Vuvox.com is a site that allows users to make multimedia presentations in the form of interactive slide shows. The site provides the production tools for producing rich, interactive presentations from videos, photos, text and music. The resulting productions can be easily shared, for example on Ebay or Facebook. Users can upload content to use in their creations from their PC, from the web, from Flickr, or from Picasa. There are three basic tools available on the Vuvox site for creating presentations – Express, Collage and Studio.
Express is a scaled-down version of Studio and is the easiest to use. Collage allows users to create a panoramic slide show with interactive text, photos and videos. Studio allows the most creative control, providing the ability to create a number of different types of presentations. All three of the tools are browser based and very user friendly, featuring a WYSIWYG interface with drag and drop editing. Creation of a presentation is basically a 3-step process – collection of the media, creation of the presentation, and sharing the presentation. Users can choose to make their publications publicly available or to keep them private.
Redwood City, CA-based Vuvox.com was founded early in 2008. The site was bought by Ebay later in the year, and Ebay currently uses the technology from the site to allow Ebay Motors users to post presentations for car auctions.
Competition to Vuvox comes from sites such as Flickr and Picasa, and from desktop applications such as Powerpoint and Adobe Flash. The site combines the ease of use of Flickr and Picasa with the powerful features of Powerpoint and Adobe Flash to allow the creation of visually appealing interactive presentations. The software developed by the Vuvox site is quite sophisticated, yet browser based and very easy to use.
The Vuvox site has a very clean and uncluttered look and feel. Page loads are very responsive, and the browser-based applications load and operate seamlessly. Navigation is intuitive and obvious, with a convenient top menu bar shown on all pages on the site. The top menu bar has tabs for Create (Collage, Express, Studio), MyStuff (Profile, My Collages) and Explore (existing content – Recent, Featured, Collages, Search). There is also a convenient search bar shown on most pages of the site. There is no advertising displayed on the Vuvox site.
Registration at the Vuvox site is not required to view content, but is required to create content. The registration process asks for username, password, email address and name. Validation of the email address is not required.
Registration is free and there is no premium membership offered to the Vuvox site.
Vuvox is recommended to anyone who wishes to create an interactive, multimedia presentation. The editing tools provided by the site allow for sophisticated presentations to be created relatively easily. The site is also recommended to users wishing to view presentations created by others, as some are very well done.