A slideshow comparing Wow Slider, Smilebox, and Animoto on Windows, Android, and iOS platforms (as available).

1. Comparison of 3
Photo Slide Show Applications on
Various Electronic Devices
Presented by:
Bonnie Parham
Joey Feigley
Beth Drayer
Group 5 December 13, 2012
Web 282AF
Emerging Web Technologies
Professor Gina Bowers-Miller

2. Everyone’s Contributions:
Bonnie Joey Beth
Smilebox – PC Smilebox – iPad Smilebox - iPhone
Animoto – PC Animoto – iPad Animoto – iPhone
Wow Slider – PC Animoto – Android

3. Bonnie Parham – Smilebox for PC
PROs
• Many free designs to choose from with the free version for all occasions.
• Free music or the ability to upload your own.
• For longer videos you can add up to 3 different pieces of music. Music
automatically loops if there are still more photos when the music ends.
• Allows choice of transition types between slides and speed of both slides
and transitions
• Can use up to 400 photos
• Can import email addresses from other applications for email fished show
CONs
• The MAJOR Disadvantage is that you can only share the video slideshow
on Facebook, a blog, or Wiki or by Email. Could not export to hard drive to
save, or burn to a CD/DVD without their Premium membership.

4. Bonnie Parham – Animoto for PC
PROs
• Easy signup, can use Facebook to create an account
• No download necessary – online program
• Preset Template Styles
• Slideshow can be easily shared on Facebook, Tumblr, Photobucket, Flickr,
Myspace, Picasa, Twitter, YouTube
• One click share buttons for: facebook, twitter, email
CONs
Free Version (Lite)
• 30 second videos – total of 12 photos
• 360p video resolution
• No Image fitting, i.e., cropping, sizing
• Can not adjust timing or transitions

5. Bonnie Parham – Wow Slider for PC
PROs
• Interactive demos for each style where you can change each feature to
see what it does prior to making your selection.
• Site provides “Quick Help” for answering questions and customer support
• Offers professional looking styles (13), transition effects (13) - not a “fun,
cutesy look” like Smilebox
• Offers 9 preset resolutions from 320 X 240 to 1024 X 768 in addition to
allowing for “Custom Settings”
• Can control the time delay between slides in addition to time of each
transition
• More than one slide show can be published on the same page of your site.
• Offers the ability for functionality to:
– pause on mouseover
– loop the slideshow for continuous play or stop after one showing

6. Wow Slider for PC, continued
PROs (continued)
– design with or without frame and shadows, photo descriptions, back and
forward arrows, thumbnail images, bullet navigation, customize
background to match website.
• Offers many options for publishing:
– Can save directly to a folder on your PC, external hardrive, upload to
an FTP Server or directly to an open HTML page, create a Joomla 1.5
module, or a Wordpress plugin slider.
CONs
• Not recommended for everyday users
• When you mix Portrait and Landscape photos within the same slideshow,
the portrait photos get cut off on both ends as if the photo was taken in
“landscape” format unless you select shrink to fit.
• Not as easy to modify once published

7. Bonnie Parham - Summary
• Personally, I would not waste my time with the free version of Animoto;
the maximum of 12 photos is not enough to create a valuable slide show,
not to mention the very low resolution of 360p.
• Although Smilebox had many nice features for the average user, again, I
can not get over the fact that with the free version, the slideshow can not
be downloaded or burnt to a CD/DVD.
• In my opinion, the free version of WOW Slider has everything! Me being a
Web Design major, this is product I would choose over the other 2. It is,
however a more advanced program geared towards the professional, and
consequently, I do not recommend it to the average user.

8. Joey Feigley – Smilebox on the iPad
You can use this app to manage photos and add
effects and text to those images. You can not,
however, actually make a photo slideshow.
Overall, this app received a 3.0 rating from me.
Some of the high points:
• Easy to set up and use
• Free version allows for a ton of photos (I
haven’t actually found a limit yet)
• Very user friendly UI

9. Smilebox Photo with Photo Effects:

10. Joey Feigley – Animoto on iPad
You can use this app to create neat little slide shows with
nifty animation and background music. The free version only
gets a 2.5 though, because the emphasis is on the word
“little”. With a maximum of 12 images per slideshow and no
way to control timing, this app could be a lot better. The UI
of this app is much better on Android than it is on iPad, but
aside from that they are both very similar. Some key points
of this review are:
• I found 12 images per slide show to be very inadequate
• The UI is a bit cumbersome on the iPad, though pretty
easy to use on the Android device
• No control over timing or effects leaves a bit to be desired
• All in all, not a terrible app, but very limited in what you
can do with it for free.

