At last week’s The Next Web Conference, I was part of the 4-headed jury that evaluated all presenting startups and ultimately decided My Name Is E should be awarded the top prize. It was an extremely close call, since we ended up having to decide between the young Dutch company and a startup that built a simply amazing web application you’re really going to want to check out. The tool I’m referring to is called Prezi, and it allows you to create amazing presentations on the web.
If you think you’ve heard that too many times, don’t stop reading just yet, because this one is just plain awesome. It’s an entirely Flash-based app that lets you break away from the slide-by-slide approach of most presentations. Instead, it allows you to create non-linear presentations where you can zoom in and out of a visual map containing words, links, images, videos, etc. This is similar to pptPlex, a Microsoft Office Labs project that aims to bring that type of functionality to PowerPoint.
It’s really no use explaining how presentations come out without seeing it for yourself, so it pains me that there’s currently no way to embed the examples that are showcased on the Prezi website. Instead, you will need to jump to examples in another tab or window, but please do it: good examples are ‘AIESEC’ and ‘Technical Investigation ICYA’.
It takes a while to get used to the way Prezi lets you create presentations, although the interface is fairly intuitive once you’ve grown accustomed to using the ‘Zebra’. There are a number of tutorial videos to assist you in creating your first Prezi presentations.
To get started, you can use the free version which brands every presentation with a Prezi logo, offers 100 MB of file storage, comes with an offline player but without the ability to make presentations private. For €39 a year, you get all that but 5x the amount of storage space and the option not to have your presentations made public. A third ‘Pro’ version costs you €119 per year but features a cool desktop application you can use to create and edit Prezi presentations offline. Besides offering paid versions of the software, Prezi also has other revenue streams, like selling DVDs and offering branding services.
Try it out and let us know how your presentations come out!
Amazing for a web application, however i find it a bit clumsy when trying to create a presentation
The concept is indeed very cool. But I think building slides takes too much time (they should implement a “slide template” feature to quickly build new “slides”, just like PowerPoint). The editor takes some time to get used to, and is missing some basic functionality (or I couldn’t find it) like: multi level bullet points, spell check etc.
No no no If you don’t believe me check out http://prezi.com/51221/ from never heard of it to eight hours later. Its not just a web application either!
Is it just me or did anybody else get a LittleBigPlanet feeling over the video presentation.
I had the same feeling
very cool output but steep learning curve.
I tried this out last week and must say it is really cool. The interface is a little confusing at first but it really doesn’t take long to get used to it, once you doit is really easy to use. I think I will use this for my presentation at Next09 for mloovi.com
great idea indeed. but I guess in 1/2 year that will be an old crap
No no no If you don’t believe me check out http://prezi.com/51221/ from never heard of it to eight hours later. Its not just a web application either! I have replaced Powerpoint for my lectures
Quite an interesting idea and it’s nice to see an attempt at creating a different kind of user experience / interface. Although I’d agree the learning curve is a bit steep.
Reminds me of http://www.formatpixel.com for online presentations which has been kicking around for a couple of years now.
I think templates and some familiar elements like powerpoint’s outline feature will make prezi much easier to get started with.
Although not the quickest way- you can embed Prezi’s: http://getsatis..._to_embed_prezi
I don’like this tool, building slides takes too much time
Building slides does take a bit long. But not because of the interface. I’d venture to say the first time one tries powerpoint, it takes a much longer time. Because there are so MANY features.
Prezi is simple. And any added time you take in creating your slides, I think, is due to the wonderful new way of thinking non-linearly about a presentation.
Very cool, I’ll have to try it out. Let’s hope people who use it remember not to make the presentation so cool that it outshines the content or the message the presentation is supposed to deliver.
Prezi does take a little time to get used to. Going from a linear format in PowerPoint/Keynote to a non-linear format in Prezi requires you to re-think the way you layout your presentation. However, it also allows you to do things that aren’t possible (or at least not easy) in other tools. For example, I build detailed (and huge) process flowcharts as part of my deliverables to my clients – displaying these flows is always problematic and usually means printing them out. Put them in the presentation? Forget it. PowerPoint just can’t handle a 200″ wide flowchart such that the text is actually legible. BUT – with Prezi, I stick the flowcharts right in the presentation and zoom in on them as questions arise.
Once you are used to the Prezi “mind-set”, it’s pretty easy to use. I created this mini-demo of a piece of software we created in less than a day:
http://prezi.com/35272/view/
Kevin, the presentation you linked to seems to be access restricted.
Try again – I forgot to share it (still learning Prezi, I guess!)
I would love to just buy the whole company, stick them in a cellar somewhere, and just keep the software for my own presentations.
That is also the one worry i have: if you have seen 20 Prezi presentations will the effects become as boring as all the other effects in Powerpoint and Keynote?
Besides that, great product!
I just saw this service the other day. One of the folks I used to work with did a ‘Resume’ presentation. Really cool personal resume marketing presentation.
Check it out:
http://prezi.com/28848/view/
That is pretty cool. I don’t have a job to offer the guy, but I watched the whole thing
Wicked cool. You’ve gotta check out the demos at the main site to really see all it can do. It’s not just about zooming around… there’s a mindmap and you can zoom on things that are actually moving video… PDF’s, images… very cool stuff. Signed up, anxious to create something with it.
I like the free license for getting a taste – and the other price points are not outrageous.
Thanks for letting us know about this – I may choose it over Camtasia if I can work with it to do what I need.
