A weird little feature new to the latest version of PowerPoint is that you can save your PowerPoint as a .wmv (Windows Media) video. Who knew?
Microsoft Office 2010 has some new video editing tools available that allow you to add fades, automatically go full screen, and make trims and cuts directly in PowerPoint. This lets you avoid the step of having to first edit your video in an outside editor, such as Movie Maker or Adobe Premiere.
To begin, you insert the video the same as you always have: go to the Insert tab, choose Video, then Video from File.
Select your video. You now will have a "contextual" Video Tools tab appear above the other tabs (see image below), and below it two other tabs, Format and Playback. Choose Playback.
To trim video, choose the Trim Video icon. A dialogue box will appear (see image at left). Drag the left marker to set your Start point, and drag the right marker to choose your End point.
To add fades to the beginning and end of your video, use the Fade In and Fade Out boxes just to the right of the Trim Video icon to set the duration of the fades (see image below).
Finally, to allow your video to automatically play Full Screen, check the Play Full Screen checkbox. 
You can embed a YouTube video directly into a PowerPoint presentation, so that it plays in a tidy little window on your presentation slide, rather than the YouTube site.
Go to the YouTube video you want to embed. Click the Share button just below the video.
Scroll down the page to the Embed button. Click it. Before you copy the code, make sure you check the "Use old embed code option" option (note: not all videos allow this option). Then click inside the embed code, right-click, and choose Copy.
Go into PowerPoint, and navigate to the slide you want to embed the video into. Choose Insert. Choose the little drop-down arrow just below the video icon (this will be in the upper right of your screen). Choose "Video From Web Site"
A dialogue box will appear. Paste your code into the box (right-click, choose Paste), then click the Insert button. A black box will appear on your slide, which you can resize by dragging one of the corner sizing circles (using the corners will keep the width-to-height ratio the same). When you go into Slideshow mode in PowerPoint, a screenshot of the the Youtube video will appear. Click the center of the screenshot to play the video.
Thanks to Gisele Jefferson for posing the question.
The site ReadWriteBiz has a great article this month on 5 web-based alternatives to PowerPoint.
Included is Prezi (we'll be having a Connect session on using Prezi next week on January 19), a free Flash-based alternative to PowerPoint that allows a much more non-linear approach to your presentation. A particularly creative example is embedded below. Click the forward arrow to move the presentation along.
Google Docs allows you to share a synchronized PowerPoint presentation with others using a shared URL. Combined with a conference call, you can offer an entire presentation in this manner. For free!
Upload the PowerPoint to Google docs. Then in the upper right-hand corner, click Start presentation, which will turn the presentation to full screen.
In the lower right-hand corner, click View Together. This will bring up the presentation with a chat pod on the right (shown below).
Just above the chat pod will be a URL to share with the others in the group. Email the link to the rest of the group. As they click on the link, their names will show up on the chat pod. When everyone has joined, simply progress through the presentation, slide by slide. The presentations on their screens will move with yours, so everyone wil quite literally be on the same page.
Much has been made of the Extension webpage templates, but there are other templates at your disposal as well, for brochures, reports and PowerPoint presentations. Also available are a wide range of loges, in different colors, sizes, alignments and backgrounds.
Template for Publisher brochures are available at http://www.ext.colostate.edu/logos/Communications%20Template-Instructions/. There are templates here for Colorado Living brochures, 4H brochures (one is shown below), and general Extension brochures. Also available here, inside the Photos folder, are a wide range of photos and images, cleared for use. The instructions for using all of these are resources are posted at the URL as well.
Templates for a wide range of press releases and reports are available at http://www.ext.colostate.edu/logos/Communications%20Template-Instructions/Report%20templates/. Many of these allow you to easily insert an image of your own to personalize the graphics (a letterhead with an blank placeholder for your own image is shown below). Instructions are posted.
Template for PowerPoint presentations are available at http://www.ext.colostate.edu/logos/PP_Templates/. One of the Master Gardener title slides is shown below.
Finally, a vast number of CSU, Extension, 4H and Master Gardener logos, in many formats, sizes, colors, and alignments, are available at http://www.ext.colostate.edu/staffres/bulletin/logos.html. Applicable graphic standards are posted here as well. The MG logo is shown below.
Sometimes you want to highlight a section on a graphic by masking out the rest of it with a semi-transparent mask. An example is below. Here's how you do it in PowerPoint.
1) Insert the graphic (Insert>Picture).
2) Use the drawing tool to draw a rectangle over the graphic (Insert>Shapes, then choose the rectangle tool and draw it).
Then, right click the rectangle, choose Format Picture and dial the transparency up to 25% or so.
It should now look like this:
3) Draw an oval over the bit you want to highlight. Use the Fill Color tool to make it a different color.
