August 2012 – The Logical Blog

August 30, 2012

PowerPoint: Text-to-Speech Voiceover Tools

by AJ George

When you give a PowerPoint presentation live, what you say verbally is more important, probably more interesting, and certainly more fleshed out than the few words or pictures on the slides. But what if you want to send your presentation off to be viewed by a faraway audience or online viewers, where you will not be there to fill in the gaps? You could, of course, record a voiceover in PowerPoint, but maybe you have a cold and your voice isn't up to par. Or maybe your own voice sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard to you. Several new tools allow you to type the text you would normally say, and have text-to-speech technology (TTS) generate the voiceover for you. Later, if the content changes, editing the typed text will be way easier than re-recording an entire voiceover. Read on to learn about three different TTS tools for PowerPoint.

HelloSlide

HelloSlide worked great. To add a computer-generated voiceover via TTS to your presentation, first save it as a PDF and then upload it to the HelloSlide website. The presentation must be in PDF format and can't be more than 100 MB (if your presentation is larger than this, try selecting minimum quality when you save it from within PowerPoint). Transitions and animations are not preserved, but if this isn't a problem for you, HelloSlide is a good option. You add the text for your slides right on the HelloSlide website. Presentations can be shared by linking to the presentation through the HelloSlide site or by using an embed code for playing elsewhere. On playback, your presentation will play one slide at a time for as long as it takes the voiceover to be read. I particularly enjoyed the English accent, but there are 20 languages to choose from. Be sure to type your text phonetically to get the best pronunciation quality (ie: instead of "live, online eLearning," type "lyve online ee-Learning").

SlideSpeech

With SlideSpeech, uploaded presentations don't need to be saved as PDFs, so that's kind of nice. Also, you don't have to enter the text on the site, because text is lifted right from the notes fields of your slides. If you typically enter the voiceover script there by default, this is probably a good option, as it will eliminate a step for you. Also on the plus side: after uploading your presentation and setting up the voiceover, SlideSpeech sends you a link to your presentation for easy editing and distribution. On the down side, the computer-y sounding voice doesn't sound as good as HelloSlide's options, and there are only two language choices (English and German). As with HelloSlide, typing your text phonetically will help with pronunciation.

PowerTalk

There are a couple benefits to PowerTalk. For one, if you've already made your presentation 508 Compliant and added alt text to all of your images, this may be a very quick way to add TTS, since it reads directly from the slide as well as reading alt text on images. Additionally, the text is read as it appears on the slide, so if you're working with bullets, the text won't be read until that bullet appears. However, I've already beaten into the ground in my articles that you shouldn't be using bullets, so perhaps this is a moot point. On top of that, the TTS voice used is VERY robotified. I would consider PowerTalk a last resort that you turn to out of necessity. Since it reads right off the slide you won't be able to type the text phonetically and a lot of things may be mispronounced.

PS: Need some crafting that voiceover text? Not sure whether or not you should be reciting what's on the slide for your voiceovers? You might want to check out our Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts class.

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AJ teaches a live, 3-hour class that offers tips/tricks for improving the look and feel of your PowerPoint presentations: Slide Sprucing: Remodeling Lackluster PowerPoint Slides for eLearning and Presentations.

August 29, 2012

Adobe Captivate 6: Unable to Disable

by Kevin Siegel

If you would like to ensure that your learners always return to your site and receive fresh lessons, one way to proceed would be to set a Project Expiry Date.

Choose File > Publish Settings. From the Project category at the left, select Start and End. Then select Project Expiry Date.

Adobe Captivate 6: Project Expiry Option.

Click the Calendar button at the right, select a future date and then click the OK button. Optionally, type a message into the available text field. Learners will see this message when they attempt to view the expired lesson.

Project Expiry Date set.

Once you publish the lesson, the Project Expiry Date is embedded within the output files. Learners will be unable to disable the Project Expiry Date. Instead of seeing the lesson, learners will see the message you typed should they attempt to access an expired lesson.

The ability to add an expiration date to published lessons isn't a new feature in Captivate 6. In fact, the feature has been available for years. What's new in Captivate 6 is the inability to disable the Project Expiry Date. You read that correctly. You may find yourself unable to disable.

