Many thanks to Jessica Morgan, for telling me about her company's new product through email. The Impatica Showmate recently won the 2007 CTIA's Most Innovative Wireless Device Award.

When you look at the product page, maybe you'll understand why the Showmate earned the accolade. The concept is so simple that, to use a cliché, you'll wonder why you didn't think of it yourself. Just plug in the Impatica Showmate into a projector's VGA port. And your smartphone or PDA will send the powerpoint presentation wirelessly through Bluetooth.

This means it's possible to walk around the room while presenting, while having full control over the advancement of the slides. And the mobile becomes a cheat sheet of sorts, since users will be able to "View the titles, text or presentation notes on the handheld while projecting."

An unfortunate side-effect is that the Showmate only reads .PPTs converted into a proprietary format. Which probably means that you won't be able to make changes through Office Mobile on your Windows Mobile device if you suddenly spot a misspelling or wrong figure. A nitpick actually, since your presentation should be as good as gold before you head over to the venue.

The whole system works on Blackberries (software version 3.8 or later), Sony Ericssons (Java Platform 5 or higher), and Windows Mobile (2003 edition or later). Bluetooth is of course a must, and the desktop software only runs on Windows PCs.

Symbian, Palm OS, and Motorola Linux support, where art thou?