@FUBAR, can you tell me what is the IP of the remote site? I will block the IP using Local Host if I know the IP.

#19, ojoj, most of your comments aren't worth responding to. Presentation Pointer makes four attempts to communicate with a remote site every time it's started. Since it has keyboard access, and even worse, can be set to start with Windows, that makes it a significant security risk, so yes, it should be blocked.

#24,28, mike, resource usage on stuff like this is largely irrelevant, and of course ZoomIt will consume more resources because it does more (it takes more resources to do full-screen zoom and screen capture). Virtual machine resource usage related to display is meaningless. I didn't see any CPU issues on an actual Windows 7 installation. Use of right-click Administrator modes are not to be toyed with, there are implications to running things as Administrator when they shouldn't be.

#31, Hefollowedmehome, um, it's a computer, so of course everything you do with presentation apps is a transient effect (although you can always capture the screen if the app doesn't directly support it). The browser example was just that, an example. It applies to any UI element which goes away, like a menu entry. It makes no sense for the click animation to continue when what was clicked on is no longer there. You can always decrease the duration, but the proper solution is to do the animation before passing the click on to the application.

Presentation Pointer is interesting and has some nice features but I found it to be very buggy, in addition to the issues mentioned. If I had to do a live presentation, I would prefer to use ZoomIt. You should install the latest version and study the UI options very carefully, it does a lot.

I tried to install. Setup ran without asking for Admin password, but stopped before finished. Activate asked for Admin password, I gave it, then it said it was activated, but no program. Sad. Looked like good program.

"Running Presentation Pointer makes use of Direct Input & an included file called BugTrapU.dll" (Comment by mike — June 11th, 2011 at 11:43 am)... BugTrapU.dll reports your IP Address in the even of any error (or not)
It would be a good idea to not include this file for your next version and make sure it does not call home every time you exit it.
Otherwise, the program is very useful :)

I tried Monday's Smart Uninstaller program then reinstalled today's Presentation Pointer, and this time it registered!!!

So if you have a problem, and #28's comments did not work out, try Smart Uninstaller, if you have it, and reinstall it. Hey, it worked for me.

The time where I gave lectures is gone, but I think I'll put this programme into my graphics toolbox - I like to pimp my photos :)

An urgent request to the developer: Please inform the user (your client!) in advance, that your software calls home and why. I like to decide myself when and why my system goes online. If the developer keeps the fact secret, I'm suspicious and will not open the firewall and maybe not buy the programme.
Thanks to GOTD and to Goldginko for the opportunity to test this software!

@ the users with activation problems:
Make sure you are online, and make a rule for the firewall. No proxy!
Make sure Internet Explorer is NOT in off-line modus (even when you use another browser.
Make sure that the programme is not running - exit with right click on the taskbar-icon.

The software does not phone home and having tried Camtasia, I like this software just as much for its unique features.

Please can someone tell me which registry folder is this software writing to? I do not seem to be able to find its registry entries.

@Fubar #10


A couple of comments related to your post at the number 10 position:
1. "It’s just drawing on an overlay"

if you give a presentation using the same slides multiple times you don't want to make permanent changes on the slides. If something doesn't work for an audience you don't want to be stuck with that exact presentation later on, you'll want to be able to make changes.
2. "Also, say it’s a browser"

I can't say that I've ever seen anyone using a browser to give a presentation. A presentation may involve running a program in a browser but out of the many presentations I've given and the dozen or so that I've seen at medical conferences a browser never entered into the picture.

The program installed and activated without difficulty; I nearly missed this one because of the ridiculous approval rating, it does what it is supposed to do very well. It looks like the approval rating is being used as a marker to the usefulness of the program to the individual rather than its functionality.
It will be very useful in this shared screen function of Skype to bring attention to various parts of the screen, I shall certainly be keeping it.

# 8. Your comments indeed sound as if you are well acquainted with pre-school prerequisites. If you don't like the program, leave it alone. If there is a security problem you have uncovered, then by all means bring it to our attention. If you simply want to vent, there are numerous social websites that allow you you to throw a tantrum about most any topic. Sarcasm is welcome there, not here.

