Google Docs has been making steady gains over the years and I’ve finally gotten to the point where I use Documents and Spreadsheets instead of Microsoft Word and Excel, but the major hangup in my quest to abandon the Office suite has been Google Presentation. Oversimplified, slow, lacking features… it just hasn’t been a good replacement. But with these new improvements, maybe that has changed.

Perhaps the best addition to Presentation is the new set of drawing tools that allow you to sketch anywhere on your slide while giving tight vector control of shapes, line thickness, color, and size. This is a very nice feature that is missing from PowerPoint and makes it easy to highlight content on your Presentation slide. While PowerPoint has an advantage with SmartArt, these drawing tools (which I would use often) help to even the scales.

A sorely missing feature from Presentation was slide transitions. Thankfully, Google has added a few simple and attractive slide transitions from which you can choose. Are transitions absolutely necessary to a presentation? Of course not — but sometimes transitions add a bit of polish, and it’s nice to have the option. Good work, Google, especially on the rotating ‘Cube’ effect.

Google has finally brought collaborative tools to Presentation so that multiple users can alter a slide simultaneously and communicate in a conveniently integrated chat pane. Does Microsoft Office have something like this? I’ve looked and looked and found nothing. At any rate, it’s certainly not a feature available to the average user. These collaborative features are hugely useful for team presentations…and now that I’ve had a taste, I don’t know if I can go back!

But here’s the real test, prefaced by a story. I’ve only given a single presentation using Google Presentation in my life. In most ways it was unremarkable, except that I had to deliver it from a computer that wasn’t my own. I started flipping through my slides and I was impressed…but about halfway through my talk I was interrupted by a distressing error: “Network connection lost.” OH CRAP. I was unable to re-connect and was forced to reschedule my presentation. Needless to say, I haven’t used Presentation when it has mattered since then. So, what happens when I start a presentation and then flip off my wi-fi?

Drat! Google, come on!! Fix this!!! You have no idea how scarred I was when this happened in a room of 40 people.

So, what’s the verdict? Obviously Google Presentation is not ready for the big show, but I think it’s tantalizingly close.  The tool set has developed to the point where I don’t miss PowerPoint at all, and in fact, it is very easy to pick up and use without any training. It’s a simple tool that I plan to use a lot in the future… but I won’t trust it in front of a crowd quite yet. Don’t keep me waiting, Google!

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Subsequently, it is a known fact that when we do take a break from working, there is a good chance that our boss or IT department will stop on by and (in my case, 9 times out of 10) catch us in the act of inactivity.  Such is the battle of the workplace.

Since the boom of the internet, some IT departments have been at the forefront of this activity/inactivity war, blocking most websites and internet freedoms from their corporate populace.  For some procrastinators and internet junkies, this restriction is called therapy.  But for others, it is just a reason to adapt and evolve.

Because I am a journalist first and foremost, I (for now) will not take sides on this “IT vs. Employee Internet Rights” clash.  But what I can do is report on what the suppressed procrastinator has done to work around their woes.  And here it is.

Does this image look familiar?  It appears to be Microsoft Excel, but yet there is a Sonic the Hegdehog game embedded inside of it.  This is just one of the countless games available for download that use the standard Microsoft Office tools to get themselves running.  The games are created inside the Microsoft Office programs, use any normal Microsoft file extension, and retain all the normal Office tools and features when opened or saved.

Thanks to Flash plug-in functionality and the program Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), Excel and PowerPoint allow these games to exist inside of them and function with the help of a mouse and keyboard.  Most PowerPoint or Excel games can be found by a quick Google search, but I have a few websites below to check out for starters.

ExcelGames.org

This site has a few traditional games (Battleship, Tetris, Chess, etc) for the Microsoft spreadsheet powerhouse, with some even formatted to not look like games at all.  What I like best about this site is that it has a mission statement on why they support these games and their development.

GamesExcel.com

Another site for this genre, GamesExcel has both flash-based and VBA-based games available.  They have some more popular games available and appear to update their lists daily; this is where I found the flash version of Sonic.  They also have games like Monopoly, Super Mario, and Space Invaders available for download.

GamesPowerPoint

Sister site to GamesExcel.com, GamesPowerPoint applies the same flash embedding opportunities to…well, Microsoft PowerPoint.  With name brand titles like Castlevania, Metal Slug, and Megaman, how can one resist?  These games, though, are basically in fullscreen presentation mode when they run, so I recommend exercising caution with these ones if they end up at the workplace.

Develop Your Own Games

One final note on the subject: if one is interested in how PowerPoint allows some of the simpler games to be created, check out this article here on Dynamic PowerPoint and the interactivity features that allow if/then hyperlinks, action settings, triggers, and more.  Game on.

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