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presentations posts

Filed under: Internet, Office, Adobe, Beta, Web

Adobe launches online presentations app (web based PowerPoint)

Acrobat Presentations
When Adobe launched its online office suite at Acrobat.com last year the site was a bit on the anemic side. Sure, it featured the slick Flash-based Buzzword word processor. But it lacked a good spreadsheet or presentations application. There's still no spreadsheet app in sight, but today Adobe added an attractive tool for viewing and editing presentations to Acrobat Labs.

Like Buzzword, Acrobat Presentations is built on Flash. It features the smooth and attractive animations you'd expect from a Flash-based application. But it's also fairly intuitive to use. At the top of the screen are a series of icons which expand into toolbars to give you access to the features you need at any given moment. The left side of the screen shows thumbnails for each slide, while the slide itself hangs out in the center for your viewing, creating, or editing pleasure. Or you can hit the Play Slideshow button in the bottom right corner if you just want to sit back and enjoy the show.

Because the application is built on Flash, the right-click button on your mouse is useless which MS Office addicts might find frustrating at first. But Acrobat Presentations does give you most of the tools you'd expect from a presentation application, plus online collaboration tools. You can share your presentations with other users and let them edit your files.

[via VentureBeat]

Filed under: Internet, Office, Web services, web 2.0

Zoho Show now supports PPT export, Picasa import

Zoho Show
Those folks at Zoho just don't quit, do they? Last year the company rolled out a major redesign of its powerful, web-based PowerPoint clone. And now Zoho Show 2.0 has 8 new features, some more exciting than others.
  1. Export to PPT, PPS, PDF, and ODP. You've been able to export files as HTML for a while, but the addition of PowerPoint and PDF export brings Zoho Show a bit closer to being a true PowerPoint replacement
  2. You can now import images from Picasa (Zoho Show already supported Flickr importing)
  3. Support for up to 50 undo/redo actions
  4. Support for 9 new languages: Chinese, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Portguese, Spanish, and Swedish.
  5. Create contact groups for sharing your presentations with
  6. Copy and paste slides from one presentation to another
  7. Enhanced remote presentation user inteface
  8. Advanced options for embedding presentations on a web site
You can see a demo presentation highlighting the new features after the jump.

[via Mashable]

Read more →

Filed under: Internet, Productivity, Web services, Google, web 2.0

Google Docs gets even more features

Google DocsEarlier this month, Google Docs added a bundle of new features to kick off 2008. Apparently the feedback the team got was good, and they've been busy adding even more features that people have been requesting to the mix.

And today, some very in-demand features have gone live on Google Docs. Most of the new goodies are for presentations - much like the last update.

You now have the option of saving your Google presentations as PDF files, as well as being able to do PDF-style printing - allowing you to choose up to 12 slides to appear per page. And, if you like peppering your presentations with visual flair, some basic drawing tools and vector shapes have been added to give them that extra impact.

Unfortunately, the option to save as a PPT file is still not an option, but hopefully we'll see something of the sort in the near future.

[via Google Blogoscoped]

Filed under: Internet, Office, web 2.0

Zoho updates its online PowerPoint clone


Online office suite Zoho has rolled out Zoho Show 2.0. Probably our favorite part of that sentence is the fact that Show and 2.0 rhyme. Try saying it out loud. Fun, isn't it?

But seriously, brings much of the power of Microsoft PowerPoint to a web based application. In fact, there are some things that you can do with Zoho Show that you can't do with PowerPoint. For example, you can embed a presentation on a web site, or invite a group of people to watch a presentation live in real time while sharing comments in a chat window.

A few of the updates in Zoho Show 2.0 include:
  • New themes
  • Clip Art
  • Zoho Meeting and Zoho Chat integration
  • Enhanced import feature
  • New user interface
[via Zoho Blogs]

Filed under: Business, Design, Developer, Internet, Office, Web services, Beta, web 2.0

Live Documents, a peek at the next online office player

Live Documents, a peek at the next online office player

We covered Live Documents, the new online office documents competition last month, that is about to make a move to steal some market share aware from Zoho, ThinkFree and Google.

