Zlides

Monochrome or Color

2006-10-07T03:08:00.000-05:00

I’m old because I remember the crazy debate about “Why people would ever need a color monitor?” Amber or green monochrome was a good enough choice. Worked for Pong.

Zlides has a nice “green” front page but the actual presentations are a rather bland monochrome. This had to change. So I’m rewriting my RGBjive JavaScript application to work within Zlides. You’ll get 16 palette choices in six color groups plus 14 monochrome choices.

Look for it soon.

PS Found another nice color palette generator that uses an image to suggest a palette at degraeve.com

Approve.com

2006-09-06T10:53:00.001-05:00

If you are taking a look at Zlides.com, you might want to also take a look at Approver.com. I like the collaboratively working on ideas part.

Draft Mode

2006-09-02T18:53:00.000-05:00

I’ve been creating several Zlides Presentations in the last week and noticed a needed feature. So I’ve been working on the code to allow saving a draft mode. I’ll upload that for beta testers in the next week.

Email to a Friend

2006-09-01T07:42:00.000-05:00

One of the proposed features of Zlides is that you can email to a friend a link to any presentation. Just got that code working and started emailing some of my friends.

Editor Improvements

2006-08-20T09:17:00.000-05:00

Two improvements to the editor today. First, some IE bugs are gone. Second, when you add a new Zlide it immediately opens up that Zlide for editing.

Zlides logo

2006-08-19T04:35:00.000-05:00

Scobleizer wrote up the Web 2.OV2Logo Creatr (beta) so I created two for Zlides.com.

Friends on Zlides

2006-08-19T04:27:00.000-05:00

Last night I asked a few friends to try out Zlides.com. It will be nice to get a few people trying it who don’t think it is the best thing since slides bread. Also explained more on the home page thanks to Mike.

Zlides Quickstart

2006-08-17T08:14:00.000-05:00

This is the first Zlides presentation that I recommend you try: Zlides Quickstart. I’ll start opening up others in the coming days.

What do you think Mike?

Zlides Editor Ready

2006-08-13T23:58:00.000-05:00

I been working on the Zlides presentation editor and finally finished it up. I’ve uploaded it and need to do some testing. I’ll be inviting a few more people to test Zlides in just a few days.

PowerPoint Import

2006-06-12T05:39:00.000-05:00

On the flight back from the Bay Area (SFO) yesterday my fellow passenger asked if I had any plans for importing PowerPoints. No.

First, PowerPoint is more complicated than Zlides intends to be. Zlides is about keeping it simple. Your skill in using Zlides should never be a criteria in a job interview. Second, I think part of any startup, at anytime is ‘not to be everything to everybody’. This is part of the vision that you must be true to. Zlides is simple.

However, I hope to have Zlides import RSS feeds. Now is your PowerPoint is converted into RSS, now maybe Zlides will be able to import PowerPoint.

Use slides to enhance your presentation, not cripple it

2006-05-26T21:42:00.000-05:00

Dave Taylor cites Seth Godin’s ebook and makes a pitch for skipping the slides completely “or work hard to minimize your slides.” He provides a nice simple example of a simple slide versus a multi-bullet point bonanza.

Your Home Page
Is Obsolete

These are emotion words and fits in Seth's six word maximum. Good post.

Simple = Effective Presentations

2006-05-26T21:28:00.000-05:00

Many years ago I took a computer programming course that was crammed into a week. During the last day of the course I worked with a team to solve a business problem. You failed if your solution required the use of a computer. The lesson was that technology is not always the answer.

Seth Godwin wrote “Really Bad PowerPoint and How To Avoid It” as a 10 page pdf ebook in 2001. Several million presentations later this is still a good read. He states that you don’t need all of those wizards built into PowerPoint and that they just hurt your efforts to communicate. Instead, “make slides that reinforce your works, not repeat them. Create slides that demonstrate, with emotional proof, that what you’re saying is true not just accurate.” He recommends no more that six words per slide. Yes, six words.

And why only 10 pages? If he “hadn’t spent so much time on it, it would be longer.” Same for your presentation: simple=effective.

zlides and JavaScript (Ajax Experience) Fest

2006-05-12T01:08:00.000-05:00

The consensus of the speakers at JavaScript (Ajax Experience) Fest is that one should use libraries or frameworks for Ajax work. While I agree in principle, I’m having a hard time agreeing for everything in zlides.com. Sometimes compactness is better. And sometimes machine language is better, but it is rarely used any longer. So I’ll keep an open mind on this.

Two positives for zlides

2006-05-10T18:21:00.000-05:00

I’m just starting to show a few people behind the curtain of zlides.com. So far two positive comments. Remember execution is key and “the devil is in the details.” But those comments are enough to tell me to keep on working.

Beta signup for zlides.com starts

2006-05-08T23:33:00.000-05:00

Tonight I got the front page of zlides.com to accept email addresses from those people who want to participate in the beta program when it is ready.

Zlides is about displaying and creating presentation blogs. Examples will be available in early June.

May Bowling Night

2006-05-05T00:48:00.000-05:00

I lug my laptop to the bowling alley most Thursday nights. One issue I tacked tonight was how to provide a URL to get directly to a particular zlide. On a standard web page you'd use an anchor to get you to a segment of the page. On the Ajax page that makes a real simple presentation we have to use a JavaScript solution. So I implemented a query string of ?z=slidenumber (e.g., ?z=5). So now in the RSS file for the presentation, each slide has a quid.

I also wrote the first draft of the Zlides pitch. Of course I used Zlides to write the pitch. Only missing projections, but who knows at this stage.

zlides beta soon

2006-05-03T21:51:00.000-05:00

Just setting up the site tonight. More soon.