Deliver Synchronized Presentations On the Web with Zoho Show

Slide Aware, the service I earlier recommended for broadcasting live presentations using the Internet, has closed shop recently so here’s a new and better alternative - Zoho Show.

There’s a "Remote" feature in Zoho Show (available in the toolbar) that lets you deliver presentation slides live to a distant audience over the web. And any number of participants can attend your online presentation.

Every stays on the same page all the time:

You (the presenter) remains in full control of the presentation - if you advance (or go back) a slide on your local computer, the same happens on the browser window of all other computers that are viewing your presentation.

And like Google Presentations that is integrated with Google Talk, Zoho Show too offers a chat window in the sidebar so that presenters and audience can text chat with each other.

There’s an advantage with Zoho Show though - while Google Docs requires attendees to have a Google Account for them to participate in the chat, there’s no such limitation with Zoho Show.

*This remote presentation feature in Zoho Show has been around for some time now but I discovered this only today after reading their blog.

Forget Kids, $100 Tablet Targets Amazon Kindle & Sony Book Reader

You thought the $100 "Open Laptop Per Child" program was meant for providing low-cost computers to kids in developing nations but these images of XO version 2.0 may change that perception.

This fully-functional laptop tablet computer is the size of a book, sports a dual touch sensitive screen (no keyboard) and can also be folded like a book. The prototype uses the same 16:9 screen that are seen in DVD players.

The only problem - this desirable XOXO tablet computer won’t ship before 2010 and that’s a very long period.

For more on the XOXO laptop, check out PC World, Laptopmag and IHT.

What Are The Best Fonts for Making PowerPoint Presentation Slides

The fonts that you use in PowerPoint slides do play some role in making your presentations successful. The typeface should be readable and font size should be large enough so that people at the back have no problem reading the text.

Here’s some expert advice on selecting the right fonts (font family + size) for using in PowerPoint (or Keynote) presentations:

Guy Kawasaki: Guy says that your PowerPoint presentation slides should contain no font smaller than thirty points or just find out the age of the oldest person in your audience and divide it by two. That’s your optimal font size.

"Force yourself to use no font smaller than thirty points. I guarantee it will make your presentations better because it requires you to find the most salient points and to know how to explain them well."

Seth Godin: He recommends picking up a font other than Arial for presentations.

"Hire a pro, get a font you love and stick with it. Don’t change fonts over time (at least not often)… The right font becomes your handwriting."

Scott Hanselman: Scott, a great presenter and geek, recommends Lucida Console font, 14 to 18pt in bold for PowerPoint presentations.

"This [Lucida Console] is the most readable, mono-spaced font out there. Courier of any flavor or Arial (or any other proportionally spaced font) is NOT appropriate for code demonstrations, period, full stop. "

Garr Reynolds: The world’s best know presentation expert says that san-serif fonts are generally best for PowerPoint presentations, but try to avoid the ubiquitous Helvetica.

"Use the same font set throughout your entire slide presentation, and use no more than two complementary fonts (e.g., Arial and Arial Bold). Serif font are said to be easier to read at small point sizes, but for on screen presentations the serifs tend to get lost due to the relatively low resolution of projectors."

Free Web Clipping Tools: Permanently Save Anything That You Find On The Internet

With billions of web pages around, keeping track of information that you discover on the web is extremely tough. Some of us rely on bookmarks but they are unmanageable and become useless over time when the underlying pages disappear because the website structure may have changed.

If your bookmark folder is also getting obese, switch to any of these web clipping tools - they help you capture and save anything from the Internet including text notes, images, complete web pages, documents, PDFs, etc.

So even if the source website is gone, you will never feel lost again.

Microsoft Onfolio - Onfolio is an outstanding note taking application that lets you collect information from web pages as well as all other Windows programs (like Excel, Outlook, Notepad, etc) so you have a central repository of all content captured from websites, emails, screenshots and documents.

Onfolio provides some very unique features. For instance, you can capture complete websites or single web pages in their entirety including CSS, Javascripts and images so the captured web page looks the same even in offline mode. Onfolio can also download PDF files and Microsoft Office documents from the web with a simple click.