Live Documents has released some screen grabs from its interface, giving a little more insight into what they are all about. The Flash based interfaces do resemble what Microsoft currently has on the market, but add the ability to collaborate. Screenshots include Presentations, Spreadsheets and Documents.

Live Documents does reference Microsoft, and Microsoft's Office applications quite a bit when talking about its own suite, and the look and feel closely resembles what MS offers, so we have to assume that they have relied heavily on Office as a starting point. Is this a bad thing? Not if you're looking to quickly build and sell the business.

We'll have to test Live Documents when it becomes readily available to see what its winning points are, and whether or not it will become a major player in the online office space.

Filed under: Design, Internet, Text, Office, Productivity, Google

Google Docs Mobile goes live

Google Docs Mobile goes liveIf you are a Google Docs user you are going to be happy to know that Google Docs Mobile was recently released. Accessing your online Google Docs has gotten easier but don't get your hopes up yet, there are some restrictions.

There were some hints in September about the new mobile service when users came across a working web address for the service. Google Docs Mobile is still in its early stages and it's far from perfect. For instance, only iPhone and Blackberry devices are officially supported. And you can only view documents. You can't edit them. You can either open spreadsheets as an HTML document or you can download an XLS version.

Presentations are said to be viewable on the iPhone. Other devices may work with the mobile version, but Google has said that the more advanced a phone's browsing capability is, the more seamlessly it will work with the Mobile Docs site. As for the interface, it's basically a stripped down version of the online site offering not much more than plain text with no formatting.

A trend that has been flowing with Google has been the development of proper mobile applications, as with Gmail, and Gmail Apps for your domain. We wonder how long it will take for a Google Docs mobile application to get off the ground?

Filed under: Office, Web services, Google

Google inches closer to online slideshows with Zenter acquisition

Gmail PPTWhy develop a new web-based tool for your arsenal when you can afford to just buy a company already working on the problem? And why stop at one, when you could buy two?

It's no secret that Google is developing and online PowerPoint clone/killer to add to its suite of online office tools. In April, the company acquired online presentation company Tonic Systems. And now the company has picked up Zenter as well.

Zenter was working on its own online slideshow application, which was in private beta before the website went dark and was replaced with a notice that "Google has acquired Zenter." Back in March, TechCrunch described Zenter as PowerPoint, with the added ability to add web images and other content to presentations.

Last week, Google added a new slideshow viewer to Gmail, allowing you to view PowerPoint email attachments online. But there's still no publicly available Google service for creating presentations.

[via CNet]

Filed under: Internet, Productivity, Web services, Social Software

SlideShare: Lovable bastard child of YouTube and Powerpoint

SlideShareRemember when Conan O'Brien used to do that "what if they made it" segment? (Maybe he still does it... I haven't watched the show in years. I'm so out of touch.) Well, here's one possible outcome of YouTube and Powerpoint hooking up: SlideShare.

SlideShare is a service that lets you upload Powerpoint or OpenOffice presentations and have them be playable on the web, via a handy navigation toolbar. (If you're using unsupported presentation software, such as Keynote, simply export the file to PPT format before uploading to SlideShare.) This way, the presentations have a permanent URL for easy sharing; no more toting around a USB key drive and hoping it works at the client's office, for example.

Why is SlideShare better than using web-based services such as S5, you might ask? Well, for one thing, it placates recalcitrant office workers who refuse to use anything other than Powerpoint. But there are other benefits as well. I already mentioned the permalinks, but here are a few more perks:
  • Files can be tagged.
  • Comments can be left by viewers.
  • Each slide has its own permanent URL for reference.
  • SlideShare is simpler and more specialized than WebEx competitors such as DimDim and TeamSlide.
What about the drawbacks and as-of-yet unimplemented features? (Surprise, SlideShare is in beta!) Here are a few:
  • Files cannot be larger than 20 MB.
  • No sharing or privacy options.
  • The original presentation file cannot be downloaded.
SlideShare says it will add support for these features in the future, however.

All in all, SlideShare looks promising. And I didn't mean to take a cheap shot at Powerpoint users, really. Let's face it, no web-based system currently has an interface that compares to Powerpoint in familiarity and ease of use.

[Via TechCrunch]

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