Webware

Fax machines, couriers, and e-mail are old news. Today's reviewing and meeting apps use the Web to share desktops, photos, and live video.

ConceptShare is a neat reviewing tool. We have reviewed ConceptShare before. VH1 used the professional version of this tool to redesign its Web site. ConceptShare's demo was really slick, showing the crowd a step-by-step brainstorming session on a design for a business card. ConceptShare focuses on asynchronous communication, meaning users note suggestions and changes without the need to have people in the room. It's almost like passing around a story among copy editors. It's less of a net meeting, and more of a sharable whiteboard for documents and media.

SlideAware is a PowerPoint add-in that lets you publish and share PowerPoint presentations via an Office add-in. Once you've clicked the Publish button in PowerPoint, you have the option to control how people can use your presentation, either by limiting how long it will be hosted, or how many times the presentation can be viewed. Think of it like DRM for your presentation. There's also a drag-and-drop interface to customize the order of your slides, depending on who is viewing it. To follow suit with the group theme of these presentations, SlideAware also has online collaboration to create and manage shared presentations with others. We'll have a hands-on look at this soon.

Spresent is a Flash-based presentation creator that comes in both browser and desktop flavors. We got our hands on Spresent in December, and today it's releasing its third version. It uses vector graphics for text and clip art, meaning you can zoom and scale presentations as needed without a reduction in quality. It's marketed as "High Definition" and as a presentation tool for mobile devices.

Vyew is a synchronous and asynchronous collaboration and conferencing product. Presenter Christopher Peri took a bold move and invited Under the Radar attendees to join his live Vyew presentation to show off the product. It was also a brilliant move as nearly everyone who joined had a hands-on demo right in front of them. Peri also showed that Vyew presentations can be embedded in various places like Netvibes and MySpace, something that in all honesty seems like more of a gimmick and less of a needed feature for a presentation tool. Check out our previous coverage of Vyew..