Christmas ideas – Making Christmas card with PowerPoint and podcast it on YouTube

Christmas is around the corner! Want to wish your dear ones blessings of joy on this special day? Sending elegant Christmas cards may be a good idea. Especially with the development of the Internet, more and more people tend to send electronic cards instead of paper-based ones to their friends and relatives.

Compared to the traditional cards, ecards are lively and more environment friendly. Besides, it is faster to give your wish by sending an ecard than mailing a postcard. As PC computers getting popular in modern life, ecard is easy to be accessed.

There are many web sites online on which you may find thousands of stunning Christmas cards. But many of them are alike, and no one allows you to create your own. How about DIY your own Christmas ecards? It will be more fun and you are allowed to make full use of your imagination to make your own e-card as interesting as possible. Send the most sincere greetings to your dear ones. Now, let me show you the way of making your own Christmas card.

Since MS PowerPoint and Windows Movie Maker are available on most computers, below is a way of how to make a special and lively Christmas card yourself with the help of these two tools step by step.
1. If you want to personalize a video in your Christmas card
You can make use of the free tool Windows Movie Maker which comes with all Windows XP and Vista installed computers. You can either directly capture a video from the video capture device or make one with existing videos, pictures and music. After the video is OK, you can further add effects, transitions and titles to the video. In simply 3 steps, a personalized video will be created.

Below is an example of how to capture a video for your Christmas card with WMM:
 - Click Capture from video device in the Movie Tasks menu
 - In the coming page, you can set the Mic Volume and configure the camera & video settings

 - Click Next. Then you will be able to see a blank needs you to enter a file name for your captured video and the place you want to save it on your computer.

 - Click Next to continue. In the coming page, choose the video setting for your captured video. Choose Best Quality for Playback on my Computer is recommended.
 - Go on clicking Next to the last step. In this page, you can start to capture video by clicking Start Capture, end the capture by clicking Stop Capture.

 - After you have finished capture a video yourself, click Finish to end this process. The captured video will be displayed at the Collection area. Drag it to the video area in Timeline board. If you still want to add other pictures or music to form your video, you can do this by clicking Import Pictures and Import Audio or Music in the Movie Tasks menu. Then drag all of them to the corresponding area in Timeline board below.

Right click each object in the Timeline board. Then you will be able to set the Video Effects and the Play Timeline for them.
 - After you have adjusted all the settings for your video, you can save the video onto your computer by clicking Save Movie File in the File tab.

2. Form the content of your Christmas card with PowerPoint
As PowerPoint allows you to insert customized backgrounds, characters, pictures, animations, movies, and etc, you can take this advantage to make the content of your Christmas card colorful and meaningful. The video you made with Windows Movie Maker can also be inserted into the PowerPoint. Besides, you can input greetings and warm wishes into the PowerPoint.
In this process, you just need to make full use of your imagination to create the e- card.

3. Turn the PowerPoint you made to video format
The last step for making your own e- card is to convert the PowerPoint you made to video format. In this way, you can make your e- card look like a movie and upload it to websites such as YouTube for wide sharing. After that, you can send out your Christmas greetings just with a video or a website link.

Here you can try this tool: Acoolsoft PPT2Video Converter, it is designed to convert your PowerPoint to almost all popular video formats such as MPEG, AVI, MP4, WMV, 3GP, FLV and MOV.
Currently, the company has launched their Christmas sale, each product are sold at a favorable price.

Here are two DIY Christmas cards from YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SLY_HfO-pQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRfvSOuwM_4&feature=related
Interesting? Take actions now, make Christmas ecard by yourself. Send out your warmest and most sincere greetings to your friends and relatives. Have a merry Christmas!

How to insert Flash Video to PowerPoint and convert PowerPoint to FLV

What is FLV video format?
FLV is the short term for Flash Video, a kind of video format that is accepted by many websites. Notable users of the flash video format include YouTube, Google video, Reuters.com, Yahoo video and My Space.