You can also assign colored flags to captured content. The tool is integrated with Windows Live Writer and all popular blog services so you can quickly publish scrapped content onto your blog with proper attribution to the original source.

A limiting point is that Onfolio stores all the content to your local hard drive and so you may not have access to your web research on another computer. You can however export web clipping as compressed web pages (MHT) and share them via email attachments.

Onfolio can either run as a standalone desktop application or as a sidebar in Internet Explorer provided you have installed Windows Live Toolbar. Other commercial alternatives to Onfolio include Microsoft OneNote and EverNote.

Clipmarks - Working like a pair of scissors, Clipmarks is a very innovative web based software for clipping snippets from web pages, images and even YouTube videos - you place the mouse cursor over a portion you want to save, Clipmarks will then intelligently draw a logical boundary surrounding that snippet and a click will put a copy of that portion to your online Clipmarks account.

This is a perfect solution for grabbing specific portions of any web page that matter the most to you - it could be a video on YouTube, contact address of a friend, a quote on Wikipedia or anything else. And Clipmark will always include a link to the original source so you always know the origin of your clippings. For IE, Firefox and Flock.

ToRead and InstaPaper - You discover an interesting web page but do not have the time to read it. So you either save the URL of that page to your Browser bookmarks or store it in del.icio.us with the tags "follow" or "toread".

Now this methods involves some effort so you want to try toread or instapaper for keeping up with unread web pages - both services are dead simple but extremely useful. You neither have to type anything nor open any new windows.

With toread, a click will send a full copy of the current web page to your email address. In case of Instapaper, the address of the current web page is captured to your online instapaper account so you have a instant list of unread pages.

Google Notebook - If you want quick access to all your web research while on the move, Google Notebook is the only decent choice. This online web clipping tool from Google is available for IE, Firefox and they also have a version for mobile phones so you can take notes from your iPhone or BlackBerry.

One of the most useful features in Google Notebook is the integration with Google Web search. You can save any search result to online Google Notebook by clicking the Note This link that appears next to every search result on Google.com.

The sharing features in Google Notebook are also impressive. You can publish certain notebooks as public so anyone (including search engine bots) can read your web clips like a regular web page. Alternatively, you can invite friends or family members to work together on a particular notebook. Nice option if you want to do some collaborative research for a group project or an upcoming vacation.

Google Notebook are currently not supported on Apple Safari or Opera.

With any of these tools on your system, there’s little probability that you will ever loose touch with important stuff you ever discovered on the Internet.

Iterasi is another promising tool for clipping web pages but it’s in closed beta. Also check out Ript for ripping text and images from web pages and converting them into scrapbook

Convert PDF Documents to SWF Flash Movies Online with PDFMeNot

Like Scibd and SlideShare, PDFMeNot is an online PDF to Flash converter that will instantly convert any Adobe PDF document into a Macromedia Flash (SWF) movie while preserving the original layout, image graphics and formatting.

The PDF to SWF converter can very useful when you have to embed PDF files in web pages for inline viewing or you want to read PDF files on a computer that has no Acrobat Reader.

Here’s how to create Flash movies from PDF documents:

1. Go to PDFMeNot.com (Username: stateless Password: systems) and type the URL of the PDF file - you can use this PDF link as an example. Alternatively upload a PDF from the local hard drive.

2. In your Firefox menu bar, click Tools -> Page Info -> Media. Select the object that has an SWF extension (e.g. pdfmenot.com/store/f6a29535da98cd1.swf) and save it to your disk. That’s the SWF file created from your PDF document. For IE, here’s the trick to save Flash locally.

Bloggers can embed the following JS code in their web templates and PDF links will open in Flash SWF format via PDFMeNot.

While PDFMeNot is an extremely convenient option for quickly viewing PDF files in the browser without loading Adobe Reader, the downside is that the generated SWF objects contains Zoom but no Print and Search function. They are all supported in Macromedia Flash Paper format used by Scribd. Thanks Marshall.

Flash Video Editing Made Simple - Learn Everything about FLV Videos

Flash Video (flv) has become the default video format on the web and almost every video sharing site uses FLV to stream videos online. And its not just the YouTube clones, even media properties like CNN have switched to Adobe Flash Video.

