Recently, graphics guru Edward Tufte put out a small pamphlet on The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint. Although I haven’t seen it myself, comments have been quite positive; it seems everybody agrees about the generally dismal state of PowerPoint presentations.

Halley points at another anti-PowerPoint book, which also looks interesting. And she also links to the Gettysburg Address PowerPoint presentation, which is both funny and interesting. (As an aside, the full text of Lincoln’s speech is given at the end, and I was surprised to notice that I’d never read it before; only the first and last paragraphs seem to be usually cited.)

Let’s face it, hearing someone read off bulleted lines in the usual droning tone is nearly as boring as seeing other people’s baby pictures. I remember fondly Edwin Estrada, who used to be Apple’s developer contact for Latin America, always skipping forward dozens of slides in the official Apple presentations while muttering “marketing – blah blah – marketing – fluff – marketing – you don’t need to read this”. Few people can pull this off with such aplomb; unfortunately, Edwin seems to have left Apple a few years ago.