Neil Hillman

The Swiss might have been late to the table when it came to giving women the vote, (1971), but they are certainly no strangers to democracy, holding national referendums on just about every conceivable decision.

So it should come as no great surprise, I guess, that a new Swiss political party calling itself the Anti-PowerPoint Party, is proposing a national referendum to have Microsoft’s presentation software PowerPoint banned from Switzerland!

It is estimated that 11 percent of Swiss people have to attend a PowerPoint presentation, (with a minimum of 10 other people), at least twice a week, at a cost to the country of 2.1 billion Swiss Francs, (about $2.5 billion), of economic loss each year. They also add that 85 percent of people find these presentations demotivating.

But what may be even more surprising than those figures is that the Anti-PowerPoint Party (APPP), who see themselves as advocates of approximately 250 Million people worldwide, only need to collect 100,000 signatures in order to hold a national referendum on banning PowerPoint and other similar presentation software in Switzerland!

Where do I sign?…

Microsoft announced today that it has bought Skype for a staggering $8 billion, making it the biggest acquisition in the company’s 36-year history. But despite 124m connected users a month, Skype doesn’t actually make a profit. So why has Microsoft paid $8 billion for a company that last year make a loss of $1 million?

Microsoft are playing up the integration into devices like Xbox and Kinect, Windows Phone, and connect with Lync, Outlook, Xbox Live and other communities. Some believe it’s for simply for the global customer user base.

But I personally think it’s to their answer to iPhone’s FaceTime. I think they foresee a future, a year or two from now, when 25% of the market are walking around having face-to-face conversations with their iPhones, while the rest of their disgruntled users look on in jealousy, and slowly start to succumb to Apple.