This one is a goody, and in all honesty I thought I was on the tail end of find it. Apparently not. I’ve seen both lifehacker and techcrunch blogging on this particular application recently and have to add my two cents.

Prezi is different, and I like different. The majority of online presentation tools are aiming to recreate the presentation experience we are all used to when using tools like Microsoft Powerpoint or OpenOffice. Make slide, put on picture, add some text, repeat. Until you have created a presentation that gets across the information you wanted to convey, and a format more appealling than a simple word document. What Prezi does is give you a canvas on which you can take your audience on a journey around your product or concept, which really is very slick.

The Design Canvas
Using the design canvas is quite a simple task, with a very inituitive radial menu displayed at the top-left of the screen that will allow you to create text, lines, frames and then path your objects together into a fluid presentation. There are some limitations in this interface which are a little frustrating, like the lack of a grouping function or copy-and-paste. Even without these features it’s still super simple.

A very funky feature is the method for moving, resizing and rotating objects on the canvas. This is done using what is called the “Transformation Zebra” (interesting). A screenshot of the tool is displayed below:

Basically, inner circle to move, next circle out to resize, and then the outer circle to rotate. Feels and works intuitively.

Showing the Presentation
Here is where prezi absolutely shines. Essentially the presentation is one big canvas, which you can view just like that (grabbing and panning, zooming with clicks and mouse wheel, etc, etc) and this is one way that your presentation viewers are likely to view your masterpiece. For presenting your work to an audience, however, prezi offers the more traditional slide based presentation (they even have an offline player - yippee).

By using the pathing tool available in the design stage, you can connect objects in your presentation and this is defining the logical flow between elements. If you have rotated objects, then the screen will rotate as it transitions from one object to the next, zooming in and out as required to size the screen to the object. It’s just really well done.

To demonstrate, I’ve put together a very quick (and I mean very quick) presentation that captures some of my thoughts around ConceptBuzz (currently on hold). If you have the time, take a look, I think you’ll be impressed (with prezi, not my presentation).