Death by Powerpoint

What audiences find irritating about Powerpoint presentations:

speaker read the slides 60%

text too small to read 51%

text too wordy 48%

poor color choices 37%

moving text or graphics 25%

irritating sounds 22%

complex charts 22%

Super Speed, Greater Learning

Don Clark writing in the Wall Street Journal reports that Intel Corporation has reached "a new milestone on the way to developing computers that use inexpensive optical components to
achieve massive increases in communication speeds. The company said it has fabricated the first modulator made from silicon that can encode data onto a beam of light at a rate of 40 billion bits per second, or gigabits. Modulators are key components in using lasers to send data down fiber-optic cable."

"Such speeds -- roughly 40 times faster than the most sophisticated corporate data networks -- now require expensive materials, a factor that helps push the cost of existing 40-gigabit modulators into the thousands of dollars. "

As technology breakthroughs continue to come at a furious pace, the need for trainers, teachers, and instructors to explain it all will only broaden.

Ensure Original Speech Material

A new service from iParadigms is available that protects writers everywhere as well as helps meeting planners to ensure that a speaker’s material is his own originals. From its own website: "iParadigms is a pioneer in the rapidly expanding field of digital information tracking. The Internet, though an invaluable resource for services and information, is unfortunately also an unparalleled environment for all varieties of intellectual property theft.”

“We have developed a suite of advanced tracking tools to combat the piracy of intellectual property and ensure the originality of written work. These tools have already been adopted and successfully implemented for thousands of institutional clients all over the world."

Email is Becoming Unusable

Your email system is under attack and you are not alone. A Reuters report out of London says that “criminal gangs using hijacked computers are behind a surge in unwanted e-mails peddling sex, drugs and stock tips.”

According to Postini, a U.S. email security company spam messages have tripled since June and now account for nearly 90% of the e-mails sent worldwide. "E-mail systems are overloaded or melting down trying to keep up with all the spam," said Dan Druker, a vice president at Postini.

The Reuters report observes that “as Christmas approaches, the daily trawl through in-boxes clogged with offers of fake Viagra, loans and sex aids is tipped to take even longer.” Postini has detected a staggering 7 billion spam e-mails worldwide in November compared to 2.5 billion in June.

According to Spamhaus, an agency that tracks the problem, “About 200 illegal gangs are behind 80 percent of unwanted e-mails.

Reuters: Experts blame the rise in spam on computer programs that hijack millions of home computers to send e-mails. These "zombie networks", also called "botnets", can link 100,000 home computers without their owners' knowledge. They are leased to gangs who use their huge "free" computing power to send millions of e-mails with relative anonymity.

Information that May Haunt You

It is plainly evident that vast segments of the population have turned to online exhibitionism. Writing in the Washington Post, economist Robert J. Samuelson observes says, “ It turns out that the Internet has unleashed the greatest outburst of mass exhibitionism in human history.”

“…MySpace has 56 million American "members." Facebook, which started as a site for college students and has expanded to high school students and others, has 9 million members. …YouTube, a site where anyone can post home videos, says 100 million videos are watched daily.”

“People seem to crave popularity or celebrity more than they fear the loss of privacy.” However, “what goes on the Internet often stays on the Internet. Something that seems harmless, silly or merely impetuous today may seem offensive, stupid or reckless in two weeks, two years or two decades.” Samuelson notes that “Henry David Thoreau famously remarked that ‘the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.’ Thanks to technology, that's no longer necessary. People can now lead lives of noisy and ostentatious desperation...”

Risky: Reaching Members by Email

If your principal means of alerting others about a meeting or conference is via email, here are some sobering statistics. Wordwide, 50 billion e-mail messages are sent each day, equal to seven messages for everyone on the planet, although the vast majority of people are not online. In 2001, e-mail traffic was less than 12 billion.

Of the 50 billion messages sent daily, more than 88% cent of e-mails are spam including about 1 per cent which are virus-infected. So that means at least 44 billion spam messages are sent each day, 365 days a year, and each day 4.4 billion e-mail messages contain viruses. Has junk email become an issue for you and the audience you’re seeking to reach? A multi-phase, multi-vehicle approach is becoming mandatory.

Cellphone Madness

HealthDayNews.com: Cell phones and pagers, part of the technological revolution that was supposed to liberate everyone, is tethering people to their jobs to an unprecedented degree, to the point where family life is suffering. The study limited the blame to cell phones and pages, and not computer-based communication such as e-mail. Cell phones and pagers were linked to increased psychological distress and reduced family satisfaction for both sexes.

The research, by University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee sociologist Noelle Chesley, appears in the December issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family. "The use of cell phones and pagers was linked to increased distress and a decrease in family satisfaction over time," said Chesley, an assistant professor of sociology. "There is clearly a link between using the technology and experiencing increased access."