If you’re a Mac user like me, you might be aware of those software bundle deals like Mac Heist and MacUpdate Promo. I bought the promo bundle last year, which gave me $500 of legit, full-featured (not demo) software for $50. It’s hard to beat that. This year’s bundle wasn’t as impressive dollar-wise ($376-worth of [...]
For my previous slide make-over, I gave a slide deck presented by the Coast Guard at a Web 2.0 workshop. This facelift targets a deck presented by the EPA at the same workshop. The issues were different this time and unfortunately, the “Greenversations At A Glance” slide deck was typical of what I see on [...]
Last month, I attended the Government Web 2.0 Best Practices Workshop hosted by FEMA. As you would expect from events such as this, there were presentations given that included PowerPoint slides. Given my experience, the federal government is a fertile breeding ground for poorly designed and down-right ineffective slides. This event did not disapoint. As [...]
We’ve all seen slides like this. It’s your standard title and bullet list slide. The title is “Agenda” and below it is a detailed list of each topic that will be discussed. Oh, don’t forget the Q&A at the end. Why do we see these slides all the time? They’re not really helpful. They encourage [...]
Think what you will of him or his opinions, but Glenn Beck was the stereotypical presenter sharing data in tabular format on slides. Some slides were more effective than others and some highlighted the perils of adding bullets after bullets or even rows after rows. You’re forced to shrink the text and the [...]
Have you run into a situation where you need a photo for a slide and you either can’t find one that works and looks just right on services such as iStockPhoto or for a shot like this, you can’t justify paying for a photo of some Sharpies? You can try the Creative Commons route at [...]
In my early morning routine of online-comic reading, I stumbled across this really interesting talk on color, how to use it, and tools that can be used to help with choosing the right colors and color scheme. The show notes, including links to the tools and resources can be found at: SAP #17 Show Notes
Over on the Speaking about Presenting blog, Olivia Mitchell asked what everyone else would like to see this year in slide design. I’ve got a really long list of things I’d like to see this year, but I’ll focus on the top 3 on my list: Less Organizational Inertia Quite often, one of the reasons [...]
Types of slides that we often create are those that try to present data to our audience. All too often, this data is placed in a cluttered data table or worse, is presented in a narrative format. In most cases, a chart of some sort is the appropriate method of presenting data. However, there is [...]
In my last post, I looked at the basic features of PowerPoint 2004 and Keynote ’08. This time, I’m going to take a look at the two applications from the viewpoint of someone preparing to or actually delivering their presentation. I will also be looking at the various export options should you need to make [...]
Having read in books and online how great Keynote was and how the pros use it over Keynote, how could I not spend the $70 on iWork and give it a spin? The version of PowerPoint that I have to compare Keynote to isn’t the latest and “greatest,” but as some may argue, with the [...]
