The Mobile Presenter

The benefits of using a remote control (also called "clicker" or "presenter") to control the advancement of slides in presentation software should be obvious. Mainly, that you can be far away from your laptop and therefore better interact with your audience (instead of with your equipment).

Have you ever wondered how such a remote actually works?

So I wrote a checklist of things that you should take with you to your presentation. Here's how I handle that.

I originally started this blog to document my search for the best (for me) portable equipment that would allow me to give presentations easily without having too much to carry around. I soon settled on an iPad and haven't looked back since (although I'm still keeping an eye out, in case even lighter alternatives would show up).

So you've prepared your presentation, rehearsed it, and you're ready to give it to your audience. Did you check what else you need to bring with you?

If you haven't heard from the organisers, the default at most events is still that the speaker will bring his or her own device, usually a laptop, with them.

What else do you pack? Here's a checklist:

The list of changes for the recently released Keynote 1.7 for iOS includes words to the effect that it now seems possible to import themes into Keynote. This makes it sound like you are no longer restricted to the 12 default themes that Keynote for iOS ships with.

As it turns out, this new feature is not quite what you think it is ...

One of the most popular articles on this site is Remote controlling Keynote for iOS via Bluetooth, which contains a step-be-step description on how to establish a Bluetooth connection between Keynote for iOS (e.g. on an iPad) and the Keynote Remote app (e.g. on an iPhone or iPod Touch). The problem with this article is - that it only worked with iOS 4.x and that Apple broke the Bluetooth connectivity outlined in that article with the iOS 5 update (and iOS 5.0.1 didn't fix it).

Well, the good news is: The just-released iOS 5.1 fixes the problem. You can now establish a Bluetooth connection between Keynote and Keynote Remote (for iOS) again. Hooray!

Note: The WiFi connectivity wasn't affected from the problem.