How to insert FLV into PowerPoint?
Now and then, you may find attractive videos in FLV format on the above websites such as YouTube. Want to embed them in your PowerPoint and share with others?
As FLV is a video format that PowerPoint doesn’t accept, before embedding a FLV video into PowerPoint, you should convert FLV movie to a video format that PowerPoint accepts such as MPEG, AVI, WMV and ASF. Below are three ways for you to do this:
1. If the FLV video is on YouTube or MySpace, follow these steps:
Copy the YouTube or MySpace video URL >>
Go to http://vixy.net (a free online conversion service), paste the URL in the conversion box >>
Select the output format such as AVI, MOV and MP4. Then click Start. The conversion process would be done automatically >>
When the conversion is done, download the output video to the local disk on your computer >>
Insert the video to PowerPoint ( PowerPoint -> Insert -> Movies and sounds -> Movie from File)


2. If the FLV video is already on your computer, visit http://www.media-convert.com/ (a free online conversion service) and follow these steps:
Browse your local disk and select the FLV video needs to be converted >>

Select the output format you want, and click OK button on the right >>
When the conversion process is over, download the converted video to your computer >>
Insert the video to PowerPoint ( PowerPoint -> Insert -> Movies and sounds -> Movie from File)

3. Use some conversion software to do this: If you have lots of FLV videos need to be converted, you can use some professional conversion tool to help you save your time, because many tools support batch conversion. You can try this one Video Converter. It can help you convert your FLV (YouTube) video to almost all other video formats.

After inserting Flash Video from popular video sites to your PowerPoint, have you ever thought you can also upload your PowerPoint to these popular video sites for wide sharing? You can click here to know more benefits of uploading PowerPoint to online-sharing websites.

As it has been mentioned above, YouTube, Google video, Reuters.com, Yahoo video and My Space all accept video formats in FLV. Before uploading your PowerPoint to these sites, you need to convert your PowerPoint to FLV first. Here are some tools you can use to convert your PowerPoint to FLV.
Acoolsoft PPT2Video Converter, Wondershare PPT to Video: help convert your PowerPoint to almost all popular video formats such as FLV, MPEG, AVI, MP4, WMV, 3GP, FLV and MOV.

After converting your PowerPoint to FLV, the next step is to upload the converted video to these websites. It’s all that easy. For more details about how to do it step by step, you can click here.

Choose the method you like to insert flash video to your PowerPoint, and convert your PowerPoint to FLV. Have more fun about it.

Use Product Presentation to Boom your Sale during Christmas

As Christmas is coming, most business men would like to bet their sales fortune on this shopping season. In order to attract prospects at the critical first impression, appealing presentations are important to presenting your products in the best light possible. Especially under such an economic circumstance, using some cost-effective ways to help you promote your product is meaningful.

Why use PowerPoint to help you promote your product:
1. PowerPoint is available on most computers. And with the development of information technology, product presentation has become a powerful ad format for presenting products or for special promotions.
2. You can broadcast your product presentation on big screens in the main streets, on mobile TV, on Internet and so on.
3. Compared to asking an advertising company to make advertisement for you, making PowerPoint ad by yourself may help you save a lot.

As it to how to make an effective product PowerPoint presentation to advertise your product, below are some points that Mark J. Tiedeman points out. (Note: Mark Tiedeman has over 25 years in the high-tech telecommunications industry including 15 years in senior product management and marketing roles. He has served as Vice President of Marketing at Copper Mountain Networks and at Tut Systems and is currently providing marketing and product management consulting services.)

Before starting any product presentation, you should know what the purpose of your presentation is. As a product presentation, the purpose is to enhance the value of the product that is perceived by the audience. Depending on the circumstance, some presentations will be more overt than others in persuasion style.

