presentation
Latest
GoSpeak! Pro fold-out speakers give on-the-go presenters plenty of joy
NXT's flat-panel speaker technology doesn't get an awful lot of love these days in the high-end audio realm, but that's not to say some outfits aren't putting it to good use. Take SMK-Link Electronics, for instance, who just pushed out the most spectacular must-have product ever for the traveling salesperson in your life. The five-pound GoSpeak! Pro is little more than a fold-out speaker system, which is slim enough to slide easily into any briefcase yet potent enough to project PowerPoint audio to some 200 listeners (yes, 201 actually is impossible). As expected, you can also hook up a wireless microphone to let your voice project through it as well, but with a base price of $399, you might consider just yelling really, really loudly.
Book Review: "The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs"
In "The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs," Carmine Gallo provides a framework for you to deliver a keynote like Steve does. The book provides both an Al Michaels and John Madden perspective of Jobs's keynotes: a play-by-play account of events married with analytical insight. While rich in detailing the stylistics of Jobs's presentations and the empirical evidence supporting it -- for example, limiting bullet points on slides, using simple language, and using the rule of threes to enhance a narrative -- the most captivating portion of the book is how it details Steve Jobs's preparation for his keynotes. Yes, even Steve Jobs, like the rest of us, must prepare for his preparations presentations. And prepare he does, which is evident in the stories of Paul Vais. An executive at Jobs's former company NeXT (that Apple later acquired, which brought Jobs back into the Apple fold), Vais recalled that "every slide was written like a piece of poetry...[and that] Steve would labor over the presentation. We'd try to orchestrate and choreograph everything and make it more alive than it really is." However, Gallo says that "making your presentation 'more alive' takes practice. Once you accept this simple principle, your presentations will stand out in a sea of mediocrity." Gallo's book follows many of the "Jobsian" presentation mantras he preaches. Like a Steve Jobs keynote, the book is simple to read and provides an easy-to-follow roadmap for a reference-minded reader. The one thing that most readers will walk away with is that Steve Jobs's on-stage presence evinces a style similar to that of Apple's products when they're on the stage of the showroom floor or marketed on Apple's website. As a result, as much as it serves as a Steve Jobs presentation guidebook, "The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs" in many ways is a Steve Jobs biography. "The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs" is available at many booksellers, including Borders, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.
HandyGames releases App Store analysis presentation
Top20 iPhone Games Analysis 09/2009 View more presentations from HandyGames Germany. The folks over at German developer HandyGames originally put together this slideshow presentation for their own internal use, but they determined that it actually could be useful for almost anyone following iPhone releases and their development, so they released it out into the world. And they were right -- there's some good info in here. Basically, they did a survey of the top 20 apps, both paid and free in five different regions of the world on the App Store, and then compared different qualities of all of those apps to see what the most successful apps had in common. What did they find? Things like the fact that the majority of top 20 apps do not use all caps for the title and use an original IP for their releases. The differences are interesting as well: most paid apps are made by recognizable developers, while most free apps are made by smaller publishers. Free apps receive many, many more reviews than paid apps, though (if I'm reading the presentation right) they tend to be rated lower. Chillingo is the App Store's most prolific top developer, while Digital Chocolate releases games most often, with a full 1.5 releases per week since (I suppose) they started publishing games. Very interesting stuff, though the numbers still require a little backgound knowledge to deciper (Backflip Studios appears in a few rankings, even though they've only just started releasing games last month -- popular games, but only a few games nonetheless). Cool to get an overall snapshot of the kinds of games that are doing well on the App Store so far.
How to create Keynote themes
Out of the box, Apple's Keynote is a gem. The app is intuitive and, like many Apple products, strikes a nice and delicate balance between ease-of-use for novice users and functionality for more advanced power users. While Keynote offers a nice set of built-in themes, there may be times when you want a more customized look -- be it a different resolution, font, background or element or graphic. To begin, choose an existing theme. Here, I'm choosing to use the default "White" Keynote theme. Then, you'll want to modify the master slides, which is accessible by pulling down the divider adjacent to the "Slides" viewer, or by clicking "View" and selecting "Show Master Slides."
Windows 7 plugs WoW
This is one of the stranger World of Warcraft mentions out there -- WorldofWar.net spotted a posting on overclock.net that shows a Microsoft presentation to Best Buy employees mentioning our favorite game. Apparently WoW is a selling point for Windows 7, specifically when comparing the OS to Linux. If Best Buy wants to sell operating systems that play "the games your customers want (e.g. World of Warcraft)," then Windows is supposed to be the way to go.Interesting. Then again, World of Warcraft is a big game, so you can't blame Microsoft for jumping on its popularity while trying to sell OSes. But it's a little misleading -- of course Blizzard has supported Apple's OS X on the disc from day one, and while they don't officially support running the game on Linux, it's certainly possible to do. If you really are going to buy a new OS, playing WoW might not be the best criteria to base your purchase choice on.
