http://ntschutta.com/jat/
http://blog.objectmentor.com/articles/2009/02/26/10-papers-every-programmer-should-read-at-least-twice
http://jania.pe.kr/aw/moin.cgi/JSSpec
http://www.jsunit.net/
http://www.extjs.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext_(JavaScript_library)
http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/
http://blog.inspired.no/google-releases-page-speed-for-firebug-665
http://www.prototypejs.org/
http://www.crockford.com/
http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/
http://github.com/
http://www.jslint.com/
http://code.google.com/closure/
http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in-kingdom-of-nouns.html
http://www.javascripter.net/faq/reserved.htm
http://www.joehewitt.com/
http://www.thefrontside.net/

Acronyms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-specific_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior_Driven_Development
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration

Others Deborah found while searching for my topics:
http://blog.inspired.no/javascript-error-logging-with-ajax-154
http://writecodeonline.com/javascript/
http://www.infoq.com/articles/javascript-tdd

I can understand why Kathy is so fond of this book – throughout, Atkinson reminds speakers of a vitally important lesson: it’s about your audience stupid. Too many speakers epitomize the “me me me” approach of presenting and that’s a recipe for failure. Though I find the “four tweet” model bit minimal (especially for longer talks), it is a useful exercise that I’ll be incorporating into my talk prep. Again, the notion here is to focus on your audience and really think about the key ideas you’re trying to communicate. I also like thinking about Twitter sized bites – making your talk “Twitter friendly” is valuable advice.

The concept of a presentation home page is rock solid and I think I’ll play with that as well; starting (and fostering) conversation should be the goal of a modern talk. Considering the wealth of ways people can consume information today, live presentations need to offer something compelling to capture an audience. Turning a talk into one leg of a more immersive experience is a worth exploring.

While there certainly were some strong points in The Backchannel, I felt it took too long to get to the key points which is ironic considering Atkinson’s repeated advice to do so in a presentation. I suspect there was an effort to inflate the page count a bit – the first half of the book could be condensed quite a bit. Case in point, I was surprised to see a chapter that was devoted almost entirely to setting up a Twitter account. A number of the graphics did little to add to the material, in many cases, they stated exactly what was already on the page. It also felt like the book was written on Twitter – so many of the sentences and paragraphs seemed to adhere to a 140 character limit.

Atkinson has a great list of ways the backchannel can blow up but not nearly enough advice on just how to recover when faced with those situations in real life. I understand he wants us speakers to *think* about how we’d handle that situation (and that’s great advice) but I was hoping for more of his thoughts here; I wanted more hard won experience from people who’ve lived to tell the tale. The backchannel blowup case studies were useful but again, I wanted more “here’s what they should have done…”

Though a bit light on content, the last couple of chapters make this book worth reading. Atkinson reminds us to focus on our audience and our message and he has some practical advice for dealing with the realities of modern presentations. Just as we can’t turn back the clock to when bullet point laden talks were the norm, we can’t put the Twitter genie back in the bottle. But we can do a better job of engaging and leveraging these tools to make more compelling presentations.

Every year, we’re treated to a new version of Keynote (and the rest of its iWork brethren) which means we get a collection of new features: transitions, themes, better charts and now new ways of sharing our work with others. Keynote 09 is no exception, this year we’ve got magic move and you can even use your iPhone as a remote. Before this year’s conference series kicked off, I went ahead and upgraded and while I’m quite pleased I did run into one issue.

As I crafted one of my early decks, I noticed that one of my favorite transitions from Keynote 08 was gone – for example, I couldn’t find confetti.

It may seem strange for an unabashed promoter of Presentation Zen and slide:ology to be married to a transition, but I go out of my way to use them judiciously. A slew of Google searches later, I had my answer – some transitions were considered obsolete in Keynote 09. Enabling them is quite simple, simply go to the Keynote preferences and select “Include obsolete animations in choices.” Perhaps I should just accept the wisdom of Apple and, ah, transition to the new animations but I’ve just got to have my confetti!

The other big change I noticed was the vastly improved printing dialog. While nothing has fundamentally changed in the dialog, with 09, you get a handy preview of just what you’re going to print (or save as PDF – one of the unsung features of OS X.)

You can also change the page setup from within the print dialog, something that is very handy when you’re creating PDFs for handouts.

Oh and for those of you that like the black or gradient background, if you don’t want to kill an ink cartridge, select “Don’t print slide backgrounds or object fills.”

Keynote is an invaluable part of any presenter’s toolbox – if you think its just an Apple version of PowerPoint you’re wrong. If you haven’t tried it out, you owe it to yourself to use it for your next talk, it really does make a difference.