Pioneer developer of Web-based desktop applications, HalfBrain.com Wednesday brought to market its second product offering, BrainStorm, a graphic presentation program (think PowerPoint) that’s live on the Web and accessible to the public.
Employing the company’s user-friendly Web interface, which features drag-and-drop editing and pull-down menus, BrainStorm lets user to create presentations directly as Web pages. Features include outline view, slide-sorter, and slideshow views, multiple master slides, background patterns, blends, picture, line and box elements.
Written entirely in dynamic HTML, BrainStorm requires no plug-ins or special downloads by the user. BrainStorm is cached like a Web page, has most of the features of Power Point, and works well over modems as well as high speed connections.
“Any technology that requires a download ends up screwing you up in one fashion or another,” Steve Guttman, president and chief executive officer, told ASP News. “The technology that we have has the W3C stamp of approval and will end up winning in the end. It raises the bar with what can be done with HTML technology.”
BrainStorm works with Microsoft Internet Explorer versions 4 and 5, and will work with a Netscape Navigator version that’s currently in development.
Guttman said the company is talking to third parties, ISPs, and corporations about licensing the BrainStorm technology, but declined to disclose further details at this time.
Guttman said HalfBrain.com is working with two unnamed clients to interface the company’s first product, BrainMatter — a full-featured Web-based spreadsheet program introduced in November 1999 — and the BrainStorm presentation program directly into relational databases.
BrainStorm is available to end users at no cost on the HalfBrain.com site.