The next important thing is to fix who the audience is for your presentation. Product presentation audiences can be segmented as follows:
• Within your company: sales, sales engineer, customer support, marketing, product management
• Distribution or solution partner: sales, sales engineer, engineering, support, marketing, manager, executive
• Customer: purchasing, engineering, operations, support, manager, executive. Additionally, customers should be segmented, as appropriate, by market and/or application.
• Investors
• Industry and market analysts
• Media

For more details of how to create an effective product presentation by Mark J. Tiedeman, you can click here: http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/publications/magazine/4/4/0608mjt

A well-done product presentation is just the first step of making advertisement for your product. To present it in various ways is the final purpose of making the masterpiece. Only in this way, you can make the most of your product presentation and let more potential users get your promotion idea. Finally sell out your product. Regarding this, below I list some most effective ways to help you present your product presentation.
1. Convert your product presentation to video. Then you will be able to upload the converted video to website in the advertising area; broadcast your product presentation on digital signage indoors and outdoors; let people see your promotion on TV within transport vehicles.

Benefits of doing so: Creating video advertisement with PowerPoint yourself is much more cost-effective than asking a third-party company to do that. And PowerPoint is easy to deal with. You can fix the content you want to spread freely.
In order to do this, all you need is a PowerPoint converter that can help you concert your product presentation to video. There are many such tools in the market, but here I would like to recommend some tools that I have experienced and function well. Wondershare PPT to Video and Acoolsoft PPT2Video Converter. They can help you convert your PowerPoint to MPEG, AVI, MP4, WMV, 3GP and MOV that can be accepted by almost all media.

2. Burn your product presentation to DVD. Then you will be able to send a DVD disc to your premium customers and agents to provide them the promotion information.
Benefits of doing so: compared with written promotion documents, DVD promotion slideshow can be accepted more intuitively, as there can be animation, pictures, transitions and even background music, videos in a PowerPoint.

Also, with a DVD disc, your agents can conveniently spread the promotion information to their stuff by playing it on a big screen.
Tool recommended: Wondershare PPT2DVD. With it, you can also create DVD menus for your presentations for quick navigation.

A great product presentation could be the power for your Christmas boom. Use all effective tools and resources as you can to drive up your Christmas business.

Tips for making PowerPoint courseware and how to distribute it

In modern education, PowerPoint is frequently used when preparing courseware. A judicious use of this tool helps guarantee a high-quality class. However, if it is used ineffectively, it can obscure teaching content, turn a great lesson into computer chaos. So using PowerPoint courseware effectively in teaching is very important.

Below are some main tips of ensuring a well-designed PowerPoint courseware.
1. Set Your Goals
Before starting any PowerPoint courseware, ask yourself a question, “What is the goal of this lesson?” Goal is the key. You cannot well organize your class without figuring out the goal of a lesson. Many educators suggest using an outline to list clearly what skill or knowledge is being assessed. Brainstorm in mind, and then outline your ideas in PowerPoint.
And, the most important thing, be sure to weigh content heavily in the assessment tool, don’t let style to take precedence over content.

2. Style Matters
Avoid using too many animations, clip art, backgrounds and so on. But keep in mind that a judicious use of those tools can be effective. Below is a research on under which set of conditions people learn best.
• Hearing spoken text and looking at graphics – 91% more learning,
• Looking at graphics alone – 63% more,
• Reading printed text plus looking at graphics – 56% more,
• Listening to spoken text, reading text, and looking at graphics – 46% more,
• Hearing spoken text plus reading printed text – 32% more,
• Reading printed text alone – 12% more,
• Hearing spoken text alone – 7% more.

3. Other tips of creating teaching presentations• Include only 3-7 points per slide and 3-7 words per bullet
• One theme or background; one font set; one text animation effect
• Avoid using complete sentences, using clause instead
• Don’t show all points on a slide at once, otherwise, students will read ahead and stop listening to the presentation
• Challenge students to use pictures in stead of text, initiate talking with students and among students

According to different teaching contents and teaching goals, pay attention to the tips above, I presume doing a successful PowerPoint courseware is not a hard thing.

