Though you would probably have a hard time convincing a judge to let you use this during your closing arguments (Text NOT GUILTY to 41411!), Poll Everywhere could certainly come in handy for a presentation at a legal conference or symposium. For example, you could pause for a minute to do a quick comprehension check after covering a particularly difficult concept. Or, if you have a large audience, you could use to power your Q&A session.

If you think this sounds great, head on over to the Poll Everywhere website and sign up! Free plans are available for testing and the collection of up to 30 responses.

Think this is something you will use in the future? Do you have any creative ideas for its use? Please, comment below!

Via TechCrunch.

This, of course, is a bad thing. Because if there is one thing worse than a presentation overflowing with bullet-filled slides… It’s that same presentation, animated. And at its heart, pptPlex is just another fancy animation tool. Here’s how Microsoft describes it:

“This plug-in allows you to arrange slides on a canvas then zoom between the slides during the presentation. You can move around the canvas and show groups of slides, individual slides, or even zoom in to show a particular section of a slide.”

In other words… You can see all the slides at once, or you can see only some of the slides, or you can see individual slides, or you can see sections of individual slides. Being able to zoom in and zoom out, as pretty as it may look, will do nothing to combat the “Death by PowerPoint” wrought by jamming as much information as possible into every single slide. If anything, it encourages putting more information on a slide since if you can’t read it, you can at least zoom it!

As my presentation idol, Garr Reynolds, has said, “[PowerPoint] is not a method, it’s simply a kind of tool. A kind of tool that can be used effectively or ineffectively. It all depends on your approach and your method.” These are as true words as any. I find it disappointing, though, that Microsoft isn’t making being effective any easier.

What do you think? Have you had the opportunity to actually test pptPlex? Please, feel free to comment below and share your thoughts and experiences…

This isn’t brand new—you could say it’s pretty new—but it is awesome nonetheless.

Anyone who has ever encountered the problem of not being able to find the perfect picture for a presentation (which is most likely everyone who has ever made a presentation with pictures) will appreciate this tool. It’s called Moodstream, it’s by Getty Images, and it’s super awesome.

So what the hell is a “Visual Brainstorming” tool anyway? Well, the way it works is that you choose a value on five different sliders: somewhere along the spectrum of “Happy to Sad,” “Calm to Lively,” etc. Then you click the “Refresh Stream” button, and Moodstream starts cycling images, videos, and audio clips that match the mood you’ve selected.

Even neater, when you see media that you like, you can add it to a “Moodboard,” which is just a fancy name for a folder or project. Once you’ve added some footage, images, and tracks to a Moodboard, you can play it, edit it, or save it for later. Most usefully of all, though, you can head directly over to Getty Images by clicking “I want more information…” and immediately begin licensing the media you just gathered.

In summary, Getty Images Moodstream is certainly going to find itself a comfortable home in my presentation toolbox, and I very much believe that it will prove a useful tool for other presenters as well.

It’s the truth. Simple and clean but quite informative. And to let you in on a little secret, I came to bestow this award because I was browsing the Top 250’s websites for inspiration… A certain website managed by yours truly may be getting a face lift in the near future…

1. If you want professional results, hire a professional.
2. Don’t use the built-in fonts that come with your PC. (Type is cheap. Invest.)
3. Headlines in sans serif. Body in serif. (Easy tip—headlines are bold and condensed.)

The tips are also available in illustrate PDF form. Be sure to check out this post and implement the tips in your next presentation!

iPresentee.com has a whole bunch of “Objects” for PowerPoint, Keynote, and pretty much any publishing software available for free download right now! In their own words…

iPresentee presents free Keynote Objects for Apple’s Keynote, iWeb and Pages! The package combines 100 easy to use and attractive objects. The background of all objects is transparent and can be used on any colored background. Each object can be changed in size, rotated, increased or decreased in opacity, fitted with shadows or even overlapped with one another to create extra effects. Keynote Objects are compatible with Keynote, iWeb, Pages, Microsoft PowerPoint and Word.

