Twitter tells me when I have new followers (If you’re not a follower, feel free to find me: @presentations). I check them all out by hand and for most people I follow back: it’s not automatic but it’s likely. And of course, in checking out, I also poke around at people’s websites… hence a quick and dirty review of http://www.presentista.com/
presentista signup page
It’s not a long, drawn-out, or even thoughtful review: I have quite literally only been using the system for ten minutes but in many ways that’s the point of Presentista – it’s a very simple tool. It’s got some significant limitations, of course, as it’s only in beta stage yet but I must admit I liked the speed I could get going and the simplicity of the interface… I was creating something in just minutes.
For those of you who’ve not tried it yet, the signup page looks like you see here, simply asking you for your email address (twice) and the password you want to use. After that, you’re in.
Speed and simplicity. So far, so good. So really quite good indeed!
What about the downsides then?
Well, if there’s an export function I’ve not found it in the first ten minutes. And as it’s an online tool, that means it’s a non-starter for the real world so far: web connections aren’t reliable enough for me to rely on something I can’t have on my hard drive.
Another issue is that I don’t appear to have (yet) to have much functionality. For example, all the transitions have to be the same and there’s a limited combination (painfully limited) of fonts and colours etc. Without that flexibility it’s so far a non-runner for a serious presenter.
But – the email I get when I register tells me – this is only a beta test and new stuff is coming soon. If that’s really the case, then this might be something to watch for the future. It’s got a sort of ‘prezi- light’ feel to it and – as one of the reasons I dislike Prezi is to do with how clumsy it is, this might be well worth looking at again when it’s grown up a bit!
Hi there,
I have been looking at finding an alternative to Prezi – do you think this could be it?
I want to get away from the whole boring slide based presentation software options (PPT, keynote, Google Docs, SlideRocket etc).
I like the idea of a more flexible presentation, but Prezi doesn’t provide me with the stability and functionality that would allow me to use it as a research resource for students.
Does this provide that yet? understandably this will still be in beta, so i do not expect too much
Cheers,
Rhys
Hi Rhys.
Could be – but perhaps not yet. It’s only a Beta test, as you say.
Prezi is pretty limited too, I’m afraid, probably more so than (say) PPT, Keynote and the others – it just happens to be limited to different tricks. The important thing isn’t the software: it’s the message and the presenter. I’ve seen presentations with Keynote/PPT that have made me want to cheer (although I agree with your feeling typical software slides are boring!)
In short, I’d say that at the moment, this isn’t your solution – but may be in a couple of releases.