Remove that annoying background from your company logo

Adding your company logo to a presentation seems like an easy enough task. You probably have a special graphic file that’s just the logo—how hard can it be to insert it into a slide? Inserting it isn’t the problem but getting it to look right might be. Quite often, the logo shows up with a background and unless the slide’s background matches the logo’s background perfectly, it looks awful. (Please don’t flame me for the yellow background; the garish yellow makes the example easy to see.)

If your logo is a bitmap file, the solution is easy, but perhaps not well-known:

1. In Normal view, right-click the logo image and choose Show Picture Toolbar to display the Picture toolbar.    

    

2. Click the Set Transparent Color tool (the next to the last tool). The pointer will change to resemble the transparency tool.    

    

3. Simply click the image’s background. If you’re lucky, the off-white background will just disappear like magic!   

    

If you’re using PowerPoint 2007, do the following:

1. Click the Format tab.
2. In the Adjust group, choose Set Transparent Color from the Recolor option’s dropdown list.
3. Click the image’s background.

Of course, you can use this feature to remove more than backgrounds. Just click an area and it’ll disappear. If you don’t like the look, press [Ctrl]+Z. At the very worst, you might have to delete and re-insert the file to start over. This transparency setting works best with bitmap files. For vector files (most clipart), you’ll need special image editing software.

Official Twitter for Android app goes live, will go open source

Twitter had committed to rolling its own client for Android not long ago — and like clockwork, here it is. Looks like the OS integration goes pretty deep, too, with support for Éclair’s Quick Contact bar and tweeting straight from the Gallery app; you’ve also got a timeline widget for your home screen, and you can even see your friends’ latest tweets from your contact list and the Google Talk app. It sounds like Twitter worked pretty closely with Google to make this happen, contributing the code to Android’s trunk for open sourcing in the near future — and developers will even have access to a set of standard Twitter APIs for their own applications. The only downside appears to be that you need Android 2.1 to use it, but that’s just an excuse to run out and upgrade to a sweet new phone, right?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Official Twitter for Android app goes live, will go open source originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Apr 2010 18:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LG Ally to say ‘aloha’ to Verizon in mid-May?

Continue reading LG Ally to say ‘aloha’ to Verizon in mid-May?

LG Ally to say ‘aloha’ to Verizon in mid-May? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Apr 2010 18:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Motorola RAZR3 comes back from the dead for a very special hands-on video

Continue reading Motorola RAZR3 comes back from the dead for a very special hands-on video

Motorola RAZR3 comes back from the dead for a very special hands-on video originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Motorola CLIQ XT update rolling out — and no, it’s not Android 2.1

The CLIQ’s keyboardless cousin is getting a software update as we speak — but unfortunately, it’s probably not quite what you were hoping for. In fact, the T-Mobile Community board post officially announcing the CLIQ XT upgrade had to specifically call out the fact that this isn’t Android 2.1, proof positive that there’s a ton of interest in getting these things on something fresher than the 1.5 they launched on. Anyhow, the update still looks like a good one, promising to improve “overall phone performance” and tweak visual voicemail, Bluetooth, touchscreen accuracy, messaging, and camera issues. T-Mobile says you’re welcome to wait for the on-screen notification, or you can manually check for the update in Settings and you should be able to pick it up. Good luck, folks.

Motorola CLIQ XT update rolling out — and no, it’s not Android 2.1 originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Palm Pre Plus, Pantech Breeze 2 dummies showing up in AT&T stores

It’s pretty wild that neither Palm nor AT&T have fessed up to a release date for the GSM-ified versions of the Pre Plus or Pixi Plus yet — especially considering that there are already unboxings going on — but we’ve now got confirmation that dummy units (of the Pre Plus, anyhow) are filtering into retail stores, so it definitely shouldn’t be much longer now. Dummies of an updated version of the ultra-simple Pantech Breeze (uncreatively named Breeze 2) is also coming in, so between these two, you should pretty much be able to outfit every member of the family from grandpa to the newborn. Seriously though, AT&T — wait much longer on this release, and this sucker’s going to be obsolete.

[Thanks, Kal]

Palm Pre Plus, Pantech Breeze 2 dummies showing up in AT&T stores originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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T-Mobile getting new prepaid, hourly data access options next month?

T-Mobile’s got a reputation to uphold as the US’ value carrier, right? It looks to be doing that come the 16th of next month when it’ll apparently be rolling out a $50 monthly prepaid option for unlimited voice and text, beating AT&T’s recently-deployed plan by $10. You’ll also be able to get unlimited messaging plus 10 cents per minute for voice for $15 a month, an odd combination that might be surprisingly popular considering that text has all but replaced voice as the primary means of communication in some social circles (ours included). Here’s where it gets really interesting, though: there’ll also be an “Hour Pass” option for prepaid folks that lets them access as much web on their handset as they’d like for 99 cents an hour, a pretty sweet option that should keep overages to a minimum if you need to do a lot of browsing every once in a while. Well played, T-Mobile.

T-Mobile getting new prepaid, hourly data access options next month? originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Fri, 30 Apr 2010 14:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple #1 US phone manufacturer, RIM enters top 5 worldwide, Motorola feels the burn

Apple #1 US phone manufacturer, RIM enters top 5 worldwide, Motorola feels the burn originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Apr 2010 14:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Confirmed: LG’s Moorestown-based GW990 won’t be made

Considering the almost complete absence of love in the commercial marketplace for Moorestown and Moblin — and the fact that there’s no sign of MeeGo building serious momentum just yet — we’re sure that Intel would’ve just loved for the drop-dead-sexy GW990 to serve as the platform’s crown jewel for 2010. Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen, because we’ve just been able to confirm that the 4.8-inch beast (and potential Dell Mini 5 foil) has been wiped off the product roadmap. Though we don’t know exactly what happened, the fact that Moblin is effectively dead and MeeGo isn’t ready for prime time might be part of LG’s justification for killing it off; if you might recall, the GW990 was introduced before MeeGo was official, and the original plan was to have it on the market in the second half of this year. Then again, this might be just as well — we weren’t impressed by the fact that LG was positioning the phone as a closed device back at CES, and there are still plenty of open questions as to how Intel and Nokia plan to offer apps on MeeGo — so let’s just hope this form factor reemerges from LG’s labs soon enough, yeah?

Confirmed: LG’s Moorestown-based GW990 won’t be made originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Apr 2010 12:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo being replaced to soothe frustrated investors?

Well, here’s a surprise: Reuters says Nokia might consider replacing CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo in order to please unhappy shareholders who don’t see the cellphone giant effectively competing in the smartphone market. The report is mostly based on analyst chatter and doesn’t provide any hard sources, but we’ve certainly seen analysts swarm around blood in the water like this in the past, so it’s not totally out of the question — especially given core concerns about Symbian^3 delays, stagnant profit growth, and (uh oh) competing against the iPhone. What’s more, OPK pledged to build up Nokia’s US presence when he took over, and he’s obviously failed to deliver on that promise — US marketshare has fallen from 20 percent to 7 percent, prompting one analyst quoted in the Reuters piece to wonder if “Nokia really has the desire to fix the problem.” Ouch. That’s a lot of big questions with no easy answers — OPK is scheduled to speak to shareholders next week, we’ll see what he has to say.

Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo being replaced to soothe frustrated investors? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Apr 2010 11:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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