Prezi, “the zooming editor for stunning presentations,” came out of private beta this week. The tool lets you lay out an entire presentation as one giant graphic and zoom into the details as you go. The general idea is to illustrate the relationships among different points based on their positions relative to each other. This video paints the picture pretty clearly:
The editor tools are a little hard to handle at first, but the site includes decent tutorials. With the free version of the editor, you get access to the Web application version of the editor, you can save 100MB worth of presentations on Prezi’s servers, and you can download anything you make. All presentations are branded with the Prezi logo. For €39 a year, you can scrap the Prezi logo and stretch out with 500 MB of space. The €119-a-year Pro license gives you an editor you can use offline and 2GB of space.
This presentation approach could spark some excellent explanations. It would be ideal for walking through a complex process that includes repeated steps, for example. Meanwhile, Scott McCloud and others are eyeing it for its Web comics potential.