We talked about presentations at work a couple of times and today google docs released their presentation tool. This is a great development as I have been doing some presentations outside work and since I don't have MS office and I don't like Open Office, I have been using S5, and now Opera Show since I've been trying out Opera. With S5 or Opera show you have to write your presentation in XML, which is okay, but not particularly nice. The google presentation tool will make this go away(for me anyway), so I can't wait to do my next presentation so I can try it out.
Also, someone at work mentioned that someone found the average powerpoint-bullet-point-style presentation to be not so good for learning retention. That's not to say Pointpoint-the software is bad, it's just how people have been using it. A new presentation style seems to be gaining adoption lately, namely the - Takahashi style. Some have mentioned Larry Lessig have also been doing this for a while now. In a Takahashi style presentation, there are no bullet points, only headlines, graphics or animations. Actually the Steve Jobs keynotes are a little like that too. See this presentation by Takahashi himself as an example. Another great presentation I have stumbled across is this one about Javascript testing. It also employs the same style, using only big headlines and images(some comic-style headlines thrown in there too), this one had more content in the slides themselves than most Takahashi style presentation, but I think it's also effective, maybe even more so. Also, check out Dick Hardt's presentation.
I am psyched about this and I will definitely give this a try the next time I give a presentation.