May 2010 – The Logical Blog

May 27, 2010

PowerPoint 2007: Insert YouTube Videos, Part 2

by AJ George

Last week I showed you how to insert YouTube videos into a PowerPoint 2007 presentation, but in order for it to work you would need to be presenting on a computer with an internet connection. This week I'll show you how to insert a YouTube video when the computer you'll be presenting from does not have an internet connection.

Find the YouTube video you would like to insert into your PowerPoint presentation.
Copy the URL for the video.
Navigate to www.mediaconverter.org (there are other free media converters, but I've tried and had success with this one) and click Enter a link.
Paste in the URL for the YouTube video and click OK.
Click go to the next step.
Select an output file type and click OK.
You can choose either avi or wmv, but if you will be following along next week to learn how to insert YouTube videos into PowerPoint 2008 for the Mac, I would choose wmv.
Click Start to begin the conversion.
When finished, click Download and save the file to your desired location.
In PowerPoint, select the slide on which you would like to insert the video.
On the Insert tab choose Movie > Movie from File.
Navigate to where you have saved the downloaded video and click OK.
When asked how you would like the movie to start in PowerPoint, click When Clicked (unless you would like the video to begin playing automatically).
Move and resize the inserted video as desired.
When you view your slide show, click the video to play it.
Click the video again to pause or stop it.

PowerPoint 2007: Insert YouTube Videos (with internet)

PowerPoint 2008 for the Mac: Inserting YouTube Videos

PowerPoint 2010: Inserting YouTube Videos

Video image source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bmhjf0rKe8

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About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Writer and author of the both "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials." You can follow AJ on Twitter at http://twitter.com/andrayajgeorge.

May 26, 2010

mLearning: The Latest Trends and Why You Should Care

by Rosie Hausler

Mobile Learning (mLearning) has been around for quite a while now. As a subset of Distance Learning and eLearning it has promised a more immediate and more flexible approach to those bleeding-edge providers that have wanted to deliver more complete blended training programs.

If you consider the definition of mLearning as untethered (from cords and cables) and interactive (so learners can participate from almost anywhere), you can see how the limitations of the available legacy mobile devices have kept mLearning in the emerging phase over the last decade. mLearning has often been over-hyped and under-adopted.

But there are some things stirring that may make now the perfect time to start paying closer attention to mLearning as a viable (and increasingly key) part of your training delivery arsenal. 2010 may just be the year you should jump into the mLearning fray if you've been sitting on the sidelines waiting for it to emerge more rapidly.

Why now?

Several interesting trends are converging to create a perfect storm for mLearning. Some of these trends include: the explosion of mobile device adoption, growth of location-based services and location-aware networks, surge in social media adoption and participation, growth in cloud computing and the continuation of travel-reluctant companies that are embracing eLearning, mLearning and online training more and more as a way to save on training costs.

Let's just consider a couple of these trends, Mobile Device Adoption and the Surge in Social Media Use.

Mobile Device Adoption

Apple sold its one millionth iPad on Friday, April 30, just 28 days after the device's release. More than 12 million apps from the App Store and 1.5 million ebooks have been downloaded from the new iBookstore.
Growth of the worldwide converged mobile device market (commonly referred to as smartphones) more than doubled that of the overall mobile phone market in the first quarter of 2010, a sign the segment is in high-growth mode again. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, vendors shipped a total of 54.7 million units in the first quarter of 2010 (1Q10), up 56.7% from the same quarter a year ago. In contrast, the overall mobile phone market grew 21.7%.
Converged mobile devices accounted for 18.8% of all mobile phones shipped in 1Q10, up slightly from 14.4% in 1Q09 according to IDC.
"E-paper eReaders will be one of the major disruptive technologies of the early 21st century," said analyst Nick Hampshire of MediaIdeas, "it will change the nature of publishing and related print industries forever, ushering in a host of innovative ways to present, market, and distribute content."
Gartner said that vendors could ship up to 10.5 million traditional tablets and next-generation tablet devices worldwide in 2010.
Although Amazon doesn't disclose how many Kindles they have sold to date, they have said that millions of Kindles have been sold.

