Say what you will about PowerPoint presentations – lots of people use them and they can be a good way to transmit information. The hard thing about PPT is that it doesn’t generally transfer to the web very well – unless you have the right tool.

The Free Answer
It is actually very easy to upload a PPT – even to include sound. You simply save a web page and upload. They problem is that it’s not very dynamic. It doesn’t flow or look like it does in PPT. The users has to click through pages themselves and doing that isn’t necessarily intuitive to the visitor. Microsoft has support to upload PPTs to the web (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HP052667841033.aspx). On a positive note – it’s free and it’s easy.

Articulate $499

“Articulate Presenter lets non-technical users create e-learning courses by adding narration and interactivity to a standard PowerPoint file. At the press of the button, your presentation is transformed into a compelling Flash-based course.” OK, I tried this and it was easy. One down side is that you have to record the sound using this tool. Here is a sample of a presentation posted with Articulate: http://www.articulate.com/demos.html#

Impatica $499

“Impatica for PowerPoint makes it easy to add narrated business presentations to your web site or e-mail marketing programs.” I tried this one too. It was less easy to use – but the support people were really helpful. One benefit is that you don’t need to record audio with the tool; it will convert audio recorded with PPT. Here is a sample of a presentation created with Impatica: http://www.impatica.com/imp4ppt

Camtasia – $299
”Camtasia Studio gives you the power to easily record your screen, PowerPoint presentations, voice, and Web camera video to create compelling video tutorials, training presentations, and rich sales demonstrations for Web and CD-ROM delivery.” I didn’t try this one because it seemed much more like video – and therefore didn’t meet the purpose I had last week. Here is a sample created with Camtasia.