Hi, For Those who are not in favor of appointing any Keys to do a task - and without any disrespect to Today's Offer, or Those who are - the simplest way of jotting on screen (form of "Presentation" in fun way?) is a little "Screen Pen 2.1" by 678soft.com

It can do few tricks - chose any color for pen, or spray /erase/distort/save (saved files will show on desktop after exit) and so on.
If unsure where You're going with it - simply exit.

Should You come across a "short survey" while installing - use Your imagination:)

It's not as sophisticated as Today's Offer, or as ZoomIt, mentioned kindly by Others.
Oh, it's free too.
Might be fun?

#15: "... Unfortunately, my employer prevents me from installing programs on my computer, and therefore I would really have appreciated a portable version of the program..."

Assuming you buy a license [or get the dev's permission] to get around the standard Personal Use Only terms on GOTD, it should be trivial to put Presentation Pointer into the portableapps.com format. AFAIK you'd just have to account for 1, maybe 2 registry keys, + the User App/Application Data folder, which is very easily done -- check portableapps.com site including forum for info etc. And/or you can always contact the dev & see if they might be willing to create a portable version for sale, using the portableapps.com format or however.

* * *

#21: "... but I can’t seem to be able to register–says it’s a trial version."

Activate.exe, included in the .zip file you download, needs to contact the GOTD servers, then needs to be able to add a key to the registry. Usually if it can't contact the GOTD servers it'll tell you, but the best way to know it got through is when it's done you'll get a success message, & closing that window will open your browser to the GOTD page for that day. Assuming all that happened, if today's GOTD still shows a trial version [you'll get the trial notice when you close it], then either Activate.exe could not write the new registry key, or Presentation Pointer can't read it. Make sure to run Activate as Admin [right-click menu] in Vista/7, & make sure security software isn't blocking it from writing to the registry. If that doesn't help, maybe uninstall, run setup as admin, then run the app as admin at least once.

In my experience, it is far more important to maintain eye contact with the audience and to know good contextual information about what you are presenting than to have a flashy presentation that lacks those qualities. There are times when I have ditched my video or PowerPoint and have just done it solo; and my school marks have benefited from that. Social skills will get you further than any app.

This program gives you control of the size, color and actions of the mouse pointer, the radius of the spotlight, the opacity of the background, whether the effects remain or fade out and for how long, the colors, you can live draw, and you can set which monitor you want the effects to be on, in a multi-monitor setup. You can even change the radius of the spotlight on the fly with a hotkey, though, as someone pointed out, the interface has a typo in it that gives the same name to both increasing and decreasing hotkey fields for the cursor advanced settings. If you do any presentations at all, this would be a very handy tool to have. I also tried Pen Attention, and of the two, Presentation Pointer has the better features for a truly professional presentation.

Requirements???

- apple keynote
- microsoft powerpoint
- openoffice impress
- corel presentations
- prezi

I couldn't find any reference to microsoft powerpoint
on the website (presentation-assistant.com). Could I
therefore assume this works equally well with
all presentation software?

Or perhaps there is no additional software requirement.
Maybe it just takes a file and works with that --
that would be a file saved in any presentation format?

Even more confusing: the Giveaway product description
at the top of this page says "you can draw on a video
as it was playing". Any video format at all? But
then it would be called Video Pointer.

Presentation Pointer is a nice, small alternative to the free ZoomIt [Sysinternals at microsoft.com - http://goo.gl/k8rga ], with a slightly different feature set -- Presentation Pointer doesn't zoom in, but it adds a nice spotlight view & mouse click animation [both switchable]. Another area where they differ is text display -- ZoomIt lets you type notes etc. that'll show up in screen shots you might take while zoomed in; Presentation Pointer shows what keys you pressed in a darkened area at the bottom of the screen. While both apps support hot keys, Presentation Pointer relies more on it's option menu, & it's also a little bigger than ZoomIt with it's single file. Despite it's larger size, Presentation Pointer also uses a bit less resources than ZoomIt, per Process Explorer in a XPMode VM [since that VM has (much) fewer resources, resource use shows up better, is easier to track & compare], that is until you turn on the Spotlight Effect, which raised CPU % from <2 to spikes approaching 80%... thankfully you can set a time limit so things go back to normal in a couple or few seconds -- otherwise I'd guess that combined with whatever else a lower powered laptop was doing, you might get enough lag trying to switch it off that it could get embarrassing.

