280 Slides: PowerPoint made fast and easy, online
280 Slides is a notable online replacement for desktop presentation apps. It's fast, functional and very visual.
The Cappuccino Framework
In it, you can create a presentation, theme it, add graphics and video, and then present it, share it via Slideshare, or download it as a PowerPoint or PDF file. It's so smooth to use that it's hard to tell the difference in the experience between working in a traditional presentation app like Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Keynote. It doesn't have a traditional app's over-the-top feature set, but it's so fast and easy to use you'll probably not notice that.
280 Slides is in beta, but I was able to create this three-slide presentation as easily as I would in Keynote, and more easily than if I had been using PowerPoint. Cappuccino turned 0.5.5 yesterday. Fellow CNET blogger Matt Asay calls it "exceptional"
280 Slides is written in JavaScript, in a new open-source framework that models how software gets written on Macs: something called Objective-J. Objective-J, the Cappuccino framework, and 280 Slides are the work of a small three-man start-up, 280North, composed of former Apple programming rock stars. This is one to watch.
Exactly what kind of additional value does it provide, comparing to PP or Keynote?
Johnqh - PP and Keynote are leaders of their respective platforms - 280 Slides to me was more interesting for demo-ing what amounted to a desktop app running via your browser, not a serious competitor to either of these products. Both Adobe AIR and Microsoft Silverlight are out to deliver this kind of experience. Bottom line, if I can run a full fledged real app in my browser, what do I want a desktop app for?