Allow me to explain…

Many people download and use the free 30-day Captivate trial that Adobe makes readily available on its website. If you use the trial version of Adobe Captivate 6, and visit the Start and End area of the Publish Preferences, you will notice that the Project Expiry Date option is selected. You will also notice that you cannot deselect the option. Any projects that you publish using the trial will basically self-destruct after 30 days, making the Expiry feature an often overlooked and potentially embarrassing byproduct of using the trial version of Captivate. Should you publish lessons during your 30-day trial, all of those lessons will expire. If you then deliver the published files to a client, you'll likely have some serious explaining to do a month later. Ouch!

The issue is easily resolved by opening the trial projects with the licensed version of Captivate and republishing them. (The Project Expiry Date is disabled by default if you are using the licensed version of the software.)

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We offer two live, online Captivate 6 classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

August 26, 2012

Writing & Grammar: One Word or Two? Or Should That Be a Hyphen? Answers to Last Week’s Challenge

by Jennie Ruby

Last week I challenged readers of this newsletter to locate all of the phrasal verbs and their related nouns or adjectives in this passage.

The command-and-control infrastructure was shutdown in July 2012 shortly after its discovery. The shutdown came after nearly a month of research into the whereabouts of the installation. A close up view of the building was acquired. The close-up provided by the satellite gave us the access information we needed to close down the facility. After we shut down the operation, we checked out the computer set-up. We provided a breakdown of the servers and connections, and one of our technicians was able to breakdown the pattern of attacks by the software. We called up our database on a smart phone and logged-in the keycodes. After that, we cleaned up the area. The clean up took less than two hours.

Here are the answers, brought to you by Tara Allen.

The command-and-control infrastructure was shutdown(s/b shut down) in July 2012 shortly after its discovery. The shutdown (correct) came after nearly a month of research into the whereabouts of the installation. A close up (s/b close-up) view of the building was acquired. The close-up (correct) provided by the satellite gave us the access information we needed to close down (correct, or remove "down" if only to avoid one more "up" or "down") the facility. After we shut down (correct) the operation, we checked out (correct, or remove "out" for clarity)the computer set-up (s/b setup). We provided a breakdown (correct) of the servers and connections, and one of our technicians was able to breakdown (s/b break down) the pattern of attacks by the software. We called up (correct, or accessed for clarity) our database on a smart phone and logged-in (s/b logged in or simply logged…or entered for clarity) the keycodes. After that, we cleaned up (correct) the area. The clean up (s/b cleanup) took less than two hours.

Here is your next challenge–pronoun case. Is it Jennie and me or Jennie and I? Make your choices and send them to me.

Jennie and I went to the playground.
The guard opened the gate for Jennie and I.
The cheerleaders all came over to Jennie and I's house.
Jennie and I drove to North Carolina last weekend.
The clerk gave Jennie and I a discount on the tickets.
Did Jennie or I leave the Chinese food on the counter overnight?

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If you like Jennie's articles, you'll love her classes. Join her online and learn about Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts and eLearning: Writing Step-by-Step Scripts and Training Documents.

August 22, 2012

Adobe Captivate 6: High Fidelity PowerPoint Imports

by Kevin Siegel

Have you, or a Subject Matter Expert, created a presentation using Microsoft PowerPoint? Are you moving away from presentations and toward eLearning lessons created with Captivate? And are you bummed because all of that great PowerPoint content is basically going to have to be redone in Captivate? Don't throw those PowerPoint presentations away. You can import PowerPoint presentations into an existing Captivate project, or create a new Captivate project that uses the PowerPoint slides.

Importing a PowerPoint presentation into Captivate couldn't be easier. From the Welcome screen, select From Microsoft PowerPoint, open the PowerPoint presentation and a few clicks later, the presentation will be reborn as a Captivate project.

During a standard PowerPoint import process, PowerPoint pptx presentations are first converted to the ppt format, and then converted to SWF. However, if you have ever used the PowerPoint to Captivate workflow, you are likely aware that some PowerPoint features, such as certain animations, Smart Art, text effects (glow, shadow, 3D, reflection, etc.), and audio bookmarks were not supported within Captivate.