Installation isn't bad, with a program folder that holds 10 files, 4 folders, & takes up ~4 MB -- a new folder under User\ Application Data [User\ AppData\ Roaming in win7] stores configuration info. Installation & Activation add 3 new registry keys -- activation is stored in the User section of the registry, so this is one of those GOTDs you'll want to activate in any Windows profiles where you might want to use Presentation Pointer. Running Presentation Pointer makes use of Direct Input & an included file called BugTrapU.dll -- Google/Bing on the file name or its dev [Intellesoft] & you'll get hits like this one explaining what it does [which is gather error/crash info] http://goo.gl/IUXRX . FWIW Microsoft's Attack Surface Analyzer only complains of lax permissions [ACLs] re: this GOTD's program folders.

I think Presentation Pointer is a worthwhile addition to most everyone's toolbox, if for no other purpose than when you want to point something out on-screen -- fingers can be too fat, leave fingerprints [I hate cleaning non-glare LCDs], & well, Sharpies really are permanent. Laser pointers are cheaper [$1] but annoying, & they're not persistent -- you can draw however many lines [w/w/out arrows] with Presentation Pointer [or ZoomIt], & they'll stay there until you clear them, so you can do far more than show someone what you're looking at right then, right there. [BTW, from time to time Meritline sells a keychain light with 1 laser, 1 white LED, & 1 ultraviolet LED for ~$1 on sale -- that ultraviolet LED is Great to check yellow ink when you print a printer check pattern. ;-) ]

With ref to my own post (#3) above

@ DEVELOPER Small flaw – missing string

I found a solution to fix the missing string.

Follow the 6 very easy steps listed below:

1) Go to the installation directory

2) In the "Language" subfolder locate the "English.lng" file

3) Open "Notepad" and drag and drop the "English.lng" file on it

4) Locate the string "4294967295=&Decrease diameter:"

5) Modify it to: "4294967295=" (in other words delete the "&Decrease diameter:" part)

6) Exit Notepad and MAKE SURE to SAVE before you exit


Now if you launch the program and click the "Advanced" button in the "Change Circle Size via Hotkey" dialog you will see two fields: "Increase Hotkey:" and "Decrease Hotkey:"

(before this modifications both fields were called “Decrease Hotkey”)

download and install went fine, but I can't seem to be able to register--says it's a trial version. any help would be appreciated.

Dudes....
If you don't trust the developer or think that this tool is actually a Keystroke logger (but as far as I can see I can tell you that IT'S NOT!!), to settle things once and for all why not install KEY SCRAMBLER while using it?

http://www.qfxsoftware.com/

As for this GAOTD I believe it's a great alternative to Mousepose for MAC: so don't be fooled by its current low GAOTD user rating.

A must have tool for those involved in demos at tradeshows, presentations and trainings....great app for Internet Marketers, teachers and IT Trainers (so definitely not suitable for anyone here...LOL!!)

THUMBS UP from me!!


BEST FREEWARE ALTERNATIVES:

- PEN ATTENTION (see comment above)
- POINTINGSTICK
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pointingstick/



Cheers from Italy!!

Giovanni


P.S. Hey dudes...wouldn't it be fairer to rate SW here according to their FEATURES rather than their usefulness??

This program has capability to be remotely accessed by a third party and can read the previous session buffers stored in the temp files and therefore is e security risk.
Uninstalled and cleaned the registry.

