I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while, and was inspired to get it done by Merlin Mann’s recent piece about improving his use of PowerPoint.

I do a lot of presentations. Each time I give a talk, I try to improve on something. I have a good base on which to build thanks to an unlikely education. Despite my career in technology, I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and Theatre.

I learned a lot of good public speaking practices from theatre school. They come in two flavours–content and technique:

I have only recently begun contributing articles to self-help blogs on the internet. Many of the articles are genuinely helpful, as can be judged by the appreciative comments from many savvy readers.

I am trying to learn how to become more efficient myself, to reduce clutter, and establish priorities. I have quite a way to go, and therefore have nothing to offer in terms of advice about efficient work habits.

I’ll be straight up with you: I don’t profess to be an expert speaker. I’ve had my share of presentations that have been total flops, along with some very successful ones.

But if anything, I’ve done quite a bit of speaking over the past four years (see the summary on my LinkedIn public profile), and therefore I’ve learned a few things about speaking along the way.

Below are 20 things I’ve learned. Though this list is geared towards one-hour sessions rather than panels and workshops, some of the same principles apply.

One of the reasons that presenters don’t use visuals instead of text is because they don’t know what visual to use to explain the point they are making. Business professionals tell me all the time that they aren’t graphic artists or designers, so how can they come up with a visual?

When I started public speaking in about 1986, I was deathly afraid of public speaking--for one thing, working for the division run by Steve Jobs was hugely intimidating: How could you possibly compete with Steve?

It's taken me twenty years to get comfortable at it. I hope that many of you are are called upon to give speeches--it's the closest thing to being a professional athlete that many of us will achieve. The purpose of this blog entry is to help you give great speeches.

Occasionally, I'm asked by colleagues or clients to send samples of "great slides" or "good PowerPoints."

I usually hesitate to send examples of slides since my answer to the question, "what does a great PowerPoint slide look like?" is "it depends."

In a world which often thinks in terms of absolutes — "this is good, that is bad" — "it depends" is not the most popular answer.

When replacing text with a visual, don't make the mistake of thinking that you need a fancy or complex visual. This makeover shows that a simple visual combined with a good headline is much easier to create than trying to design a more complex visual, and it is more effective.

Nearly a year ago, Adobe produced their “PowerPoint for the web” software, which will soon be negated by Microsoft’s in-built presentation broadcast feature in PowerPoint 2010. Though there is no real use for one-to-one broadcasts, this is a new way lecturers and teachers can give presentations and lectures to students over the web with no extensive technology needed.

Nowadays, PowerPoint presentations are looking in boring stage. Luckily that presentations are having some alternatives and the good news of this, a lot of online presentations tools are came. They offering a free account for presentations, you can upload. Here, you’ll find 15 online presentation tools.