Regifting your Holiday present is not too nice. But reusing this Christmas Prezi is great! (and it’s carbon neutral too).

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Three new features have been implemented to Prezi online editor:

1. Snap: It used to be harder to create a simple chart or align any objects with each other in Prezi. Now, as you rotate or move images, frames and text, they will automatically click into position with identical objects around. You can also adjust text to the size of other text boxes.

2. Right click menu: right click in the editor to activate a submenu that offers copy, paste, cut and delete.

3. Copy paste texts: now can use your computer’s clipboard for copy paste. This means that you can copy any selection from your documents, the web, or any other applications and paste them to your editor with a click.

Prezi’s Terms of Use document has now been updated–providing more privacy to our users. We had asked creators of public and private prezis to provide the same licenses in return for our service before. The new version handles public and private prezis separately. Let our friendly avatars explain the details for you in the prezi above!

We have implemented new features in the editor that make it easier to add text, move around elements and manage your growing prezi while zooming and panning. Let’s see what’s new:

1. Move objects around simply by dragging them with your mouse. No need to click on them and use the zebra.

2. Just click anywhere and start typing to add text. Double click still works, and is used to edit existing texts.

3. The “Escape” key of your keyboard just became smarter:
- pressing esc while typing finishes the text edit session and closes the textbox.
- pressing esc while the Zebra is over an object makes the Zebra disappear

4. Lock elements with zooming (photo above): as you zoom in and out and items get tiny or huge, they will fade out and get “locked”. They will behave like the background (you cannot drag them or select them but you can write on them). Unlocking is easy: just zoom to the opposite direction. Hitting the “shift” key (for multiselect) or multiselect by the zebra “+” menu option unlocks every object
(locking is disabled in show mode, you won’t see faded objects while presenting)

Rob Newberry, Director of Education Technology at Chatsworth International School in Singapore, Apple Distinguished Educator, Prezi evangelist and all around good guy was one of the first testers of Prezi Meeting. After the feature went live, he immediately started to use it in the classroom. First he thought his grade 5 class how to use Prezi, then after getting good at it, he introduced Prezi Meeting – just a few days after it was launched. The kids said it was easy to learn, and they really enjoyed using it.

Rob believes that Prezi Meeting allows students to work with students in other classes, and then other schools, ultimately work with students in other countries around the world. Prezi is nothing new for Rob: as a teacher he finds it ultimately engaging – the way information is laid out makes it so much more accessible. Similarly, the fact that it is collaborative, can incorporate multimedia, and lends itself nicely for embedding in student’s ePortfolios make it a very powerful tool for organization, presentation and displaying learning. After having used it for a few weeks, Rob thinks the best part of Prezi Meeting is that after one invite – that Prezi is always collaborative. He doesn’t need to keep inviting students to collaborate, and once they invite each other – they are collaborators forever.
This is how Prezi Meeting looks like in his class network (click for larger version):

It all started with a Facebook message. The sender was Jihoon Roh, a Prezi author from Seoul, Korea. He asked if we had plans to create a Prezi theme that works with Korean fonts. It turned out that he voluntarily represents a fast growing Prezi community in Korea and, besides using Prezi, he also teaches others about our zooming space. Soon we got to know to an amazingly active Korean community on Facebook and their Prezi support forum. We will release a Korean Prezi theme for Hangul Day (October 9).

To celebrate the release, we have asked Jihoon to talk about his community and our cooperation.
Read the rest of this entry »

We’re always looking for innovative ways to use Prezi, so we were thrilled when the good folks at Google emailed us a link to Prezi Meeting to sign a digital birthday card for a mutual friend! We’ve all been there: someone at the office buys a card for a colleague and asks everyone to pass it around, but at some point the momentum stops and the card gets stuck on someone’s desk. Now you can have everyone sign a card – without tracking down where it is!

Simply start a prezi, and click the Meeting link in the upper right corner of the screen in Edit mode to generate an “Invite to Edit” link. Email this link and see the avatars pop up! Add videos, text, and images to create an interactive card.

Are you using Prezi Meeting in a creative way? We’d love to know!

Chris Anderson does not speak often at TED events. He is the curator of the world famous conference, where top brains share their ideas worth spreading in the topics of technology, entertainment and design. This year, Chris spoke at TEDGlobal in Oxford. In his closing speech, he talked about how online videos change the way we interact, learn, think and consume in this increasingly shrinking world we live in.

“Chris Anderson shows how Prezi can be used effectively in a linear talk like this which has the feeling of a story and a journey. But what really made this talk good was Anderson’s idea and the simple organization of the idea around a metaphor,” says presentation guru Garr Reynolds in his related blogpost. Like other experts, Garr puts the emphasis on the importance of the speaker’s qualities and ideas, while he says Prezi has the potential if it is used well.

Two new resources on how to use Prezi are out now!
Prezi for Dummies (English) explains how to think outside the traditional slide, create your project, and publish your presentation. Presenteren met Prezi (Dutch) discusses how to create better presentations using Prezi’s limitless space.

The Dutch book release was announced at Prezivent in Utrecht, organized by the book’s author Hedwyg van Groenendaal. Prezi founder and lead designer Adam was there talking about how to create better presentations with Prezi and introducing Prezi Meeting to the Dutch community. Check Hedwyg’s blog for some cool Prezivent videos!

You can now work together in real time on the same prezi! With Prezi Meeting, teams can collaborate live or simply present prezis with up to 10 people in a prezi at one time. Prezi Meeting is included in all license types.

Here’s how to start Prezi Meeting:

• Open a prezi to edit
• Click “Meeting” from the menu bar in the upper right corner of the screen

Now you have two options:

1. Select “Invite to edit” to generate a link that you can send to anyone. When your invited collaborators open the link, you will see their avatars. Text, images, and videos added to the prezi are visible to everyone, giving remote team members the sensation of being in the same creative space together. (When you are invited to co-edit a prezi you will enter the Prezi Meeting in Show mode upon clicking the link. To start co-editing the prezi, switch to Edit mode).
2. Select “Start online presentation” to generate a link that you can send to anyone. When recipients open this link, they can watch as you present, but will not be able to edit the prezi. This link expires 10 minutes after you have closed the prezi and finished the session.

Here’s how to navigate in Prezi Meeting:

1. To follow an avatar: click an avatar and select “Take a look”
2. To give a collaborator control of the prezi (you are currently the presenter): click on the avatar and select “Hand over presentation”
3. To navigate on your own: click on the avatar and select “Explore freely”

To add an extra dimension to the co-editing process, you can use communications tools such as Skype.