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Nick MacKechnie today announced on his website the release of PowerPoint Producer 2007 beta.

You will need to go to http://www.connect.microsoft.com to get it. Full instructions on Nick’s post.

I downloaded and installed it easily, although it had several UAC prompts during the install.

I ran the wizard and added photos quickly from a folder (from Judes Birthday) and then added a song (Michael Frank’s “Eggplant” from The Art of Tea).

I was able to synchronise the pictures and song and then publish as a presentation really easily. Awesome tool.

If you use PowerPoint for timed presentations or speaking engagements, then you should definitely download and trial this tool.

So I am now using Xobni - the new email revolution software.

I have some invites - who wants them - comments please. (

Xobni is the Outlook plug-in that helps you organize your flooded inbox.

Comments from their website:

Sidebar View of Past Conversations & Attachments

Don't waste time hunting for information buried in email - everything is right there in the sidebar.

Lightning Fast Email Search

Locate lost attachments, contacts, conversations and more with search that responds as you type.

"Bill Gates called Xobni the next generation of
social networking."

Joseph Chirilov has written a series of 3 posts showing exactly how to build a fully functioning media player inside Excel.

If you want to try this then follow his step 1, step 2 and step 3. I would be interested in hearing from anybody who does that.

While we are talking about Joseph's site I want to highlight two other posts that are there.

Andreas from BonaVista Systems has let me know that they are running an Excel Dashboard competition.

You can find all the details of the competition on their website.

Winners will choose from 3 great prizes, an Apple iPhone, a Data Visualisation workshop with Stephen Few, a copy of Stephen Fews book, "Information Dashboard Design".

Some of the rules include:

The solution must be in Excel 2000 or more recent, and not require additional software other than Excel and MicroCharts 3.

If you are not an existing MicroCharts user, you can download your 30 day trial version of MicroCharts at http://www.bonavistasystems.com/DownloadMicroCharts.html

Worth a crack!