If you thought that technology could add nothing more to your presentations, it might be time to think again.

A new application, supported on your iPad, gives you all the freedom of a wireless remote controller for your presentation, plus you can change your slides during your slideshow.

Splashtop Inc. has announced that it’s launched their new product, Splashtop Presenter. The new iPad app’ supports both Microsoft PowerPoint and Apple Keynote presentation software. Giving presenters the means to control their slideshows and make annotations from a distance is its principal claim.

The app’ sits on a user’s iPad, which in turn communicates, via wireless, with a notebook computer supporting PowerPoint or Keynote, and a slide projector. Very simple.

Presenters will have the chance to annotate their material, draw lines or arrows, highlight or mask material. The possibilities are endless.

Now the question of whether this will add up to a better presentation is hard to answer. The visual possibilities are certainly endless. But your application tinkering might well limit your audience’s attention.

I sense that this app’ will prove very valuable in interactive training, briefing sessions, technical workshops or design review presentations. And like most new presentation technologies you will need to practise everything first.

It’s worth a go if you own an iPad and have either PowerPoint or Keynote. There’s more about the Splashtop Presenter at the apple online store.

Presentation software business Prezi has managed to raise further funds as it gears up for more market reach. The presentation design company has raised $14 million in finance from Accel partners and Sunstone Capital.

Prezi presentation software is proving to be an effective online, or cloud-based, tool for presentation design and development.

It has to compete with the likes of PowerPoint and Keynote that are often packaged with other software titles.

Much of its effectiveness comes from its zooming capacity. Defined as a zooming user interface (ZUI), it’s the zooming capability that’s most commended by Prezi users. The ZUI allows presenters to show both the big picture and the detail in their presentations…exploring presentation ideas, themes and thoughts.

Sold as a service with annual licences, its two main packages require some attention–if you want to achieve the best deal for you. But it’s competitive. And it has a good reputation among its users as their presentation tool of choice.

There aren’t many presentation software titles that achieve that distinction.

Unusually a sickly sweet, saccharine advert for Microsoft Windows 7 caught our attention this week. Unusual because it featured PowerPoint, starred PowerPoint and was pretty much all about PowerPoint.

PowerPoint has a reputation that’s below where it deserves to be. No doubt this type of commercial aims to restore some perspective to your next choice of presentation software.

The advert shows PowerPoint as “the secret weapon” used to persuade a boy’s parents to buy a dog in a classic filial pitch.

The boy’s narrative picks on all the key elements of good presentation design and style: a title, theme, key points and an argument.

Great stuff.

PowerPoint charts were also displayed with the memorable line…”nothing beats a good bar chart.” I’m sure that’s not the case but, done well, they can be compelling. But they have to be good.

Last, but not least, the narrator introduced us to video inserts in the PowerPoint presentation. And with that–boy and canine friend–he nailed it…a compelling presentation.

This short advert captured many of the key points of an effective presentation. Its authenticity was sealed with the boy narrator using the presentation for a purpose, to achieve a goal. And that really is the point of any presentation.

A survey by the presentation software business SlideRocket highlights some unsurprising research about PowerPoint.

In their survey of more than 1,000 workers, over 30 percent of respondents reported falling asleep during a PowerPoint presentation. We presume that these are audience members falling asleep, not the presenters.

This figure might seem extreme until you start to think of your experience of sitting in a conference room, listening to the speakers.

Now it’s fashionable to knock PowerPoint but is it the PowerPoint presentation that induces the state of “death by PowerPoint”? Or is it the speaker, the length of the presentation or the rapid-fire sequence of presentations at most conferences?

We’ve highlighted the occasions when the Vice-President of the United States falls asleep during his boss’s speech. Nothing to do with PowerPoint. And we’ve also noted how members of the President’s audience have nodded off during his speeches. That’s not a PowerPoint problem. It’s the speaker’s problem.

The SlideRocket survey found that the most frustrating features of PowerPoint include excessive text on slides, boring graphics, lack of analytics, and large file size. That’s undeniably true, but it’s not PowerPoint software that’s behind the problem. It’s the presenter or their lack of presentation experience.

