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Technology
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Upload and Narrate PowerPoint Presentations for Freeby Janet Attard Have you ever wished there were an easy way to put your PowerPoint presentations on the web, and narrate them? What about photos? A picture may be worth a thousand words, but if you're a realtor, you may want to embellish a photo slideshow with a verbal description pointing out the crown molding in all the rooms, the home's proximity to the beach, or the top-of-the-line kitchen appliances that are only a year old. Now, you can do those things easily and for free thanks to a new service called MyBrainshark. A “show-and-tell” website for business communicators, MyBrainshark gives you a simple way to upload, narrate, share and track PowerPoint presentations, Word documents and photos. You can also upload videos and MP3 files (for an audio podcast, for instance). Or you can pick up the telephone and record a podcast on MyBrainshark. When you're done, you'll have a podcast you can share on MyBrainshark, or embed on your own site – all without having any special technology skills. MyBrainshark.com isn't the first site to let you upload and share PowerPoint presentations and videos. But what does make it unique is the ability to add narration just by dialing a phone number and talking. To test out the system, I put together a brief slide presentation about marketing and uploaded the slides to MyBrainshark.com. When the presentation finished uploading, I saw a screen prompt giving me a phone number to call to narrate the slides. I called in, recorded audio one slide at a time and then hung up the phone. Seconds later I was able to play back the presentation, which now had my narration perfectly timed to the slides. What I really liked about the entire experience was I didn't have to read a manual or any lengthy onscreen instructions to upload my PowerPoint presentation and narrate it. All I had to do was click the upload button, choose the type of content I wanted to upload and follow screen prompts.
I decided to try out MyBrainshark's photo slideshow feature, too. This was also extremely easy. I uploaded the photos one by one, then picked up the phone to call in the narration I wanted for each slide. The hardest part was figuring out what I wanted to say about each photo before I called in. Here's the brief photo slideshow I created: You may have noticed some variations in sound levels in both of my narrated presentations. That's because these were my first attempts at narrating a presentation over the telephone and I was moving the telephone handset around a bit, turning it slightly away from my mouth at places in the narration. Presenters or trainers who have headsets that plug into their telephone lines would get much better and more even sound quality that I achieved on these first two tries. Since MyBrainshark gives you a platform to share other kinds of content, I also uploaded a video and a pre-recorded podcast. Yet another feature of MyBrainshark.com will be attractive to speakers and trainers who want a platform to sell training materials and expertise on line. If you are a professional in your field, you can apply to become a learning provider and sell your content through them. MyBrainshark is stable and reliable, too. The product is a free version of their enterprise level service called Brainshark, which has been sold on a subscription basis to large corporations for about 10 years. All in all, the free MyBrainshark is a service I think you'll find invaluable, whether you want to share PowerPoint slides, set up a photo slideshow for clients, or use it as a platform to help you sell training materials on the web. For more information, visit http://www.MyBrainshark.com. Note: BusinessKnowHow.com is one of MyBrainshark.com's marketing partners, but this free version of their product is so good I'd recommend it even if we didn't have any type of agreement in place. Copyright © 2009 Attard Communications, Inc.
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