Empressr Releases Web 2.0 Competitor To Powerpoint

July 13th, 2006 Davis Posted in Web 2.0 |

TechCrunch has an interesting write up on a web 2.0 company named Empressr that is offering an online based alternative to Powerpoint. In the article, TechCrunch also highlights a couple of other web 2.0 start-ups that are trying to develop their own powerpoint applications in this space as well.

While, I haven’t tried any of the programs that he highlights in his story, I’m pretty interested in this nonetheless. Over the last several years, I’ve found that my computing needs have been met less and less by Microsoft and more and more by new Web 2.0 services. Whether it was ditching the truly horrendous Outlook Express for the free Thunderbird program or using online alternatives to Word, it has really made me think about how strong Microsoft’s Operating system monopoly really is.

If consumers increasingly find competitors online that can compete with the software that Microsoft sells, this could help add some much needed choice to the office application space. While finding an alternative to Powerpoint is of interest to me, Empressr’s launch did leave me wanting more. Instead of just allowing consumers to build and export presentations, I would have liked to have seen a way that users could embed presentations into their web pages. While Empressr is a good first step, I think that the real killer to Powerpoint will be a Youtube version of the software where consumers can create rich applications and then showcase them to their readers. With as blog saavy as Microsoft has been, I’m almost surprised that they haven’t already introduced this functionality already.