Written on July 23rd, 2009, by Peter Arvai
It’s been said that the strongest combination is a good tool in the right hands. For a visualization and storytelling tool that intends to change the way people present information, the best possible partner is TED, a global conference about technology, entertainment and design, where the world’s most influential speakers and scientists share “ideas worth spreading”.
When Peter Halacsy first showed Prezi to me, my immediate thought was TED has got to see this. TEDGlobal Conference is happening this week in Oxford UK. Yesterday, the first ever prezi in TED’s history was shown by writer and aphorism expert James Geary.
Right after Geary’s speech, curator Chris Anderson announced TED’s investment in Prezi from the stage. Chris had an amazing introduction on Prezi, which will also be used this week by another TED speaker, New America Foundation researcher and geopolitics expert, Parag Khanna.
We are very proud and excited!
Ps.:
We have just received a very kind comment from the Audio/Video crew of TEDGlobal. They are the experts behind the scene, who saw every single presentation in the history of the conference. Thank you guys!
“The AV crew at TED Global think prezi is a long awaited refreshing change.
all the best”
Tags: news
Written on July 22nd, 2009, by spacecadet
Ol’ buggy player fades to dust as new version rises
We should have done this for a some time, sorry for the the buggy video player in Prezi! Finally we have updated the feature, thanks for all your feedback and comments about this issue.
Let us explain what has happened:
Earlier we used the default video player component for flash, because this solution seemed to be most reasonable. The problem had been caused by Prezi interaction functions that couldn’t get along with the player. Shortly, when you wanted to pause a video in your prezi, our system considered your action as a simple click on an ordinary object which in Prezi means a zoom. Zooming and pausing – two different functions dedicated to the same action equals chaos.
Now we have created order from this chaos, and we need you to test the result.
Behind the scenes our brand new video player uses a lightweight flash video player API called Pyro that handles all the boring stuff (that’s right, NetStream and pals). Thanks guys! As you can see on the image above even the look of the player has been changed. We have redesigned the interface, it looks mush better now!
Most important thing: how can you try it?
It’s the same old stuff. Please complete your online prezi’s URL with /experimental/videoplayer and go on as usual. If you have uploaded a video to your prezi, you will notice the difference. Here is an example. This is only a test version, but don’t worry, your prezis are secured. And most of all, please comment and share your thoughts.
Written on July 21st, 2009, by Peter Arvai
“Hi,
I am a partner at Sunstone Capital in Copenhagen, Denmark, and I have been following your developments over the last couple of months. I was wondering where you are located and if you are fully funded – and in that case by who. If you have time for a chat I would be happy to learn some more about your plans.
Regards
Christian”
This is how it all began. And now Sunstone Capital has invested in Prezi and Christian is on our board to speed up Prezi development. Merete (Sunstone Capital’s Lawyer/Rocker) is here to make sure all is on the up and up. We also expect her to motivate at times with a heavy dose of “Law Rock” . (btw, we love doing music, but we’ll call the spam bot Gods on you if you link in any embarrassing performances here)
Also, just wanted to say that we received a lot of interest in Prezi. Still, Christian and Merete were the ones who charmed us. They won us over by their down to earth, open-minded approach. You guys rock!
Tags: news
Written on July 20th, 2009, by Zoli Radnai
It’s always very exciting to introduce new Prezi features and upgrades. This Monday we have both! You can test Prezi embed using the code generator in the previous post, and we also have a shiny new front page and blog design to show you today.
On the old frontpage we used a prezi Now we have a video to show some action
Now we use a video to introduce Prezi on the opening page, where we have also updated the example prezis. Click through those three presentations and watch the video! We made these changes to give a clearer first impression of Prezi, and show the new features we have introduced since April.
As you can see, Prezi blog has a new dress too. In addition, we have collected our social accounts here. Check prezi related images on Flickr, become a fan on Facebook, or share this post on Twitter right away. We have placed your recent comments to the front, so you can see our replies in a blink.
Start writing a comment now, and testdrive our cool new embed code generator below!
Tags: new feature
Written on July 20th, 2009, by hp
Prezi team proudly presents the tech pre-release of our new embed feature. From now on, you can embed any public presentation to your blog or website. The result will look like this:
Embedded Prezi with simple navigation mode
Looks cool, huh? And there’s more:
We have two new features built especially for embedding:
- simple navigation mode: Viewers can only follow the path created by you (the owner of the prezi), no matter where he or she clicks inside the embed window. This simple walkthrough helps to deliver your message instantly. Do you find this useful? Give it a try, and have your comment!
- autoplay: One button magic. Press, sit back, and enjoy the show. Your prezi steps forward every 10-20 seconds. Do you like it that way? If you want, we can add adjustable timing of course.
Click more button and press Autoplay: Prezi plays automatically
So why is this so important?
We believe that the embed feature opens new perspectives for the Prezi user. A must have feature in the 2.0 universe, however we have taken this step quite slowly. Why? Because Prezi has been built to be an illustration tool, staying in the background, helping to tell stories. It was the presenter, who stood in the spotlight and controlled.
