Sean Penn Senior Director Product Mgmt
Web Product Services Grp
Sonic Solutions
Roxio Online
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With the advent of broadband technology many software companies have found the web as a great way to not only offer trial downloads of popular desktop applications but also now offer the functionality of the desktop application as an online service. Sonic Solutions, Roxio Online has launched to offer users the ability to not only create PhotoShows with digital media uploaded to the site but also share instantly with family and friends.
The Roxio Online service with PhotoShow offers two ways of using its online features, a Free service and a premium service which offers benefits such as PhotoShows placed online and retained longer then 30 days, group channels with friends and family, video clips can be stored and shared, downloaded PhotoShows can be stored in MP4 and used and shared on phones, ipods and other portable media sources with Mpeg4 capabilities. The Premium service is available for 39.99 for a full year and also comes with the Roxio PhotoShow Desktop software which allows for creating PhotoShows even when an internet connection is not available and then uploading to the Premium service.
To get started the user simply visits the website at http://www.photoshow.com and signs up for an account. Uploading couldn't be easier as a upload box can give the user the ability to find photos in many different directories on the computer to upload. Once uploaded, the user can then select from any of the 8 free themes and available music. The Premium service offers over 150 themes for setting the mood and tempo and over 400 different music variations to have while the PhotoShow is playing. Users can also add animations to the photos and really personalize it with text. Once finished, the user can save it to the Roxio Online Member page that was created upon signup and email a link to friends and family as well as share the presentation on Social Networking sites such as MySpace, Blogger and a list of others. It took us about 3 minutes to create this PhotoShow on the Free Account http://www.photoshow.com/watch/HT2KP5KN
The Roxio PhotoShow Desktop software also allows for burning PhotoShow presentations to DVD. The company certainly has the experience behind it working with Digital Media of all types with its popular Roxio Easy Media Creator program. Taking this online approach to applications where the program itself resides in the "Cloud" can allow users with good internet connections yet older hardware to work with programs which would normally take longer amounts of time to process on these older systems. Beyond the benefits of this Online service with older hardware also comes an easy to use interface which allows users of all ages to create compelling and entertaining presentations which can be shared and even gifted, it sure beats an electronic greeting card.
We had the opportunity to talk with Senior Director of Product Management for the Web Product Services Group Sean Penn on the new service and how users can get started sharing right away. Tune in to listen to our interview with Sean Penn on Roxio's new form of digital storytelling.