Amusingly the survey notes how a good proportion of the respondents (33 percent) actually dread having to build a PowerPoint slide deck. That’s more than the 29 percent who dread sitting through a PowerPoint presentation itself.

It’s probably the simplicity of crating a presentation using SlideRocket that’s most important as SlideRocket does provide the professional tools needed to create some stunning presentations. But note that pretty SlideRocket slides alone aren’t going to do the trick.

But if temptation gets the better of you and you’d like to give the software a work-out then you can sign up for a free trial of the presentation software.

An infamous PowerPoint presentation deck comprising 43 slides is being outlawed by the United States Air Force.

But this particular presentation isn’t being sidelined because of its tediousness or irrelevance.

Roman Catholic and Protestant Chaplains at the Vandenberg Air Force base in California had used the PowerPoint presentation to help them teach a “Christian Just War theory” course to those Air Force officers responsible for the United States nuclear deterrent.

Twenty years after the course was first devised its time is up after officers at the base complained. Their complaint? Apparently the Christian fundamentalist presentation was at odds with the traditional separation of Church and State in the United States. That seems fair.

So the 43 slides in this PowerPoint deck can be filed in the archives and the officers will no longer be subjected to the thoughts of St Augustine or references to Abraham. That all adds up.

It’s not reported whether the Air Force chaplains will revert to a new presentation deck…but we hope their pastoral ministering can be offered without PowerPoint.

Being encouraged to build more graphics into your PowerPoint presentations can be a bit of a chore. You ponder over their sourcing, their reliability or their pixel size. So much to ponder.

Author STREAM aims to help. Their AuthorSTREAM Desktop 2.0 add-in for PowerPoint aims to help you with your presentation graphics. Their version 1.0 add-in was used by some 500,000 users within months of its launch. And the version 2.0 add-in is set to top this achievement.

There are some restrictions. Your system will need to support Microsoft Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7–it’s got to be up to date, really. And you’ll need to run Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 or 2010 and support Flash ActiveX 10.1 or above.

But, if your system supports all that you’ve got some pretty useful help with AuthorSTREAM, which is free to download.

AuthorSTREAM will help you to source and download videos directly into your PowerPoint presentations. It’ll help you to find images, with search options such as image size or copyright, via the Bing and Flickr image search engines. No surprises there.

And, rather surprisingly, it’ll help you to share your presentations via Twitter. OK, that’s probably not the best business application, but it’s supported.

Is it useful? Yes, undeniably. If you don’t have ready access to a presentation resource outfit such as iStock then sourcing your PowerPoint presentation graphics via Bing or Flickr is going to be that much easier.

An exciting Swiss idea. Is that a contradiction of terms?

It’s got to be said that we don’t always associate the Swiss with excitement, fun and jollity. But there’s definitely excitement in the Swiss cantons these days with the launch of the Anti Powerpoint Party.

The party is the brainchild of its founder and President, Matthias Poehm, a software engineer turned business author.

His plan? Create a worldwide movement to end the PowerPoint constraint. A constraint that currently means that managers around the world insist their people present with PowerPoint and listen to the PowerPoint presentations of others–the party reckon that some 250 million people worldwide are subjected to “death by PowerPoint” every month.

Matthias Poehm has a  goal of 30,000 plus party members for the Anti Powerpoint party. If he can achieve that number then his party could be the fourth largest political party in Switzerland. The significance of that? Switzerland has a strong tradition of popular referendums–and as a large party the Anti Powerpoint party could force a vote on the use of PowerPoint in the country’s offices, government departments, schools and colleges.

You don’t need to be Swiss to join. Anyone can join the Anti Powerpoint party.

Their alternative to PowerPoint involves presenters energising themselves without the artificial connivance of PowerPoint. Matthias Poehm espouses the use of the flip chart and, no doubt, the white board. It’s the flip chart that Mr Poehm reckons will release presenters from the constraints of PowerPoint.

He cites some impressive “evidence,” suggesting that PowerPoint costs the European economy some €110 million each year. That’s a large sum. Whether one can really attribute such a cost to a presenting software package is debatable.

