I had a presentation to deliver in Helsinki this week. I joined a packed Finnair flight on Sunday evening along with Rafe Blandford of All About Symbian and arrived late on Sunday night. My presentation was scheduled for Monday lunchtime.
I’d spent a good amount of time pondering over the subject of the presentation. I’d made copious notes. A few nights before, I’d poured a large glass of red wine and sat there with a paper and pen and drawn out my ideas. Sometimes the old ways are the best.
Filled with ideas, concepts and the basic form, I resolved to actually write the presentation on Monday morning. I work well under pressure and since I already knew what I wanted to discuss, I was quite keen. It was just a matter of transferring paper and mind based ideas to PowerPoint.
Here’s the science bit
I decided to do an experiment — but only as the aeroplane prepared to pull away from the London Heathrow gate. Just as the announcements began to ask people to consider putting away their mobile phones, I headed on to the iPhone App Store. A strong Orange 3G signal delivered the first screen in a second or two and I did a search for ‘PowerPoint’.
I wondered if there was an app that would allow me to author a series of slides in PowerPoint format as I sat there on the plane (with the iPhone on Airplane mode, of course). I scrolled by a few different applications before I came across DocumentsToGo.
Premium vs Standard
I noted that the standard version (£5.99) could only view PPT files, whilst the premium version (£8.99) could actually author them. Bingo! That’s the one I needed. I hit the purchase button and the app downloaded as the preparations for departure continued.
Within a few moments I was editing a PowerPoint deck. I used the app’s built-in DropBox support to connect to my online file store and bring down a few recent files to look at.
As the plane took off, I stowed my iPhone and once the seatbelt sign had been switched off, I got to work. Goodness me it was simply fantastic! All I wanted to do was prepare my points in a logical manner. I was then going to put in the screenshots and images once I got to the hotel using my laptop. And DocumentsToGo performed brilliantly.
The iTunes entry explains that there is a free update coming soon that will see iPad support added — I cannot wait for that.
Definitely consider this one
The ability to logically write out my titles, bullet points and so on — from my iPhone — was simply wonderful. I was able to get all the ideas out of my brain and on to ‘virtual’ paper — quickly and easily. Of course the iPhone wasn’t necessarily the best device to use to create the presentation during my 2.5 hour flight, but the iPhone was near me, easy to access and quick to switch off as necessary. I will definitely be making use of DocumentsToGo Premium in the future. I’m pleased I spent the cash.
(iTunes link, £8.99)
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