Check out a few more…

Tom Peters on Yes! You Are in Sales! from Tom Peters on Vimeo.

My favorite part is the very end:

You’re an engineer, you’re an accountant, you’re an MBA, you’re a person involved in the technical stuff. Oh no, you aren’t. If you’re going to be remembered for having gotten things done, you are a salesman in the morning, you are a salesman in the afternoon, you’re a salesman at lunch, you’re a salesman at dinner. And then you dream about it at night. Sales, sales, sales, sales, sales, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. Period.

I’ve only had the opportunity to play around with 280 Slides for a few minutes, but that was all I needed to recognize that this was something I’d never seen before, and I mean that in a very good way. Sure, there have been plenty of Web applications that have attempted to be PowerPoint-in-a-browser. I have used exactly zero of them. 280 Slides, on the other hand, takes a step in the right direction when it attempts to be Keynote-in-a-browser.

Based upon my initial impressions, 280 Slides succeeds. It has almost everything I could want in a piece of presentation software, Web or otherwise: simple and elegant themes, a wide variety of fonts, integration with Flickr and YouTube, opacity and layer controls, and the ability to publish directly to SlideShare. It even has Adobe Kuler color palettes built in! You can also save in PowerPoint 2007 format… If you ever want to go back to PowerPoint, that is.

Don’t take my word for it, though! The 280 Slides Editor is up and running; head on over and play around with it for a few minutes. I bet you’ll be as surprised and impressed as I was.

If your PowerPoint contains videos, the first thing you’ll need to do is save the file as a “PowerPoint Package.” The reason you’ll need to do this is because, for some unknown reason, PowerPoint refuses to embed video… Meaning that when you save a PowerPoint with videos as a .ppt file, the file contains only links to the videos and not the videos themselves. This means that unless your recipient has the exact same video file in the exact same place on their computer, they will get a big blank space or a big red X, depending on the version of PowerPoint they are using. Fortunately, this is really easy to do: Just select “Save As…” from the “File” menu, and when the dialogue box pops up, choose “PowerPoint Package” from the “Format” drop-down menu.

The next thing you need to do is convert your PowerPoint Package folder into a Zip file. If you have a Mac, you’ve got it pretty easy: Just right-click (or control-click) the folder in the Finder and choose “Compress.” If you’re on a Windows machine, you’ll need to use WinZip, which is a little bit more complicated, but still pretty easy. This step compresses your folder into one neat and tidy archive file, which greatly simplifies the uploading process we are about to tackle…

In this step, you’ll need to upload your Zip file to an online file delivery service. My absolute favorite service for this step is senduit. The way it works is simple. Here are the steps, as listed on the homepage:

What I really love about senduit, though, is that “Step 1″ actually includes choosing an expiration date for your file. Why do I love this? Well, sometimes when you’re sending around files containing rough drafts or sensitive information, you don’t want those files to be floating around the Internet for the rest of time, potentially finding their way into the hands of nefarious characters! You just want to send the file, have the intended recipient download it, and then delete it. With senduit, you can keep your download link active for anywhere between 30 minutes and one week, after which senduit will delete the file from its servers forever.

The only shortcoming of senduit is that its maximum file size is 100MB. However, this qualifies as a “shortcoming” in only the most extreme cases. 100MB should be plenty of storage for most presentations; the only situation I can imagine it not being enough is when dealing with a PowerPoint that consists almost exclusively of video clips (in which case you’d probably be better off making a DVD). Nonetheless, here are a few other file transfer services, some of which allow you to send 500MB files for free (but none of which match the ease and simplicity of senduit).

Now all you have to do is email the private link to the file! Simple as that. Then the recipient can download, unzip, and experience your PowerPoint presentation as it was meant to be experienced.

I hope this “How To” guide was helpful, if you have any questions or comments, I would love to hear them below!