Share Your PPT Files in PDF with TonicPoint

There’s no doubt that it would be cooler to build multimedia presentations with flash elements done with Macromedia. But we still love to use Powerpoint (PPT) presentations. Perhaps because they are very easy to create and almost every PC supports PPT files. And it’s kind of a standard to use PPT files to create a presentation.

I actually want to share with you the new web based power-point editor, TonicPoint. It is a tool that allows you to create, edit, present, and store your multimedia presentations easily online. You might be interested to take a look at the demo on what you can do with the TonicPoint PPT editor.

Of course, you can store and share your presentations here - that’s quite a common feature today. But besides it you can even edit an existing presentation or create a full-featured graphical animated presentation using the editor using MochiKit and SVG/VML (no plugins), all in your web browser.

But the files can only be exported into PDF files, and that’s a shame. I personally feel that it would have been better if they could allow me to share my PPT files as slideshows as well. Why would someone want to use a PPT to create PDF files anyway?

If you feel like running out of ideas, just use the featured simple conferencing tool provided to have a discussion with your friends.

TonicPoint is currently under private beta. So, if you’re interested to try it out, you have to supply them with your email and they will add you into their waiting list. I am not sure how long you have to wait, but I have not received any invitation yet after waiting for a couple of weeks.

Although there are techniques you can use to upload your PPT files online, they usually require you to install plugins, so this is where TonicPoint is different. Who wants to go through the hassle when there is a better and easier way to share your multimedia presentations online?

TonicPoint is not the first web based PPT editor, of course. Profy has already covered SlideShare, Zoho Show and Spresent, for example. SlideShare is an already well-established tool and it has its own followers. Besides, it seems they feature PPT files in the form of slideshows. And SlideShare also allows its users to embed the slideshows into blogs very similar to how we embed YouTube videos. Users can even comment and tag slideshows.

Actually SlideShare looks more appealing than TonicPoint, unless one needs the files in PDF format, that is. Since it is still in private beta, there’s not much information on how well it works compared to other online powerpoint editing tools available. So there’s no point arguing. Expect more information when the tool is released to the public. But there are no news about when it is to be released either.