an.alternative.to.the.usual.presentation.apps

Hello guys, I've been quite busy lately juggling fatherhood, work, ideacamp and setting up the mapping party that I haven't been able to update this blog as much as I want to. So now that I have a few minutes to spare I'd like to point your attention to a pretty cool application (more of a script really) I came across yesterday, must have been what we drank and ate at Talaba Joe's (thanks Mark... I enjoyed the quantum physics talk hahaha) because I just randomly searched for presentation apps online and managed to stumble upon Impressive.

Impressive is a program that displays presentation slides. But unlike Impress or other similar applications, it does so with style. Smooth alpha-blended slide transitions are provided for the sake of eye candy, but in addition to this, Impressive offers some unique tools that are really useful for presentations. Its not as flashy or feature-loaded as the usual presentation software but what I like about it is its simplicity and the potential to do more (it is after all a FOSS app), its just a 150k python script (fully configurable and free) that allows you to render your PDF files as presentation, providing hardware-accelerated effects (page transitions), a smashing overview screen that looks like Compiz or Cooliris, a highlight box that stays that way until you disable it and the cool spotlight effect (so you can throw away that laser pointer). Of course its not as complete as Keynote,Powerpoint

or Impress but in some ways I find it more impressive :)

improving.intel.graphics.on.ubuntu.jaunty

Here's a link to a very helpful howto that not only improves the speed of your Intel integrated chip but also solves the Google Earth 5.0 flickering (and logging-out issues). Btw, I have an MSI PR-200 notebook with a GM965/GL960 chip running Ubuntu 9.04 64bit, the fix (or should I say work-around) manage to drastically improve glxgears frames from 600+ to 2700+ (I followed the bleeding edge option), yet remained stable with no apparent memory leaks. Hope this helps

post.ideacampdavao.post

I'd like to thank all those to came and participated in the first ever IdeaCamp Davao! We had a full-packed room of people willing to share what's on their mind. I personally enjoyed the whole experience, not just because I'm part of the organizing group (it was fun btw), but because of the ideas that were introduced. Engr. Espina's talk on renewable energy was both an eye-opener and a window for opportunity, I could have sworn I saw light-bulbs on people's heads when he presented his ideas. The presentation was limited to 10minutes (plus another 10mins for questions) each and although I personally would want it to be longer, it was at least effective in keeping the speakers from talking to much and the audience from losing interest (maybe we should consider parallel session on the next IdeaCamp). This is just the beginning guys, We hope to bring even more interesting ideas on the next IdeaCamp (schedule will be announced in a few days).

Btw, I'd urge anyone even those who haven't attended IdeaCamp Davao (and therefore did not see the presentation) to checkout G.ho.st's virtual computer, its a new paradigm for computing and quite helpful for those who wouldn't want to lug around a laptop when travelling, just sign up and go!

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