More People Interacting on Social Media Sites

There are more than 100 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices (and more than 400 million active users according to Facebook).
People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook as non-mobile users.
There are more than 200 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products.
Twitter now has 105,779,710 registered users.
New Twitter users are signing up at the rate of 300,000 per day.
180 million unique visitors come to the Twitter site every month.
Twitter gets a total of 3 billion requests a day via its API.
Twitter users are, in total, tweeting an average of 55 million tweets a day.
Twitter's search engine receives around 600 million search queries per day.
Of Twitter's active users, 37 percent use their phone to tweet.
Over half of all tweets (60 percent) come from third party applications.
LinkedIn has over 65 million members in over 200 countries.
A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second, and about half of its members are outside the U.S.
Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members.

Where to Start

If you've decided that now may be a great time to dip your toe into the mLearning pool, take some time to evaluate your audience and develop a goal for your mLearning effort. One great use of mLearning is to reinforce concepts from instructor-led and e-learning courses. You could get back together with the course alumni for a Q and A session a few weeks after the more formal training course is over. Learners will have had time to apply the new material they learned during the course and mLearning is a perfect format to bring the group back together for a quick check-in and follow-up session to drive the main points home. Assessments and evaluations are also another great application for mLearning. Whatever program you decide to implement, start with small learning bursts and grow your mLearning program according to the success you have with it. Let your learner community help steer the direction and cater to their current mobile skillset and behavior.

mLearning is here and it's not going away. It is undoubtedly changing and growing but now is a great time to start small and build upon your successes.

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About the author: Rosie Hausler is the president and founder of Sandhill PR and Search Engine Marketing based in Seattle, WA. She has more than 20 years of high tech marketing experience and was VP of Marketing for the ViewCentral LMS (acquired by Rainmaker in 2006).

May 25, 2010

Adobe Captivate 5: The Mother of All Upgrades!

by Kevin Siegel

I've been using, writing about and teaching Captivate since, well… before the program was known as Captivate. I've seen all of the upgrades. I've been underwhelmed (Captivate 1 to 2 didn't do much for me) and amazed (Captivate 3 to 4 was a major step forward for the program). With the upgrade from Captivate 4 to 5, I'm awestruck. Adobe didn't just upgrade the program, they tore it down and rebuilt it.

If you're on Twitter or follow the eLearning BLOGS, then you probably already know that the new version of Captivate is expected to be released in June of this year (as in next month). The new version will run on a Macintosh, which would be reason enough to do a jig except that that is not even the coolest of all the enhancements. Over the coming weeks, I'll touch on some of the hottest features that will surely bring a smile to your face (and have you reaching for your credit card in a rush to buy the upgrade).

Goodbye windowshades, hello panels!

The new Captivate has a shiny new interface that more closely matches the other popular Adobe programs. Gone are the dreaded windowshade buttons that were made popular by the late, great Macromedia. (Those of you who don't know the history might be surprised to learn that Captivate was once owned by Macromedia before Macromedia got swallowed up by Adobe.)

I can't tell you how many new developers (and even some vets) clicked the windowshade button for the Timeline to collapse the panel, only to find themselves in a fight with Captivate trying to get the pesky panel to come back. In Captivate 5, so long windowshades, hello panels.

You won't find very many dialog boxes in Captivate 5. The new version relies on panels for just about everything. For instance, in the current version of Captivate, if you right-click an object and choose Properties, you are met with the Properties dialog box. Make your changes there and then click OK. In the new Captivate, you double-click an object to display the Properties panel. Once on the panel, you make your changes and… and… there's no OK button to click. Simply continue working because your settings took. Not having to click an OK button after every change is going to take some getting used to, but just think of all the clicks you are going to save over the coming years!

The Properties Panel, CP5

Workspaces

So there's all these new panels and you are going to love them. I mean hate them. I mean love them. To be honest, you're going to have to get used to the new panels. You'll probably hate them at first but grow to love them. Believe me, the panels are worlds better than the clunky old dialog boxes.

To help you get used to the new panels, Captivate 5 sports a Workspaces feature. Here's how it works… drag your panels anywhere you want within the Captivate window. Group your favorite panels together, collapse them, resize them or close them.

When you've got Captivate window looking the way you want, why take the chance that some rogue colleague of yours is going to start Captivate after you've left for the day and move everything around? Instead, go to the Workspace menu and choose New Workspace.

Name your new workspace and click the OK button (yes, I said click OK… most of the dialog boxes are gone, but not all of them).

