Abstract Powerpoint slides

A toolkit of abstract slides that you can use for your Powerpoint or Keynote presentation. Be cause “PEOPLE cannot COPE without some kind of visual STIMULATION”. (via bbj)

• keynote
• Powerpoint

Ars Electronica

On Friday, September 1, I’ll be speaking at the 2006 Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. I’ll be taking part in a symposium on simplicity organized by John Maeda (schedules: part 1, part 2). I’ve been furiously preparing my slides in Keynote for the past week or so. It’s my first talk using either Keynote or Powerpoint and I’m having fun messing around in Keynote. It’s a great little program. Thanks to John and the folks at Ars for including me…it’s a real honor.

Updates for the next few days will be spotty at best; the internet connection situation at both the conference and our hotel is unknown and I’ll likely be busy preparing for my talk¹. And after the conference, we’re heading into the Alpine wilderness for a few days (maybe Salzburg, Munich, or Zurich as well) during which my internet status will likely be “offline” and my sausage intake status will be “every 6 hours”. See you when I get back.

So, now’s your chance to catch up on some recent doings around the site. Here are some of my favorites from the past few weeks/months:

• Manhattan Elsewhere - Maps and landscapes imagining the island of Manhattan placed near Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, and other locales.
• The Pluto Mnemonic Device Contest. “My! Very educated morons just screwed up numerous planetariums.”
• Post on the Mill City Museum in Minneapolis, MN. Panoramic photograph of the museum and the surrounding area.
• Some old WWII-era color photos, color corrected to look a bit more contemporary.
• Tales of the Telegraph.
• A piece about some surviving Gopher servers.
• Some baseball card musings.
• Madden NFL 06 Fans Take Video Game Into Real World

[1] “Preparing for my talk” may or may not be a euphemism for “throwing up repeatedly in worry about my talk”. (Actually, practice is a wonderful thing. It makes perfect, builds confidence, and reduces abdominal discomfort.) ↩

• arselectronica2006
• Austria
• conferences
• John Maeda
• keynote
• travel

Some background on how Al Gore’s global

Some background on how Al Gore’s global warming presentation got so polished. Also references Spike Jonze’s Al Gore video from 2000 which pictures Gore as anything but stiff. Some backstory on the Jonze video.

Update: More on Gore’s use of Keynote.

• Al Gore
• climate crisis
• keynote
• Powerpoint
• Spike Jonze