Live Presentations is the first of a suite of applications planned by Live-Documents.com. It is a full-featured online presentation creation and management application. The application offers much the same functionality as Microsoft’s Powerpoint, Microsoft’s Live Office or Google’s Desktop. Users can create, customize, store and organize presentations directly in a browser window, or download a dedicated desktop version of the application. The software is full-featured, allowing you to change the content and style of pages, control transitions between slides and add animations and effects. The site is fully compatible with Microsoft’s Powerpoint file structure, and can import and export Powerpoint documents. Users have their own My Documents folder on the site and can further organize documents with sub-folders. The site makes it easy to share documents – if a user clicks on the Share button they are prompted for an email address. The document is then automatically emailed to the recipient. Live-documents.com was founded by Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia in September 2006. The site launched Live Presentations in November 2007. The company’s CTO is Sumanth Raghavendra. Growth has been slow, with the site having an Alexa page rank around 1,000,000. Site usage will likely continue to increase as the site releases planned future applications such as word processing and spreadsheet software. Live Presentations has much the same functionality as the presentation software at Microsoft Live, Google Desktop or Zoho. It most closely resembles Microsoft Live because it is fully compatible with Office 2007. It differs from all three of these competitors in that it is Flash-based rather than Ajax-based. This translates into a more pleasing and responsive user interface for Live Presentations. In addition, while Microsoft has the Powerpoint desktop application, Google Desktop and Zoho do not have downloadable versions of their online software. The site has a very sleek look and feel, and is surprisingly responsive. Navigation is intuitive, but there is a learning curve involved in using some of the application’s more advanced features. There is a convenient top menu bar available at all times, with File, Edit, View and Help tabs. The application functions as a plug-in to your browser, which means that most operations take only slightly longer to accomplish than they do with desktop software. The downloadable desktop application is more responsive than the online application, about the same as Microsoft Powerpoint. Registration is required to use the online application, but the desktop version can be downloaded without registration. However, you cannot store documents online without registration. The registration process asks for email, first, middle and last name, and password. Activation of your account requires validation of your email address. Once logged in, you can download the plug-in for Live Presentations. The installation first prompts you to install Adobe Air if you do not already have it, then installs the browser plugin. The entire installation process takes only a few minutes. There are two levels of membership at the site – Basic, which is free, and Premium, which costs $6.99 per month. The difference in the two levels is that with Basic membership the user is limited to a total of 20 documents and a total of 20MB of online storage. With premium membership the user gets unlimited documents up to the storage limit of 500MB. Other than the document and storage limits there are no differences between the two levels of membership. The site is recommended to anyone who has a need to create full-featured presentations. While Google Desktop or Microsoft Live offer the same functionality, Live Presentations is easier to use and more responsive, particularly if the desktop application is used. The cost of the premium membership, which the user will have to purchase if they intend to use the site often, adds up over time; however the site is recommended to users who find the up-front cost of an office suite like Microsoft Office prohibitive. Success of the site will undoubtedly depend on how quickly they roll out the other applications in the full office suite.

• Create, edit and manage full-featured presentations
• Store files and documents online
• Downloadable desktop application available
• Import and export Microsoft Powerpoint files
• Based on Adobe Air – Site is pleasing and responsive

http://live-documents.com/live_presentations.html