Technologizer

I’ve been writing about presentations and tools and tips for creating and conducting them since the Mesozoic era–way back when you most likely created your slides with Harvard Graphics, and maybe even printed them out on overhead transparencies. Today, I’m pleased to be one of the judges of The World’s Best Presentation Contest ‘09. The competition is being held over at Slideshare, the neat service for embedding presentations in Web pages–so everyone who’s interested can see all the entries. And there are some neat prizes to be won, including a MacBook Pro, a Kindle DX, an iPhone 3GS, an HP TouchSmart laptop, and copies of Adobe’s Acrobat 9 and Creative Suite CS4.

I’m one of the judges for a category for presentations created with Acrobat 9–Adobe is the sponsor of the whole contest this year–along with Scott Belsky of Behance and Julie Hansen of The Business Insider. And three presentations I put together are on Slideshare. The contest is running through September 8th–check out the entries and spread the word!

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Seagate’s new hard drives designed specifically for Macs, and noted that it was interesting to see how booming sales for Macs have led large companies to enter the Mac market rather than flee it, as many were doing not so long ago. Here’s more confirmation of that trned: Targus, the big manufacturer of computer cases and mobile accessories, is rolling out its first products tailored for Mac users.

The “Targus for Mac” line includes mice, a USB hub, a presentation remote, a file-sharing cable, a cooling pad, and privacy screens. For the most part, their Mac-isness doesn’t relate to functionality, and Mac users already have access to products in all those categories which are fully Mac-compatible. But Targus has done a nice job of styling the products with a look that’s pleasingly complimentary to MacBooks and MacBook Pros without simply being an unimaginative knockoff of Apple’s own aesthetic.

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