The Savvy Technologist

Rich media presentations with mPOWER

Multimedia Design Corporation has a multimedia product called mPOWER. It looks similar in capability to eZedia and MediaBlender, but my first impression is that it’s a bit more intuitive to use. The program has direct hooks into Apple’s iLife applications that allow you to import photos, movies, and audio very easily. The desktop version works on PCs and Macs. There’s also a Web-based subscription version that can be used to access presentations that are on the Web and modify them. The “webinar” feature looks pretty interesting too. Subscriptions to the Web-based version are very cheap and according the sales rep the webinar attendees don’t need their own subscriptions.

The software imports HyperStudio which is interesting to me because we’ve still got some old HyperStudio stacks lying around that are increasingly difficult to play on our newer machines. The content is stored in XML format for maximum buzzword compliance. I’m sitting here cringing at the moment because the sales rep who’s doing this presentation clearly has no idea what he’s talking about with respect to XML, HTML, and streaming over the Web. I hate sales B.S.

The final verdict: the software is definitely worth looking at. Price looks pretty good and there are a bunch of features that could be useful for putting content on the Web.