Google Unwraps Presentations
Not even a week after I reviewed Google's word processor and spreadsheet, the company launched a presentation program that gives it a full set of Web-based productivity tools. The news came out in a blog posting Monday night, followed soon after by an e-mail from Google's public-relations department. (Note to Google PR: This is information I could have used a week ago. I'm just sayin'...)
After a quick tryout, the new Presentations program looks like a solid but unpolished counterpart to the other Google Web programs. Like its siblings, it does an extraordinary job of making a Web site look and work exactly like a disk-based application: You can move and resize images and text boxes by dragging them around with the cursor, just like in Microsoft's PowerPoint, and right-clicking invokes a short menu with context-sensitive commands ("new slide," "change theme," "send to back," "send to front" and so on).
Presentations doesn't provide much design flexibility, though. You can choose from just six fonts and five slide layouts, and you can't change the background color or pattern at all except by picking from one of 15 prefab themes like "Chalkboard" or "Pink n' Pretty." You can insert your own images if they're under 2 megabytes each, but only if they come from your hard drive--you can't copy them over from an album saved on Google's own Picasa photo-sharing site. Odder yet, in my test Presentations rejected several JPEGs on the grounds that they were in an "invalid image format."
Presentations can import PowerPoint files up to 10 megabytes in size; two fairly dense marketing presentations came through with only cosmetic problems, such as an incorrectly indented line of text. It cannot, however, save your work as a PowerPoint file. Instead, it keeps everything in HTML format, which makes online sharing easy but makes offline storage slightly awkward, since saving a slide show to your desktop gets you a .zip archive of separate image and HTML files.
Have you tried Presentations yet? How's it been working out for you?
By Rob Pegoraro |
September 19, 2007; 10:29 AM ET
| Category:
The Web
Previous: Debating the Future of Music |
Next: Is Your iPod Feeling Old Today?
Posted by: kjh | September 19, 2007 11:44 AM
I just imported one of my work presentations into Google's new Presentation tool. I am fairly impressed with the transition, although some text formatting is incorrect, and images appear blurry after the upload. I can definately see this being useful in the future though!
Posted by: AJ | September 19, 2007 03:01 PM
I also just played with Google Presentations and I tried to invite a colleague to view the presentation online. I sent her the link but she was prompted for a Gmail password. If this is the case it limits the utility if all of the intended audience must have a Gmail account.
Posted by: cb | September 19, 2007 05:30 PM
While the functionality is a bit short of MS Office, the key tradeoff is the ability to collaborate with anyone, as I've already done.
Imagine a conference call/global VC with everyone simultaneously editing the presentation - very powerful, and we did it!
This is going to kill Office in a couple years.
Posted by: Russ | September 20, 2007 01:15 AM
I quite liked Presentations, but I find that it lacks basic features like an outline. Nobody in the professional sphere would ever create a presentation without an outline. Here's my blog post on it:
http://www.indezine.com/blog/2007/09/google-unveils-presentations.html
Posted by: Geetesh Bajaj | September 20, 2007 03:06 AM
Google's Blogger also regularly rejects some JPGs as invalid image format, even though they were created using Google's Picasa.
Posted by: Mike | September 20, 2007 04:41 AM
Posted by: Alona Meiller | September 20, 2007 07:33 AM
I downloaded and installed IBM's free offering, Lotus Symphony, which can be used offline. Online apps are great, but I'll be on an EDGE network in Asia in a few weeks' time, even if it worked well at those speeds, the roaming charges would be prohibitive.
Posted by: Menno Aartsen | September 21, 2007 02:45 AM
When something new comes along, it is not necessary to make broad general observations such as "no professional" would ever work without an outline. I used to know quite a few geniuses who were so automatically organised that making them do an outline would interfere with brilliant accomplishment. Unfortunately I am not so geniused yet, I abhorred outlines like Bush abhorred timelined benchmarks. As the creator of the first IBM 1403 color printed pumpkin for Halloween in 1967/68, I speak with the authority of the Great Pumpkin when I say it's alright to cut a pumpkin face too without an outline. Afterall there are artistic as well as sespedalian geniuses.
Posted by: Vox Populus Disgustus Phila PA | September 24, 2007 02:04 PM
Google's solution is good but not that suitable for corporate use. You are also relying on a good internet connection...no good when sales people want to work last minute in a cab!
My company ((TNT), has invested in a great alternative to get away from 'death by powerpoint' and help our sales team of 100 convert more new sales. It's called www.presentiafx.com and gives us control of our brand id and really nice visuals to present with. Would recommend this to any business who want to look different when presenting for new business.
Posted by: Nickgravett | October 14, 2007 06:00 AM
Post a Comment
We encourage users to analyze, comment on and even challenge washingtonpost.com's articles, blogs, reviews and multimedia features.
User reviews and comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions.
I just played with Google Presentations for a moment. I especially like that you can present the slide show on-line and invite others to watch it. Any idea if Google is looking to add desktop/application sharing a la Microsoft's Live Meeting?