Things mom may not have told you about Keynote: Presenter Display
I consider myself a power Keynote user, and overwhelmingly prefer the app over PowerPoint (on both the Mac and PC) -- even though though I'm just as well-versed at PowerPoint. Only on rare occasions do I start my presentation workflow in PowerPoint (if the deck is going to be chart-centric, to avoid the limited axis and error bar support in pre-09 versions of Keynote). While both Keynote and Powerpoint get you from Point A to Point B, it's the "little things," such as alignment guides and better graphics support (i.e., native support for Photoshop PSDs and Illustrator AIs), that make the presentation journey that much more enjoyable and more presentable. One of these little things is Presenter View. Although PowerPoint has a similar feature (in both Mac and PC versions) it lacks the polish and ease-of-use found in Keynote. Presenter View allows you to look at your slide's notes, and upcoming slides and builds, without your audience's knowledge.
WWDC Demo: Videro, a digital signage tool for Macs
Videro is one of those silent-but-cool application suites you've probably never heard of, but you may see it being used every day. I met some of the Videro team at WWDC, and they were happy to demo a little of what the tools do: electronic signage and interactive kiosks. If you happen to need an animated in-store (or museum) display, fed from a server, easy to set up and deploy, complete with iPhone access to check on the servers (so they say), then Videro is an impressive tool. To start, Videro has a composition tool that allows you to drag and drop your animations, complete with images, video and audio. In fact, Videro has extensive in-app tools for cropping, rotating and otherwise "fixing" your assets for display. But wait, there's more! This isn't just Keynote all gussied up. Videro is designed for business, and a server application makes sure mission-critical displays are functioning properly. There's solid asset management support both in the client and the server applications, making sure your displays never fire off with a dreaded "black box of nothing" where a product shot should be.Videro mentioned an iPhone app in the video but I have been unable to locate it in the store and a search on their website revealed nothing. Still, it wouldn't be terribly difficult to provide some baseline stats via password-protected web app. We weren't able to get Wi-Fi at our location, so some features weren't visible and this might have been one of them.Unfortunately Videro's site mentions nothing about price. In my experience that means we're talking about an expensive solution, and likely a custom one for the high-end customers. If you're looking for something simpler, don't miss Dave's excellent post about using Keynote and Dropbox to create an updating and easy presentation solution that would work in a pinch.
Massive at MI6: Blizzard is an "around game" ad success
Not only did Blizzard clean up at the MI6 awards (and yes, that's not to be confused with the British Intelligence Agency that some dude named Bond works for), but their partners at Massive also gave a presentation there. Who's Massive, you ask? You may not know their name, but you've already seen their work: they're the company, related to Microsoft, that Blizzard has hired to run their ingame and in-software ads.During the presentation, the rep from Massive, JJ Richards, talked about the three types of advertising that they're running: in-game, around game, and for game. In-game is what you usually see in EA's big sports titles: big billboards that sport real-life brands, or even in-game items like cell phones and clothing that advertise real objects. World of Warcraft obviously isn't much of a candidate for that type of advertising, but Massive does cite them as a huge success for the second type, "around game": they take full credit for the ads over on the forums, as well as the ads we'll eventually see in the Starcraft and Diablo Battle.net interfaces. Strange that they didn't mention the gold ad slipup (/sarcasm). He also suggests putting ads in the WoW launcher, but at least agrees that those will have to be extremely game-related if they're going to get away with it.And the third type of advertising Massive does is "for game," where they use the various Microsoft properties like Xbox Live and Hotmail to do targeted advertising at gamers -- using Netflix queues on Xbox to shape Hotmail ads, and so on. If that all sounds sneaky, so be it (don't forget that this presentation was made to a bunch of marketers, not necessarily actual gamers). But it sounds like Blizzard has made a nice big deal with Massive (despite the fact that we're still paying a tidy subscription fee every month), so whether we like it or not, we're going to be seeing exactly what they're planning in our games in the future.
LG's Renoir spokesperson: he will jump for you, ladies and gentlemen
Four days of late nights, early mornings, endless meetings, and drugs will do this to even the most stoic PR flacks. Almost magical video is after the break.
