6 Tools To Help Make Inspiring Presentations

By Alexa Garthwaite, Business Development Manager at Executive Offices

Not too long ago fancy clipart and animated text was enough to make your presentation stand out. Nowadays using default Microsoft presentation tools and art often ends with a presentation looking cheap and uninspiring.

Here are a number of tools that offer alternative ways to create and share stunning presentations:

1. Empressr

Empressr stands out as one of the best and most reliable media presentation and storytelling tools.

With its unique features, it allows you to upload your own contents such as videos, audios, images, and music to make your presentations online. You can also use the contents in sites such as Flickr and Photobucket and share the links to your informative and educational creations or embed them into various websites or blogs. In addition, Empressr has charts and tables to help you out in your business presentations. It also keeps a record of the number of people viewing your presentations every day. The tool is available free of charge and can easily be downloaded from the Internet.

2. Vcasmo

Vcasmo is also one of the best free online multimedia presentation tools. The tool is very compatible with numerous formats including photos, music, videos, and PDF files. It is very suitable for academic teaching, conferences, seminars, press release meetings, training, and business presentations.

The tool comes with very special features that allow you to synchronise music and video files and skip to specific or preferred portions of the music or video file instead of waiting for the whole file to be downloaded. Other additional features of Vcasmo include visitor comments, permission controls, and embedding into websites and blogs.

3. Prezi

Prezi is a unique cloud-based presentation and storytelling tool that comes with both free and paid plans. With both plans, you can create your own presentations in forms of PD files, videos, images, drawings and texts and share them online. You can also download the presentations for offline viewing. The tool comes with a zooming user interface (ZUI) that you can use to zoom in and out your presentation media. The Prezi Zebra allows you to edit, rotate, and size your objects. The Prezi canvas is an open space from where you can navigate between videos, texts, images, and other useful presentation media.

With paid plans starting from £37.56, you have the advantage of getting more extraordinary features that allow you to get more web-based storage space, work offline and to make your presentations private. If you subscribe for Edu Pro or Prezi Pro, you can work offline through Prezi Desktop and create and save your all your presentations on your own Mac or Windows system.

4. Keynote

Keynote is one of the best presentation tools designed by Apple as part of the iWork suite. It comes with special features and easy-to-use interface that allow you to create presentations with attractive themes, high-quality animations, and polished graphics. The themes allow you to keep consistency in fonts and colours throughout your presentation.

Keynote supports Quick Time video formats including DV and MPEG-2. It also comes with a dual monitor support system that allows you to show your presentations on a screen and still be able to see the presentations from your private screen or laptop. It has a tight integration with Apple Remote, allowing you to turn your iPod touch, iPad, or iPhone into a portable presentation tool for easy control and management of your presentations. This presentation tool goes for about £50.30 to £60.00.

5. Google Docs

Google Docs is a wonderful free web-based presentation tools from Google. It allows you to upload your own texts, videos, and images and create quick reliable presentations while collaborating with other users online. You can also create spreadsheets and documents and import them through the tool’s web interface or via email. The documents can be saved in a variety of formats including PDF, ODF, RTF, HTML, and Office Open XML.

6. SlideRocket

SlideRocket is a hosted presentation tool that allows you to create, manage, and share your presentations. It has strong features that enable you to upload videos, images, texts, and music and publish them to any webpage. The tool features slick slide transitions, graphic effects, media integration, and enhanced text effects.

SlideRocket is available online at a price of about £15.28 per month or £229.20 per year. Before you make your monthly or yearly subscription, you can sign up for a 14-day trial and test the tool to see if meets your presentation needs. Alternatively, you can use the tool’s basic version which is offered for free. The only disadvantage with the basic version is that it has very limited features as compared to the paid version.

If there are any presentation tools you cannot live without then please let us know about them in the comments.

Alexa Garthwaite is the Business Development Manager at Executive Offices (executiveoffices.co.uk), who offer virtual offices, serviced offices and meeting rooms in prestigious London locations.