Fliptron Trial Preparation

As a quick, fun post for those of you who are stuck thinking about things like trial presentation technology on Labor Day, I present Flip Chart Comedy by Demitri Martin. If you’re at work, watch out… Some of the language and content is a bit vulgar. Make sure you bookmark it and watch it when you get home, though!

I’ll make this a quick post, since this isn’t something you could use in trial, but it’s such a cool service I couldn’t resist mentioning it. It’s called Poll Everywhere and it’s a service that allows you to poll your audience in real time using their cell phones! You simply ask your audience a question, they respond via text message, and then you can view the responses online or in a PowerPoint slide.

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.

Approximately 36 hours ago, Microsoft Office Labs released a plugin called “pptPlex” for PowerPoint 2007. It’s a fun looking plugin. Unfortunately, I’m unable to test it since I’m using Office for Mac… I say “unfortunately” because it really does look like it would be fun to play with! My understanding from reading the website and watching the videos, though, is that looking pretty and being fun are about all pptPlex has going for it.

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.

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Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher!

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…