2010 – Page 14 – The Logical Blog

June 3, 2010

PowerPoint 2008 for the Mac: Inserting YouTube Videos

by AJ George

Over the last two weeks I've shown you how to insert YouTube Videos into PowerPoint 2007 when presenting both with and without an internet connection. This week I'm going to show you how to do the same thing, but in PowerPoint 2008 for the Mac.

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.
Choose either mov or wmv. Mov files will play on Macs but will not play on PCs. Wmv files will play on PCs, but not on Macs. If you will be presenting on a PC, select wmv and read the note at the bottom of this post before inserting your video into PowerPoint.
Click start to begin the conversion.
When finished, click download and save the file to your desired location.
In PowerPoint, ensure that you are working on the slide where you would like insert the video.
From the Standard toolbar, select the Media tool and choose Insert Movie (if you do not see this toolbar, from the Menu bar, choose View > Toolbars > Standard).

The Insert Movie dialog box appears.
Navigate to your saved YouTube video and click Choose.
Select whether you would like your video to start Automatically or When Clicked.
When you view your slide show, simply click the video to play it. Click the video again to pause or stop it.

Note: If you will be presenting your slide show from a PC, you should have converted the YouTube video to wmv (the rest of these steps would still apply to you). There are several programs that will allow Mac users to play wmv files on their systems, but I have tried and had success with Flip4Mac, which you can download for free here. You may need to restart your computer before the software will allow you to watch the wmv files and insert them into your PowerPoint presentation.

PowerPoint 2007: Insert YouTube Videos (with internet)

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

PowerPoint 2010: Inserting YouTube Videos

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

June 3, 2010

Writing & Grammar: Tiny Questions that Drive Writers to Distraction

by Jennie Ruby

Do I use a or an before the word historic? Do I use everybody or everyone? Do I use toward or towards? These tiny questions and others like them have driven writers to distraction since–well probably since the invention of papyrus and pen. And for just about as long, editors have tried to answer them.

Professional editors in the field of publishing know a big secret that many business writers and members of the general public don't know. This secret is not addressed by most English or communications classes. The secret is that the answers to many of these questions are arbitrary.

Now, wait just a minute before you decide that you will fire your copyeditor and use a coin toss to make all future editorial determinations. The decisions are arbitrary, but they were also made long ago by practitioners in a long line of professional writers, editors and publishers. What you need to know is what those decisions were, and that you can find them in style guides, usage guides, and grammar books.

On a versus an with historic, the tradition in American English diverges from British English. American English uses a. How do I know? My authority for this is the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Edition, paragraph 7.46.

Everybody versus everyone? These words mean exactly the same thing. You can choose whichever one sounds best to you in your particular sentence. But just so you know, everyone is used about twice as often in print. With anybody versus anyone, anyone is used three times as often in print. My authority for this? The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style by Bryan A. Garner. My personal opinion as to why this disparity in usage occurs is that everyone and anyone sound more sophisticated and smooth, whereas everybody and anybody sound more choppy and casual.

And the question of the s on toward? Again, American versus British tradition addresses this question: American usage is toward without the s. Garner came through with this answer.

Making your writing conform to these once arbitrary, but now traditional choices will enhance its credibility and professionalism. If you don't have time or inclination to collect a shelf-full of reference books and memorize much of what is in them, you can make it a practice to hire a good copyeditor for every job, or, if you like, just ask Jennie. I love hearing from our readers with questions on usage, style, grammar, and other writing problems.

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Are you an eLearning developer who has been tasked with creating an effective voiceover script? If so, consider attending my Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts. 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.

June 1, 2010

Adobe Captivate 5: Affected by Effects

by Kevin Siegel

How many times have you wanted to make Captivate slide objects animate like you can do in PowerPoint (you know, make an image fly in, flip, rotate, follow a path… the standard stuff you've been able to do since the dawn of time in PowerPoint)? And how many times have you been stymied when it comes to adding effects because well, Captivate simply did not offer the feature. Did you notice I said did not? That's right, the new Adobe Captivate 5 offers effects… and not just a few vanilla effects. Captivate 5 features so many effects, we just might have to offer a dedicated class just to cover them all.

Add an Effect

During the steps that follow, I'll show you how to add a few simple Effects to an image (but keep in mind that you can add an Effect to just about any slide object and you can combine Effects).

Right-click the image and choose Apply Effect.
On the Effects tab, which is new to Adobe Captivate 5 and is grouped by default with the Timeline, click the Add Effect button (the button is very small and is located in the lower-left of the Effects panel).

Shown below is the full Effects menu available to you in Adobe Captivate 5. Each menu has several effects.
In the screen capture below, notice that I've added an image and positioned it at the far left of the slide. Then I selected Entrance > Fly In > Fly In From Right.
The slide position of the image is important. As the image performs the Effect, the image will fly in from the far right of the slide and stop at the designated slide position.
When you add Effects, the effect appears on the Effects panel (as mentioned above, the Effects panel is new in Adobe Captivate 5 and grouped with the Timeline). In the screen capture below, notice that I have also added a Glow effect.

You can easily control which effect occurs first (in the screen capture above, the Fly In From Right effect will occur first, followed by the Glow effect). All you will need to do to reverse the effect is drag the objects left or right on the Effects panel (just like controlling the timing of objects on the Captivate Timeline).

Two final things, but I think they are both kind of cool. First, many of the Effects will have Properties you can edit. In the screen capture above, the Glow Effects include Blur and Strength properties. Second, there is a Save icon (the little disk) on the Effects panel that will allow you to save your Effects for future use.

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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 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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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.