Once saved, you can access your new workspace via the Workspace menu where you will find a half dozen default Workspaces including Classic, Widget and Skin Editor. It is worth noting that you can delete or rename a workspace by choosing Manage Workspace via the Workspace menu.

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Looking to learn Captivate? We have a couple of options… we offer two online classes (Beginner and Advanced). Click here for details on the Beginner class. Click here for details on the Advanced class. We also have a 3-hour class devoted to Advanced Actions. Click here to learn more about that class.

May 24, 2010

Adobe RoboHelp: Links to PDFs in the Baggage Files Folder

by Kevin Siegel

If you want to include PDFs in your RoboHelp Help System there are basically two ways to proceed. First, you can store the PDFs on your Web server and then create a standard link to the PDF from within any topic in your Help system. However, if you go that route, the PDFs won't be searchable from within the Help System.

If you instead add the PDF to your Baggage Files folder, and then create links, the PDFs will be part of the generated Help System and the PDFs will be searchable via the Search tab. Sweet! The problem is that creating the link to the PDFs isn't an obvious series of steps. Read on to learn how.

Add the PDF to the Baggage Files folder

Right-click the Baggage Files folder (the folder is located on the Project Manager pod, but you'll need to change the view to Details view instead of Global view) and choose New > Baggage File.

Add a Link to the PDF Link the TOC

If you would like to add the PDF to your TOC, create a new TOC Page. On the General tab, give the page a title. Select Baggage File from the Link to drop-down menu. Finally, select the PDF you just added to the Baggage Files folder.

Create a PDF Link within a Topic

If you'd like to make a link in a topic to the PDF in the Baggage file, press [shift] on your keyboard and drag the PDF from the Baggage File into a topic. Nice!

If you would like to watch a video of this process, click here.

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Looking to learn RoboHelp quickly. Join me at the end of this week for a live, 2-day RoboHelp class (class starts Thursday). Click here to register or learn more about this and upcoming classes.

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Follow Kevin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kevin_siegel

May 21, 2010

Adobe Photoshop CS5: A Few of My Favorite Things, Part I

by Barbara Binder

Photoshop CS5 is out and has lots of really cool new features. I'm going to cover a few of my favorites over the next few weeks, starting with mind-boggling Content Aware Fill.

Content Aware Fill is a new technique that seamlessly fills a selection with similar image content nearby. For the best results, create a selection that extends slightly into the area you want to replicate. (A quick lasso or marquee selection is often sufficient.)

Here's how it works:

Open an image and make a rough selection. Notice that this selection includes some of the background.
Choose Edit > Fill and from the Use drop-down menu, select Content-Aware.
Click the OK button.
After a few moments of processing Photoshop succeeds in removing the selection and builds a wall in its place! For a long-time Photoshop user like me, this is nothing short of magical.

Not impressed? How about some more examples…

Here's a second example, this time, removing the lines of paint from the parking lot:

Hey, what happened to the lines?

Now, let's be realistic. This feature is not going to work on every image, every time. Here's a third example:

One file example of content aware.

Curiously, tree stumps appear as our cyclist is removed. Truthfully, I'm still impressed. Removing the stumps is a quick task for an experienced Photoshop user. I'm thrilled I don't have to build the railing, the sidewalk or the ground in the background!

Note: All images used in this training post are courtesy of Adobe Systems, Inc.

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If you are new to Photoshop and want to get up to speed quickly, join IconLogic's instructor-led, online Introduction to Adobe Photoshop class. Too elementary for your skill level? How about the Advanced Photoshop class? Hope to "see" you there.

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About the author: Barbara Binder is the president and founder of Rocky Mountain Training. Barbara has been a trainer for nearly two decades and has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.

May 20, 2010

Acrobat: Berry Cool!

by David R. Mankin

There's a commercial on TV for a major cellular phone carrier in which a young businessman gets out of a cab, the cab drives away, and he realizes that his presentation for his meeting is still in the cab. The sales pitch is for how one can reliably have a document sent from a smartphone to the board room. This got me thinking. What if there was no board room to zap the file toward? What if there was no printer at the presentation site to help you recreate your lost document?

What if the File is a PDF?

I use Acrobat regularly on Windows-based machines and Macs. I test files with Reader on those two operating systems, and even have a Linux computer equipped with Reader for testing purposes. I also carry a Blackberry with me everywhere. It never occurred to me to see what the Blackberry would do with a PDF email attachment until I saw the commercial mentioned above.

