Web Presentation And Photo Sharing Tool Creates Stunning Multimedia Slideshows: Scrapblog Arrives
The long awaited all-new release of multimedia presentation and scrapbook authoring tool Scrapblog is finally upon us. A lot of us have been waiting a long time for this easy-to-use, high powered visual communication tool to open its doors to the public, and now it has. If you want to create visually stunning presentations, photo albums and scrapbooks using your photos, fantastic looking design elements and themes, and even YouTube videos, you came to the right place.
I was lucky to have been given early access to what has turned out to be a very impressive web application, packing features that would be every bit at home on a commerical desktop-based application. In actual fact, anyone familiar with the Apple iLife and iWork suites are going to feel right at home, as the look, interface design and overall feel of Scrapblog seem to pay affectionate homage to the best aspects of Keynote, Pages, iWeb, iPhoto and iDVD.
But don't take my word for it, for here is an eight part blow-by-blow introduction to Scrapblog and its capabilities. You can check out the individual clips and full commentary over at Master New Media.
So what is it that has me so excited about Scrapblog?
Chiefly it is the sheer amount of features that the Scrapblog team have managed to squeeze into an application that runs completely from your browser. If you were wowed - as I was - by the capabilities of online presentation tool SPresent, you are likely to be even more so by Scrapblog.
Here is a service that allows you to make use of hundreds of high quality design elements, put together by a team of international graphic designers, and use them to present and dress up your online photos, video and text. Among the impressive list of features are:
Comprehensive image editing tools and effects allowing you to resize, rotate, add drop shadows and reflections and a lot more to your photos and graphics
A great set of design templates that make those featured in PowerPoint pale in cmparison - each one packed with fully editable design elements. In Scrapblog if you can see it, you can move it, resize it, rotate it, change the stacking order of it, apply effects - in short every single element is at your complete disposal
Great looking transitions that can be applied between the pages of your Scrapblogs, every bit as good as those featured in commercial presentation applications
A whole lot more, as featured in my full review and the videos above
Scrapblog isn't however 100% focused on the presenation market, and is very much based around the idea of sharing your photos, videos and text rather than creating graphs, tables and bullet points.
While this will come as a welcome relief to presentation regulars tired of the death by PowerPoint approach, those looking to display statistical data may be better served by the Scrapblog competitor and PowerPoint friendly SPresent. The next step, of course, will be for someone to come along and combine the strengths of the two, putting the final nail in the PowerPoint coffin.
That said I can see Scrapblog being of great use for those looking to display portfolios, visually driven presentations, marketing materials and pamphlets, in addition to those who will use it primarily for sharing photos and videos with family and friends.
I urge you to give Scrapblog a few minutes of your time - given that you don't even have to register to start creating, I am sure that a lot of people would find it time well spent.
posted by
Michael Pick
on Friday, March 30 2007
Tuesday, January 15 2008
URL of this article:
http://masterview.ikonosnewmedia.com/2007/03/30/web_presentation_and_photo_sharing.htm
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