Freepath 2.0 is a new application that lets you create presentations that are mashups of web content and content from your PC. So, instead of a traditional PowerPoint, for example, your Freepath presentation could combine a PowerPoint file with images, videos, music, PDFs, Word, and Excel documents and play them as a seamless digital presentation. You can integrate web content like YouTube videos, slideshow’s from slide.com, music from Pandora, images from flickr or photobucket, and ...

I’m very proud and excited to announce that I’ve been invited to be a monthly guest on the Sparkling Client Silverlight Podcast. Details to follow very soon, but our initial shows include a discussion of Templates on September 23rd and of Databinding on October 28. You can find out more about the show, its hosts and their previous podcasts on the Sparkling Client Home Page.

A continuation of my series of demos from my advanced workflow services talk. Here we focus on duplex message exchange patterns. Duplex messaging is something that we model at the application level (as opposed to the infrastructure level) because we want to model that message exchange at the level of the application. Here's some scenarios where I could use duplex messaging: [concrete] I submit an order, and you tell me when it ships [abstract] I ...

So, we've seen in part 1 how to manage context, we saw in part 2 how we can take that basic knowledge to do duplex messaging. Once we start doing duplex work, there are some interesting patterns, and the first one is one that we like to call "long running work". Why are we interested in this? Well, as you probably know, the execution of a workflow is single threaded (this is a feature, not ...

So, last week I wrapped up a conversation at TechReady, our internal conference, where I was talking about the integration between WF and WCF in .NET 3.5. This talk was somewhat bittersweet, it's the last conference where I'm scheduled to talk about WF 3.0/3.5, I'll start talking about WF 4.0 at PDC this fall. There are a series of 4 demos that we'll talk about in this series: Basic Context Management Simple Duplex Long Running ...

When we start doing this two way style of messaging, we now open up to start modeling some interesting business problems. In the previous post, you'll note that I did not include the code, because I mentioned we needed to be more clever in scenarios where we listen in parallel. First, a brief diversion into how the Receive activity works. Everybody remembers the workflow queues, the technology that underlies all communication between a host and ...

Tomorrow morning I am teaching two different groups of people. The first group is about 10 people, mostly in their forties. The second group is about 30 people, all at least 70. Tomorrow night I am teaching a group of unknown number, of mixed demographic. Their one common link is that they all are leaders of adults at our church. So why am I writing a post right now instead of studying and reading and ...

Macworld ‘08: Merlin Mann / “Living with Data” Last month, I premiered a new presentation at Macworld San Francisco 2008 called “Living with Data” (previously). Since this talk was part of the “Vision” track, I used the opportunity to start gathering some threads around the idea of time and attention that had been floating around my head for a while (I think you can see the genesis of some of this stuff in my IDEO ...

I presented a 15 minute introduction to Subversion during the Alt.NET Community on Alternative .NET tools evening last week. The video should appear online soon at the Skills Matter site. Here is the talk in a more readable form meanwhile. Subversion is my favourite version control system. I’ve been using it for about two years now (I first wrote about it first in april ‘07) and so far I am very happy with it. It ...

It's been a long, long time since I said anything original in a presentation. I'm mostly fed up with talking about what I actually know about (brands/adverts/all that). And I don't know enough about the things I'm becoming interested in for anyone to want me to talk about them. So I thought I'd try and cook up something newish by knocking the two together and seeing if there's a presentation in there somewhere. So here's ...