In Captivate 6, if you select the new High Fidelity option, the import process will take native pptx files directly to Captivate SWF (the ppt conversion is skipped). This option, which is only available in Captivate for Windows, will result in content in Captivate that matches the original PowerPoint presentation better than ever before.

Adobe Captivate 6: High Fidelity PowerPoint imports.

If you elect to go with a High Fidelity import, keep the following in mind:

As mentioned above, High Fidelity is only available for Windows users.
It will take much longer to complete the import process if you select High Fidelity.
You should not be actively working with PowerPoint during the High Fidelity import process.
Do not perform any copy-paste actions until the import is complete.
Ensure that both PowerPoint and Captivate use the same access privileges (Administrator Mode is recommended).

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We offer two live, online Captivate 6 classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

August 21, 2012

eLearning: Using Fonts to Encourage Trust

by AJ George

I've previously written about the value of being selective with the fonts you use for eLearning. The right font selection can mean the difference between your content being taken seriously or not. Why spend the time pouring your time and effort into solid content, only to have your learners question its validity–solely on the basis of a poor font choice?

Now there is more research to back up the theory that fonts encourage trust (or lack thereof) in content. Writer-filmmaker Errol Morris asked readers of the New York Times last month to read a passage from David Deutsch's "The Beginning of Infinity" and then presented them with the question, "Do you think Deutsch's claim is true? Is it true that 'we live in an era of unprecedented safety'?" The question was presented as though it was a test of optimism or pessimism of the reader. In reality, it was testing the effects of fonts on truth. What the readers didn't know was the Deutsch passage was being presented to them in different fonts (Baskerville, Comic Sans, Computer Modern, Georgia, Helvetica, or Trebuchet).

The results are charted below:

Weighted disagreement

Weighted agreement
Images via Benjamin Berman

The overall assessment: despite the fact that the content was exactly the same, when the passage was presented in Baskerville it garnered more trust. When it was presented in Comic Sans it garnered the least. The study is pretty interesting; I encourage you to read it here.

Added font fun: check out these faces drawn using only letters from popular fonts.

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August 19, 2012

Writing & Grammar: One Word or Two? Or Should That Be a Hyphen?

by Jennie Ruby

I received an email message yesterday from a well-respected anti-virus company to which I subscribe. I was surprised to see a grammar error in the message, because grammar errors are often a give-away of internet scams, and I was sure this was a legitimate message from an established company. The error was a run-together verb that should have been two separate words. How can you make sure you don't make this kind of embarrassing error in your professional communications? First, let's get technical, then let's get practical.

The technical: We have hundreds of verbs in English that consist of two words: a verb plus a particle. A particle is a small word or phrase that when added to a verb creates a new meaning. Here is an example: throw out. To throw something out is different from just throwing it. The word throw is a verb. The word out is a particle. The combination of throw plus out is a phrasal verb. Phrasal verbs often have an associated noun that serves as a description of the action rather than the action itself. The verb throw out does not have such a noun, but many phrasal verbs do. Here are some examples:

Phrasal verbs: shut down, hand out, set up, clean up

Corresponding nouns: shutdown, handout, setup, cleanup

The practical: When in doubt, look the word up in the dictionary. (Did you notice the phrasal verb look up in that sentence?) I recommend using http://www.merriam-webster.com. You can type just m-w.com in your browser to get there. If the word has two forms, verb and noun, the dictionary will list the two separate entries like this:

shut down (verb)
shutdown (noun)

Some phrasal verbs also have an adjective form. The verb form of the word will be open (treated as two words). The noun and adjective forms of the word will typically be closed up (one word) or hyphenated.

If the word you look up is not in the dictionary, consider whether the particle is actually needed. If the verb means the same thing without it, don't add the particle. Also, read the entry for the verb alone. You might find that the verb is often used with a particle, but somehow the dictionary does not grant the phrasal form of the verb its own entry (check out wake, for example).

Here is your challenge this week. Locate all of the phrasal verbs and their related nouns or adjectives in this passage. Look them up. Determine whether they should be open, closed up, or hyphenated. Are there any that should have the particle removed? I am eager to hear from you on this one!

