Thumbstacks – Ajax/Flash Web PowerPoint

New York-based Thumbstacks is a bare bones but functional application that allows users to build presentations online and present them via a permanent URL. It uses both Flash and Ajax – it uses Flash if its installed, and defaults to Ajax if not. Click here to see a sample presentation. Note: Zoho is preparing a web based power point application as well – I should get a demo in the next week.

Don’t let the lack of design fool you – I’ve tested the product and the core functionality is there. Here’s what’s included now: a nice online interface to create applications (see screen shot), the ability to manipulate fonts (including sizes and colors), drag and drop functionality, image inclusion (including flickr images using the Flickr API).

There are a number of planned features that aren’t there yet: drawing tools (lines, arrows, shapes, etc.), export to powerpoint/keynote/pdf, private sharing on presentations (everything is public right now if you can find the URL), and a search feature for public presentations.

This launch is pretty timely given the Writely acquisition by Google today. Thumbstacks is the creation of Duncan Werner, who was previously an employee of PubSub.