Zoho Show Versus Thumbstacks!
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Interface : Well, The interface of Zoho Show seems good but not satisfied at all, maybe because I had more expectations from them as Zoho writer and sheet's interfaces are far better than Zoho Show. Anyway, The interface does'nt completely get the look of Powerpoint and that was not the case with other two products (see again more expectations). The web 2.0 service powered by Ajax and thus takes a bit of time to load however then things go smoothly and the editing of the presentation is ease after that. It supports right click menu and has some functions to offer with that too.
On the other hand, Thumbstacks has a bit cleaner look (not much difference, just a little cleaner) rest things are almost same except for that clean look.
Features : The main function of both the web 2.0 services is to provide the functionality of making presentations but there are certain features which are missing in one or the other. I'll mention some of them which are missing and which are present :
* Zoho show allows presentation upload and that of 1 MB (although, it is not enough but still a feature is a feature). On the other hand Thumbstacks misses out on that.
* Zoho Show allows images to pulled from the computer and from Flickr. And it supports private pictures too from Flickr. However, Thumbstacks is able to pick up only public pictures.
* Zoho Show fails to provide the option of Export (I've read somewhere that it supports but may be I've got bad eyes and could'nt find it, if you do please inform me. Thanks in advance.) On the other hand Thumbstacks gives you the option of exporting it as HTML.
* Both provide remote presentation viewer which runs just like the normal powerpoint slideshow.
* Zoho show has better themes than that of Thumbstacks.
* Thumbstacks has the Arrow feature which is rotatable & can come handy when it comes to pointing out certain things in presentation.
* Both services miss on sounds and effects of slideshows (maybe that will be in future updates).
* Right Click menu of Thumbstacks is much better and offers more options as compared to Zoho Show.
Ease of Use : The ease of use also goes with Thumbstacks as the ease of use mostly depends on interface and as I mentioned earlier that Thumbstacks has a cleaner look and is less cluttered.
Value for money : No money is involved in either of the services thus PRICELESS!
To sum up the things, the service launch seems to be a bit rushed a little bit only as it a service which is already provided by other company, so extra features would have been handy in the competition. However, that doesn't mean that the service is no good or has no future. I think that the Zoho products are absolutely great and in future we can always expect more and more feature from Zoho show as we are getting from Zoho Writer and Zoho Sheet.
Rating : 2 Dino out of 5
Product reviewed : Zoho Show
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5 Comments:
commented by Mani, 7:06 AM
You are welcome!
Well, I love you products and I see that you guyz have *that thing* which actually drives me to your site and your softwares and tempts me to write something about them :)
Well, I love you products and I see that you guyz have *that thing* which actually drives me to your site and your softwares and tempts me to write something about them :)
Thanks for your compliments. It's the feedback from users like you keeps us motivated. We will do our best to meet your expectations.
> No money is involved in either of the services thus PRICELESS!
This has also been my slogan for quite some time and after attending an Asia Commons conference, I've been doing quite a bit of thinking...most 2.0 technologies are still proprietary at the end of the day. is there no free lunch? will we be charged for the 2.0 service model all the sudden? will companies be smart enough to charge us for functionality directed at power users only? will I be forced to pay to get data out conveniently?
just playing devil's advocate now that I've been in the game for 9 months!
This has also been my slogan for quite some time and after attending an Asia Commons conference, I've been doing quite a bit of thinking...most 2.0 technologies are still proprietary at the end of the day. is there no free lunch? will we be charged for the 2.0 service model all the sudden? will companies be smart enough to charge us for functionality directed at power users only? will I be forced to pay to get data out conveniently?
just playing devil's advocate now that I've been in the game for 9 months!
Zoho Suite is impressive. You might want to compare Zoho Show to teamslide (http://www.teamslide.com) in case that you prefer creating your slides in a desktop app such as Powerpoint only.
commented by , 9:27 PM
Thanks,
Mani