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August 16, 2012

Scam Alert: Crooks Getting More Resourceful

by AJ George

Just like everyone else, at IconLogic we receive our fair share of spam emails and fraud attempts. Usually they're easy to snuff out. But training companies beware: scammers are getting more resourceful. Last week we received a paid order for one of our classes. The next morning we received the following email (presented as it was received, except for the account number):

This is to notify you to cancel Our attendance at the program due to some circumstances beyond my control. I recently lost my husband to complication during surgery, He was hit by bullet while we were robbed in our home in Illinois, and this have caused a devastating effect on my psychic as I'm seriously preparing for the funeral.Kindly issue a refund credit to my company corporate visa card account XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-4272, Exp: 05/14 and CVV:XXX on my authorization.

Secondly! All my account including the old card which i use for registered is no longer valid for transaction, the card account has been discarded and closed permanently because my old card was a gift card,it is inactive due to deactivation as it was also stolen by the robbers.Please can you respond to this letter am writing to inform me that you have received it and that you will be processing the refund due to me shortlyThanks for your anticipation and understanding at this time of my trouble. Awaiting your decision.

Kind Regards

The email itself sounded fishy to me. The poor grammar and typos definitely sent up a red flag. And even without looking into this to see if was, in fact, a scam, I would have never refunded another card all willy-nilly. But I did look into it, and found that similar scams are cropping up amongst nonprofits and educational institutions. In those cases, similar emails to the one above are sent, but instead of cancelling a class order, the scammers request to be refunded the amount of a large donation that was made in error or to cancel a conference registration. The trick with all of the above, however, is that they'd like to be refunded to a different account than was used for the original transaction.

There were also a couple other tell-tale signs of fraud in this case. We tried to call the number provided with the class registration, but were told that we had the wrong number. The email address (although I won't list it here), was similar to those that are included with spam posts on blogs. Additionally, despite the email stating the "customer" lived in Illinois, the billing and shipping addresses were listed as California.

Have you received similar fraud attempts? Share your stories below and pass this article along to prevent these scammers' most recent creative attempts from being successful.

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August 15, 2012

Adobe RoboHelp 10: ePubs Even Easier

by Kevin Siegel

The ability to get an ePub out of a RoboHelp project was okay in RoboHelp 8 and easier and more reliable in RoboHelp 9. However, the ePub process just didn't seem to fully integrated within RoboHelp. For instance, in RoboHelp 9, you created an ePub layout on the Single Source Layouts pod, but you didn't use the layout to generate the physical ePub. To do that, you visited the File menu and chose Generate > ePub.

Once you had your ePub, you needed to use a few different processes to both validate the ePub (ePub's will not be accepted by most vendors, such as the Apple iBookstore, unless the ePubs validate) and convert it to the mobi format for use on the Amazon Kindle. Neither of these processes were available in RoboHelp. To validate my ePubs, I have always used a free tool provided by the International Digital Publishing Forum. To convert to the mobi format, I used a converter found in Calibre, a free ePub reader.

In RoboHelp 10, the process of creating an ePub is seamless! If you visit the Single Source Layouts pod, you'll notice that there is an eBook layout by default.

eBook layout on the RoboHelp Single Source Layouts pod.

Double-click the eBook layout and the eBook Settings will open.

eBook Settings in Adobe RoboHelp 10.

The most significant options for me were located in the General group. When creating the eBook, I can generate both the EPUB format (version 3, which is the latest and greatest format) and the Kindle Book format. (There's no longer a need to take my ePub into Calibre.)

Both ePub and Kindle available.

Just as awesome, take a look a bit lower down the dialog box and you'll see two options for validating the ePub and Kindle files.

Validate the ePub and Kindle outputs.

All I have to do is click the Save and Generate button and RoboHelp does all of the heavy lifting.

If this were any easier, I wouldn't have to show up for work. Hey Adobe, in RoboHelp 11, is there any chance you can work it out so that RoboHelp actually does all of the writing for me? Thanks.

August 14, 2012

Adobe Captivate 6: Brand the Skin’s Playbar

by Kevin Siegel

I had a client recently who requested that the playbar used in their Captivate eLearning lessons use only approved corporate colors. In fact, they wanted one of the colors on the playbar to match a color found on the corporate logo. The problem is, my contact did not know what the exact logo color was, only that it was "some kind of dark red."

