You can change the PowerPoint text direction and make it go from right to left. You can change the orientation of the text to various positions such as Horizontal, Stacked, Rotate all text 90 degrees, ...

This tutorial explains how to convert a Text box to a Dotted frame in PowerPoint. You can remove the Text box and convert it to Dotted Frame. A Text box is a text ...

Though the presence of these presets may suggest that they are the only choices for shape gradient colors, you can change the colors to suit your presentation.

For text to overlap in PowerPoint 2007 it has to be entered into separate text boxes. If you think of each text box as a sticky-note, you can envision how PowerPoint works with objects.