the green button to start OCR this document now.

The conversion will be finished in a few seconds, you can download the output file as .txt, .doc, .pdf, .rtf.

Now you can search through a long document, or edit the content in Word document easily, it’s really a time saver.
The output formats are flexible.  For example, if you don’t have Microsoft Word, you can download the .rtf which preserves all formatting and page layout accurately. RTF files can be opened by ‘Pages’ on Macs, Open Office on any Operating Systems. Just choose the format according to your needs. If 20 pages are not enough for you, you need to spend some money, there are three payment modes, check it out.

Note: If the background of the original file is too complicated, the output accuracy will decrease.

If you just want to convert normal PDF to editable Word document, I strongly recommend AnyBizSoft PDF to Word Converter.

Hope this tutorial can help. 🙂 If you know any other OCR Converter, please leave a comment here to let me know.

Stop Motion Movies Collections

Today I found an awesome channel about Stop Motion Movies produced by PES on YouTube. And I immerged myself into those funny, brilliant, creative movies for hours.

What is Stop Motion Movies?

Stop motion (also known as stop action or frame-by-frame) is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. – definition by Wikipedia.

Still don’t get it? Just watch the following video then you will know what exactly does stop motion movie mean.

This video earns 1,446,667 views on YouTube, it’s funny, isn’t it? To find more interesting stop motion moives, you can take a look at the following website to find more:

Recent review by Makeuseof:  15 of The Coolest Stop Motion Movies on YouTube.

And the SmashingMagazine: 50 Incredible Stop Motion Videos.

Or subcribe PES’s YouTube Channl.

Now I wanna make my own stop motion movie, how to get start? Buy myself a digital camera, then…

Forget it, just watch the professional tutorial: How to Make Stop-Motion Video Shorts with Your Digital Camera

Hope I could make such a great movie by myself on day. 🙂