Multitasker:
The Communicator
is a mic and more
If the medium is, in
fact, the message, as Marshall McLuhan once wrote, why not upgrade
the medium at your next presentation with some of the new gadgets
designed to make otherwise ho-hum lectures more impressive? Here
are three slick options.
Interactive Meetings’
Communicator (www.interactivemeetings.com) resembles a bare-bones
mobile phone and acts as both a wireless microphone and an
audience-response system keypad. When distributed to each member of
an audience, the device can transform any one-way talk into a
conversation. With the Communicator, the entire room can hear all
questions or comments from the floor, and speakers easily can poll
attendees with multiple-choice questions on any topic.
A presenter now can avoid being
tethered to a laptop while wowing an audience. The
ShowMate, from Impatica (www.impatica.com),
about the size of a deck of cards, allows a speaker to control
wirelessly, not to mention discreetly, a PowerPoint presentation
from a BlackBerry or other compatible device. The ShowMate connects
to any projector or computer monitor.
A far flashier choice is Gesture
Studios’ GoodPoint (www.gesturestudios.com), a pair of black
motion-sensing gloves that, when flicked, pushed, pointed and
dragged through the air, can control every aspect of a multimedia
presentation. You might remember seeing GoodPoint-like gloves used
by Tom Cruise’s character in the 2002 film Minority
Report; be on the lookout for the real thing soon at a
tech-savvy presentation near you.