Given the fact that there's a whole range of red available in the color spectrum, trying to guess which exact red was used in the logo would have been impossible. Thankfully, during the process of customizing their playbar, grabbing the exact red from their logo was really easy.

First, to change the colors on a playbar, open the Skin Editor (Project > Skin Editor). Pick any skin you like from the Skin drop-down menu. Then, from the Themes area, selectPlayback Colors.

Captivate Playback Colors.

There are four areas of the Playbar that can be modified: Background, Button Glow, Button Face and Button Icon. The client wanted the background of the Playbar to use the same color as their logo. I clicked the color square to the right of Background and selected the ever-handy Pick Color tool.

Pick Color tool.

I used the Pick Color tool to point at the client's logo (which was visible on my display). One simple click on the client's "some kind of dark red" and the exact color was picked for me by the Pick Color tool.

For the record, "some kind of dark red" turned out to be "some kind of color that was closer to brown than red." Upon clicking the Background color square again, the logo color was displayed. As a bonus, I could even see the logo's hexadecimal color code for future reference (#763F2D).

I followed similar steps to grab the other colors that my client wanted. In the end, I quickly had a branded playbar that used specific colors. The final step was to simply click the Save tool at the top of the Skin Editor, and give the skin a unique name. From that point forward, the client's Skin was available in the Skin drop-down menu for use in any project.

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We offer two live, online Captivate 5 classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced). Our Captivate 6 classes will ramp up in August.

August 12, 2012

PowerPoint: Presentation Apps for iDevices

by AJ George

Today we are always on the go, and we are seldom without our mobile devices. For this reason I thought it would be a good idea to investigate some just-in-time app solutions for presenting PowerPoint presentations on the road. Spoiler alert: it didn't go well.

First, the good news.

iPad: SlideShark

SlideShark is available in the AppStore for free and does a terrific job. To use SlideShark, you first upload your PowerPoint presentation from your computer to www.slideshark.com. Then you download the SlideShark app on your iPad. Once you have logged into your SlideShark account, your uploaded presentation appears in the SlideShark app on your iPad, ready to be presented with full animation functionality. You advance the slides by using a simple swipe gesture. Click-to-start animations start with a tap of the screen. To skip between slides, you swipe the screen up to reveal a pane containing all of your slides and then tap the slide to which you would like to advance. You can also hide slides from within the app so they do not show in your presentation. I am extremely pleased with this app. Rating: Highly Recommended

Now the bad news.

iPhone: iPresenter for Microsoft PowerPoint

Hypothetically speaking, this app will allow you to move through presentations on your computer by using your iPhone as a remote. My best advice, however: don't even waste your time. I spent $3.99 on this in the AppStore, which is roughly $3.99 too much, considering I could never get the partner software to install correctly on my PC. I tried several times, checked and re-checked that my system requirements were correct, but it never worked. Rating: Disappointing.

iPhone: mbPointer

Deja vu: this app should do the same thing as the iPresenter, but, alas, it falls short. I spent $2.99 on this app, but it did not work. The instructions in the app say nothing about downloading the receiver software to your system. Had I not read the reviews, I would not have known at all. However, even after reading the reviews, downloading the receiver software to my computer and ensuring that both my iPhone and the computer were on the same wireless network (which they also don't tell you, but someone in the reviews did), it still could not connect to the receiver, giving me "Error Code 60" but no solution for what to do about said error code. Rating: Disappointing.

iPhone: iClickr

This free app should function as a remote clicker for your PowerPoint presentations. I, however, could not get it to work. First the computer download told me I didn't have the correct version of Microsoft PowerPoint on my PC (even though I did). Then the iPhone app told me it was unable to connect, either through a digital Bonjour connection or through a manual connection via IP address. I fooled around with this app for about half an hour, and made sure to check the instructions given in the App Store, but could not get it to work. Judging from the app's reviews, I am not the only person to have these issues. Rating: Disappointing.

For me, except for the success with SlideShark, the world of iDevice apps for PowerPoint is still in its infancy. How about you? Are you having success with an app that you'd like to share? Let us know in the comments below.

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