Blackberry

A quick visit to Adobe's website reveals that there is no official Adobe release of Reader for the Blackberry, although if you specify "Mobile" as your OS, you are directed to a site where a $15 product called Adobe Reader LE 2.5 is available. The list of supported mobile devices is very limited, and Blackberry isn't one of them.

Time for the grand experiment: I emailed a PDF file to myself. The Blackberry sounded its new mail chime, and I retrieved the message. I gave the command to "Open Attachment," and much to my delight my Blackberry's default file viewer displayed my image-based PDF file! Clicking on the phone's menu button revealed some convenient controls enabling zooming, rotating and fit to page.

PDF Controls

So now I get to make my own commercial in which I get out of a cab, realize I forgot my proposal printout, pull out my Blackberry and squint my way through my presentation. Ideal? No. Potential deal-saving feature that few know about? You bet!

Acrobat is loaded with cool features you are unlikely to find on your own. Sign up for my next online Acrobat class where you'll learn a whole bunch more.

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About the author: David R. Mankin is a Certified Technical Trainer, desktop publisher, computer graphic artist, and Web page developer. And if that wasn't enough, of course David is an Adobe-certified expert in Adobe Acrobat.

May 19, 2010

Questions of the Week

Adobe Captivate 5: Will You Have Books and Classes?

I recently learned Adobe is releasing Captivate 5. Will you have any training resources available in the near future? I am still using Captivate 3 but am hoping to upgrade soon.

Answer: Adobe has announced Captivate 5 but the software will not be released until the middle of next month. I am working on the new course materials now. I would expect my CP5 classes to be ready in July.

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Adobe Captivate: Why Aren't My Links Working?

I just published my Captivate lesson and the links don't work. I'm 100% sure that the URL is correct. Any ideas?

Answer: If the link isn't working at all in your published video, you are likely hitting a Flash Security issue. Review this article for more details (follow the steps even if you don't see the message shown).

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Got a question you'd like answered? Email me.

May 19, 2010

PowerPoint 2007: Insert YouTube Videos

by AJ George

I am often asked how to get YouTube videos into a PowerPoint presentation, and, unless you're using the latest version (PowerPoint 2010), it's an understandable question… it's not a simple process. Over the next few weeks I will show you how to insert YouTube videos into PowerPoint 2007 (both with and without an internet connection) and PowerPoint 2008 for the Mac.

Insert YouTube Videos into PowerPoint 2007 with Internet

In PowerPoint click the Office button.
Click the PowerPoint Options button.
From the Popular category, select Show Developer Tab in the Ribbon.
Click the OK button.
Go to YouTube and locate the video you would like to insert into your PowerPoint presentation.
Copy the URL for the video.
Back in PowerPoint, select the Developer tab and from the Controls group, select More Controls.

The More Controls dialog box appears.
Scroll down and select Shockwave Flash Object.
Click the OK button.
Your cursor should now look like a cross, an indication that you can draw a box.
Draw a box on your slide and size it as desired to contain your video. Do not worry about making it perfect, you will be able to size it later just like any other shape.
With the box you have just drawn selected, click Properties on the Developer tab.

The Properties window appears.
Locate Loop and select False from the drop-down menu.
This step will keep your video from looping.
Locate Playing and select False from the drop-down menu.
This step will keep your video from playing automatically.
Locate Movie and paste in the URL for the video you would like to use.
Find in the URL where it says watch? and delete it.
Change any instance of = in the URL to a /.
Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bmhjf0rKe8 would be changed to http://www.youtube.com/ v/0Bmhjf0rKe8.
Close the Properties window.
When you play your slideshow, your video will appear just like it would on YouTube, ready to be played.

PowerPoint 2007: Insert YouTube Videos, Part 2 (without internet)

PowerPoint 2008 for the Mac: Inserting YouTube Videos

PowerPoint 2010: Inserting YouTube Videos

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About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Writer and author of the book "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials." You can follow AJ on Twitter at http://twitter.com/andrayajgeorge.

May 18, 2010

Writing & Grammar: Make Your Own Style Sheets and Feel the Awesome Power!

by Jennie Ruby

Should I use quotation marks around the names of drop-down lists and radio buttons? Should I use italics for those? Am I correct in capitalizing them? These were the questions of one reader this week, and these questions come up in nearly every writing class I teach! And no wonder, because the answers live in a nebulous land between arbitrariness and convention, a land that style sheets rule.

