PowerPoint Templates? PowerPoint Alternatives? (Link List)

One of my students (Thanks, Jeff!) asked me this morning if I knew of any place to find high quality, free PowerPoint templates.

He had already looked at the MS Office template repository and had done the standard Google search and found the MS templates to be good but over-used by his classmates, the truly free offerings to be of fairly poor quality and the good quality templates to be out of his "poor college student's" price range.

I suggested that he use either Google's advanced search feature to look for .PPT files that were "free to use or share" or use one of the several PowerPoint specific search engines to help him find additional templates or backgrounds he could use.

Another alternative , of course, is simply not to use PowerPoint. There are a number of alternatives including, for example, Impress, which comes bundled with the OpenOffice Suite of software. OpenOffice is free and open source software which mimics (and in some cases improves) on MS Office's functionality. It works with most operating systems (including Windows and Mac).

Ever since I started using Ubuntu (a Linux distribution) on my laptop, I have been impressed with OpenOffice (which comes bundled automatically with Ubuntu). I have not had a chance to use Impress other than as a tool to view .PPT presentations but it has worked flawlessly. I also noticed that there were a number of free (and fairly attractive) template sites dedicated to Impress (an example of one is here).

If you look to online presentation applications, the alternatives seem even more robust. Rotorblog lists a number of options worth exploring. Two of these I have seen in action, Sliderocket and Prezi, and I think they could both be used to make a very interesting presentation.

Of course, the final option is to dramatically change your presentation style. We tend to focus on a "standard professional" style here at Mercyhurst that minimizes the flash and focuses more on substance.

There are a wide variety of other styles out there, however. Presentation Zen has captured some of them including the "Lessig Method", the "Godin Method", The "Kawasaki Method" and the "Takahashi Method". Not all of these methods are appropriate for intelligence briefings but there may well be some elements which can transfer effectively.

Have your own favorite tool, template source or presentation style? Leave a comment!

"Quarantine, shmarantine! Let's send MORE flights into the infected areas!" (My Linux Experiment)

(Note: First, I want to welcome all the Linux lovers to SAM. I had heard that the Ubuntu and the broader Linux communities were pretty good people but wow! I have received a number of very nice emails and even some telephone calls offering both support and help and the referral traffic from sites like Ubuntu-news.net, Tuxmachines.org and Free Software Daily has been impressive. Thanks to all!)

A couple of days ago, I talked about adopting a Linux distribution, Ubuntu, for one of my old laptops. I had a number of personal reasons for adopting this open source operating system but one of my explicit reasons for doing so was in order to become more resilient.

Resiliency, as I use the term here, is about being able to withstand bad times. Microsoft products, because of their popularity, are the primary targets for state and non-state sponsored hackers. One day, the bad guys are going to win and win big. This victory may be only temporary and the perpetrators may pay dearly for it in the long run but do I really want to be just another victim? Having (and knowing how to use) a Linux machine makes sense in this context.

One of the pieces of evidence I pointed to in that article was Jeff Carr's (of Intel Fusion) characterization of Africa as in the midst of a cyber pandemic. Most of the machines there are infected with viruses or are part of zombie networks (or both) due to pirated Windows software and a wholesale lack of anti virus protection.

Associated with Jeff's article is a pretty neat map of the projected level of connectivity (via undersea fiber optic cables) in Africa by 2011. This map doesn't show the explosive growth of the "big pipes" -- the undersea cables that carry most of the internet's traffic -- around the globe, however. To get this picture, you need to go to the BBC (Note: The pic below is just a screenshot. The full map is interactive and shows growth over time).


For me, this explosive growth (which is unlikely to stop in 2011) is the epidemiological equivalent of increasing the number of transmission vectors from an infected area instead of quarantining it.

That said, I am not sure what the answer to the problem is. I consider it almost inhumane to deny these parts of the world the benefits that robust internet and communication facilities provide. Likewise, I don't think you are ever going to see a company (such as Microsoft) take a "responsible" position that is fundamentally contrary to its shareholder's interests. Government control sounds even less palatable (though the government, after a hue here and a cry there, seems to now be taking the risk seriously).

Which sort of leaves just us. We have to act in our own best interests and, for me, at least, that means not putting all your ova into one open-top, woven reed container. So, I converted one of my machines to a Linux machine.

Having used my Ubuntu/Linux machine all week, what have I learned? First, it boots way faster than Windows did. Everything is quicker, snappier now. Second, all of the apps that come pre-loaded with Ubuntu mimic or improve on similar Windows-based apps. Third, most things are the same or about the same. Firefox, for example, works the same. Some of the drop down menus are in different places but I strongly suspect you can move them around if you don't like them where they are. I consider the fact that the user experience is similar in many ways to Windows to be a huge plus, by the way. The last thing I wanted to do was to have to learn a whole new workflow. The similarity in experience also allows me, I think, to really appreciate where Ubuntu is better than Windows, as well.

I also ran into my first snag this week. I went to download a piece of freeware only to realize that there was no Linux version of it. This led me to do a little research and was quickly able to find that the capability was already built into Ubuntu. I am pretty sure that all my surprises will not be that pleasant but that was pretty cool.

