Create online web presentations using Google Docs presentations

Make sure to read other posts from the Online Office Suites series!

1. Review of Live Documents – Office 2007 online replacement
2. First look and review of Microsoft Office Live Workspace Beta
3. Adobe BuzzWord – New online web-based Word Processor
4. Zoho – Free online office applications – Word Processor, Spreadsheets, etc
5. IBM offers alternative to MS Office with Lotus Symphony
6. Create, edit, and share Microsoft Office format documents online without any software
7. Create online web presentations using Google Docs presentations

Google had announced back in April of this year that they would be adding the ability to create online presentations like PowerPoint into their Docs and Spreadsheets web application, which was cause for lots of excitement! Finally today Google has released the new Google Docs presentations feature, which will allow you to not only create online presentations, but allow you to easily share, organize, present, and collaborate on the presentations with others.

If you’ve been using Docs and Spreadsheets, you won’t have any problems with presentations, as they will be displayed in the same list as the other docs. You can use the same interface to edit, share, or publish them and have several collaborators working on a presentation at the same time. When you’re ready to present, click Start Presentation to begin taking the audience through the slideshow. Participants can chat with your or with each other during the presentation via Google Talk.

Google Presentations Features – Making online presentations

You can get to Google Presentations by logging into your Google account and clicking on Docs or by going to http://docs.google.com/ directly. Once you’re there, you’ll see a new option under the New menu option called Presentation.

Google Presentations is not as robust as Microsoft PowerPoint and that is obvious by the number of options across the top pane.

• New Slide
• Duplicate Slide
• Delete Slide
• Insert Image
• Insert text
• Change Theme

Personally, I find that in PowerPoint, I probably don’t even use 90% of the features, so in a way, Google Presentations is perfectly fine for most presentations! Of course if you like to have lots of audio, video and sliding effects between slides in a presentation, you’ll have to stick to PowerPoint. But if you want something practical that doesn’t MS PowerPoint to be installed on the presenter’s computer, that allows you to make changes with others in real time, and that is completely free, then it’s definitely worth trying out.

But one thing that it does have that I like is the ability to change the theme. Currently, there are only 15 themes available to choose from, but I’m sure more will be added later.

The presentation software is also available in over 25 languages, so this is definitely an International tool. It’s also available for Google Apps customers.

[tags]google presentations, google docs, create online presentations, web presentation software[/tags]

source by : online-tech-tips