Technology and Money

Useful PowerPoint Presentation Tips by Seth Godin

Steve Jobs rarely uses complete sentences in his Keynote presentation slides. Credit: Wired

Seth Godin offers some great tips on preparing PowerPoint presentations that will leave an impact on your audience. Favorite picks:

1. Here’s the deal: You should have to put $5 into the coffee fund for every single word on the wordiest slide in your deck. 400 words costs $2000. If that were true, would you use fewer words? A lot fewer? If you have bullets, please, please, please only use one word in each bullet. Two if you have to. Three never.

2. If people are live-blogging, twittering or writing down what you’re saying, I wonder if your presentation is everything it could be. After all, you could have saved everyone the trouble and just blogged it/note-taken it for them, right?  (hint: bullets demand note-taking. The minute you put bullets on the screen, you are announcing, "write this down, but don’t really pay attention now.")

More PowerPoint related stories:

• The Best Fonts for your PowerPoint Slides
• Effect PowerPoint Presentation Tips

Useful PowerPoint Presentation Tips by Seth Godin - Digital Inspiration

Show Pictures of your Best Friends on your Facebook Profile Page

Your Facebook profile page has a "Friends" box in the lower left corner that, by default, displays a list of six random friends. This selection is completely random and you’ll see a different set of faces (or pictures) if you refresh the Facebook page.

There’s however a little-known feature in Facebook that lets you decide who shows up in that Friends box. And if your list of best friends is more than six, even that can be accommodated without requiring any Facebook App.

All you have to do is click that "edit" pencil in your Friends box and type the names of your best friends in the box that says "Always show these friends."  That’s it.

Some more Facebook tricks:

• Create Photo Collage from Facebook
• Create a Phone Book in Facebook
• Put Facebook Chat in Firefox Sidebar

Show Pictures of your Best Friends on your Facebook Profile Page - Digital Inspiration

Rososo - the simplest RSS Reader

Rososo, which is a play on the word "RSS", is the world’s simplest RSS feed reader you could hope for.

You add feeds by entering the address of the website or the feed URL and Rososo will display them in the order in which they are updated. That’s it.

There are no titles, content, images, or anything – it simply includes a notification of when the different blogs were updated.

Rososo may not appeal to power RSS users but if you’ve never used RSS before, this may be a good place to start.

Rososo - the simplest RSS Reader - Digital Inspiration

Google PageRank Dropped? No Reason to Worry

The most recent PageRank update sparked some intense discussion in the blogosphere with people like Steve Rubel, John Battelle, Danny Sullivan and Dave McClure joining the conversation.

"Judge me by PageRank" Credit: Blaugh

Danny Sullivan was surprised when the Google PageRank of SEL dropped from 7 to 6 - "Not that it matters, but then again, there’s no good reason for that to have happened." Matt Cutts then pointed to this article by Udi Manber which suggests that Google "made significant changes to the PageRank algorithm in January" and that may have caused the dip in PageRank.

John Battelle asked Google to either completely drop PageRank or "give us more granularity" so that users know how how that PageRank data is used to "determine value in the Google economy."

Dave McClure made a very intelligent comment saying "if PageRank doesn’t matter, then why is it displayed so prominently in the toolbar?" His reasoning is that if PageRank doesn’t matter, completely remove it from the toolbar but if it matters, then Google should offer more explanation.

Steve sought of agrees that Google PageRank, though imperfect, is still a measure of "online influence" as "it judges you based on links from all kinds of sources, not just people who live in the same fish tank.. Create high quality content that earns links from other quality sources and, over time, your Google Page Rank grows as does your influence and responsibility."

Finally, Vanessa Fox has jumped in with some great insights. She is an ex-Googler and best known for creating the Google Webmaster Central - a tool that has proved so useful for web publishers.

Vanessa says that Google maintains two different PageRanks – one is internal that is computed regularly while the one you see on Google toolbars is the external PageRank that is updated infrequently. So if your current PR is displayed as 5, the actual PR may be 2 or even 7 and you’ll only know this during the next PageRank update cycle.

Vanessa points to a comment by Matt Cutts where he says that PageRank is just one of the 200+ signals Google uses to determine the ranking of a web page in search results.

The PageRank of my Blogger Blog dropped from 7 to 6 in this update but it is something that really doesn’t matter. To quote Vanessa again: "If there’s one thing that PageRank is not, it’s the determination of your Google footprint."

Google PageRank Dropped? No Reason to Worry - Digital Inspiration

Read Blog Feeds Like a Magazine with Opera 9.6

Opera 9.6 is just out and this browser will completely change the way you read feeds. It turns the default feed of any website into a multi-column magazine layout that is not just beautiful but makes reading content a pleasure.

For instance, here’s how the default feed of Techmeme will appear inside Opera 9.6. The wider your screen, the more columns you’ll have.

And here’s another example that uses the DI feed.

This layout is from Twitter Timeline.

The Opera 9.6 layout for feeds is especially convenient for viewing Flickr photostreams.

The layout design and view is so beautiful that I am sure it will inspire some blog themes in the coming days. Also check this detailed review of Opera 9.5.

Read Blog Feeds Like a Magazine with Opera 9.6 - Digital Inspiration

Earthcomber Sues TechCrunch Blog and Loopt for ‘Patent Infringement’

Illinois based Earthcomber has filed a suit in the US District Court against Loopt and the popular TechCrunch blog for ‘patent infringement’.

It seems that TechCrunch is part of the lawsuit because they have either written about Loopt in the past or Loopt is a sponsor/advertiser on TechCrunch.

Here’s an excerpt from the complaint that was filed by the lawyers of Earthcomber against Loopt and TechCrunch:

• Plaintiff EARTHCOMBER is the owner of United States Patent No. 7,071,842 (the ‘842 Patent’).
• Defendant LOOPT has infringed and continues to infringe the ‘842 Patent by making, using, selling and/or offering for sale products and/or methods covered by one or more claims of the ‘842 Patent without Plaintiff EARTHCOMBER’s authorization in violation of 35 U.S.C. § 271(a).
• Defendant TECHCRUNCH has actively induced and contributed to the infringement of the ‘842 patent in violation of 35 U.S.C. § 271(b) and (c).

I am sure Arrington would soon publish the ‘threat letter’ and his take on on TechCrunch but until then, you can download a full copy of the complaint here.

Earthcomber Sues TechCrunch Blog and Loopt for ‘Patent Infringement’ - Digital Inspiration