Presentation software for the non-linear thinker

I have never really been trained to give a presentation, but I have learned enough over my 20 years in the technology busy to know that "death by PowerPoint" (sorry Microsoft) is a very real phenomenon.

So, for those executives, salespeople and marketing types that want to turn the art of giving presentations on its ears, you might want to check out a cool software as a service (SaaS) application, desktop and tablet based application series from a company called Prezi. The reason that Prezi is on my radar is that it just passed 5 million users, which isn't too shabby for a start-up that really got serious about the idea of "zooming" presentations about four years ago.

The philosophy behind Prezi, which has been a brain-child of founder and CEO Peter Arvai since 2001, is that sharing information should be more visual and "fun." So what you get with Prezi presentations is the ability to "zoom" into different graphics and images for more detail.

"Our medium is different," Arvai said. "You can zoom into a piece of an image for more detail any time you want. The presenter doesn't have to think linearly. The audience can interactively discover what is going on."

The video below gives you a sense of how Prezi presentations are created. You can work offline with the desktop application (as illustrated) and then share the resulting visuals with whomever you want as part of the hosted cloud service.

Arvai said Prezi has found a following with marketers, project managers, human resources executives and educators who are looking for a less linear, more visual way to express their ideas. The software is updated roughly every two weeks with new features. Aside from working on the desktop, you can view Prezi files on the Apple iPad tablet.

You can use the public edition of Prezi for free, which lets you create presentations and then download a copy that can be viewed offline. You need a $59 annual subscription in order to store your presentations privately and include your own logo on the presentations; it costs $159 annually if you want to use the offline desktop creation application.