Jack Emmert discusses the Champions IP in fresh new video
During a recent media event at Cryptic Studios, Jack Emmert gave a presentation on what the Champions IP was all about, including the history of the Champions universe and its super-powered beings. He also took some time to answer a few questions, and delineated how the Champions Online MMO will distinguish itself from City of Heroes.Although the video misses a few minutes of the beginning of the presentation, it does cover the major figures such as Defender, Doctor Destroyer, and Foxbat (pictured above); the various organizations the world harbors; and the Nemesis system. There's a lot of great content in Emmert's words, and if you're like us, it all just makes you hungry for more. The full 14:50 video is all yours after the break!
e-Detail's twin-screen Prezenter PSR tablet gets detailed
e-Detail's Prezenter PSR was floating around CES a few months ago, but now it seems that the Korean firm has managed to get its atypical tablet into trials here in America and in Europe. In a nutshell, the dual-screen unit includes a 14.1-inch touch panel that ideally gets pointed in the face of your client; the 7-inch touchscreen faces you, giving you clues on what to say next and enabling the traveling salesperson (still you, bub) to give a presentation without being all up in the area of the potential customer. Specs wise, it runs Windows XP Home and gets powered by an AMD Geode LX800 processor, and there's also a trio of USB 2.0 ports, VGA output, gigabit Ethernet jack, WiFi and a 1.3-megapixel camera. We're hearing that it'll eventually sell for around $1,800, but a US release date is still far from certain.[Via SlashGear]
Video of CCP artist's Ambulation presentation available
CCP character artist Ben Mathis gave a 30 minute presentation at the New York Comic Con last month. He talked mostly about the forthcoming Ambulation expansion, which will allow EVE Online players to leave their cockpits and walk around the interiors of space stations with customizable, 3D avatars. Ten Ton Hammer has a Flash video of the entire session.We saw some of the presented content at GDC earlier this year, but there's some new stuff in this video, too. As we've noted before, CCP isn't holding back; Ambulation is very technically impressive. It's ironic that EVE -- a game focused almost entirely on spaceships instead of face-to-face interactions -- might soon carry the most advanced avatar creation tools on the market.Players will be able to customize every thing from body fat to the materials from which their clothes are made. Female avatars will have makeup customization options so powerful that the differentiation between lip gloss and lip stick will be noticeable. New animation blending technology will enable realistic transitions between disparate facial expressions. Infinite morph points will be available when faces are molded, thanks to creative use of shaders. CCP's ambition is astonishing -- let's hope the reality lives up to the promise in the end.
Steve Ballmer uses a Mac for presentations
You may remember Steve Ballmer (CEO of some other company) criticizing the iPod and iPhone on several occasions. Something that he definitely cannot criticize is the Mac, mostly because he was seen using one for with one at the podium while he gave a presentation. MacLife pointed us to this Flickr picture showing what really powers the other Steve's presentation. What's there? You guessed it, a MacBook Pro. We imagine that it is running Windows via BootCamp, proving once again that the best Windows machine money can buy is a Mac.I guess Microsoft is staring to "Think Different," eh?Update: As noted by several Flickr commenters, Ballmer didn't actually use the Mac to present; all that was displayed was his title slide, most likely driven by backstage gear, and presumably the MacBook Pro was left at the podium by the conference organizers or a previous presenter. Still a pleasant thought to imagine him slaving away over his PowerPoint (or Keynote!) presentation on the MBP, but it doesn't look like that's how it went.
Mike Morhaime speaks at D.I.C.E. 08
The D.I.C.E. Summit's official site describes the event, currently taking place in Las Vegas, as a meeting of "the video game industry's most influential leaders," so of course you know Blizzard's there. Gamesindustry.biz's coverage of Mike Morhaime's presentation today doesn't reveal anything too earth-shattering about the company or the World of Warcraft. It's about the same thing we've heard from him in the past, but hey, if the presentation isn't broke, don't fix it, right? It's still good to hear that Blizzard's on the right track, of course, and it's actually amazing that even with Mike Morhaime about to get his eighth boss, Blizzard's stayed pretty consistent on quality and dependability, as almost anyone who's had to switch bosses can tell you. But it looks like that, even with the Activision merger, we can expect the same tradition of long development cycles leading to quality games, which is, if familiar news, also comforting news.
