The first assignment I did was the presentation software review. I tried a couple of different programs, including GoogleApps but was not satisfied with any of them. Then I ran across 280slides.com. The first thing that appealed to me with this service was its look and layout. It tried to emulate the Mac look and feel, which is something I was familiar with. It was extremely easy to use. It only took a few minutes to create a presentation, insert images, and share the presentation with others. 280slides.com does not have its own sharing built in but they have a link to slideshare.net which I used for sharing. This took the longest time because the slide show had to be rendered between 280slides and slideshare. It took about 3 or 4 minutes to share the presentation.
The next assignment was to create a project in a graphics program. I had heard a lot about Mr. Picassohead but after using it I ran into a couple of problems with sharing. So, I moved on to toondoo.com. This was very easy to use. I created a 3 panel comic strip and shared it within minutes. It has some nice features for working with graphics (flip image, enlarge, shrink, etc.). One of our computer classes currently uses a program called Comic Life to create basic comic strips. This seems to do many of the same things for free.
Overall, I enjoyed these two assignments. We are in the process of reviewing our school licenses. Online software is going to play a big part in this process. Things like GoogleApps and other software mentioned here are nice alternatives to programs that are licensed per machine.
