Flektor's "Web 2.0" interface is drag-and-drop, which makes for a very short learning curve. To add media to your show, just drag your image and video files down to a timeline at the bottom of the screen, where they can be rearranged or removed at any time. There are also "Flidgets" which can be inserted into your show to add live chat, a live broadcast from your webcam, or special effects like color bars or static. What's really neat is the ability to edit any picture with some easy-to-use sliders that let you do simple, on-the-fly alterations to your photographs--something you'd find on Picnik.
There are nearly 100 transitions, effects, and filters to add a little flair to your show. You can also edit each effect and change its appearance. Out of the many transitions I've seen on some of these Flash editors (Photobucket's Remix in particular), Flektor has some really snappy and good-looking effects.
The main hindrance in using Flektor is how long it takes to communicate with the some of the third-party services. Flickr in particular takes quite a while to sync up photos from various albums. On the upside, the MySpace integration is very simple; just give it a username and it will pull up photos members have uploaded in addition to any images that have been embedded in user comments. Cool! It is also very easy to embed your Flektor player on a number of services, with a handy export page that provides special embedding codes for a dozen services, including Google's Orkut. You can customize the embed code, like specifying the player size.
Here is a "Flek" from abby-normal called Plastic Perspective. Makes you think twice about throwing away your plastic bottles … that is if it loads for you. I let it stream down in the background for some 10 minutes with no success.
Neither could I get the embed code. All this great production capability lost in the shuffle ... NOT a good omen for Flektor!
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