Up until now I’ve scrounged around on the iTunes store, seeing what free and Lite versions of apps I could discover that had some usefulness.  This morning though I found an app that I decided to go ahead and buy.

Zentropy Pointer turns your iPod Touch or iPhone into a remote control, pointer and note tablet for Powerpoint and Keynote.

Once the app is installed on your iPod/iPhone, you need to grab the small pointer server application to run on your Mac.  Sorry PC people.  Get a Mac.  And upgrade to 10.5 – you need that for this to work.

You then simply fire up the application on the iPod/iPhone and you have control of Powerpoint or Keynote via either an existing wireless network, or by setting up a computer to computer network.  The display on the iPod shows you which slide you are on, a timer so that you know how long you’ve been yammering away, Next Slide/Previous Slide buttons and the best part, the notes for the current slide.   If you touch the screen the accelerometer controls the pointer on the main presentation screen – take a bit of getting used to but it works great.

It worked flawlessly for me with Keyote ’08, but Powerpoint 2008 doesn’t display the notes. Hopefully there is an easy fix as this looks like it could be one amazing tool – and at $0.99 how can you say no?

[Update] I emailed some sample presentations (that weren’t displaying the notes) for Powerpoint 2008 to Anthony, the developer of the Pointer app and even though he’s in the middle of traveling, this morning he mailed me a new version that works perfectly.  Amazing support for an application that cost me $0.99!