[This](http://mprnotes.wordpress.com/2009/08/14/changing-background-image-of-latex-beamer/) post shows how one can change the background image in a Beamer presentation: The above method spans the image to cover the entire page size. To include a smaller image and center it, do [this](http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/26458/beamer-background-image-centered): (I asked this question on the [Tex.SX](http://tex.stackexchange.com/) since `\hspace{4.5cm}` works but `\vspace{4.5cm}` did not.)
I have to do a poster presentation, and I prefer to do it in LaTeX (as opposed to MS Powerpoint, Adobe InDesign/Pagemaker or [Scribus](http://www.scribus.net/)) because I don’t want to worry about formatting and I have existing code from LaTeX Beamer presentations and other tex files. [beamerposter](http://www-i6.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/~dreuw/latexbeamerposter.php) is probably the easiest after googling. To get started, read more
In powerpoint or keynote, you can easily insert a background image in your slides. In Beamer, this can be done with little effort. I found instructions here. Just put the following in the preamble: \usebackgroundtemplate{ \includegraphics{Path to image} }
Check out the movie15 package for including multimedia inside in Beamer slides. Some references are here, here, and here. Note that movies are currently playable in only Adobe Reader/Acrobat. Mac’s Preview and other pdf readers currently do not support it. However, I know hope support will be given in the near future.
Been wanting to do an interactive/animated plot like the one here for a while (go to the Taylor example). Sage looks like a good program to generate animated graphics, but R is my primary language of choice as a statistician. I don’t want to learn another language just for a single feature (although the other read more