After creating your wonderful PowerPoint courseware, you may sometimes receive appeals from your students and colleagues to share it, or you want to make your PowerPoint courseware be available online. The next and more important thing is to present and distribute it in a proper way so that more people can benefit from it. In the following, I would like to introduce some ways to help you distribute your PowerPoint courseware well.
1. Directly e-mail your PowerPoint courseware to others
It is a way that many people could think. And it is also easy to operate, just attach the PPT file and then send it to others via e-mail. But in this way, the people who receive it should have a MS PowerPoint installed computer. Besides, the PPT file sent to others could be modified by others.

2. Burn your PowerPoint courseware to DVD/CD
As DVD discs are convenient for sharing. Burning your PowerPoint to DVD/CD will be ideal for distributing your courseware. You no longer need to worry if others have PowerPoint installed or not because DVD discs are supported by most computers and players. You can click here to learn more about how to burn PowerPoint to DVD, and create eye-catching DVD menus for your presentations.

3. Convert your PowerPoint to video/flash, then upload it to website or blog
You may have your own website or blog, upload your PowerPoint courseware to it can make your students and others see your PowerPoint courseware as long as they visit your web page. In order to do this, you will need to convert your PowerPoint to video or flash first. Tools recommended: Acoolsoft PPT2Video Converter, Wondershare PPT2Flash. You can click here to know more about the benefits of converting your PowerPoint to video.

4. Convert your PowerPoint courseware to PDF
PDF is accepted by many people as it is easy to open and can be printed easily. Convert your PowerPoint courseware to PDF is also a good idea to distribute your PowerPoint. You can click here to get the tool to convert your PowerPoint to PDF.

Microsoft PowerPoint is a powerful teaching tool. It can greatly improve the efficiency of teaching. So take the advantages of PowerPoint courseware, make your class more interesting and let more people get your teaching ideas.

Create DVD Menus for Your Presentations

Burning PowerPoint to DVD is a good solution of preserving PowerPoint presentations and preventing them from being edited by others. Also, by burning PowerPoint to DVD is ideal for viewing PowerPoint presentations through various media. But have you ever thought that you can create DVD menus for your presentations to be viewed on TV with a DVD remote control just like a movie?
With eye-catching DVD menus, one can easily catch audience’s attention and set quick navigation for the PowerPoint presentations. Here below is a ready-made DVD menu for some PowerPoint presentations.


Also want to make one for your own presentations? So follow the step-by-step guide of how to burn PowerPoint to DVD with Acoolsoft PPT2DVD and create stunning DVD menus.
1. Install Acoolsoft PPT2DVD on your computer and open it. You can get it free from here.

2. Click Import button to choose the presentations you want to convert.

3. Click DVD Menu button on the top navigation, and then you will come to the DVD menu page. Click DVD Menu Creator button, then you will be able to start to customize the DVD menu for your presentations.

Here you can set the background, button style, frame style, icon style, caption and more to the current selected menu. In the preview area, it shows the preview for the current menu, and changes will be shown in real-time when you design it. Tool pane is used to set properties of current menu.

4. Tool Pane:

In the Background tab, you can choose a background for your menu from the gallery that the program itself offers, or choose one from your own computer. There are several different types of background for you to choose, including business/exhibition type, education/training type, holiday/celebration type, nature/environment type, religious/spiritual type and others.
You can also set background music for the current selected menu by clicking Background Music button.
In the Button Style tab, you can set the button style, frame style and the icon style for each of your menu. There are many different options for you. You can choose a proper one according to your own interest.
Apply to All is used to apply your settings to all your menus.



In the Caption tab, you can edit the caption of a selected object just as in word.
In Advanced tab, you can tick Disable this menu button to disable current menu, and you will need to select an action that will be taken at the end of show. In Menu Options, it lists the options on current menu. You can remove corresponding object by removing the tick of the item.

5. Want to see how the DVD menu you’ve created will work in real time? So follow this step. On the top right of the DVD Menu page, you can see a DVD remote control simulator.

This is a soft-remote-control integrated in menu simulator. You can find those buttons on normal DVD remote controls. The simulator includes four cross direction selection buttons, which allow you to select items on the menu, and the center one is the confirm button. The Menu and Title button are for switching to different menus when playing presentation.