每个周末， 褪墨上都将介绍一些摄影 /软件 /演讲小技巧。 成为一个优秀的演讲者的，除了要有自信心，还需要多加练习，以精益求精。这是一些可以帮助你提高演讲水平的小技巧： 10-20-30原则 这是Guy Kawasaki（湾区著名的风险投资家，同时也是位充满激情、睿智和幽默的演讲家）提出的一个幻灯片制作和演讲原则，即一个Powerpoint不能超过10张幻灯片，演讲总长不能超过20分钟，而且幻灯片的字体要大于30号。他说，不管你的想法是否能够颠覆世界，你必须要在有限的时间里，用较少的幻灯片和精炼的语言将其精华传达给听众。拓展阅读《Powerpoint的“10/20/30原则”》 有趣的演讲 演讲要讲求寓教于乐。我不是指做演讲时要像猴子一样又蹦又跳，但是同文章或杂志相比，人们期望在演讲中感受到你的激情，而不是枯燥无味的背诵。 放慢速度 紧张或没经验的演讲者更容易在演讲时像打机关枪一样说个不停。试着放慢你的语速，并且通过增加一些停顿来达到强调的效果。 眼神交流 与所有听众进行眼神交流。销售人员都知道，你不能把所有的注意力都盯在做决定的人身上，因为秘书和助理也在一定程度上影响老板做决定（弥缝注：总是将注意集中在一人，会让对方感到不舒服）。 用15个词做总结 你能把你的想法用15个词总结出来吗？如果不能，那就再总结。演讲对信息的传递并非理想中的那么强有力，所以在演讲中不断重复这15个词的总结可以达到强调和加深记忆的效果。 20-20原则 另外一条幻灯片制作原则。这条原则指的是，演讲中你要有20张幻灯片，并且每张幻灯片只演讲20秒。其目的就是逼使你做到简练，避免听众听得不耐烦。 不要读幻灯片 很多人都认为自己可以脱稿演讲，可事实上却常常回头看屏幕。读幻灯片，只会不断打断你的演讲思路，这也间接地告诉听众你根本就不理解自己要讲的内容，从而对你的演讲失去信心和兴趣。 演讲就像讲故事 如果你的演讲比较长，那最好加入一些小故事、双关语和奇闻轶事等来串联整个演讲，同时也帮助阐述观点。优秀的演讲者都知道怎样将小故事和要阐述观点联系起来，从而达到吸引观众的目的。 提高音量 演讲最忌讳听众无法听到演讲者在讲什么。虽然现在都有麦克风和扩音器了，但是你仍然要确保使所有听众都能听到你。提高音量不是说要你喊，正确的做法就是挺直身体，从肺部而不是从喉咙里发出更为清晰的声音。 不要事先计划手势 演讲中的任何手势都应该是你要传达的信息的延伸，它是帮助你传递信息中的情感来。事先计划手势会看起来很不自然，刻意为之时还会和其他自然的肢体语言不搭配。如果你不知道该做什么手势，那把手随意地放到身体两侧就好了（不要用手指着听众！）。 “这是个不错的问题” 通过使用“这真是个不错的问题”、“我很高兴你提出这个问题”等语句来为自己争取时间以组织回答的时间。听众一般不会察觉这样客套的话，而且你要避免“恩”、“啊”等等口头语。 吸气而不是呼气 当你感觉要说“呃”、“啊”等语气词时（过多语气词只会让演讲变得糟糕），可以停顿一下或者深吸一口气。虽然停顿会显得有些尴尬，但是听众会很少注意到的。 提早到会场（尽可能的早） 不要等到听众都坐好了，你才慢吞吞地调试好投影仪和幻灯片。提早到达演讲地点，熟悉一下场景，检查电脑和投影设备，确保不会出现异常的境况。而且这有助于消除紧张感。 熟能生巧 参加如Toastmasters一样的提高和锻炼演讲和交谈技巧的组织。这些锻炼会使你上台演讲时显得更有能力和自信。 避免道歉 只有做错事情时才需要道歉。不要为自己的能力不足、紧张和准备不充分道歉，这只会使听众觉得你没自信。再者，多数情况下，听众并不会注意到你的紧张和小错误。 当你错误时一定要道歉 虽然要避免道歉，当你在传达信息时包涵了错误的观点时，或者有其他明显错误的地方，一定要道歉。保持自信是当然的，但是过度自信就会出问题了。 以听众的角度出发 要从听众的立场来撰写演讲稿和思考问题。哪些内容对于听众比较难理解；哪些内容会使听众感到繁琐？总是要记得，对听众来说，这里面表达的内容有什么意义。 乐在其中 将你的激情注入到演讲中去，乐在其中。 原文：18 Tips for Killer Presentations - Lifehack.org | 翻译：弥缝 褪墨|时间管理 - 弥缝褪墨是一个关注时间管理、个人提升和演讲技巧的博客。想提高自己？为什么不来褪墨看看呢～ 收藏、分享这篇文章!