11. Joey Feigley - Summary
If you’re looking for an actual slideshow, then out of the
two apps, Animoto is the only option. If you’re just
looking for photo effects and a way to share your
pictures, Smilebox is very superior to Animoto.
Both apps had their merits, but out of the two Smilebox
would have to be the winner. It may not be able to make
slideshows, but it does have useful features, where
Animoto seems more like a tease than anything else.
I did attempt to download Wow Slider. Wow Slider is only
available on PC and Mac, and not at all for mobile
platforms. This seems like a pretty significant limitation.

12. Beth Drayer - Smilebox
• Pros:
– Easy set up and install on the iPhone
– Allows you to view your entire album to choose photos from
– Allows you to choose frames or stickers to place on your photos.
– Sends notifications to let you know when there have been
updates to the app
– Allows you to send to instagram, facebook, twitter, e mail, or text.
– Allows you to crop and reposition the photos within the frames.
– Frames, stickers and brushes are separated by catagories…
Family, seasonal, life, occasions, etc
• Cons:
– The most photos you can put in a collage frame is 4
– No slideshow capability in the iPhone app

13. Smilebox Demo Pictures
Collage of Photos Photo with Effect

14. Beth Drayer - Animoto
• Pros:
– Allows you to pick music from your own library to play with
your video
– Easy set up and install on the iPhone
– Allows you to view your entire album to choose photos from
– Allows you to choose different themes for your photos to be
placed in, which for a free version is a decent selection.
– The app sends you an e mail letting you know you video is
done, but the e mail comes long after the video is done and
has been viewed.
• Cons:
– Can only choose 12 photos for free version, which would be ok
if you don’t mind your video being like 36 seconds long
– Slides move fast and I could not find a setting to change the
speed

15. Beth Drayer - Summary
Although Animoto only allows you to use 12 photos in the
free version, I liked this app the best out of the two I was
able to use. Smilebox is nice if you want to frame and put
stickers on your photos, but as far as creating a slide show
using your music and more than 4 pictures, you cannot do
that. I would be interested in getting the paid version of
Animoto just to be able to use more pictures. The average
video I made for Animoto was approximately 36 seconds
long, and the music didn’t even really have a chance to get
started. But again, Animoto is an actual slide show, where
Smilebox just allows you to manipulate or frame pictures.
Wowslider was a big let down as it was not even available to
download on the iPhone.

16. The Group’s Summary Review
Each of us completed the survey below for each slideshow application
utilizing a rating system of 1=low through 5=great.
The scores below are an average of all answers for each application:
ANIMOTO Smilebox WOW Slider
1. Ease of download and/or install. 5 5 5
2. Ease of account set up: 5 5 5
3. User friendliness of the UI: 4.5 4.5 4
4. Tutorials available within the application: 3 3.5 5
5. Usefulness of the free version: 3.5 4 5
6. Maximum # of photos accepted per slideshow? 12 400 Unlimited
7. Adequacy of maximum # of photos accepted: 3 5 5
8. Overall user experience: 3 4 4

17. The Best App for Each Platform
PC Android iOS
Smilebox* Animoto* Smilebox
Wow Slider*
*Smilebox for PC is recommended if you are an average user and would
like to share a video slideshow with friends and family via email or social
media.
*Wow Slider for PC is recommended for serious professionals
*Animoto received the best Android App option because it was the only
one of our 3 applications that worked on Android OS
When uploading our slideshow to Slideshare, we discovered that the links
did not work. Please see associated document containing all links to
demos as well as independent consumer reviews on our applications!

18. Thanks from Group 5!
Thank you for your time, and we hope you have
enjoyed our presentation!