6. Choose output options, video settings and advanced settings for your presentation and burn your PowerPoint presentations to DVD without attendance.

It’s all that easy to finish the whole process of designing specific DVD menu for your PowerPoint presentations. Start now, burn PowerPoint to DVD and enjoy the happy time it brings to you. Click here to learn more about how to burn PowerPoint to DVD.

Create Digital Photo Albums with PowerPoint 2007

You may have precious photographs or important business pictures from time to time. A PowerPoint photo album is just a presentation that helps you store and display these photos in a digital way.

Why we want to make photo album with PowerPoint?
1. PowerPoint is available on most computers. You don’t need to buy other software to make a photo album. It is easy and cost-effective to do it with PowerPoint.
2. Show your photos according to the sequence you like, make your memories more beautiful.
3. Besides photos, you can also add effects such as attention-grabbing slide transitions, colorful backgrounds, specific picture layouts and more into your PowerPoint photo album.
4. A photo album that is made in PowerPoint is easy for wide sharing.

Below is the step of how to create an attractive digital photo album with PowerPoint 2007 in 6 steps:
1. Open PowerPoint, on the Insert tab, click the Photo Album button, in the drop-down list, there is the New Photo Album option.


2. Insert pictures
Click File/Disc button. Choose pictures you want to include in the album from folders on your hard disc. (Tip: you can import several pictures to the album at a time)
In the photo album dialogue box, you will see the selected pictures in the Picture in Album list. You can view each picture by clicking it. And you can also change the order of a picture by choosing it and clicking the Move Up or Move Down button. Below the preview of the picture, you will be able to see six buttons, which you can use to adjust the rotation, contrast and brightness of each picture.


3. Create album layout
Under Album Layout, by clicking Picture layout arrow, and then in the drop-down list, you can choose the layout format you like. By clicking Frame Shape arrow, in the drop-down list of it you can choose the frame you want to add to your pictures.

4. Create title and subtitle for your album
After you have clicked Create button, on Slide 1, type the title you want for your album in the place of the words of Photo Album. Then if necessary, give your album a subtitle by inputting it in the place of your user name.
Display Slide 2, click the title placeholder, and then type the title for this slide.

5. Edit the photo album
On the Insert tab, click the Photo Album arrow, and then click Edit Photo Album.
In the Edit Photo Album dialog box, under Picture Options, select Captions below All pictures box, and then click Update.

Now you can edit the file name below each picture with a suitable caption.

6. Apply a theme to your album
On the Design tab of PowerPoint, in the Themes area, select a theme that meets the need of your album.
Or you can also customize the look of your album by choosing a theme from your computer.

Now you have finished making your own PowerPoint photo album. Want to e-mail it to your friends or colleague? Want to share it with others? Or you want to keep it for permanent store? Below are a few tips about how to do this.
1. E-mail your photo album to others
Maybe you will find that the photo album is in a huge size due to the mountainous images added in it, and you can’t send it properly via e-mail. In order to reduce the size of it, you can use compressed pictures in your photo album.
How: Open bitmap image with a program that converts images and save the image in one of the following graphic file formats: jpg, gif, tif, wmf. Once your image has been saved under another format, you can reinsert it into your photo album.
Here is an article tells how to reduce the file size of a PowerPoint

2. Share your photo album with others
You can upload your beautiful photo album to some online sharing websites, such as YouTube. Let more people enjoy it or let your friends view your photo album online.
How: Convert your Photo album to a certain format that YouTube accepts. Then upload it with your YouTube account.
Tool: Acoolsoft PPT2Video Converter
It helps you easily convert your photo album to WMV, AVI, MOV, and MPEG formats that can be accepted by YouTube. After the conversion, you can directly upload it.
Click here to get the tutorial about how to do it

3. Keep your photo album for permanent store
The photo album you make maybe valuable and meaningful. In order to store it and prevent it from being edited by others, so far the best way I know maybe is to record it on a DVD disc. As we know things stored in a digital way could be easily lost.
How: Use some professional tool to help you burn your photo album to DVD such as the PowerPoint to DVD tool from Acoolsoft.
Click here to get the tutorial about how to do it

To view the finished PowerPoint photo album is an enjoyable thing. The process of making it is also interesting. So, when are you going to create your next photo album? Very soon, I presume.

