Heed these four tips when preparing a PowerPoint presentation: 1.  Keep slides clutter-free. 2.  Use one image to sell each idea. 3.  Follow the same color schemes, fonts and logos as your company’s website or brochures. 4.  Give the audience a break to prolong attention spans.

Trying to share a presentation with a broader audience or get the word out about a new company focus? Three free online tools for putting slideshows and videos online:

Innovative software is helping to make dull PowerPoint presentations a thing of the past. Here are three tools to keep handy when you’re creating slides:

Avoid “death by PowerPoint” by stealing presentation tips from the charismatic Apple CEO, Steve Jobs. Carmine Gallo, communications coach and author of The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, points out that Jobs uses presentation software as a tool to visually complement his stories.

To help an audience tune in to your PowerPoint presentation instead of zoning out, stick to these four cardinal rules from communications coach Carmine Gallo when creating a presentation: 1.Stick to three or four themes. 2.Type should be no smaller than 30 points. 3. Use charts sparingly. 4. Divide the number of minutes you’re allotted to speak by two—that’s how many slides you should have.

Help a boss avoid “death by PowerPoint” by stealing presentation tips from the famously charismatic CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs. Jobs is a gifted speaker, not necessarily because he was born with talent, but because he sticks to several strategies. Jobs uses presentation software as a tool to visually complement his stories.

“It’s one thing to keep a crowd engaged for two minutes, but two hours—or more—requires a different set of techniques,” says communications coach Carmine Gallo in BusinessWeek. So if you’re preparing a PowerPoint presentation, remember Gallo’s rules for keeping an audience captivated:

The massive new “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009” signed by President Obama on Feb. 17 is bursting at the seams with tax breaks designed to help both individuals and small businesses. Here’s a roundup of 14 tax strategies under the new law.