Other than viewing Flash videos in your browser, some of download FLV files locally to enjoy web videos offline.

Everything You Wanted to Know about Editing FLV Flash Videos

Watching videos in an FLV player is half the fun - you can do so many other things like split FLV videos into multiple clips, trim the introductory part, convert flv videos to MP3 songs, extract image frames from the video, etc. Lets get started:

Q: How to Edit FLV Videos with expensive video editors ?

There are no standalone FLV editors around but if you have Adobe AIR, I highly recommend RichFLV - a lightweight flv editor that lets you do almost everything with FLV video clips.

With RichFLV, you can split flv files by adding cue-points, join two or more FLV video clips by stitching or add new MP3 sound tracks over your existing FLV video. Perfect if you want to edit YouTube videos on the computer.

Mac users have another good option - download Perian that turns Quick Time Pro into a FLV editor.

Q. How to convert FLV videos into MP3 audio files ?

To extract audio from flv files, get the free FLV Extract utility from moitah.net - the video is saved as an MP3 file and the quality of sound in the original video is maintained as there’s no encoding done to save the audio.

Alternatively, you can extract MP3 from FLV files only using Vixy.net - an online service.

Q. Which media players can play Flash Videos on the desktop ?

To play FLV video files on the desktop, you can use Adobe Media Player, VLC Media Player or this standalone player which I think is the best flv player around for XP or Vista.

If you are on a Mac, you can play FLV videos downloaded from YouTube in your QuickTime player using the free Perian component discussed above.

Q. How to extract image frames from FLV Videos ?

You can export any image frame out of the FLV video using either the RichFLV editor or through VLC Media Player.

Open the .flv file in VLC, navigate to the frame that you want to save as an image and press Ctrl+Alt+S (or Video -> Snapshot). Note that the regular Print Screen key will not work for capturing screenshot from FLV file.

Q. Where can you upload FLV Video files on the web ?

Blip.TV - none of the other video sharing sites accept FLV format files.

Q. How to Embed FLV video clips in web pages ?

Read this guide on how to embed flv files in web pages. Alternatively, you could upload the file to Blip.TV and use the embed code provided by Blip.TV.

Q. How to Convert FLV videos to other video formats like WMV, AVI, etc ?

Use SUPER - the program may look complex at first glance but don’t worry, it’s very easy. I think it even lets you convert SWF movies into FLV videos.

Q. How to create new FLV movies files from scratch ?

VideoSpin is the only free video editing software I know of that can export movies into Flash Video format. An alternate trick is export your video into Windows Media or AVI and convert it into FLV using a converter program like SUPER .

HP Notebook Giveaway: You Can Get a Laptop Computer for Free

This is the HP Pavilion HDX notebook computer that retails at $5,100. This sleek and very powerful laptop with a 20.1" screen is a perfect desktop replacement and ideal for gaming, entertainment and all other computing tasks.

The very exciting news is that we are giving away this gorgeous HP laptop computer for free to one of our readers.

Anyone in the world can participate in the giveaway - you could be a geek, mom, educator, software developer, home maker, photographer, web designer, student, management guru, blogger, journalist, writer and from another profession.

To win this very expensive laptop computer, you just have to talk about stuff that you already love. You may write about your favorite software tools & websites or share ways that help you stay more productive or you may develop something new from scratch.

I have put some examples here to give you an idea on what you can do to claim this laptop but feel free to think beyond this list - be creative, be unique.

* If you are an expert at Microsoft Office, Photoshop, iTunes, Outlook, Firefox or any other software, you may write a tutorial (with screenshots) explaining some lesser-known but useful features of that program. Your write-up could be about a single feature or you could create a list or just produce a video screencast.

* If you are web designer or developer, you may consider writing a Firefox extension, a new WordPress theme or a WordPress Plugin.

* If you are into web applications, you may try creating some mashup using available APIs in Google Maps, YouTube, Flickr, twitter, Yahoo! Pipes, Google Docs, etc. Or you could create a new Google Gadget, a Facebook App or use the OpenSocial platform to create an Orkut app.

