Stockholm - 2007 was an extraordinary year for former vice president Al Gore, who received the highest honors in both film and humanitarianism for his tireless efforts in creating a visually pleasing, hour-long slide-show presentation using the popular computer program Keynote.

The slide-show, which features approximately 80 full-color pictures of landforms and people, as well as a vast array of detailed line and bar graphs, proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that a successful visual presentation must utilize both an application's audio and graphic capabilities. Furthermore, Gore effectively silenced many of his critics by incorporating short videos.

"The Nobel Committee was deeply moved by Mr. Gore's passion for making a clear, concise, easy-to-watch slide-show", Professor Geir Lundestad, director of the Nobel Institute, told reporters in late October. "[The slide show] truly displayed how well-placed transitions—be they dissolves, wipes, or splits—can really tie a presentation together."

Added Lundestad: "Also, the slides with multi-image animation were cool." In February, Gore's montage of satellite images and title slides was awarded an Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and was hailed for presenting a "truly global message" with a clear beginning, middle, and end.

"I was stunned", said Phoenix resident Amy Swinton, 23, who saw the slide show twice in theaters. "It turns out that you don't always need flashy fonts or background colors to make a great multimedia presentation. Simple white text on an all black background can be very effective."

Swinton later called the slide-show extremely informative, saying that over the course of two hours she was completely convinced of the reality of Keynote's "bounce" slide-transition option.

"I think these awards will help give even more weight to Mr. Gore's ultimate message", New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote. "In our changing world, it is absolutely essential that all of us do our part to stay informed about the various eye-catching possibilities of today's slide-show software."

© The Onion
December 18, 2007

http://zonezero.com/magazine/articles/gore/