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PowerPoint News

Slideboxx review and special offer

I've started using a slide-management program called Slideboxx. It lets you search for slides based on file name and content; you can then copy the results to the Clipboard (to paste into an existing presentation) or use them to create a new PowerPoint presentation. With over 10,000 slides on my computer, I need some help!

Slideboxx works in your browser, which is unusual; it's actually a Flash application. It features a Search box where you enter keywords to find the slides you need. You can click an icon on any resulting slide to view all the slides in that presentation.

PowerPoint slide management -slideboxx

Other features include:

  • Advanced search by date, content, notes, or file name only
  • Sort by name and date
  • Similarity search
  • The ability to specify which folders (directories) to search

I interviewed Charles Wolfus, Co-founder of Zinali, LLC, the software company that makes Slideboxx. Read through, as there's a special offer at the end!

Ellen Finkelstein: Why is there a need for a program like slideboxx?

Charles Wolfus: Powerpoint users worldwide build presentations by finding slides they made before, then copying and pasting them into a new presentation. As a result, they spend plenty of time organizing slides, searching, copying, and pasting them. This is a tedious and time consuming process that takes away focus from what matters most - communicating ideas.

Slideboxx ends all that wasted time and effort. You no longer need to organize slides since slideboxx's PowerPoint presentation management system builds an automatic PowerPoint slide library. With slideboxx, you can search PowerPoint slides and instantly see thumbnails of the slides you want without opening all those PowerPoint presentations. Then, you can quickly use those slides to build a new presentation. With slideboxx you'll easily find your slides and create new presentations much faster.

Ellen Finkelstein: What in particular led you to decide to create this program?

Charles Wolfus: Zinali's founders have over 20 years of experience working in Biotech/Pharmaceutical companies. These companies have many employees that use PowerPoint to share complex ideas with slides that are regularly reused by the slide creator and others. However, much of the information is highly confidential and not appropriate for sharing on the internet. For years, I watched these employees spend too much time searching for a slide or asking a co-worker for a presentation they could copy slides from. Multiplied by all the employees in the company this amounted to a lot of wasted time - time that could have been spent working on other ideas.

Ellen Finkelstein: Can you give some scenarios for using slideboxx?

Charles Wolfus: Say you need to build a new presentation and you know there are 3 slides from 3 different PowerPoint presentations that you want to include. With slideboxx, you search using keywords in the title or body of the slide; find your first slide represented as a thumbnail; double-click; and search again. In moments you'll have your slides and can click a button to open a new presentation with those slides in them.

Slideboxx is also great for comparing slides. For example, you've already created a slide but want to compare the facts to an earlier slide in a different presentation. Instead of hunting down the old presentation and scrolling through all the slides to find the right one, you only need to open slideboxx and do a search. When the slide thumbnail appears use the magnify icon to see the slide in greater detail. Discover slides you forgot you created! These days, when I go to create a new slide I use slideboxx to search for keywords before I start even if I have no recollection of having made a similar slide. A quick perusal reminds me of slides I have already created and sometimes unexpectedly saves me a lot of time creating a new slide from scratch.

Finally, and this is a big deal for employees that share slides, instead of asking a co-working to dig up an old presentation they created, you can find it yourself in seconds!

Ellen Finkelstein: What is unique about slideboxx?

Charles Wolfus: EASY INSTALLATION - If you don't have an IT group to help, slideboxx is no problem because it does not require a server and is easy to install. If you have an IT group, slideboxx is also easy for them to install on many computers at once. EASY TO USE - slideboxx is simple, intuitive, and the search is very fast. We include documentation, but few people ever need it. SAFE - You can collaborate on confidential slides with coworkers without loading slides to the internet or even having internet access. It's perfect for government and other highly secured networks.

Ellen Finkelstein: How much does it cost?

Charles Wolfus: slideboxx is free for 30 days. After that, it is only $99. We also offer discounts for bulk license purchases. You can find more information at http://www.slideboxx.com/OnlineStore.html. Until May 15, you can purchase slideboxx for only $89.00 by using this link to purchase from our online purchase center. The $10 discount is good until May 15th only.

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Microsoft product screen shots reprinted with permission from Microsoft Corporation.