A new chapter now opens in Prezi history. We introduce Prezi as an interactive, zooming media tool that can deliver stories online, where viewers become controllers and spotlight is easy to share. Give this new Prezi a try, play around and comment your experiences!
Tags: new feature, test
Written on July 17th, 2009, by Zoli Radnai
Adam presenting with Prezi at the ceremony
We just couldn’t wait for Adam to give a sign from New York last night. Then around 5:20 AM Hungarian time, a short line appeared in our mailboxes: “We won.” A few hours later Adam also sent some pictures made with his iPhone during the World Technology Summit, where he and collaborator Usman Haque have won the World Technology Award in the category of Arts.
Party before the ceremony.
Other winners of the award are Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg (Marketing Communications), Lawrence Lessig (Law) and President Paul Kagame, Republic of Rwanda (Policy). The WTA in association with Time, Fortune and Science magazines are presented each year to the outstanding innovators of different fields of technology. Adam has been nominated by the membership of the World Technology Network which is composed of over 1000 scientists, entrepreneurs, financiers, journalists, academics, policy makers, etc., and over 200 organizations/companies, spread out over 60 countries.
Adam and Usman have worked on a number of collaborations experimenting with architecture, spaces, interactivity, and the cultural aspects of new technologies. As architects and artists they believe that the domain of architecture is much more dynamic than it used to be. Mobile connectivity, people-centered design, contextual awareness, and interactive spaces are challenges and fields of new experiments for them.
Tags: awards, news
Written on July 15th, 2009, by Zoli Radnai
What did Prezi founders learn from MTV videos, or the zooming bullet perspective of television series like CSI Miami? Why are Steve Jobs or Larry Lessig so successful presenters? A year ago today founders of Prezi, Peter and Adam, asked the audience these questions at a workshop in Budapest, which was a double celebration, and launch party in one.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: about, video
Written on July 7th, 2009, by Zoli Radnai
When the parents of Rob Newberry’s class of 5th graders come in for interviews, the kids take their moms and dads on a virtual tour of the work they have done in Prezi: presentations, videos, photos and reflectations appear on screen at Ramrudee International School in Bangkok, Thailand.
One of the prezis at Rob’s workshop on 21th century learning, is about landslides. If you check the work of the two students Gene and Tif, you could easily tell that, since the presentation is not just explaining the natural phenomenon, it actually is a landslide. As you move forward, you will notice different elements of the presentation sliding, turning and rotating as the two 5th graders visualize the causes and effects of the often disastrous phenomenon.
Rob Newberry’s classwork is a great example of using Prezi as it’s meant to be used. As we started to share thoughts in email, he added: students use Prezi as a visual communication and multimedia tool, their goal is to tell a story. In Ramrudee International School, they use Prezi for education and art projects as well. Even a bunch of art teachers are collaborating on a project with Prezi right now. Rob also plans to use Prezi with SmartBoards and other interactive multimedia, and we are just happy to hear that. His goal this year is to have each student have an account with offline access to the PreziDesktop then have them use their Prezi accounts as an online portfolio.
Tags: education, user story
Written on June 25th, 2009, by Zoli Radnai
The style switcher feature is now ready and online. Just open a prezi, or start creating a new one using your online editor or the offline version, Prezi Desktop. You will notice that the editing interface has been upgraded. Now you have all the different Prezi styles available just a click away while working. We believe that a more customizable tool means more freedom, so don’t ever think we stop right here… Oh, and a little gift for movie fans: we have installed the super cool wipe transition effect to this feature, you will notice when switching between styles. This is the one that has first been used by Japanese movie director Kurosawa, then became famous in the Star Wars episodes.
Important notice: This update will automatically download for the Desktop Editor users as well. Don’t forget to login at least once in order to fetch all styles again from our servers. Once you have successfully logged in, you’ll be able to choose styles in the editor.
Thanks for your all your comments, tweets, and emails during the past weeks you have posted for the test version. Please continue to share your thoughts!
Tags: new feature
Written on June 8th, 2009, by Zoli Radnai
Update 3: I have just talked to our system administrators and developers, and I think I can explain this very embarrassing network glitch. When we have switched servers this Sunday and moved to our new provider, software environment has obviously changed as well. It seems that we had a problem that could be best described by the analogy of a home PC reinstall: part of the Prezi system somehow couldn’t work within the new environment, so our administrators had to perform some further system fixes. We really hope that there will be no more unforeseen issues related to Sunday’s core changes. Thanks for your patience!
Upadate 2: Prezi is back online again. It seems we could fix the technical problem that caused the issue. It was not a server downtime though, there were some system glitches we could solve ourselves. We’ll explain this as soon as we are sure what has happened. More soon.
Update: It is clear that the source of the issues is not Rackspace, our data center provider. Our sysadmins will soon come up with a solution. We’ll update this post as we know more of what has happened.
It’s not that we want to test the support service of our new host already, still you may experience unexpected network glitches right now. We are aware of the situation and our system administrators are working hard to solve the issue. Sorry for the inconvenience!
Tags: engineering