@17 Fubar, find yourself a good cutter; locate the networkcable (usually at the back of your PC). Apply just a little force and clip... all your troubles are gone... Really allow block whatever, the program does NOT communicate home on a regular basis like even Windows standard does! Or any other programm checking for a newer version (gotd's in particular I might add.) What's you feeling about the activate.exe people here click without even knowing what this acutally does?

May I remind you all that: General conditions: Please note that the software you download and install during the Giveaway period comes with the following important limitations: 1) No free technical support; 2) No free upgrades to future versions; 3) Strictly personal usage. Does not apply according to their own EULA (embedded in the program's setup) So commercial use is allowed by all means. As to portable, Works fine get yourself a good VM thinapp machine... or learn Dutch

#2, ojoj, get better security software before claiming no communications. Here are some of my various security-related settings and logs for Presentation Pointer: allowed actions, blocked HTTP, necessary to interpret following (rule name is "Allow", but setting is Block), various security log entries collected, oldest at bottom, "modification" is generally just a read access.

Does anyone know if this works with PowePoint?

I hold presentations quite often, and in this connection I have used the small and portble program Zoomit from Windows Sysinternals (bought by Microsoft. This is very good. But after using Presentation Pointer for halv an hour, I would say that this is even better - an extremely useful help during presentations. The visual presentation of mouse clicks is very instructive!
Contrary to # 8 Trucker, I find this program easy to use, and I can hear no unpleasant sound.
Unfortunately, my employer prevents me from installing programs on my computer, and therefore I would really have appreciated a portable version of the program.
A couple of suggestions: 1) Make the default spotlight radius bigger. 2) Regarding opacity and colour: Don't make the default picture that dark, and make it easier to see what is darkened. However, for the user it is easy to change these options.
Thank you very much, and keep up the good work!

In my job I do lots of software training simulations / demonstrations, delivered via web-based training, using Adobe Captivate. I frequently have to add effects in Captivate to draw attention to a screen area. I did a test run training sim with Presentation Pointer and it works just fine - toggle On to draw attention where I need it then toggle Off to continue. Everything is captured. This will reduce development time and enhance the finished product. The Publisher has some other tools that may be useful to me and I intend to purchase after using the Trial. Thanks to GOTD and the Publisher.

You can also take a look at the freeware PenAttention: it comes with a portable version, along with versions for tablet and non-tablet PCs (Both with x32 and x64 binaries)...


Cheers!

Have seen something like todays program in both Lynda.com and Total Training´s videos. Although I do not know if they are using the same program. But if firms who makes teaching material profesionally thinks some kind if teckonology is good enough for them, then it´s also good enough for me.


Will look forward to try it out for my self.

It is a suspicious little program. It is flagged as not having a digital signature (first program I ever ran that gave that flag). It is also flagged as a keylogger. Of course you should expect this because it *has* to hook into the keyboard stream to intercept your keystrokes.

It does ask to connect to the internet though, and I don't know why. Giving them the benefit of the doubt it could be for updates.

You don't need to allow it to connect to the internet to activate it.

I don't have the problem where it displays "Decrease Hotkey" twice.

Nice little program for presentations.

This is an interesting presentation utility. Unlike Microsoft Sysinternals ZoomIt, it can draw on a "live" screen. It has many features and options. But the way it draws effects is both its strength and weakness. It's just drawing on an overlay, it doesn't know anything about what's on the screen or what the application is doing. For example, if you have it set to visually animate left and right mouse clicks, it doesn't know if the application accepted the click. Also, say it's a browser, and you clicked on a button or link. The browser may have loaded a new page, but the click animation will still be running at the position it was at on the previous page.

The text animation is a little strange. Since it doesn't know what the application is doing, it typically shows just one letter at a time, or if you type fast, two or three letters joined with "+". It also shows lowercase letters as uppercase, true uppercase are preceded by Shift.

Since I don't need this for presentations, I was hoping that it might be useful for video screen recording apps which don't have these features (many have a few similar features), but the disconnect with the application on the screen limits its value. Even so, it's an interesting presentation utility, I'm sure that people will find uses for it.

