Monday, September 15, 2008

Get Your Free PowerPoints Here!


Brilliant! PowerPoint users rejoice!

Here's a great data visualization tool we'll all benefit from and we can have a voice in creating it. While I'm referring here to a new tool, "We Build Your Presentation," I'm pretty excited about it's home, "The Big Money," too. It's a smart-looking and -sounding new business news site from the folks at Slate.

This isn't the first nor will it be the last Web site to offer viewers free and easy PowerPoint slides, but with Slate's pedigree, it's probably going to be one of the best.

What I love about features like this one is their emphasis on making important data understandable and putting it within reach of, well, everyone, or at least everyone who can get to the Web. TBM's version has the added crowdsourcing advantage of letting users vote on what data they'd like to see clearly displayed. Since I am on a National Academy of Public Administration panel creating an augmented reality game to engage college students about the national debt crisis (I know, I know, sounds impossible), I would like to see TBM start tackling that, especially the likely outcomes of the path we're on, those of the presidential candidates and those suggested by the "experts." (Why do I have the nagging feeling that crowdsourcing might just beat all these options?)

Here's TBM's editor, James Ledbetter, explaining "The Big Money" and the new presentation builder. I've already added the site to my bookmarks bar, give it a once over!

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