Over the holidays I came across this fun link and posted it to CULIBS: http://www.wordperhect.net
One stalwart librarian thought he had caught a typo, but, no, it is “wordperhect,” with an “H” like in “helpful,” something every librarian tries to be.
Something else a lot of librarians try to be is up-on-the-latest-technology. We also try to be thrifty because we aren’t working in the highest-paid profession. So when we find ourselves with the cash to buy a new laptop, the thought of paying out half the price of the device for the privilege of being able to type well on it sends us out looking for alternatives, like wordperhect, perhaps.
I bought myself a new laptop in December and was looking forward to making a presentation at ALA Midwinter. The laptop doesn’t come with Microsoft Office and I wanted to avoid paying hundreds to get the package that includes PowerPoint. So, I decided, it’s now or never, time to look into cheaper or free alternatives. The dilemma here is should I go with an online host or download a product?
The argument for the download option is that you’ll have the product on your machine, it will run faster, and you’ll save the work you do on your own computer. A big contender in the download world is Openoffice.org. Openoffice was developed by Sun and meant to compete with Microsoft. The initial drawback of using it seemed to be that it didn’t offer as many bells and whistles as PowerPoint. I missed PowerPoint’s variety of slide templates, but it occurred to me that most of my slides are screen shots so I didn’t really need a colorful template for my presentation. An added feature of Openoffice is that although its default save mode has some odd file extension, you can save as a ppt (PowerPoint). This would be great if you lose your laptop on the way to a conference (not such a great thing) and have to run your flashdrive off a computer running PowerPoint (your small consolation).
The two online contenders that I looked at were Google
Docs (which offers a presentation mode) and Zoho. Show, from Zoho, is extremely attractive and very colorful. The site is even kind of Googly looking (white, clean space punctuated by bits of bright color). It has a multitude of templates and seemed like a fun way to go. The big problem with Zoho is that the export feature doesn’t seem to work (no back up copy of your work) as promised and you will be left on edge wondering at your conference if you will be able to get into your own work. Google Presentation, which is built on Sun’s Openoffice, is pretty bland but has a decently functioning import feature.
A problem with the online tools is that their performance while you create a document is as jumpy as any other online input activity you might encounter. The feature that is most praised in the online tools is the ease they offer for doing collaborative work. A very cool feature of the online tools is that chat can run in a column to the side of the presentation. Imagine. While you are presenting, the audience can pass their comments up to you in real time. You might argue that it is all a very big distraction, but I suppose a positive way to go with this is to say, no more “sage on the stage in the classroom, no more sage on the stage at a conference.”
What I settled on in preparing for Midwinter is downloading Openoffice, sending them a check for what I could afford, creating my presentation in Impress (their PowerPoint equivalent) saving the work as a ppt file and almost flawlessly (the text on one slide was a little out of order) importing it to Google. I now have a copy of the file on my own computer, on a flashdrive saved in Openoffice format and as a PowerPoint, and as a url in Google. I think I’m all set to go, but if I start making changes, I’ll run into that problem of making the changes in all of the files.
Google Presentations will not let you back up a file on your own computer (scary, right?). When you opt to email the file, all you are doing is emailing the URL. This is, though, a useful feature pre-conference. People can come into your session with your page on their laptops ready to chat. Google also only lets you save 10 MB in presentations. If you do a lot of presentations and they are long, be prepared to delete post-conference if you are running through Google for the sake of the chat feature. You can use another online host for archiving and referral purposes. Slideshare is a freebie. Maximum file size allowed is 30MB. That should work well for image-heavy shows.
Happy open access new year to everyone!
Beth