A style sheet is a list of your formatting, punctuation, and capitalization decisions for a document. You can choose whatever styles you like. The decisions are arbitrary. That means you can exercise your own judgment or taste or even whim in making your style decisions–feel the awesome power! But not so fast: style decisions are not made in a vacuum.

Your readers have seen other publications that use capitalization for the names of on-screen tools and buttons, and the tools themselves display names that are usually capitalized. If you made the arbitrary decision to lower-case yours, your reader might notice, be surprised, or–worst of all–be confused. Plus, if you work within an organization or a team, the documents coming out of the organization should be consistent. Consistency lends credibility and professionalism to documents and stamps them with the organization's branding or corporate identity.

The one thing you do not want to do is capitalize the name in one place but not another, randomly use italics or bold for commands, sometimes use a special font and sometimes not, or make a style sheet that contradicts what anyone else in your field is doing.

So how do you make your style decisions and create your style sheet?

Decide on a formal style guide for general text, such as the Chicago Manual of Style or the Associated Press Style Manual. Use the formal style guide for questions such as how to format book titles, state names, numbers, dates and times, and other general items.
For software training documents, follow the on-screen displayed names of things.
Study other publications in your field for examples of formatting and style so that you can make informed decisions.
Record your decisions in a style sheet–A list organized alphabetically or by topic.
Follow the style sheet for all documents you produce.

Once you have a style sheet for your documents, for your office, or for your organization, you will find a sense of confidence in formatting and styling your documents. No more wondering whether to use italics, caps, numerals, bold, or an abbreviation. Just look it up and move on. Now you can feel the real power of the style sheet.

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Are you an eLearning developer who has been tasked with creating an effective voiceover script? I'm teaching a new online class in May called Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts. During the class I'll be teaching you how to define the appropriate voice and tone for a narrative text. You will learn how to take specific steps to create the engaging and personable writing style that voice-over narratives require. I hope you can join me. Click here to learn more. I also teach the Writing Training Documents and eLearning Scripts class. You can learn about that here.

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About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Editing with Word 2003 and Acrobat 7" and "Editing with MS Word 2007" to her credit. She is a publishing professional with more than 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.

May 17, 2010

Adobe Captivate 4: Let’s Review from the Beginning

by Lori Smith

The ability to let a student review quiz questions in Captivate 4 is great. But what if you want the learner to review part or all of the course by clicking the Review Quiz button at the end of the quiz? Can't be done you say? Of course it can! You just need to learn a clever trick. Read on to learn a simple solution to what may seem like a frustrating feature.

All you need to do is insert a scorable object, such as a clickbox, on the slide where you want the review to begin. When the student clicks the Review Quiz button at the end of a quiz, he or she will be taken to the slide containing the scorable object. The student will then be led through all slides that follow, not just the quiz slides.

Be sure to set your clickbox up as follows so that it does not actually do anything more than mark the quiz start point.

Show the Properties of the click box and, on the Reporting tab, select Include in Quiz. Ensure the Points are set to 0 so that the click box will not be added to the final quiz score.

Reporting tab

On the Options tab, ensure that Show hand cursor over "hit" area is deselected so the student doesn't mouse over the area and wonder what it is.

Options tab

Deselect Pause as well so the click box does not interfere with your current slide timing.

Lastly, on the Click Box tab, Disable Click Sound and set the On success to Continue (just in case your student happens to click on it by accident).

Click Box tab

Several quiz settings must be selected for a quiz to be reviewable (via Quiz > Quiz Preferences). Be sure to select Allow User to review quiz, Show score at end of quiz and Allow backward movement. Deselect Show progress or the progress indicator will show up and be inaccurate due to our fake quiz click box.

Quiz Preferences

One last item to note. Don't set the Quiz Required field to Answer all or your student will be forced to click the fake clickbox in order to proceed. Any of the other settings are just fine.

Quiz Preferences 2

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Helpful? There's more. Join me this week for live, online training on Adobe Captivate Advanced Actions. And if you are new to Captivate, we offer two online classes (Beginner and Advanced). Click here for details on the Beginner class. Click here for details on the Advanced class.

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About the author: Lori Smith is IconLogic's lead programmer and Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) in Adobe Captivate.