Do presentation styles matter ?

I think it does. One of the best presentations I have seen are from Steve Jobs. Again, my humble opinion is just from the slides that I have seen, and the rave reviews that I keep seeing on the web, on how fantastic Steve presents the slides. There was recent criticism of how bad Bill Gates did the presentation for Windows Live. I did not attend this event either, but I can just picture how it would have been, by just seeing some of the slides.A beautiful comparison is done in Garr Reynolds blog – Presentation Zen.Check out these two pictures below for a preview and then go to the presentation zen for some more good analysis.
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(Both pictures courtesy : http://presentationzen.blogs.com)

IE inside firefox ?

Wow. If you are one of those professional website creators and one of those people who are paranoid (and should rightfully be) about UI/appearance differences between mozilla and IE, your ears should perk up N.O.W. These guys have a firefox plug-in where you can invoke IE inside a firefox tab ! How is that for interoperability ?

Check it out at the mozilla add on site here.

Low tech solution for maintaining your Contacts List

If you are totally into low tech stuff like the Hipster PDA and printing out planner pages from diyplanner.com etc, consider this. How do you maintain your contacts ?

Kevin Kelly has an exteme-low-tech solution (which I incidentally use too) for maintaining your contacts. Slip that visiting card into a clear sleeved rolodex visiting card holder. You can sort it and slip it in (like me), or just slip it in chronological order (like Kevin does). It is easy to look up and extremo-cheapo. Try this before you get that expensive card reader for your palm.

Read Kevins full entry here.

Make sure your blog is read …

Paul Stamatiou has a very good writeup on how to get your blog read by other people.

I used to have a personal blog at one point in time, and I had a very loyal readership. Lots of people commenting. Lots of people writing in to me etc. Due to circumstances in real life (as opposed to my cyberlife), I had to terminate that blog. Recently I started this blog hoping to write every day and archive some of the finds that I make on this topic. And since this is a very niche and upcoming topic for a blog, I do not think I have readers yet. So I went and had a peek. Paul has a nice write up on how to build readership. First and biggest thing I noticed was that it was almost essential to get into technorati (and yes I did it :)). I now need to figure out if there is a way of getting out RSS feeds from blogger.

Read Pauls full article here.

I am back ….

Howdy all ! I am back. Hope everyone in India had a safe and fun Diwali. I got back to reading some of the older articles (a week old) today morning, and the first thing that struck me as worthy of posting here was the following article on “How to avoid Monday Morning Blahs” (well fondly called blues). Almost everyone that I know have monday morning blues – all the way from Computer Engineers to CFOs to Executive Directors. The below article points out 5 super duper tips to “possibly” avoid or optimistically put, reduce monday morning blues. The best two points that I liked were :

3. Start something on Friday that you can finish on Monday.
Many times we dread Monday mornings because we know that there are certain projects that we have to tackle for the week. Why not get a headstart on Friday and begin something? That way, you don’t have to overcome the initial procrastination tendencies that are present when you are starting something. You’ve already got momentum started from the week before.

and …

5. Get up earlier than normal on Mondays.
Mondays can be hectic enough without feeling like you have to race everywhere or feel like you’re already behind because you slept in. Get up a half-hour to an hour earlier and take your time. Have a leisurely breakfast. Read the paper. Exercise. If you start out the day racing, it will have a negative effect on the flow of your day.

Read the full article here .

Brief Hiatus

I will be on a brief hiatus for the next 7 days. Leaving for home (Chennai) for Diwali holiday. For non-Indian viewers, Diwali is called the festival of lights and is probably the hindu equivalent of the holiday (christmas) season in the US. Houses all over India have brightly coloured lights decorating their frontage.Read the wikipedia entry for Diwali.

I do not think I will be posting for the next one week or so.

Ciao !

4 great presentation tips

Gen Taguchi over at lifehack.org gives 4 great presentation giving tips (these are not totally just powerpoint hacks). One of his key points is that, several presenters do not get the amount of applause they deserve. And this is not because of a bad presentation, but he/she did not set up the audience correctly for applause.I agree. There is nothing more gratifying to a presenter than a hearty applause (not a half-hearted one). All is well that ends well right ?

Read the tips here.

Ask Metafilter to the rescue …

Read the following thread for a touching account of how a man living in Washington DC posted on AskMetafilter to find out the address of where his grandfather lived in Vienna before he fled (during WWII). Someone from the Holocaust Museum (another reader of Ask Mefi) responded within 32 minutes of posting. He and a colleague of his, were able to trace down a large amount of information about the grandfather. A very touching story, – only that it is real.Read the full thread here.

Active Reading

Sacha, over at diyplanner.com, has a wonderful post on how to read actively. She suggests a template (not really a template but a method of folding a sheet of paper), and using the different sections thus created to help her read. She uses this technique for preparing for her exams, but it can be extended to any book that you want to “actively” read. It does seem like a sound technique.Read the full article here.

Diwali

We hear so much about globalization, and see it in a dozen facets of daily life. But there are times, when it touches your heart, you feel a sudden pang of joy. It happened to me this morning, when I found this post over at Lifehacker.com. I have been a loyal lifehacker reader for quite some time now. It had the following today :

Diwãli, the festival of lights, is just a week away.

If there’s a special Hindu, Sikh or Jain person in your life, why not send an eCard to wish them happiness and prosperity?

Hallmark offers several free Diwali cards that you can personalize and send by e-mail.

Being a hindu myself, I was touched by the above post. I am sure posts like these are what would be the first steps in building better global understanding and unity. Thanks lifehacker.