Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Google Unlocks Presentation

Google has made its Presentation tool available through Google Docs. Well, I had mixed feelings when I had a look at the same. There were certain obvious things missing and at the same time some pretty decent features present. A mixed bag of sorts!

Diskless systems are turning on the heat now and with such applications like Google Docs, Buzzword, etc we are slowly making a gradual transition to a new phase of doc keeping.

Sometimes, I do feel that Google takes its 'keeping it simple' motto a tad too seriously. Its one of the benchmarks on which their flagship product is based but then when you come down to a tool like a presentation maker you probably need to be a bit more flamboyant.. as I call it the zing, and their latest tool falls short on it.

Well, a somewhat surprising omission was that you can't add images from anywhere but your machine on the presentation slides! Did I forget to tell you that its an online tool? Errrr............. Few templates and fewer fonts make it a not so attractive option. Microsoft PowerPoint is a heavy product, and perhaps comparing all the features of such a product with Google's Presentation would be unfair, but then certain features can't be missed. A small albeit irritating glitch is that once you have created a new slide, you cannot change its layout. Oh com'on..

Anyways, the 'Share' feature is worth taking a look and yeah, Google allows you to save the presentation in a PowerPoint format. Moreover, you can also upload a PowerPoint file, though with certain size restrictions (which is obvious).

I never wrote about Buzzword, but then its one of the most fantastic tools I've come across. Its a word processor and I've not seen many better tools in this category than Buzzword.

And damn, when will Google recognize Opera as a stable browser? Google docs refuse to work, Google Reader gets a screwed up layout and God save the Blogger!

4 comments:

Rendezvous said...

well, as i alwaz mention "Excess of everything is harmful" ... i think that google is now trying too hard... i didn't like orkut, and now i m not that impressed with the presentation tool as well...

Yes they are in the right direction, but still probably they should certainly try doing the right thing in the right way and not the fast way.. bt still.. GOOGLE ROCKS :))

@purV said...

Well, you've gotta be kiddin' that you don't like orkut! Man, you are there all the time on it..

Gaurav Goel said...

Before i read the full article of yours i just went ahead to feel it myself. my views abt the product were
1. NetMeeting(for sharing presentation across geographies), Yahoo briefcase(to carry ppt's) and the google's idea to bring transcperency to globe combined into one. Amazing isn't it
2. A security threat to the IT companies untill they block this site, so that the risk of important business ppt's shared across people is nullified the space is also huge 10mb per presentation.
3. One suggestion, if they can combine gtalk with it so that while sharigng thought on ppt one can actaully talk.

Rest google again rocked with it.. but this time their product(presenation seprately) is much simpler and pale infront of Microsoft's powerpoint.. otherwise the whole idea is amazing.

Nowi will read your full article :)

@purV said...

Yeah, they've been slowly but steadily working towards their bigger goal - A complete and transparent Diskless Operating System. An illusion where you are no longer bounded by your memory or your applications!