The install was clean. Of course it requires access to your keyboard, but only while it's running. It tries to connect to the Internet, I didn't check why, I routinely block applications which don't require Internet access, especially if they have access to the keyboard.

The default keyboard shortcuts were not well-chosen, and I doubt that it checks for in-use shortcuts like it should. I always add more modifiers in an attempt to reduce conflicts.

There’s no game giveaway today, but there is one tomorrow. In the meantime there has been several more games posted by myself, Chazzo, Delenn and Idunno in the freeware project over in the forums. These include Holdover an excellent puzzle platformer with Anime elements , Isocraft a Minecraft like game though in its early stages of development and isometric as opposed to 3D, there’s a Lego designer modelling tool that all those budding builders will love (the kids and dads in particular will love this one) called Lego Digital Designer. You’ll also find an arkanoid based on the children’s cartoon series Ben 10 called Blockade Blitz and 1916: The War you Never Knew, a really cool First Person horror survival game (it made me jump). Then there’s a retro R.P.G from the Ultima series called Ultima IV :Quest of the Avatar, a pet simulation game called Amju Pet Zoo that the younger kids will love. There’s also a platform action shmup called Action Cyborg (strictly for the adults) and finally one of those games you can dip into for a few minutes of stress management called Jaywalker: Take Back the Streets, an action game where you have to make cars swerve and crash without being hit yourself.

This type of software is only usable in preschool.

- It's a terrible noise which can be connected, for those who still have their hearing intact.
- If you do not have tinnitus before using the program, so you have it after you've used the program.


- GUI is on XP stage where there is a clear pixel edge.
- There should be a smoother transition as the user can adjust.

- Being able to draw directly on the screen or a moving video is not usable since it requires a lot of preparation and a quick hand to sign during the presentation.
- It's faster, easier and more accurate to make such visible markings when you build martial for presentation.

All in all, a program which has a long road ahead of them, if it should present itself in with people who have presentations that require a special tool that can help the user in his presentation. This program makes working with the presentations more complicated, which is not optimal and therefore worthless.

I prefer to add effects and other things during the actual construction of presentation. If I get a feeling that the audience needs extra emphasis or they like to ask questions along the way, so I would rather use a good laser pointer.

It may key log. But if it works, it should be helpful for the training videos I produce, Prevent it from "Phoning Home" with a decent firewall like Zone Alarm. Duh.

I have ran spysweeper and norton scan and they both found nothing else. I believe GoldGingko will not do this.

From their Site

Display Keystrokes

With the Keystrokes function of Presentation Pointer you can display large characters on the screen for whichever keys you press (including modifier keys such as Shift, Alt, Control, and Windows). Using Keystrokes as you manually type out the various controlling key operations when demonstrating software, your audience will know exactly which keys you've pressed.

The options in the Keystrokes page control if and how keyboard usage is being visualized on screen.


So, I would say it is not a key logger...

looks interesting will give it a go...

@dp331 Perhaps you haven't tried it yet. During the presentation (default keystroke to start: F8), you can display your keystrokes (default toggle key: F10).
Here's a screenshot for you: http://snpr.cm/KFItJH.png

Thanks,

Kelvin Zhang

@ DEVELOPER

Small flaw - missing string:

In Advanced

Change Circle Size via Hotkey

Decrease Hotkey:
Decrease Hotkey:

Both fields are called "Decrease Hotkey" while one of them should be called "Increase Hotkey".

At first I thought that this could be fixed by editing the "English.lng" file but it appears that the corresponding string is really missing.

Beside this minor issue the program seems to work just fine!

Thanks to you and to the GOTD team

@ All, program does NOT sent any info wahtsoever, even manual activation went ok without being connected.

Looks Good, But... Is this a Keystroke logger? and info sent to where?
"It also displays your keystrokes in an overlay at the bottom of the screen "
Maybe Goldgingko will let us know before it saves our keystrokes?

Thanks,
dp331