Deliver a keynote like Steve Jobs in ten simple steps
Are you a CEO hoping to "step it up," "knock it out of the park," and generally "take it to the bridge" -- old-school style -- but you can't seem to work the magic? Well, BusinessWeek has got just the thing for you: a ten-point plan on how to deliver a presentation like our main man, Steve Jobs. Breaking it down from "set a theme" all the way to "rehearse, rehearse, rehearse," the cats at BW lay out everything you need to know to shatter sales records, hike your stock, and innovate the hell out of a keynote. Of course, they don't advise you on choice of outfits (we suggest jeans, sneakers, and a turtleneck), products to launch (how does iPhone 2 sound to you?), or how to properly execute a "Boom!" ("Boom!") -- but we're pretty sure you can suss those details out on your own. If you want the full breakdown of tips and tricks, including how to properly appear excited about your own products, hit the read link ASAP. To help you along, we've included a clip of Jobs doing his thing after the break. Boom!
Epson launches ultra-short throw EMP-400W / EMP-400We projectors
Before long, you won't be bragging about how many inches your projector can throw out. Oh no, you'll be boasting about how many LEGOs you can slide between the lens and the wall. Joining the quickly evolving short throw revolution is Epson's latest duo (each requires 2.1-feet to throw 60-inches), which both feature a native 1,280 x 800 resolution, 500:1 contrast ratio, automatic 4:3 / 16:10 / 16:9 detection and resizing, a ten-watt built-in speaker, VGA (x2), S-Video and composite inputs and an Ethernet port to boot. From what we can gather, the only differences in the EMP-400We are the additional security features (those pesky kids...), a longer warranty and a bundled wall mounting bracket. All in all, we'd opt for the £999 ($1,956) EMP-400W -- unless, of course, you've got a room / house full of mischievous youngsters, in which case we suppose it's worth a few extra hundred pounds to rest easy protect your investment. [Via AboutProjectors]
Watch the first gameplay video of The Agency
Yesterday we handed out some new The Agency screenshots from SOE's CES presentation. That was cool enough, but in case you still weren't satisfied, there's a video of the presentation up on GameTrailers. Oh, and it's embedded above, obviously.The presenter calls The Agency "24 meets Alias meets Counterstike," and that seems appropriate enough. The game can be played either in first person mode, or in a Mass Effect-esque over-the-shoulder perspective. It looks like you'll be able to run through instanced encounters with other players and/or NPCs, and there are scripted heroic moments in addition to the usual shoot-'em-up stuff. Our favorite moment occurs when the player revives a fallen ally with defibrillators.It looks like the game borrows a lot from single-player game conventions, so it's not super innovative, but it's still refreshing to see an MMO that's not an action-bar-based, numeric-stat-grinding, sword & sorcery, D&D-style DikuMUD clone.
More evidence: MMOs are good for you
Some believe video games dumb us down. Dr. Constance Steinkuehler isn't one of them. She's an assistant professor of Educational Communication & Technology, and she spoke at Future Play 2007, a conference on future trends in the gaming industry. In her presentation she suggested that MMOs actually improve our mental performance for both verbal and scientific tasks.Fan fiction, forum arguments about which class does more l33t DPS, and complex social groups all keep our minds active, and these things could be educational tools for children. Even the oft-criticized MMO shorthand was shown in her talk to be more complex than one might first assume.Steinkuehler also talked a bit about the roles that friendships in MMOs play in peoples' lives. She runs a gaming club for at-risk kids and hopes to use video games and teamwork to help them overcome their academic troubles. Sadly, we couldn't find a transcript of the presentation, but Gamasutra wrote up a good summary.
Impatica debuts free ShowMate update for BlackBerry screen projection
BlackBerry users -- Windows Mobile, Sony Ericsson, and Palm will have to wait -- got a preview of a free update for their portable powerpoint presentation tool from Impatica at CTIA today. Using their handset, Bluetooth, and a Showmate presentation tool, users will be able to project the contents of their BlackBerry onto an overhead. The Impatica Showmate itself remains unchanged, it still sports the same VGA port for connecting to a projector, the powercord, and of course the base functionality remains the same. We had a quick visit with the tool and were able to wander though our site without issue, and really, you can't lose with a free update to an already cool product. Hit the read link for more info.
Genius Traveler 915BT Laser: the presenter's mouse
On the heels of IOGEAR's own presentation mouse comes the Traveler 915BT Laser, which is quite a few rungs above being a one trick pony. Genius' latest is a Bluetooth mouse that boasts a 1,600dpi sensor, built-in laser pointer and the ability to shuffle forward and back through your PowerPoint slides. There's also a battery indicator light along with an on / off switch to conserve energy, and the "4D" scroll wheel enables easy access to pages that extend left and right, too. Unfortunately, there are no details regarding a price or release date, but word on the street has it landing for around $50.[Via PCLaunches]
