It’s less of a stand-alone service and more of an extension of SlideShare’s existing features–in fact, anyone can turn public SlideShare presentations created by other people into a Zipcast. The best thing about is how, well, zippy it is.

I’m used to gritting my teeth when it comes time to join a Web conferencing–they can take minutes to load, are occasionally fussy about arcane issues like my Java setup, and sometimes decide they don’t like my Web browser. SlideShare’s service, which uses a combination of HTML5 and Flash, is compatible with all modern browsers and is fast and frustration-free for both the presenter and presentees. (“Modern browsers,” incidentally, doesn’t include Internet Explorer 6.) You can launch a conferencing session in your browser with a few clicks, and it’s live immediately–no plug-ins (other than Flash) required.

The service permits you to allow an unlimited number of attendees into your Web conference; they see your show as you step through the slides and can discuss it in a chat window. You can broadcast a video feed from your Webcam, and there’s a conference line option for dial-in audio.

Zipcast is by no means a full-on replacement for services such as WebEx, GoToMeeting, and Microsoft’s Live Meeting: It doesn’t have full-blown features for inviting attendees (although you can simply paste your Zipcast meeting URL into any scheduler) and doesn’t let you share your computer’s screen, for example. Rather than giving you a unique URL for each conference, it provides you with a single one (such as slideshare.net/technologizer/meeting) where all your conferences take place.

If all you want to do is step folks through a presentation and discuss it, Zipcast gets the job done with a minimum of fuss. But as a presenter who likes to control the flow of a show and build up suspense, I do wish that it were possible to turn off the feature that lets attendees page ahead through your presentation at will. (Then again, I guess it’s better if attendees sneak a peek at later slides than that they abandon my presentation entirely.)

Unlike most Web conferencing services, Zipcast has an offering for freebie lovers. If you don’t want to password-protect your conference and don’t mind ads, you can use it for free, and conference in as many people as you want. By subscribing to any of SlideShare’s for-pay tiers (which start at $19 a month) you can protect shows from prying eyes and ditch the ads.

If you really don’t care who sees your Zipcast–or even actively want random interested folks to discover it and join in–you can make it public. That makes it show up in a Facebook-like public feed of activity on the Zipcast homepage, alerting the world to your conference.

Zipcast is neat. The next time I need to give a presentation over the Web, I’ll be inclined to give it a whirl–and if someone invites me to a Zipcast, I won’t gird myself for potential technical trouble in way I usually do when attending Web meetings.

End result: None of the aforementioned Web-based PowerPoint rivals are anywhere near as good as PowerPoint. I can’t imagine anyone who’s very serious about presentations using any of them full-time.

But what if replicating PowerPoint wasn’t really the idea? Enter SlideRocket, a Web-based presentation service that provides many (though not all) of PowerPoint’s core tools but really focuses on collaborative, Web-based communications that go beyond anything offered by Microsoft. (For instance, it has a media manager that lets a company update images across all the presentations in all its presentations instantly–for instance, if its logo changes.)

SlideRocket does its thing using an interface built in Flash, which lets it deliver an exceptionally rich interface and set of features. It’s one of the slickest, most ambitious productivity apps you’ll ever see in your browser–and it’s easy to learn and use even though its look and feel owe little to PowerPoint. It’s releasing a new version today that takes the whole service in an even more interesting, less PowerPoint-esque direction.

As before, you can deliver presentations to people who are gathered in a conference room (and don’t need to be online to do so–you can output standalone files that work on a Windows or Mac). You can also broadcast shows across the Web to disparate locations. And the new version boosts features for creating presentations that other people will consume on their own schedule–and not just consume, but interact with.

You can now embed polls (in a variety of formats) and forms in a presentation, letting you collect feedback from the folks who view the show. (SlideRocket thinks this will be particularly useful for presentations meant for external audiences, such as sales-related ones.)

You can also invite remote viewers to add comments and questions as they watch:

And a revised dashboard lets you check out the details on viewership of your shows, as well as data from polls, forms, and comments:

You can watch SlideRocket’s own SlideRocket presentation on the new features here.

