Blow Your Audiences Minds with this amazing add-on from Microsoft Office Labs.
Have you ever thought “I wish Office had a feature that did xyz" ? Like for example, I wish I had a really cool way to make awesome charts. I also wish I had a way to prioritize my email, and maybe even turn off email for an hour so I can concentrate for once. How about a really neat way of presenting PowerPoint Slides that would remind your viewers of the Bill Gates presentation at the CEO Summit earlier this year? And by the way if you haven’t seen Plex and Touchwall, you should really check it out below. Then later make sure you download pptPlex for PowerPoint and really blow the socks of your next audience.
Bill Gates Presenting TouchWall
Microsoft actually has people working on projects for Office which you can check out at Office Labs! Here are the Add-Ons you can try out today! Make sure you let the teams know what you think of their applications. Who knows they might make it into the next version of office.
pptPlex
pptPlex is a plug-in that explores an alternate method for presenting a PowerPoint slide deck. Using pptPlex, you can present your slides as a tour through a zoomable canvas instead of a series of linear slides. No it’s not the same thing you saw Bill Gates present above, but it’s as close as your going to get to it in the next few months anyway. It’s actually pretty impressive how close they came to making PowerPoint behave in a similar matter with the use of a mouse and your scroll wheel.
Chart Advisor
Chart Advisor is a prototype that provides an alternate approach for creating charts in Excel 2007. This add-in uses an advanced rules engine to scan your data and, based on predefined rules, displays charts according to score. Top scoring charts are available for you to preview, tweak, and insert into your Excel worksheet. Some of the cool features include:
- Automatic pivoting to generate more useful charts
- Hidden rows and columns are ignored in the spreadsheet
- Totals for columns or rows are ignored in the charts so as not to skew the data plotted
- Ability to quickly change the data displayed in the chart through the Modify chart pane
- Ability to filter data
- Intelligent mapping of data to the axes
- Scoring of charts to show the best charts first
- Chart formatting (legend on/off/location, chart style) is rules-based – e.g., no legend if only one value series
Email Prioritizer
Email Prioritizer is a plug-in for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 (running on Exchange Server) that helps you manage email overload. This concept test provides a “do not disturb” button that temporarily pauses new email arrival, and prioritizes email with a 0-3 star rating system. The main features include:
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A "Do Not Disturb" button that stops incoming mail delivery so you can work without interruptions.
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Email priorities are assigned to incoming mail so you can focus on the most important mail first. With a “0-3 stars” ranking system, you can focus on email messages that are most important to you. These priorities are based on algorithms from Microsoft Research.
Speed Launch
Have you ever wanted to save commands you do on a daily or weekly basis in a quick launch interface. Speed Launch is the tool you have been looking for, and its free. You can save web commands like searching for movies, phone numbers, even launching certain applications extremely quickly.
Search Commands
Search Commands helps you find commands, options, wizards, and galleries in Microsoft Office 2007 Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Just type what you’re looking for in your own words and click the command you need. Search Commands also includes Guided Help, which acts as a tour guide for specific tasks.
InkSeine
The goal of the InkSeine project is to completely rethink the user interface for tablet computers. Some people have described InkSeine as "Windows Journal on steroids." But InkSeine goes well beyond Windows Journal, particularly in its features to search from ink and to easily drag hyperlinks for documents and web pages into your notes.
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However I’ve tried OpenOffice (although I haven’t tried Symphony), and you can’t do what you can in Office as quickly. Although it definitely is a neat free alternative to Office if you are willing to give up ease of use and functionality.
What if I do not want to pay for a office simply since there are similar free products available (OpenOffice, IBM Symphony) ?