Prezi is a great idea well executed. Kudos!
Zoomable User Interfaces (ZUI) finally seem to go mainstream. If you’re looking for a tool that helps you build great ZUI experiences in Flash then you should check out the open source OpenZoom SDK.
If you’d like to discuss everything ZUI, join our community on http://grou.ps/zooming/
–Daniel
Good service i ‘ll use it to impress my people.
Speaking of conference calls, I really like this site: MeetingSummary.com. They provide integrated telephone/web conference with machine-transcription to the audio (with awesome accuracy).
The benefit is clear: meeting minutes/to-do’s are easily shared among team members. Also if you want to remember some awesome points that was discussed, just do a search. They provide two-way synchronized audio+text play.
Check them out.
Hi, Eric, MeetingSummary.com is also called nexiwave.com. I signed up a couple of weeks ago at a conference event. Pretty decent web+telephone conference service. I love their transcription and audio bookmarks features. I have been using them for my team meetings.
For anyone who wants to sign up, the promo code I used was: MoMIT. It should still work. Also be warned, use firefox with them;).
anybody notice that their intro “prezi” uses a video to get the point across? not a good way to eat one’s own dog food.
This is a great program. I also tried My Nams is E, and Prezi should have won the award. It is much farther along than E. Prezi even has excellent help, which is something the average startup is not good with.
I’m already getting dizzy just from watching that video. Sitting in an hour long presentation with those zoom and pan effects will annoy the crap outta me.
Same here, I still feel nauseated. And that video was only one minute long.
Reminds me of when wysiwyg publishing was getting popular and everyone had 24 fonts on a page.
Just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should.
I liked Prezi….back when it was called Keynote. Keynote can be used in a non-linear manner. Granted Prezi has a few cool ideas but most could easily be done in Keynote as well. Yawn.
Too bad it’s done in Flash – non starter.
It looks a little like amap.org.uk, but I guess I have to try out first…
Actually there’re so many way to creat a online presentation. We can choose articulate, pointecast, wondershare or ispring ppt2flash converter. Why Prezi? I always use some powerpoint addin tools such as wondershare ppt2flash. I like the handy tools
Use Prezi because it changes the basic orientation from pages to space.
Quite an interesting idea and it’s nice to see an attempt at creating a different kind of user experience.
yeah. i liked the demo, but i had a question about the terms of service and attempted to send them an email. i couldn’t find a support address, so i tried copyright@prezi.com (which is supposed to be for DMCA and other copyright abuse reporting.) sadly, they’ve turned off that mail alias and messages to it just bounce.
so… sadly… without being able to clarify my questions about the terms of service, and having the copyright abuse reporting alias turned off, i won’t be able to use it.
still.. this is an easy thing to fix and probably an oversight. it’s not _that_ big of a deal that a startup missed something in the purely administrivia side of the house. but.. in the window that prezi had my attention, it turned out to be unusable due to a mildly confusing ToS and the inability to clarify it.
i hope they get this fixed so the next person with the same concerns i have doesn’t walk away disappointed.
assuming something shinier doesn’t come my way the next time i start a project, i’ll probably loop back around and see if the ToS is clearer or if questions about it show up in the known issues page.
Well, echoing concerns somewhat like the last poster regarding the new “Prezi” presentation tool. Here’s a comment sent to them (on the Prezi.com blog) which I don’t know they will publish – but should be because I’m not the only one with the concerns brought to their aware (mainly surrounding user content right and security).
Submitted to Prezi Blog Sept. 2009:
“I’ve been looking into Prezi for our group but there’s a few real obstacles before we (or others here in the US) could adopt it. Thought I would share it with you.
1) The fact that you default ALL presentations – except those on the ENJOY plan to “public” – is crippling. If you are going to gain audience traction by intending to “retain” the work people create for your own “showcase”, then at the least you should allow TRIAL users to fully make private as well as DELETE their presentations. This way they have the opportunity to “show” the concept in action to their peers without the most obvious concern that “their company or organization data” is publicly displayed without the consent of ALL stakeholders.
2) Security and privacy is a concern because in many organizations- multiple people need to “approve” use of a new application – which usually will not happen in less than 30 days. Therefore, it is impossible for those of us to actually endorse your app as a viable solution- because we have no way to ensure the rest of our team of security of the presentation. I believe in the hundreds of reviews written about your app – the ability to set prezi’s to “private” and security overall has been a REPETITIVE concern.
3) Your help manual gives absolutely NO specification on “how to DELETE your prezi” entirely off your servers. While “delete” appears to be an option on the “download desktop version” (which comes at a hefty fee) — still no way to delete off your servers. Which many have found to be a bit “Orwellian” of a tactic. Even YouTube allows you to delete your own content. Why not prezi?
I am writing this not to be critical – but because I am disappointed that for the above reasons- I am unable to utilize what otherwise appears to be a very progressive alternative to the usual “ppt” presentation style.
I seriously suggest loosening up on your policy with regards to ability to delete, make private, regardless of pricing level. Again, at the very least – give trial users the 30 days of full functionality and make it CLEAR that if they do not remove their prezi’s before the trial date- then they WILL be perpetually part of the public timeline.
Hope this feedback helps.
@mg Just jump to http://www.ahead.com, then all your worries are out the way.
Free version: Private spaces, 3GB storage, delete space (is apparently just around the corner according to a blog comment from their COO), and much better layout options. Easy choice for me