Earlier this month, the CogDog (aka Alan Levine) came to Penn State to talk with us about 50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story.
I know I wasn't the only person in the audience entranced with his use of Cooliris in his presentation. It was gorgeous, slick, and just very cool. I came away determined to find a way to make it work for myself.
Of course, because my technical skills are essentially nil (I've blown up and put back together this blog more times than I can count), I couldn't do it the way Alan recommends. Let's just say that it involved editing an rss feed. I really couldn't even conceive of what I was supposed to do.
But I found a workaround! So, if you are technologically challenged like me, but love the overall look and feel of Cooliris, here's a way to show a powerpoint presentation in Cooliris. It looks neat (you'll have to trust me---I can't embed the thing here).
Here's what you need to do:
1. Install the piclens plugin for powerpoint (it converts your slides to a format cooliris can read)
2. When your .ppt is complete, save it, and then convert it using the piclens plugin (it will appear under your add-ons).
3. One of the files created as a result of your conversion will be called 'index.html'. Right click on the file, and select 'open with...Firefox'. Once the file is launched in Firefox, click on the Cooliris icon in the corner of your browser.
4. Voila! Cooliris powerpoint! It is beautiful and slick. I am not so sure if links to web resources will work using a file locally like this (haven't tried that yet).
5. If you want to be really smooth, combine this with Portable Firefox, and you'll have a Cooliris presentation fully packaged and ready to go on your flash drive.
P.S. If you can parse out Alan's original method so that it makes more sense to the tech-challenged like me--let me know. I'd love to be able to create a file that I could simply access on the Web more seamlessly.
I know I wasn't the only person in the audience entranced with his use of Cooliris in his presentation. It was gorgeous, slick, and just very cool. I came away determined to find a way to make it work for myself.
Of course, because my technical skills are essentially nil (I've blown up and put back together this blog more times than I can count), I couldn't do it the way Alan recommends. Let's just say that it involved editing an rss feed. I really couldn't even conceive of what I was supposed to do.
But I found a workaround! So, if you are technologically challenged like me, but love the overall look and feel of Cooliris, here's a way to show a powerpoint presentation in Cooliris. It looks neat (you'll have to trust me---I can't embed the thing here).
Here's what you need to do:
1. Install the piclens plugin for powerpoint (it converts your slides to a format cooliris can read)
2. When your .ppt is complete, save it, and then convert it using the piclens plugin (it will appear under your add-ons).
3. One of the files created as a result of your conversion will be called 'index.html'. Right click on the file, and select 'open with...Firefox'. Once the file is launched in Firefox, click on the Cooliris icon in the corner of your browser.
4. Voila! Cooliris powerpoint! It is beautiful and slick. I am not so sure if links to web resources will work using a file locally like this (haven't tried that yet).
5. If you want to be really smooth, combine this with Portable Firefox, and you'll have a Cooliris presentation fully packaged and ready to go on your flash drive.
P.S. If you can parse out Alan's original method so that it makes more sense to the tech-challenged like me--let me know. I'd love to be able to create a file that I could simply access on the Web more seamlessly.
I'm glad you found a way to make a CoolIrisPowerPoint. The method I describe is not exactly easy I know as it involved hand coding an RSS file.
A compromise that I sometimes suggest is to load all of your "slides" to a flickr set, where you can re-arrange the order. Each "slide" thus can be annotated (the flickr caption) with text and reference links. You can then launch this in CoolIris and have a decent show; the link button in CoolIris allows you to jump out to your flickr photo. I've not tried yet what happens if you include a flickr video in the set...
CoolIris works for me the convoluted way i create it because most of my talks are about web sites, and it allows me to jump directly out to URLs I pick.
Keep experimenting!