4) Select the oval, hold down Ctrl, and select the rectangle. Right-click, and choose Save as Picture. Name it "mask.png".
5) Delete the rectangle and the oval. Then insert the mask.png graphic you just made (Insert>Picture, and browse to "mask.png").
6) Click Recolor Picture. Select Set Transparent Color. Then click the oval. This will make it transparent.
To see a live demonstration of this process, and learn how to animate it so the mask dissolves in and moves from item to item, show up for next Wednesday's Connect session on PowerPoint 07, from 9 to 10:30 a.m.. There will be an announcement in Monday's email, or you can contact me at jeffrey.wood@colostate.edu.
ISpring (http://www.ispringsolutions.com/)is a cool, free little add-on to PowerPoint that allows you to convert PowerPoint into flash files (.swf) so they can be inserted into web pages, Moodle, and any other platform that uses Flash content. It adds a tab (shown below) to the PowerPoint "Ribbon," or toolbar
It also allows you to easily insert Flash movies into PowerPoint slides, and YouTube videos as well.
An example is shown below. It is the the PowerPoint that will accompany the "Using Connect" Connect session on Sept. 2, from 9 to 10 a.m.. For more information about attending this session, contact me at Jeffrey.Wood@colostate.edu.
Slides in PowerPoint presentations get reused often. In older versions of PowerPoint, all you had to do was click Insert, Slides from Files, and then browse to the slideshow from you want to reuse a slide. 
Oddly, Microsoft has made this commonly used command a little harder to find in PowerPoint 07, the latest version of PowerPoint. I've gotten several questions about it already. So, here's how. Click the dropdown arrow just under the New Slide button. Then go to the bottom of the dialogue box and you'll see the Reuse Slides command. Click it, browse to the slideshow you want to use, and you're done.
Joanne Littlefield and I will be holding a Connect session on using PowerPoint 07 on September 16th, from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. If you're new to PowerPoint 07, or thinking of switching to it, be there. An email reminder will be sent out the week before.
If there are any specific topics you'd like addressed during the session, please email me at jeffrey.wood@colostate.edu.
I just read Edward Tufte's snarky, funny and deadly accurate diatribe against PowerPoint,The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within, and thought I'd address a solution to one of the problems he poses in the essay.
Tufte correctly points out that a limitation of Powerpoint is that the bullet point format forces the content of every slide into a hierarchical relationship, with one bullet point relentlessly following another down the slide. PowerPoint 07 offers a partial solution to this limitation with Smart Art. 
PowerPoint 07 offers the option of sidestepping the traditional march of bullet points down the slide. Go to the Insert Tab and choose Smart Art. The dialogue box offers plenty of visual formats to represent not only lists, but processes, cycles, hierarchies, relationships, matrices, and pyramids (an example of the "Cycles" options in the dialogue box is shown at left). Some example of slides are shown below.
Smart Art won't magically turn a boring, sloppy or badly designed presentation into an exciting and meaningful one. But it is a step in the right direction. 
SildeRocket is yet another tool for sharing slide presentations online, along with Slideshare and Google Docs.
Like Google Docs presentations, you can upload existing PowerPoint presentations, or collaborate with others to build a presentation together on-line. You can share the presentation only with those you invite, or publish to a URL for all to see. Like Slideshare, you can add audio (though synchronizing it to the slides is problematic) .
SlideRocket has a few advantages over the other two options I've mentioned. Primary among them is that it converts the slide graphics and text using Flash, so the visuals are crisp and sharp. Similarly, the on-line space the presentation runs in is very pleasing to the eye. There are also a number of very cool graphics available.
The free version allows an unlimited number of presentations, and a 250 mb overall limit.
All presentations come with easily copy-and-pastable embed code. An example of an embedded presentation is below.
Trying to inject some life into your PowerPoint presentations? Lifehack has a good, short article about creating an effective PowerPoint presentations: 18 Tips For Killer Presentations.
Tips range from the 10-20-30 rule (PowerPoint presentations should have no more than 10 slides, last no longer than 20 minutes and have no text less than 30 point font) to simple common sense tips like "Come Early, Really Early," and, the most important tip of all, "Don't Read."
Thanks, once again, to Loretta Lohman for the link.
You can easily embed PowerPoint presentations into a blog or website using Google Docs. Upload the document to Google Docs, open it, and then click the "Share" button in the upper righthand corner and choose "Publish/Embed." Cut and paste the supplied code into the body of your website or blog and you're done! A simple four slide example is shown below.
For a step-by-step demonstration of the process, as well as a live demonstration of setting up a site in Google Sites, please feel free to join our Connect session from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. this Wednesday, February 18th. For more information, check the email sent out Monday about the session (entitled "Connect session: Google Docs and Google Sites") or email me at jeffrey.wood@colostate.edu.