A Few Tips to Reduce PowerPoint File Size

Greta Williams has a large PowerPoint slideshow which weighs about 26MB and he is looking for ways to compress the PowerPoint file and share it as an email attachment.

Before finding methods to resolve this problem, it is essential to know why PowerPoint file size would grow so large and then take actions to compress it. Through analysis, we find that one obvious reason is that there are many high-resolution images and photographs in the presentation.

Regarding this problem, the following paragraphs will list some tips to help reduce the size of PowerPoint presentations.
1. Use compressed graphics file formats to reduce the size of PowerPoint
There may be many images in graphic formats like bitmap (.bmp) in your PowerPoint presentation. The suggestion is to open bitmap image with a program that converts images and save the image in one of the following graphic file formats: jpg, gif, tif, wmf. Once your image has been saved under another format, you can reinsert it into your slide. If you do this for all your images, your presentation will be much smaller and it will run smoothly and fast.

2. Save your presentation a second time to reduce the size of PowerPoint
Open your presentation, go to File (2003)/Office Button (2007) >> Save As… and give it another name. Then click “Save”.
Doing this you will have a second presentation that often is smaller than the original copy. This is because PowerPoint usually stores lots of redundant information such as earlier drafts and previous used images. Once you save it as another file, the unnecessary redundant information would be purged.

3. Choose E-mail (96 ppi) output to reduce the size of PowerPoint
Picture Tools >>Format >> Compress Pictures >> Options >> Target Output >> E-mail (96 ppi)

(For PowerPoint XP and 2003, right-clicking the image >>Format Picture >> Compress >> Web/Screen)
This would change all the pictures used in your presentation to an optimal size.

4. Insert a hyperlink instead of inserting an object to reduce the size of PowerPoint
When you insert an image, you have the option to insert it either as an embedded object or as a linked file. By inserting it as a linked file means it will not become a part of the final presentation file. But you should always make sure that the linked file is with you and in the computer where you will run the presentation. Otherwise, the hyperlink won’t be working.
Insert >> Picture >> From File >> Select the image you want to insert >> Click the little down arrow besides Insert >> Link to File

The tips above are only the basic steps for reducing the size of a PowerPoint. In tip4, hyperlinks wouldn’t work if the computer where the presentation will be played is not connected to Internet, thus lots of inconvenient you may confront with.

In order to quickly and effectively compress your presentation to a minimum, converting the PowerPoint presentation to video with a third-party tool such as Acoolsoft PPT2Video Converter will be a good choice. And it is especially suitable for the presentations that contain lots of pictures. By doing so, the file size could be reduced to up to 90%.

Besides the advantage of reducing file size, converting your PowerPoint presentation to video also has many other benefits:
1. Enable you to view your PowerPoint presentations without the need of MS PowerPoint. Windows Media Player would be OK.
2. Podcast PowerPoint slide show to iTunes or your own blog for sharing.
3. Show your PowerPoint presentations on YouTube, Google Video, etc.
4. Review PowerPoint presentations on iPod/iPhone/Pocket PC.
5. Create mp4 video and view PowerPoint presentation on TV.

About Acoolsoft PPT2Video Converter:
It is an all-in-one PowerPoint to video converter. With only 3 clicks, you can convert PowerPoint presentations to video formats such as MPEG, AVI, MP4, WMV, MOV, 3GP with high quality.

Screenshots:



Recommended video settings:
Resolution: 640 * 480
Frame Rate: 20fps

After you have used the methods above, your PowerPoint presentation should now be light and more manageable. It’s now your time to share it with others and enjoy the fun that PowerPoint brings to you.