First off, a quick “self-help” tip. Make plans to attend the monthly meeting of MMOOS (Maine Macintosh Owners and Operators Society), this coming Tuesday, March 15th, at 7:00 PM in the Multi-Purpose Room at Brunswick High School. You’ll be glad you did.

One of the highlights of every MMOOS meeting is our “Updates and Rumors” section, where we talk about what’s new and exciting in the world of Mac. This always entertaining and informative presentation is made even more entertaining and informative (and visually stunning) by the use of Apple’s Keynote application. If you haven’t seen Keynote in action, this coming Tuesday night’s MMOOS meeting is your big chance!

Keynote was recently upgraded to version 2.0, and is bundled with Apple’s new word processor, called “Pages”, in the $79 ‘iWork” suite released in January. Keynote was originally developed “in-house” for Apple CEO Steve Jobs to use at major presentations like his MacWorld Expo keynote addresses. Hence the name, “Keynote”. If you’ve used, created, or seen a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, you know the basic functions of Keynote. However, if you’ve ever slept through, or cringed at the goofy graphics and transitions in a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, you’re really going to appreciate the beauty of Keynote. And in version 2.0, Keynote gains some brawn to go with the beauty.

Brawn? Although pundits praised Keynote’s cinema-quality transitions and professionally-designed themes, they lamented version 1.0’s lack of slide and presentation controls found in PowerPoint. Keynote 2.0 addresses many of these concerns.

Let’s say you’re making a presentation with your laptop connected to a projector. You can configure your laptop display to be a “Presenter Display”, invisible to the audience, that contains a window with the current slide, the next slide, your script, a clock, and a countdown timer to the next slide change (if you’ve built a timed show). The projector just shows the audience the current slide.

The new Keynote also has improved capabilities to create slideshows that run by themselves, have audio voiceover or music tracks, and contain interactive features like navigation arrows and hyperlinks. Perfect for special events, school projects and kiosks.

There are many ways to share your presentations with others. You can create a QuickTime movie or Flash animation of your presentation to post on a web site or burn onto a CD. Save it as a PDF file, or save individual pages as JPEG, TIFF, or PNG images.

© 2005 Peter F. Zimowski