Flash apps without the messy programming

Three companies that stood out during the afternoon session will allow regular people (you know, the ones who aren't in the IT department) to create rich media and visually interesting messages. These tools will help bring Flash-like animation and rich media environments beyond the programming arena. The good news: this opens up rich media to new applications and messages. The bad news: like the early days of bad PowerPoint presentations, this could also mean a lot of bad animations in the years to come.

Focusing on the good, however, were three companies that I want to learn more about:

Flypaper, which admits that it "bridges the gap between PowerPoint and Flash." Its application lets "everyday business professionals" to develop multimedia content, including Web presentations, e-learning courses and other messages. The drag-and-drop interface looked amazing, and easy to learn. Once you've created your message, it's easy to modify, share or send over the Web.

GoldMail, which launched its Business Mail offering, allows marketing departments and salespeople to add multimedia (photos, videos, audio) to the typical e-mail message. The system uses voice narratives over a slideshow of images to create a new message, which can be branded and customize for each business. Tracking, direct-response features and reporting add to the benefits of the platform. I'm a little bit concerned about getting rich media spam messages (I'd hate to receive one of these for Viagra or other such offers), but hopefully this will only be used for good purposes, not evil. Likewise, I'm a little afraid of some PR colleagues getting a hold of this for some of their product pitches.

Sprout launched a widget building application, which allows regular users to create Web-based widgets and gadgets in a very cool drag-and-drop interface. Content creators who are struggling with ways to distribute their widgets to many different sites and locations should be very pleased with Sprout, as it looks like a "build once, distribute anywhere" type of app. In addition, there are templates for novices (like me), and more advanced features to the more professional types (artists, Flash programmers).

With all of these apps, I'm not suggesting that normal people completely get rid of their artists and Flash programmers, but the average person can use these tools to create their vision of the message that they want to create, and then toss it over to the programmer or artist for tweaking and advanced work, as opposed to asking them to create something from scratch.