There are also things that I don't yet understand. System maintenance, for example. I am used to a whole series of activities (defragging the hard drive, clearing the temp files, etc.) to keep my Windows machine operating at peak efficiency. Do you not have to do this with Linux? I don't know. It is too early to be worried about too much of this stuff but at some point in the future, I suspect that I am going to have to figure it out.

In short, so far, so good.

Ubuntu Is Pretty Cool (My Linux Experiment)

I decided to install Ubuntu on an old laptop of mine this weekend and I feel, I have to say, more, well, resilient already. The intelligence implications are pretty interesting, too.

For those of you unfamiliar with Ubuntu, it is a Linux-based operating system (For those of you who are also unfamiliar with Linux, it is a catch-all term for a wide variety of operating systems based off a common, open source core. Linux-based operating systems are alternatives to operating systems offered by Microsoft (Windows) or Apple (Mac OS X). (For those of you unfamiliar with the term "operating system", you need to join the rest of us here in the 21st Century...)).

Now Linux is much loved by the technically proficient but not so much by the rest of us. As you can see in the pie chart, Linux has not quite captured a whopping one percent of the operating system market.

What makes it worse is that Linux has more flavors than Baskin-Robbins. Because the core of Linux (the so-called "kernel") is open source, anyone with the technical skill to do so can make a Linux variant (called a "distribution" in Linux-speak). So, the one percent? It is actually divided up among 50 or so different distributions and Ubuntu is just one of them.

Ubuntu is, however, one of the most popular and best supported of the Linux distributions. Because it is free and focuses on usability, it is often the first choice for newbies like me.

But why choose Linux at all? Here are my reasons (in no particular order):

• I was curious. Trying out new tech widgets and gadgets is something I do for fun. I have been toying around with Linux for years now (using live CDs mostly) and had an opportunity to try it out so I decided, "What the heck?"

• I had an old Windows XP laptop that was slow and required constant attention. One of the great things about almost any Linux distribution is that is small and efficient. It is often recommended as a good way to get some new life out of an older machine.

• Ubuntu makes it easy. I picked the Ubuntu distribution because it was easy to figure out and install. The software takes you step by step through the process and even gives you the option to split your hard drive so you can have both Linux and Windows (or whatever) on the same machine.

• I am not sacrificing much (if anything). As the title to this post suggests, Ubuntu is pretty cool. True, the user interface is a little different but, having oriented myself (and pretty quickly for an old guy, I am proud to say), it seems a little better than Windows. It does well all of the things my old Windows machine did poorly. I have faster web-browsing now through my trusty Firefox browser. Web apps (like Google Docs) are operating system agnostic and I have yet to run into a major plugin that is not also available for Linux distributions. Open Office (a free Office-like application) works very well with most of my Office files (and others). There are also tons of new productivity and gaming applications to explore as well, all with little (some would say no) risk of virus or malware infection.
  

Finally, and most interestingly, it makes me more resilient (Here is where the intelligence implications come in). Centralized networks attract attention. On the positive side (at least from the standpoint of those that control the network), the "rich get richer", meaning the most powerful node attracts other nodes to it. This is great if you have a product that dominates the market the way Microsoft does with Windows. On the other hand, it also attracts negative attention as well. One of the major reasons hackers go after Windows-based systems so much is because so many people use it.

Machiavelli first outlined the problems with centralized networks in The Prince (Don't believe me? See Chapter 4...). Good ones are difficult to take down but once taken down, they are easy to control because of the efficiencies inherent in the centralized system. Decentralized networks, on the other hand, are very difficult to take down but are also very difficult to control.

There ought to be (and, in fact, there is) an optimal balance between efficiency and robustness in any system. To me, a resilient system ought be closer to this optimal balance than not. I am not a Windows hater and will likely continue to use Windows. That said, I feel better knowing, understanding and owning a Linux-based system as well. A "black swan" event like a zero-day virus that wipes every Windows-based computer is pretty unlikely but if it does, I will still have a computer and (maybe) internet access (many servers run on some form of Linux already).

I am no cyber analyst and do not pretend to know the ins and outs of the subject matter. I am not the only person to note the problems with an over dependence on Windows, however. Fellow blogger, Jeff Carr, over at IntelFusion notes that Africa is in the midst of a "cyber pandemic" due primarily to an over-dependence on pirated versions of Windows.

In the end, understanding something about Linux, what it can and cannot do, seemed to make some sense -- an experiment in resiliency. As I proceed, my intent is to report here periodically about what I find. Your comments and questions about both the process and my findings are, as always, welcome.

Note: Two recent authors, John Robb and Joshua Cooper Ramo, have both written more extensively (and more eloquently) about this concept of resiliency for anyone interested.

Unique Christmas Gift #1: OLPC

For a very limited time you can buy a laptop from One Laptop Per Child for $400 and they will donate one to the developing world and send you one to play with. The laptops cost about $200 dollars each so the $400 covers the one for you and the one for charity (and $200 is deductible). I made the purchase as I think the idea is worth supporting and I figured it was an inexpensive way to play around with Linux...

Free Linux Books

If you are interested in Linux and need some clear texts to help get you started, there are a variety of books here worth examining.