While Zude isn't technically a presentation tool, but rather what is known as a start page, it nevertheless has great potential for delivering interactive presentations over the web.
Key to what makes Zude so successful, as I discussed in my full review at the beginning of the week is its amazing ability to import just about any content you will find on the web, and help you to easily bring it together into fully fledged web pages.
Let's say you have some slides stored over on Flickr, a video of your speech on YouTube, some great notes on your blog, and a live video streaming account with UStream. With Zude you could drag and drop all of this content onto a single page, or series of pages, maybe throwing in a live chat widget like Meebo Rooms to add even more interactivity.
The resulting fusion would certainly make the likes of Slideshare look lame - which isn't to say that you couldn't drag your Slideshare right in there with the rest of the content.
In this summary of my full feature review of Zude I have tried to illustrate how it might be used as a killer online presentation app. Here are the details:
What's smart about Zude
In what has to be an industry first, Zude lets you grab just about any content you can see on the web. Pictures, text, video, web widgets and just about anything else you can shake a stick at can be dragged from one window and into that hosting your Zude pages. All that you need to put this magic in place is a small download to the popular Firefox browser.
As mentioned above this gives you an almost infinite palette with which to work with, as you bring all of your favorite content and arrange it, resize it, and even add hyperlinks to it within your Zude account. Live TV meets full transcript meets PowerPoint presentation - not a problem at all.
All you'd need to do to achieve this effect would be to use one of several live broadcasting services, coupled with Slideshare for your PowerPoints, and notes in whatever format you see fit to share them in.
Built in content
You are not, however, strictly limited to the content you can bring in from elsewhere, as Zude allows you to alter a number of factors using in-built tools and libraries. Backgrounds can be changed from an impressive selection, text can be authored right within the application, and a range of other 'objects' can be implemented, from importing websites right into your pages, to creating headlines, animations and even RSS feeds.
Possible drawbacks
If all of this sounds too good to be true, I can vouch that it isn't. This isn't to say, however, that everything is plain sailing with Zude. It's biggest down side to date is an interface that while far from ugly or difficult to use, certainly isn't the best or most simple in the world either.
In my full review of the service I noted:
''in terms of usability Zude is still a way off being totally intuitive, totally easy-to-use, and as accessible as claims of 'your grandmother could use it' might suggest. As I have said, the extensive use of dialog boxes, right-click contextual menus and at times technical jargon and errors appearing means for me that a little bit more field testing would go a long way.''
Nevertheless, while Zude does have some rough edges, this does not detract from its fantastic qualities, and I would urge anyone looking to go beyond simple online slide shows to consider checking it out.