Unlike most of its online competition, SlideRocket’s strategy is to replace PowerPoint rather than to complement it, and to offer something so useful that companies will pay meaningful money for it. It also expects that you’ll like it so much you’ll use it instead of whatever presentation tool came with the office suite you use for other tasks. (It makes doing so easier via features such as integration with Google Apps and the ability to import and export PowerPoint files.)

True, there is a free Lite version that offers basic features and five-user capability. But it doesn’t offer fancier stuff like polls, analytics, and the ability to present offline, makes you agree that you’ll use it only for non-commercial use, and does a sales pitch for the upgrade whenever you click on a feature that’s not in the free version. The full-featured up-to-25-users version, SlideRocket Pro, costs $24 per user per month (or $240 a year), and there’s an Enterprise version with more storage and support for unlimited users.

As the owner of a very small business who doesn’t do all that many presentations but wants the ones I do to be really good, I’d love to see a paid version of SlideRocket that’s less stripped-down than Lite but a bit less expensive than the $240/year Pro. (Google’s free version of Google Apps doesn’t cut out any features, and even the paid one is$50 per user per year for everything.) Even so, I’m impressed with the service in general and this update–they’re a striking rebuttal to the theory that Web-based productivity tools are inherently crude and underpowered compared to their desktop predecessors.

I’m one of the judges for a category for presentations created with Acrobat 9–Adobe is the sponsor of the whole contest this year–along with Scott Belsky of Behance and Julie Hansen of The Business Insider. And three presentations I put together are on Slideshare. The contest is running through September 8th–check out the entries and spread the word!

The “Targus for Mac” line includes mice, a USB hub, a presentation remote, a file-sharing cable, a cooling pad, and privacy screens. For the most part, their Mac-isness doesn’t relate to functionality, and Mac users already have access to products in all those categories which are fully Mac-compatible. But Targus has done a nice job of styling the products with a look that’s pleasingly complimentary to MacBooks and MacBook Pros without simply being an unimaginative knockoff of Apple’s own aesthetic.

The mice, USB, remote, and cooling pad all combine light gray and dark gray plastics that feel different to the touch, and which are pretty classy by any standards–here are images of the first three products:

One reason why companies are coming back to the Mac is the reputation of Mac owners as being willing to pay more for cool stuff than their Windows-using brethren–both Targus and Seagate mentioned that to me as a factor in their thinking. So none of these products are cheapies, but they’ve got upscale features, too: The mice, for instance, have a four-way scrollpad that sits under your fingertip, and the USB hub has a cord that wraps snugly around the hub when not in use. (Actually, the hub design is so clever and practical I might buy it for use with a Windows laptop.)

Prices are as follows:

–Bluetooth mouse: $70 (same as Apple’s Bluetooth Mighty Mouse, which only has up-and-down scrolling)
–RF wireless mouse: $50 (same as Apple’s wired Mighty Mouse; I was surprised to see Targus do an RF mouse, since all Mac laptops have Bluetooth, but it is cheaper, and the company told me that some users are intimidated by Bluetooth. The RF dongle is tiny, too–a nub you can leave plugged into the USB port)
–USB hub: $29
–Presenter: $80 (it works with both PowerPoint and Keynote, natch)
–File transfer cable: $50 (it includes built-in software for both Windows-to-Mac transfers and Mac-to-Mac ones)
–Cooling pad: $50 (Targus calls it a Chill Mat)
–Privacy filters: $50

The problem with designing accessories to look good with Mac portables is that Apple could change its portable designs on you–and there are plausible rumors that Apple may overhaul its laptop line real soon now. I asked Targus’s Al Giazzon about that, and he said he felt reasonably comfortable that Apple wouldn’t go in a design direction that rendered the new Targus products a bad match. I suspect he’s right, since it seems intuitively likely that Apple will do more aluminum cases that’ll match Targus’s gray products nicely.

Oh, and one final note: The Targus for Mac line won’t be in Apple Stores for the time being; it will, however, be stocked at Best Buy.

]]> http://technologizer.com/2008/10/01/new-targus-accessories-cater-to-mac-users/feed/ 2 Harry McCracken targus-logo targus-mouse targus-usb targus-presenter