Here’s a great post from Executive Travel Magazine’s website about some recession minded tips for achieving collaboration without the cost of transportation.
It list Empressr as the #5 tip due to it’s ease of use, integration of both video, audio, and visual aspects, and of course how, thanks to being browser based it allows all sorts of content to freely and easily accessed by parties anywhere on the globe!
The team here at Empressr LOVE IT when people get excited about the Empressr application!!!
We are always working on making your user experience the BEST possible and making Empressr the best product it can be. Part of that comes from our users feedback; that means you guys!!!
This is a great example from Eldor Germann’s blog Teaching and Technology. Beyond making us blush, we think he did an AWESOME job of summing up some of our great features like our 3D tranistions, direct import from YouTube, and on-slide image reflections.
Eldon also relates a great experience with tech support from @GlobalCitizen and @BryanThatcher which is something we really take pride in.
All in all its a great read and we highly suggest you check out his blog and the article on Empressr!
Last week while we were in Amsterdam at The Next Web, we released an update to Empressr. In the editor there were just a series of minor bug fixes, the big release was enhancements to the Presenters Dashboard.
The biggest change is how we integrate Twitter.
We now highlight questions so that they are easier to identify in the stream, we also have the ability to filter the Tweet stream for only questions if you are doing a Q&A.
When you manually launch a tweet to the Empressr presentation we make that tweet sticky on top of the dashboard so that it is easy to close or reference what tweet is on the screen. Launching a new one will close the existing, select the close button and it remove it from the Empressr presentation.
Particularly if your one of those still using file sharing.
Microsoft announced that the infamous PowerPoint program (Office 2003 and earlier) has been exposed to some serious security issues. In fact, in an alert separate from that of Microsoft, the Denmark based vulnerability research shop Secunia labeled the issue “extremely critical.”
Users who click on malicious files, website links and email attachments trigger malware files on their workstations. So far attempts to use this have been limited yet targeted. Further it appears those with high access levels are at the highest risk.
These types of problems are easily avoidable thanks to browser-based programs!
There are numerous online-presentation tools all of which avoid such issues. Everything being embedded on a web page means there is no need to click external links, no need to open attached files, and no need to check with IT every time you wish to launch a presentation someone sends to you.
In the meantime Microsoft plans to “monitor the situation.”
Last week at Web 2.0 Expo #w2e Stowe Boyd @stoweboyd and Oliver Marks @olivermarks used Empressr as their tool to create and present their story on Enterprise 2.0. This presentation is a warm up to the bigger Enterprise 2.0 event that they are presenting in, taking place in Boston June 22-25th. The two took advantage of some of the cool new features, namely the Twitter FrontChannel to spearhead the Q & A session.
Stowe loved it because it gave him a chance to be able to choose the Tweet that was shown on the screen, users loved it because they got a chance to participate in the presentation. Stowe is going to be using Empressr around the world speaking during the next few months, I’ll keep you posted.
The Empressr
The Dashboard
Some of the features are:
A timer so you can gauge the length or your presentation.
You can show the hash tag on the presentation so your audience knows what hash to use.
You can autorun the tweets, or select manual, in this mode you would launch each tweet to the screen.
Presenter Notes, you see previous, current and next slides, they are also click-able as an additional navigation element.
We at Empressr HQ are excited that we will be participating in The Next Web Again this year! We are not planning on having a booth this year but we will be onstage as the presenting partner for the 10 Twitter application presentations. This is cool, what we are doing is Empressr will be the engine for the presentations, we will be using the twitter FrontChannel (name courtesy of @StoweBoyd) during their talk so that the presenters can interact with the audience in Q&A or in just commenting on the presentations.
We haven’t really talked much about the twitter integration with Empressr, we have two different ways to use Twitter. One is you can simply send a twitter message with an embedded link to your Empressr. The other is a bit more complex, when launching into presentation mode, you have an option to open the presenter dashboard on a second monitor. This dashboard has two main elements, presenter notes and a place to log into Twitter, once authenticated, you have options to have your time-line automatically be sent to the screen, overlaying the bottom portion of your presentation, you can also set a hashtag to filter the tweet stream, or you can run it in a completely moderated fashion where you choose the tweets that show up on the screen. The tweets that are shown during your presentation also get recorded to the comment stream for the Empressr presentation so you have the ability to review them at a later date. We think this is pretty sweet.
The Empresr team of @globalcitizen and myself are heading to Sunny California on Monday the 30th for a week long immersion into the Web 2.0 Expo. Unlike the past years at #w2e where we presented or exhibited, this year I will be there checking out what new technologies and ideas are being presented and blogging back about them. This is a slightly different approach, but what happens when you are involved with the conference is that you never get a chance to listen and see what is going on in the rest of the event. I am excited at this opportunity, I even started to make a schedule of who I want to see, that, for all that know me, is a rarity!
I am also doing demos for all that want to see what’s new with Empressr, to schedule some time with me just follow @empressr on Twitter then DM me your availability.
Also don’t forget to follow my personal Twitter @bryanthatcher
March 24th is Ada Lovelace day. An amazing day for computer programmers everywhere. Ada Lovelace has been credited as the first computer programmer EVER.
Think about that for a second. What would it be like to be the first computer programmer in the history of computational machines.
Let me pose a couple of questions to you to frame up the magnitude of this title.
Like I promised, new features are planned to roll out every other week.
What’s new this week.
yes you can now search and drag and drop YouTube videos from within Empressr, it works great and is really easy. A couple of items you should be aware of is that YouTube videos have to auto-play (at lest for now) and due to api restrictions you are only allowed one video per slide in empressr. There is no limitation on how many videos you use, so long as it’s one per slide.
To access the video panel click the Import control on the bottom navigation bar
That opens the panel that let’s you search for images on flickr, yahoo and google, and now videos on youtube.
Another feature is the ability to import you notes that you may of made in you powerpoint document, the notes will import in both the jpeg only and the editable versions that we offer. to edit or add your notes click the gear on the lower right hand corner of the slide in the sorter,
that opens the option panel, there are 3 areas in this panel, properties, info and Notes
To see your notes while presenting, you have to launch the notes and twitter dashboard by clicking this icon in the Empressr viewer window
That icon launches the Dashboard that you can then drag to your second monitor while presenting
Empressr is the first visual storytelling and presentation rich Internet application. Feature-rich, it allows you to create, manage and share—going beyond other applications by enabling you to combine streaming video, animation, audio, still images and text to create the most dynamic content possible. You can easily embed your visual story in your blog or your favorite social network page. Or use Empressr to create state of the art boardroom presentations.
yes you can now search and drag and drop YouTube videos from within Empressr, it works great and is really easy. A couple of items you should be aware of is that YouTube videos have to auto-play (at lest for now) and due to api restrictions you are only allowed one video per slide in empressr. There is no limitation on how many videos you use, so long as it’s one per slide.