For the geek that has to do presentations, iSpring Free is a neat little tool that converts your PowerPoint presentations into Adobe Flash slideshows. So no more sticking this slides up on the Web, and needing your visitors to download then open up on their computer (and they need to have Powerpoint Viewer at a minimum too). iSpring runs on Windows supports PowerPoint 2000/XP/2003/2007. Bookmark/e-Mail

Now that we’ve closed on the first annual CodeStock conference of Knoxville, TN, I’ll share my experience as a speaker and attendee. I am absolutely thrilled that I was asked to present at CodeStock 2008, and just as thrilled to be able to participate in the excellent sessions and open spaces that were available. Sessions: I sat in Steve Andrews’ session titled “Automation with MSBuild 3.5”. Steve has a step by step layout and demonstrated ...

Windows with Office 2007 only: pptPlex, a free Office add-on, makes PowerPoint presentations less of a one-way street and more of a neighborhood exploration. After installing the add-on, you'll be able to put slides together in groups, slide around the canvas during a presentation, easily zoom in on charts or stats you want to highlight, and generally make the presentation more open to give-and-take and audience questions. Check out the video above for an overview. ...

Windows with Office 2007 only: pptPlex, a free Office add-on, makes PowerPoint presentations less of a one-way street and more of a neighbourhood exploration. After installing the add-on, you'll be able to put slides together in groups, slide around the canvas during a presentation, easily zoom in on charts or stats you want to highlight, and generally make the presentation more open to give-and-take and audience questions. Check out the video above for an overview. ...

I’m at WordCamp San Francisco 2008 today and had the distinct pleasure of giving a talk on Search and Findability. Distinct pleasure because it was the first session of the day at 9am. And if any of you know me, then you know that I don’t do mornings well. :-) My session was about Search and Findability. There seemed to be a lot of misunderstandings about what the session would be about. Findability is not ...

As you read this I am busy delivering the following Avusa case study at the Advancing Web 2.0 for traditional media conference. Hope you enjoy it. Case Study: Convergence Online - Opening up doors to Traditional Advertisers View SlideShare presentation (tags: avusa web case study)

I gave a talk last week at the SocialDevCamp last Saturday on Social Media for business. I also had the opportunity to watch many presentations, both good and not-so-good. I’ve had some great training on presentations from Northwestern (particularly Surepayroll founder Troy Henikoff) and notice where people go right and where people go wrong with their presentations. This is a quick list of seven things that will kill your presentation - avoid these problems as ...

Video: An Overview of pptPlex Wow the OfficeLabs guys are on a good run of late. Hot on the heels of SpeedLaunch they released pptPlex today. Taking inspiration from the Plex technology used in the Bill Gates’s TouchWall demonstration at the CEO Summit, OfficeLabs have created a prototype that allows people to have similar zooming capabilities using Office PowerPoint 2007. With pptPlex you can show slides on a zoomable canvas moving around the canvas to ...

Who Moved My Brain? Revaluing Time & Attention (slideshare.net) Thanks to my pals, Dara and Shawn, I’ve been preparing for a return visit with the folks at GoDaddy to deliver a couple talks on Inbox Zero and Time and Attention. As I’ve been going over my slides for the Time & Attention talk, I realized I hadn’t shared how the material has evolved since it premiered at Macworld in January. Which is to say, “Kind ...