Impatica 4 for PowerPoint

While PowerPoint has become a standard in many classrooms for creating presentations and multimedia projects it is often more difficult to share these presentation over the web. Many of us who want to embed photographs, audio and transitions to our PowerPoint presentations soon learn that when we attempt to put them on the web that the files become incredibly large and cumbersome to work with. This is where Impatica 4 for PowerPoint comes in. It is an extremely handy utility that not only compresses your PowerPoint files but optimizes it for streaming over the Internet. Impatica 4 for PowerPoint often can compress your PowerPoint files by up to 95% which really impacts on the time it takes to view them on the web. Moreover, Impatica 4 for PowerPoint will convert your PowerPoint files into a small Java application so that your PowerPoint presentation can be viewed by anyone who has a Java enabled browser. This means that you don’t have to be concerned if the individual viewing your presentation has a compatible copy of PowerPoint. Right within the browser, individuals can view the presentation complete with graphics, sound, narration and transitions as it was intended to be viewed. As a faculty member at a college, I am always concerned about others reusing my intellectual property and with Impatica 4 for PowerPoint, I know that individuals will only be able view my PowerPoint presentations but that they can not edit or make changes to it.

You might be saying to yourself well how does this work? The truth be known, using Impatica 4 for PowerPoint is a very easy application to use. To use Impatica 4 for PowerPoint you simply double click on the icon and it brings up the application. You are now ready to add your PowerPoint presentation. You can accomplish this by clicking on the Add button or better yet, simply drag your file into the application to get started. Impatica 4 for PowerPoint is available for both Macintosh and Windows and works equally well on both platforms.

Some of the new features for Impatica for PowerPoint version 4 include:

* Support for the PowerPoint 2007 file format
* Support for Intel-based Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows Vista computers
* Support for Palm OS viewing and projecting with the Impatica ShowMate
* Adjustable, scalable playback window
* Full screen viewing capabilities
* Enhanced logging
* Support for PowerPoint 2007 multi-stop gradients such as rainbow
* Expanded audio support in the PowerPoint 2007 file format (any audio format supported by QuickTime)
* New graphics and color scheme for user interface
* New installer mechanism for Windows computers


Once you have added the file you can customize how your viewers will interact with your PowerPoint presentation by having Impatica add playback controls. By clicking on the Media and Animation Tab you can easily configure your video and sound that viewers will be accessing.. You may need to play around with audio compression feature in Impatica to derive the best results once your PowerPoint is streamed to the web. One of the really nice featured that is built into Impatica 4 is its integration with Blackboard. If you are a college faculty member you will really like this feature. Impatica 4 for PowerPoint is capable of creating an archived file for Blackboard that adds a significant compression factor and allows you to upload the final file compressed. When the student is ready to view the file Blackboard is able to decompress the file so the student can view it.

Once you have set all of the features you simply click on the Translate button and your PowerPoint presentation is processed. Once your PowerPoint presentation has been processed you can now connect to your server from within Impatica and upload the files. Having a built in FTP client is really a fantastic feature and makes it very fast for uploading the files. Once your have uploaded your PowerPoint presentation Impatica creates a html file and places all of the necessary files on the server so that your presentation can be viewed with any Java enabled browser. This point should not be missed. Now that you have used Impatica for PowerPoint and placed the files on the web anyone with a web browser can view your files and don’t need to have PowerPoint installed on their computer. Likewise, if you are concerned about putting your PowerPoint presentation on the web and giving others access to your intellectual property, then this is the perfect solution for you. Now users can view your PowerPoint presentations, but don’t have access to change it. I have found Impatica 4 to be an easy to use tool that has lots of uses for the work and teaching that I do. If you are using PowerPoint as part of your teaching or professional development then you will want to use Impatica 4 for PowerPoint and give your viewers access to your presentations regardless if they PowerPoint installed on their computer or not. Impatica makes PowerPoint accessible from any browser and compresses it so that they are previewed quickly through any Java enable browser. For more information about Impatica for PowerPoint go to www.impatica.com/offers/inclusiontimes/


If you are interested in supporting the work that I do on the blog, please click on the link above to get special discount pricing. To take a look at a sample PowerPoint presentation that I put on the web click on this link.