* If you are into gadgets and mobile phones, you may share different ways in which you use that gadget - for example, you can read PDF file in iPod.

* If you are a software developer, you may write some utility program that makes our tech life more productive or solves some annoying problem.

* If you are from the education community, you can share innovative ways in which your teachers & students are making use of software and Internet that may benefit other educational institutes as well.

* If you are not a geek or a tech-savvy person, you can still participate in the giveaway - just write about your favorite things. For instance, moms can share a list of best websites for kids and why you recommend these sites. If you are enthusiastic about photography, you may share secrets that can make our photographs look more interesting. Home makers may write tips on how to arrange home or office space to stay more productive.

The choices are endless. And to reiterate, what you read above are only sample ideas. Think beyond the list.

Please send in your entries to dragon@labnol.org.

1. You could be based in US, UK, India, Singapore, France, Egypt or any other country in the world - the machine will be shipped to your doorstep for free. The import custom duties that may applicable in your country will also be paid via FedEx. If you are in US, the organizers (HP and BuzzCorps) will be providing a check to offset the taxes.

2. You can submit any number of entries. It can be any format like Word document, email, PDF, video, etc.

3. Please submit only original stories / articles / hacks / ideas. If you have already shared that article on a public website, please do not use it for the contest.

4. Once you submit an entry, we can publish it on our blog while giving you full credit. If you are submitting a software utility, plugin, theme or a mashup - you need to provide the full source code as well though you remain the owner.

5. The last date for receiving entries is Friday - May 23, 2008.

6. The winner will be decided based on creativity, usefulness, uniqueness and so on. It won’t be a random drawing.

Digital Makeup using Photoshop - Amazing

Video Tutorial on Makeup, beauty, makeover and all that stuff using photoshop.. just see it to believe it.




One more is here




Another video tutorial on makeup and beauty - The beautiful Rihanna

YouTube's Design History

YouTube is now one of the world biggest and most visited websites, with over 83.4 million videos and 3.75 million user channels, all of which was achieved within 2 years of the sites launch, something us web designers can only dream of.

But if we look back on its history in design terms we can see that it has a path similar to that of any other web design project, with a somewhat lack of direction in the design department.

May 2005

This is the earliest version I can find of youtube.com in May of 2005 is obviously incomplete. But it does show how they attempted to first put their concept into a design form.

June 2005

The next version appears around a month later in June 2005 and shows how they still weren't sure about how to bring their idea to the web. This design ironically looks like it was inspired by Google.com with the top search bar and simplistic form (spooky).

July 2005

One more month and it takes on a very familiar form, and one that would ultimatly grant it success. One thing you'll notice is that they are still clinging onto a deli.cio.us style tag cloud system (which I guess never worked out)

Aug 2005

Throughout august 2005 nothing much changes with the overall layout but they add a strange "Who else is online" feature to the right column.

Sep 2005

Now this is were is settles down, maybe they are beginning to realise that they are onto something good with this format. As you can see they have started to experiment with various features including competitions and recently viewed videos. This is also the earliest point I can find where they have added thier *New* Channels feature.

I guess the only question I can leave you pondering over is after looking at the way YouTube's design (grew up) what do you think was the real driving force behind its success? The fact it was a great concept or was this one of the biggest web design flukes ever?

CD Health - Clean your CD'S/DVD's with Toothpaste!

Now this may sound crazy but trust me it works!, forget all these fancy CD cleaning devices and drive cleaning CD’s all you need is a good old tube of toothpaste.

Just squeeze a blob about the same amount as you would normally put on your toothbrush. Now run it under the hot tap and start to gently rub the toothpaste all over the CD’s surface and it should do its magic on removing the scratches.

Anyway as the water gets luke-warm it will start to get easier but I guess don’t let the water get too hot as we all know CD’s and DVD’s don’t like high temperatures and you may end up doing more harm than good.

This even worked on a CD i'd had lying around for about 5 years and probably has more scratches than a dog with fleas and it would never load. But would you believe it after trying this toothpaste thing it actually loaded just enough for me to get some files off , woohoo!