But if the Anti Powerpoint party can make us think of better alternatives to presenting with PowerPoint and change our presenting behaviour…that’s probably a good thing.

You’d be right to think that computer hacking, phishing and all other sorts of computer misuse were worthwhile subjects of discussion in a company’s boardroom.

But what happens when the Boardroom itself becomes the subject of a severe case of computer hacking? And what happens when the incident occurs as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is giving his presentation to the Board?

That was the predicament that faced the CEO of Baltimore Substance Abuse Systems Inc as he gave his presentation in the Boardroom. As his fellow Boardroom executives watched attentively, the CEO’s PowerPoint presentation switched from the humdrum PowerPoint bullet points to some bare figures. Really bare figures. So bare that they were very revealing indeed.

A former employee, disgruntled at being fired by the Company, used his extensive computer skills to hack into the company’s computer system. Then he installed some key logging software to catch various passwords from key individuals.

He was so successful that he managed to seize control of the CEO’s computer, in real time, as he gave a PowerPoint presentation to his colleagues. We can only speculate as to their startled reaction to the graphic images projected into the Boardroom on their 64 inch colour monitor. Doubtless the CEO couldn’t establish eye contact with his enthralled audience for a while as the presentation suddenly featured graphic, full colour figures instead of  tedious sales figures.

No doubt the luckless CEO has become the butt of many jokes.

And the perpetrator? Well, it had to end in tears for him. The Baltimore Judge gave him a two year suspended sentence, and ordered him to complete 100 hours of community service and three years’ probation. A stiff sentence for causing presentation mayhem in the Boardroom.

The 9th Annual ASPO Conference for the study of peak oil and gas reserves was the scene of a potentially riveting presentation about the world’s oil reserves.

The presenter was Pierre Mauriaud, TOTAL Exploration Training and Technical Image Manager. For several years now, TOTAL is the only oil company that’s suggested the industry can’t meet the world’s demand for oil.

That’s some claim. But it’s a claim made on hard analysis of geological data.

This presentation by Pierre Mauriaud aimed to explain more.

The presentation didn’t start well. Introducing a safe harbor disclaimer at the beginning of a presentation might well be advised by the legal team at TOTAL, but it’s a terrible way to begin a presentation.

Pierre took time to recover from that imposition. Mumbling his way through his detailed PowerPoint slides one sensed that there was more to come. But we had to wait.

Despite knowing a huge amount on the subject, he’s a diffident presenter:

I’m sorry if you know that.

I’m sorry if there are any geologists in the room…

His PowerPoint slides were detailed and full. Line graphs detailed oil output, oil reserves and price points. In explaining them he reverted to looking at the slides on the screen, turning his back to his audience.

This presentation had the potential to be very interesting. But it proved a dry hole. Without an overarching purpose or mission his audience struggled to get his message.

When you have to share a PowerPoint presentation with colleagues or customers you have one or two choices.

To share your presentation with others, you could:

• Send them your file via email, ask them to open it and then discuss the contents on the phone or with Skype.
• Share your file with an online tool such as SlideShare. Then discuss its contents via the phone, Skype or Messenger.
• You could share your file with a webinar tool–combining both voice and visual presentation.

So you have some options.

And if you are the proud licensee of a new copy of PowerPoint 2010 or Office 2010 you have another option up your sleeve.

You’ll need to have a Windows Live ID, but that’s it.

When you have finished your PowerPoint presentation you simply go to the Slide Show tab and select Broadband Slide Show. Select Start Broadcast, and…wait. The wait will depend on the size of your uploaded file and your data link.

The system gives you a unique web address for your uploaded PowerPoint presentation. You can share that with colleagues or customers. Your customers only need a web browser to access your slides that they can watch in full screen view.

It’s simple and effective. But you’ll still need to have a phone, Skype or Messenger link for a two-way discussion. It’s not webinar software.

Once your presentation is over, you effectively close the link and no-one can access the presentation. That’s a major difference with posting your presentation on something like SlideShare.

It’s neat. It’s cheap and it’s cheerful.